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gone round many times, why may we not suppose the sun has already gone round his wide circuit, with the earth in his train, many, many times? Let his circuit occupy eighteen millions of years, and let us suppose him to have gone round a thousand times, that is, through a period of 18,000,000,000 of years, you will find nothing in the bowels of our earth to contradict it, but much to authenticate and confirm it!

You will find in the bowels of the earth, no marks of recency, freshness, hurry. Everything seems to have been done deliberately, gradually, with long intervals of rest; as if a thousand years were but a day; as if a millennium were spent on a single stratum, and a myriad of millenniums on some larger groups, or extended formations.

There is nothing in astronomy indicating the incalculable age of the material universe, which is contradicted by our earth.

Thus the various sciences confirm geology. The telescope and the microscope, join their testimony in its favor. All things in nature are as if the geological hypothesis were true.

Consistency with Scripture.

Having thus stated some of the leading doctrines of geology, and given a summary of the argument in their favor, the question will now naturally arise, "How is all this to be reconciled with the Bible, or with the popular notion, that the whole material universe was created about 6,000 years ago

?"

With the latter, geology never can be reconciled, any more than astronomy. With the Bible, reconciliation may be somewhat difficult, so long as men are slaves to traditional interpretations; but it is by no means impossible, if men will but receive the Bible as it was given; and look to it only for what it was intended to teach.

Our space forbids our entering fully into this question in the present article, especially as we wish to say a few words before we close, on the advantages of geology.

We may say, in general, that among the various schemes of reconciliation, there are three which occupy the most. prominent place.

1. The first is that which separates the first verse of Genesis from the rest, as referring to a long antecedent period; and then interprets the "days" as natural days of twenty-four hours; and "creation," except in the first verse, as referring simply to Adam, and the present races of vegetables and animals, and to a renovation of the earth, or of that portion of

the earth, on which man first dwelt. This is the theory of Pye Smith, Hitchcock, Buckland and many others.

2. Another is that which interprets "creation," as including the entire universe, and the "days" as indefinite periods, of which our days are a mere miniature. This was at one time the theory of Faber and Silliman, and seems to be now that of Miller and Anderson.

3. A third is that of Knapp, in his Theology, who regards Genesis I. as a pictorial representation of the successive works of creation, not to be literally interpreted, and yet having a general foundation in truth. An account written not to gratify the curiosity of scientific men, but to communicate to plain people, a sufficiently clear conception of the divine agency, in the origin of all things.

On this point we beg leave to observe,

1. That either of the foregoing modes of interpretation, is better and safer, and more sure to result in the ultimate honor of the Bible, than the popular interpretation which makes matter to have had no existence till 6,000 years ago. For this is as contrary to astronomy, as to geology.

2. It will be found a safe rule, in reading the ancient Scrip- . tures, not to be looking for modern science, nor for any other than the science common at that day. The great end for which the Bible was given was to teach theology, (including, of course, morals and the way of salvation). Even theology was not then taught in a scientific way, but in a popular manner adapted to uncultivated mind. The revelation in Gen. I. was made to the old patriarchs, and was intended to give them no scientific knowledge of the sun, moon, or stars, nor of the earth and its inhabitants, further than was necessary to furnish them with right ideas of the power, and glory, and goodness of God. Things were described to them as they appeared, not in all cases as they were in reality. The theology of the chapter, however, was the same to them, with their imperfect science, as it is to us with all our superior knowledge.

The Theology of creation is the same viewed through the science of the patriarchs, as when viewed through the science of Newton and La Place.

3. If we read the Bible with the eyes of modern science, we shall be constantly in danger of losing the spirit, in the letter. If, when Samuel's mother sings, "the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and he hath set the world upon them," 1 Samuel, ii. 8, instead of looking at the ideal exhibition of the power of

God, we go to scanning the language, literalizing the metaphor, and looking scientifically to discover the material pillars, and the rockyfoundation" on which the earth is set, we lose the sublime lesson intended to be taught, and use the Bible as it was never intended to be used! We must take the language of the Old Testament, as the Hebrews understood it; and the philosophy of the patriarchs, as the patriarchs held it.

Only grant the same liberty in interpreting the geological passages of the Bible, that is granted in construing the astronomical allusions, and the main difficulty is at once removed.

4. There is no imperative necessity for supposing that the Death, threatened Gen. ii. 17, included animals and vegetables, as well as man. The theology is the same on both interpretations; while in the one case, we are not called to doubt the demonstrations of geology, that the destruction of animals and vegetables, long preceded man.

In short, if we allow the Bible, or the God of the Bible, to speak to men in the first ages, as we speak to children, using their style, their imagery, their philosophy, superficial though it be, as the medium of teaching them moral truth, and look only at the moral truth, we shall be safe as on the Rock of Ages. But so surely as we base our belief of inspiration, on the perfection of the chemistry, astronomy, or geology, we suppose to be taught in the Bible, we erect our fabric, beside a rock, upon the sand.

Advantages of Geology.

A word now on the advantages, given to theologians, by geology.

