movements, in those to whom they are addressed. The evidences of Geology, being popular, are doubly valuable.

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history. Thus enlarged in its views, and provided with means of pursuing them, Geology extends its branches into regions more vast and remote than come within the scope of any other physical science, except Astronomy. It not only comprehends the entire range of the mineral kingdom, but includes also the history of innumerable extinct races of animals and vegetables, in each of which it exhibits evidences of design and contrivance, and of adaptations to the varying condition of the land and waters on which they were placed; and besides all these, it discloses an ulterior prospective accommodation of the mineral elements to existing tribes of plants and animals, and more especially to the use of man. Evidences like these make up a history of a high and ancient order, unfolding records of the operations of the Almighty Ruler of the Universe, written by the finger of God himself, upon the foundation of the Everlasting Hills."

Attempts (says Dr. B.) have been made at various periods, both by practical observers and by ingenious speculators, to establish theories respecting the formation of the earth. These have in great part failed, in consequence of the imperfect state of those subsidiary sciences, which in the last half century have enabled the geologist to return from the region of fancy to that of facts, and to establish his conclusions on the firm basis of philosophical induction. We now approach the study of the Natural History of the Globe, aided not only by the higher branches of Physics, but by still more essential recent discoveries in Mineralogy, Chemistry, in Botany, Zoology, and Comparative Anatomy. By the help of these sciences, we are enabled to extract from the archives of the interior of the earth, intelligible records of the former conditions of our planet, and to discover documents which were a sealed book to all our predecessors in the attempt to illustrate subterranean It was not, however, permitted to science to wrest the secrets from Nature, or proclaim her victories over Time, without raising distrust and opposition. The early and liberative stages of scientific discovery," says our author, are always those of perplexity and alarm: * and during these stages, the human mind is naturally circumspect and slow to admit new conclusions in any department of knowledge." These doubts and difficulties seem to resolve themselves into two branches; the former resulting from the disclosures made by Geology respecting the long periods of time assigned to the duration of the globe, previous to the creation of man ; the other arising from a supposed opposition existing in other points between the declarations of Scripture and the discoveries of science; between the first chapter of the book of Genesis, and the chalk quarries of Montmartre, the cliffs of Lyme, and the caverns of Maestricht. Those persons who had so interpreted the Scriptures, as to believe that the date of the formation of the earth was coæval with the creation of man, and that both took place about six thousand years ago, would be slow to admit the error of their conclusions, and unwilling to separate events which had been previously, and as it were indissolubly united in their minds. They further imagined that it was derogatory from the majesty and power of the Deity to suppose that creation in his hands was a work of time; that the world was slowly elaborated from its primeval chaotic rudeness, perhaps from a mere nebulous matter, through its long and various stages of progress, till it arrived at its designed proportion, and God saw that it was good.'

It was argued that Infinite Power would act in a manner different from the power which was limited; that Infinite Wisdom would admit no gradation or alteration in its workmanship; and, as the Creator of the universe could by a word, a breath, a will, call it into absolute perfection; why should He act by the same incomplete means by which the limited

* "For every new theory that is proposed, to be alarmed, as if all religion was falling about our ears, is to make the world suspect that we are very ill assured of the foundation it stands upon."-Burnet, i. xl.

power of man is obliged to accomplish its designs, by slow processes, by changes sometimes gentle and sometimes violent: amendment of original designs, all carried on through tedious and hardly measurable intervals of time* Such are the hypothetic reasonings that are often met with, opposed to the discoveries and inductions of the Geologist.

But the arguments were in facto unsound; for, however one may reason, a priori, on the manner in which the original creation would appear to be performed, most consistently with the attributes of the Deity, yet the fact is, that the continued creation of the world, and the everrising fabrics of Nature, are now carried on by processes which, comparing them with the manufactures of art, and the workmanship of man, must be denominated as slow. It takes a fourth part of the life of an animal to raise it to its maturity. Centuries elapse before the acorn that dropped from its mossy cup into the soil, has expanded into its colossal proportions, and spread its majestic shadows over the land. How slowly are the fruits of the earth ripened for the sustenance of man! The berry of the thorn sleeps for two years in the ground before germination commences. It takes months for the powers of nature to renew the smallest nail of the finger; years to produce a tooth. And what are those five thousand years to which the existence of the earth has been thus limited? Some of its most perishable productions can claim an age hardly less than this. What dates are given by the scientific botanist to the cedars of Lebanon, and the cypresses of Mexico? What Linnæus of the present day has determined the duration of the baobabs of Africa, even surpassing this. There are then trees upon the earth, which not only gave shelter to the Persian monarch on his march, or which stand' survivors sole' of their gigantic brethren who were brought from the eternal snows of Lebanon, to form a temple for the Lord; but there are still standing, in the prime of growth, those under which the Patriarch might have received his angel guest, and some that might have heard the voice of primeval man, and waved their leaves within the verdurous wall" of Paradise.+ Upon hypothesis then, and

