5. In the same manner we are able to trace the origin of different nations; which we could not do with certainty had the world been eternal. We can look back to the beginning of the greatest empires of the present day; and we can also mark the rise, the meridian splendor, and the decline of those which preceded them, till we arrive at a certain point beyond which we know nothing; and this point extends to about the standard assigned in the Mosaic account of the creation. Should earthquakes and floods be again pleaded as having destroyed nations as well as sciences, and thus reduced the world to a second infancy-if any had remained, we might naturally conclude that the most useful arts had been preserved, and that some wrecks of mighty nations would have survived the desolation, at least, to tell the tale of woe to succeeding generations. But a system begins to be in danger, when those who maintain it are reduced to the necessity of supposing things which might, or might not, happenwhere probabilities are against them-and when if their arguments are admitted, the slender causes they assign, are in themselves inadequate to the production of effects so extensive as they wish to establish.

6. It may be necessary to notice a modern objection which has been urged against the Mosaic chronology; and which is designed to prove, that if the world be not eternal, it may still claim a much higher antiquity than is allowed in the Bible. It is in substance as fol

lows:*

These objections to the Mosaic chronology are stated and refuted very much at large in the Encyclopædia Britannica, article Earth. To the writer of this article I am indebted for the statement given above; and for the most part I have adhered to his language as best conveying his thoughts upon the subject.

"In pits or openings of ground in the neighborhood of Vesuvius and Etna, beds of lava have been discovered at considerable depths below each other; and these in some places are covered with successive strata of vegetable mould. These different strata have proceeded, it is said, from an equal number of irruptions from the mountain. Ten or twelve successive strata, overlaid with soil, have been discovered in the bowels of the earth; and it is strongly asserted, that, by digging deeper, many more might be found. It is ASSUMED that a thousand years at least are necessary to the production of a soil sufficient for the nourishment and growth of vegetables upon these volcanic lavas. If this be granted, and twelve such strata have been discovered, the antiquity of the earth is immediately swelled to, at least, twelve thousand years: which is more than double the Mosaic chronology. This, then, is the point upon which the whole controversy turns; and the answers that have been given to this objection may be laid down in the following order:

1. It is granted, by those who have written upon this subject, that some lavas are very solid, and others much less so. The one, of course, resists the operations of time much longer than the other. This also is admitted.

2. They have not determined of which sort the lavas in question are, which is a material inquiry: since, if a thousand years were required for the more solid, a much less time would be necessary for the farina

ceous.

3. Soil gradually increases by decayed vegetables, and the sediments of snows and rain: the thickness or thinness of the soil must therefore determine whether a greater or less time has been employed in the accu

mulation: but these writers have not informed us of the dimensions of these subterraneous vegetable strata -another material circumstance in the calculation.

4. Volcanic ashes and muddy water are sometimes thrown out, designed, as it should seem, by nature to repair the sterility occasioned by the lava; and these ought to be taken into the account, as materially assisting quickness of vegetative soil.

5. They have, however, furnished us with the following fact. The town of Herculaneum was destroyed by an irruption in the ninety-seventh year of the Christian era. There are evident marks, that the matter of six irruptions,' say they, 'has taken its course over Herculaneum; for each of the six strata of lava is covered with a vein of good soil.' Here then, we have their own authority for six strata of good soil accumulated in less than seventeen hundred years: which, supposing them of equal thickness, instead of a thousand years, leaves us not three hundred for the production of each."

At best, then, this objection is hypothetical merely; and upon the testimony of the objectors, a thousand years are not only unnecessary to the production of such strata, but six of them have actually been formed in less than seventeen hundred years; or less than three hundred for each: and we therefore see no solid reason to induce us to sacrifice the chronology of Moses, to the uncertain doctrine of vegetable strata.

. We produce only one other consideration against the opinion of the world's eternity; and that appears to us of very great importance:

6. If the world is eternal, how has the tradition of its beginning every where prevailed, although under different forms, among nations both barbarous and

civilized? We leave the skeptic who disputes the Mosaic history, and the philosopher who asserts the eternity of the world, to answer this inquiry-it is not our business. The fact cannot be denied. Not only is it to be found among the refined nations of antiquity, but barbarians who then chased, and savages who still pursue, the wild and brute inhabitants of their own inaccessible forests, had, and yet have, some tradition of the creation of all things. It is not merely in England's metropolis, that infidelity is encountered with the history of the beginning of the world; traditions of it are to be met with on the plains of Indostan, on the banks of the Ganges, and among every tribe and every nation, from the line of the equator to the circle of both the poles. It forms a part of every religion in the known world. Every country, although, perhaps, claiming an antiquity higher than we allow, and supposing the world to have been produced by chance, does nevertheless admit that it had a beginning. This was the universal doctrine of the heathen world; excepting that some of their philosophers, from the love of novelty, or the pride of distinction, disavowed the public sentiment. It was the common faith of all nations, and remains so. We appeal to the Phenician histories, to the Indians, and to the Egyptians. We read it in Linus, in Hesiod, in Orpheus, in Aratus, in Thales, and in a variety of Greek writers too large to lay before you; all of whom embrace the idea that the world was created, and not eternal. From these, the Romans borrowed the same doctrines. Ovid, who closely transcribed these opinions from the Greeks, has given a long and eloquent description of the formation of the heavens, and the earth, and its several inhab

itants.* We repeat our question, how was it possible for the tradition of a beginning to the world, to be so universally prevalent, and so universally received, through every age, if it were indeed eternal?

From these representations we now wish to deduce a most interesting and important inference; and to establish a truth which lies at the foundation of all religion, natural and revealed

THE BEING OF A GOD.

If we have in any respect succeeded in overturning the two hypotheses which have now passed under review: if the world be not the production of chance, and if it be not eternal; it follows, that it must have been created-in order to which there must have been an infinite Architect. We have seen human reason led into labyrinths, from which it could not be extricated but by the friendly assistance of Revelation. To the eye of nature, all is obscurity. We have received decisive evidences from notorious facts, that when an investigation of these subjects has been attempted by men of the first talents, independently of this infallible guide, the mortifying and inevitable result has been, bewildered systems, trembling uncertainty, clashing, contradictory theories. "There is a path which no

fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye hath not seen: the lion's whelps have not trodden it, nor hath the fierce lion passed by it." These secret paths are the operations of God, sought out by those who love him, and discovered only by the direction of his word, and the agency of his Spirit. of his Spirit. Admit the being of a God, and all is clear and luminous. Every difficulty vanishes: for what cannot Omnipotence perform?

Metam, Lib. 1. See the quotation, note 4, at the end of the Volume.