1. It has forever exploded the old atheistical doctrine of Endless Series; the doctrine that neither men, nor animals, nor vegetables, had a beginning; that the chain of succession had been eternal. This, geology refutes by ineffaceable records on rocks on the face of the whole earth, showing, beyond all cavil, that before the recent period of the last 6,000 years, man was not; that a little farther back, mammals were not; a little farther, and birds were not; a little farther, and reptiles and fishes, and molluscs, and worms, and even vegetables, were not. If there be anything clearly demonstrated by science, it is this, that all creatures had a beginning; and geology shows us (relatively,) when and where."

This was never done by any science so conclusively before. 2. It has exploded the "Development Scheme" of Lamarck, Oken, Maillet, Compte, and the author of the "Vestiges of

Creation;" a scheme which virtually sets aside a Creator, and makes one species transmute itself gradually into another and a higher species, by a law of nature. Geology refutes this by demonstrating that each species was as distinct from every other species, and as perfect, at its beginning, as at any subsequent period, of its existence. No transition species, no species in the process of transmutation, or metamorphosis, has ever been found.

In other words, though there has been progress towards perfection on the grand scale of creation, in both animals and vegetables, no species or genus was more perfect at its extinction, than at its origin; and no species ever passed into a species, of a higher order. When an old order died out, and a new order appeared, it appeared as a new creation, independent, and of a distinct class, and often long after its predecessors had finished their course. In many instances, too, Miller remarks, the species, as of fish, so far from improving in their characteristics, actually showed signs of degeneracy, before they were blotted from creation.

3. It settles the question against Hume and others, of the credibility and fact of miracles. For Creation is a Miracle; and Geology shows a succession of creations, of course, of miracles, from age to age, through the Geologic periods-an old race passing away, and, after an interval, a new race, adapted to a new climate, and a new state of things, brought into being. This could have been done by no law of nature, but only by an immediate, miraculous, interference, of Omnipotent Power. For even Lyell, the coolest philosopher of them all, and the most indifferent where science may lead, teaches, again and again, against Lamarck and others, that no species of plants or animals can appear, without what he calls, an "Intervention of a First Cause." His formula for a new organism is "When the Author of Nature creates an animal, or a plant, &c.*" Now Geology testifies to a succession of creations, on the largest scale, as after the Silurian, the Mountain-Limestone, the Oolite, the New Red Sandstone, the Chalk formations, and the Tertiary series.

4. Geology confirms the testimony of Genesis, as to the general Order of Creation. This is now almost universally allowed. At first, there was nothing but sea and land. Then came plants and fishes of the lowest order; then fishes and

• Prin. of Geol. i. 493-497.

*

reptiles of a higher order; then birds, and lastly mammals and man. The more exact order of deposits, is annelids, or worms; then molluscs or crustaceans; then fish; then reptiles, then birds, mammals, man.t

5. It removes objections to the Deluge, from the supposed permanent elevation of the mountains, and the deficiency of water. Geology shows that the highest mountains have, near their tops, if not on their very summits, deposits, which must have been made in the bed of the ocean; that whole countries and continents, after having been dry land for a season, have been again submerged; that in some cases, with some portions of the earth, these changes have taken place, thirty or forty times. Where now the Atlantic rolls its flood, was once a continent, with a large river, whose mouth deposited the "Wealden" in the south of England, where was then a sea. It was not, therefore, by any means, the first sinking of the land, or upheaving of the bed of the ocean, that brought on the catastrophe in the days of Noah.

6. It extends Paley's argument from Final Causes, by furnishing manifold new proofs, of Divine wisdom and benevolence; inasmuch as it shows that the creation, and future wants of men, were in the Divine mind, when, millions of ages before man, He deposited the beds of coal, and lime, and gypsum, and salt,

* Old Red Sand. p. 230.

†The chief opponent of this particular view is Mr. Lyell; and his opposition is little more than in name. He admits all the facts stated by Geologists in general, in reference to the existence of fishes before birds, of birds before mammals, and of reptiles and mammals long before man, if we are to be governed by the fossils yet discovered; but he thinks the conclusion not yet fully justified, that birds and mammals did not exist from the earliest period. He pleads, however, nothing but negative evidence. He admits, distinctly, the “recent origin of man;" that no perfect mammal, nothing but the marsupial quadruped is found below the Tertiary series; that no birds have been found below the Lias, or the new Red Sandstone; and that the earliest reign, so far as observation has yet gone, was of the inhabitants of the waters. In short, in the main facts, he agrees with Buckland, Miller, Anderson and others, questioning only whether their conclusions are not a little wider than their premises.

In another point, that of organization, he takes the ground that there has been no improvement in form!—that "it is by no means clear that the organization of Man is such as would confer a decided pre-eminence upon him." His higher dignity is ascribed to his "intellectual and moral attributes." Principles of Geology, i. 260.

So slight are the differences between this eminent Geologist, and his brethren, on the main points and principles of the science, that this Note would not have been thought necessary, had not a writer in the New York Observer, over the signature of "A. B.," on reading Mr. Lyell's late Anniversary discourse, in which he advocates his old and favorite theory, cried "Eureka! Eureka!" as if he had found a fulcrum on which, with his powerful lever, he could overturn the Geological world. He could hardly have crowed louder, if he had found a "mare's nest" in a fossil state!

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