not be suffered to pass by unassailed, unless their own convictions were in unison with the writer; and they felt that, at the least, the principle of his inferences was one that could not successfully be gainsayed. But, to conclude these extracts, we offer yet one more from a writer, the force of whose opinions will not the less be admired for the elegance of the language in which they are conveyed; neither will the cause and motive of their delivery detract, we should hope, from their title to general respect and consideration. He thus treats of the science in question.*

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By the discoveries of a new science, we learn that the manifestations of God's power on the earth have not been limited to the few thousand years of man's existence. The Geologist tells us, by the clearest interpretation of the phenomena which his labours have brought to light, that our globe has been subject to vast physical revolutions. He counts his time, not by celestial cycles, but by an index he has found in the solid frame-work of the globe itself. He sees a long succession of monuments, each of which may have required a thousand ages for its elaboration. He arranges them in chronological order; observes on them the marks of skill and wisdom, and finds within them the tombs of the ancient inhabitants of the earth. He finds strange and unlooked-for changes in the forms and fashions of organic life during each of the long periods he contemplates. He traces these changes backwards

* Sedgewick. Discourse on the Studies of the University of Cambridge, 1834.

through each successive æra, till he reaches a time when the monuments lose all symmetry, and the types of organic life are no longer seen. He has then entered on the dark age of Nature's history; and he closes the old chapter of her records.

During the evolution of countless succeeding ages, mechanical and chemical laws seem to have undergone no change; but tribes of sentient beings were created, and lived their time upon the earth. At succeeding epochs, new tribes of beings were called into existence, not merely as the progeny of those that had appeared before them, but as new and living proofs of creative interference; and though formed on the same plan, and bearing the same marks of wise contrivance, oftentimes as unlike those creatures which preceded them, as if they had been matured in a different portion of the universe, and cast upon the earth by the collision of another planet. At length, within a few thousand years of the days in which we live (a period, short indeed, if measured by the physical monuments of time past) man and his fellow-beings are placed upon the earth."

In the Appendix to the work, he thus reasons upon his own statements.

"The Bible instructs us that man, and other living beings, have been placed but a few years upon the earth; and the physical monuments of the world bear witness to the same truth. If the astronomer tells us of myriads of worlds not spoken of in the sacred records; the Geologist, in like manner, proves (not by arguments from analogy, but by the incontrovertible evidence of physical phenomena) that

there were former conditions of our planet, separated from each other by vast intervals of time, during which man and the other creatures of his own date had not been called into being."

Admirably does he follow up this position. "But let us suppose that there are some religious difficulties in the conclusions of Geology. How then are we to solve them? Not by making a world after a pattern of our own;-not by shifting and shuffling the solid strata of the earth, and then dealing them out in such a way as to play the game of an ignorant or dishonest hypothesis;-not by shutting our eyes to facts, or denying the evidence of our senses; but by patient investigation, carried on in the sincere love of truth, and by learning to reject every consequence not warranted by direct physical evidence. Pursued in this spirit, Geology can neither lead to any false conclusions, nor offend against any religious truth. And this is the spirit with which many men have of late years followed this delightful science:-devoting the best labors of their lives to its cultivation;-turning over the successive leaves of Nature's book and interpreting her language, which they know to be a physical revelation of God's will;-patiently working their way through investigations requiring much toil both of mind and body;-accepting hypotheses only as a means of connecting disjointed phenomena, and rejecting them when they become unfitted for that office, so as in the end to build only upon facts, and true natural causes. All this have they done, and are still doing; so that however unfinished may be the fabric they have attempted to rear, its founda

tions are laid upon a rock and cannot be shaken, except by the arm of that Being who created the heaven and the earth-who gave laws to the material world, and still ordains them to continue what they

are.

These in brief are some few of the discoveries of the geologists, and the results to which they lead. We have been studiously careful of attempting to raise any- the slightest shadow -- of hypothesis founded on the data which their investigations have afforded us; much less of introducing any ideas which have not the stamp of recognized authority;and have chosen rather to quote the authors themselves, however naked such a plan, than to embody their notions in a more fluent and continued narrative. We have merely striven to connect them together by such links as seemed almost unavoidable. At the same time, it is quite obvious, that such a mode must be wholly inadequate to arm the Bible student in panoply of defence. That can only be done, in its full power, by personal study; or at the least, by a knowledge of the best writers on the subject, and by a collation of their works. Enough, however, may still be gained in the ordinary reading of a man—in his hours of leisure,-for his own conviction; and he does not justice to his mind, hearing, as he must, of the existence of a controversy working matters of the highest importance to his belief, if he rejects such means of knowledge as may be placed within his reach.

Such then are the facts of geology. They undoubtedly give grand and enlarged notions to the mind; and invest the earth-nay, human nature

with a character of sublimity, greater than possessed in the common belief. There is something inexpressibly splendid in the idea of the earth's re-formations and renewals; of long systems, successively accomplishing their Creator's designs, and sinking into a repose, the preparative for future races of inhabitants on its surface: and something elevating and ennobling in the thought,-joined as it is to the Revelations of Moses, that Man has been the last created, "a little lower only than the angels, full of glory and worship." But great as it is, will it harmonize with the account of Moses? Without this conformity the deepest discoveries of science will not minister to the soul's peace; but bring upon it distress and anguish by unsettling and confusing it. We should execrate the lore which weakened our faith in the word of God, and view that knowledge in distrust, which led so palpably and recklessly to evil. We would say, "give us our religion the written Revelation free, unfettered and unharmed, or perish for ever the science which would interfere with our reception of it."

In this spirit we examine the given records of creation, without a thought or feeling but the acquisition of Truth.