The long duration of time in these formations, and the slow and gradual process of the deposition of the remains of marine, terrestial, and lacustrine animals, may be seen in Lyell's Geology, vol. iv. p. 98, and Buckland, i. p. 119. Dr. Buckland justly lays great weight on the unity of design, on the relations and analogies existing in the systems, proving an origin in the will of one and the same Creator: but an immediate formation of a globe at once finished and starting from chaos into consummate perfection, would so differ from the continued operations of nature, and be so inharmonious, as not to allow an argument to be drawn from the unity of the same First Cause. Thus would Geology be on the side of the soundest views of Natural Theology. Theology also, we think, may be indebted to Geological research, for removing some difficulty with respect to animal life as connected with the Ark. V. Quart. Rev. No. XLI. p. 44, 58. It you proceed, says Burnet, according to an ordinary providence, the formation of the earth would require much more time than six days; but if according to an extraordinary, you may suppose it made in six minutes if you please. + See Prof. Candolle's calculations on the age of baobabs, cypresses, yews, &c. We can see no reason why the banian tree should ever cease to be. We may here remark that in Prof. Lindley's Botany, are some remarks on these calculations of De Candolle. The Prophet Ezekiel, xxxi. describes cedars, firs, and chesnuts as the trees of Eden. "The cedars in the garden of God could not hide him: the fir trees were not like his boughs, and the chesnut trees were not like his branches; nor any tree in the garden of God was like unto him in his beauty. I have made him fair by the mul titude of his branches; so that all the trees of Eden, that were in the garden of God, envied him." He seems also to describe the cedar of Lebanon as the largest and mightiest of the trees. Milton also begins his account of the Paradisial trees-" Cedar, and pine, and fir, and loftier palms," &c.

from analogical reasoning, we should dissent from the conclusions drawn by this argument: but when we come to experiment and induction, the refutation of it is complete.

:

"For Geology has already proved by physical evidence that the surface of the globe has not existed in its actual state from eternity, but has advanced through a series of creative operations, succeeding one another, at long and definite intervals of time that all the actual combinations of matter have had a prior existence in another state, and that the ultimate atoms of the material elements, through whatever changes they have been passed, are and ever have been governed by laws, as regular and uniform as those that hold the planets in their course. All these

results entirely accord with the best feelings of our nature, with our rational conviction of the goodness and greatness of the Creator of the universe; and the reluctance with which evidences of such high importance to Natural Theology have been admitted by many persons, who are sincerely zealous for the interests of religion, can only be explained by their want of accurate information in physical science, and by their ungrounded fears, lest natural phenomena should prove inconsistent with the account of creation in the book of Genesis."

To others who might be disposed to feel that there was some incongruity in believing that this globe could have been formed, arranged, and beautified by the designs of Wisdom, to be the abode for ages of animals who might enjoy its plenty, but who could not feel and admire its workmanship, or praise God for the work of his hands; and that it was, as it were, building a palace for worms and reptiles; rearing marble saloons for the spider to hang his web; and spreading costly hangings for a covering to the bat; even in this view, it must be observed that man even now can claim but one wing of this great edifice as his own; that he inhabits but one fifth part of the globe, and that the other four-fifths are stocked alone with animal life, whose enjoyment is uncontroled by human power, and is unseen by human eyes; and that in the rich profusion of the vegetable world, the far greater part

"Are born to blush unseen,

And waste their sweetness in the desert air."

Amid the drear and wide expanse of those wintry solitudes,

Where to the Pole the Boreal mountains run;

in the unapproachable and burning deserts of Africa; and the deep caves beneath the ocean-floor, the unfathomable vaults that contain the secrets of the hoary deep,-the animal creation alone exists, as independent of the control of man, as ignorant of his existence, as were their predecessors now sleeping in their fossil tombs. The tiger still claims the forests of India as his own, and the tawny monarch of the Nubian solitudes warns man not to approach within the awful circle of his domain. This argument would therefore still remain in force. Though man may form the leading or important part of the system, he does not form all, Part of the inferior animal creation may cluster round him in love, or crouch to him in fear and part may keep aloof from him in self-relying and unsubjugated independence; part may be designed to minister to his wants, or augment his pleasures; and part may forbid him to encroach on a territory that was given them by nature, and which they have the power to maintain. But the argument, thus perhaps weakened, dies immediately away, as soon as the prospective purpose is developed. Then, the existence of animal life, even for millions of ages, as in the remotest depths of antiquity, may be said to be intimately linked with the last five thousand years since the earth has become man's dwelling-place; insomuch as the remains of organic beings, by gradual process, and for countless ages, have

formed the very materials indispensable to man's existence. HE could not have lived upon a rock of granite; he could not have reared his Cerealia, the staff of his life, on a barren crystallized surface. He could have found no fuel, or food, or clothing, on a stratum of porphyry or gneiss. All these he procures by means of the remains of former animal and vegetable life, which have lived and died for him. Thus, then, we believe in a prospective preparation which links the first day of the creation, however remote, to the present; which gives an importance not its own, to the meanest reptile, and to the microscopic shell; which makes the nautilus and the trilobite out of their very sepulchres build the living palace in which man resides, and then carries the mind through a vista of immeasurable leugth, in the beginning of which are seen the simplest forms of nature-the seaweed and the coralline; and at the end, the august form of Him, erect and tall,' who by His power hath subdued the earth, and chained the waters of the sea, whose eye hath measured the heavens, and whose hand hath weighed the stars.

What are called the scriptural difficulties seem to have arisen partly from the extreme brevity with which the great events of creation are described, and partly from some ambiguity of language; and further, because the season has not arrived when a perfect theory of the whole earth (a theory that when perfect must agree with the account of the inspired writers in all points) can be fixedly and finally established: since we have not before us all the facts on which such a theory may eventually be founded. It is not however the part of a wise judgment, to let that which it does not know, interfere with that which it does †: admitting, as Dr. Buckland justly observes, that we have much to learn, we also know that much sound knowledge has been already acquired, and we protest against the rejection of established parts, because the whole is not yet made perfect. It was assuredly prudent, during the infancy of Geology, in the immature state of these physical sciences which form its only safe foundation, not to enter upon any comparison of the Mosaic account of the Creation with the structure of the earth, then almost totally unknown. The time was not come when the knowlege of natural phænomena was sufficiently advanced to admit of any profitable investigation of this question; but the discussion of the last half century has been so extensive in this department of natural knowledge, that whether we will or not, the subject is now forced upon our consideration, and can no longer escape discussion. The truth is, "that all observers, however various may be their speculations respecting the causes for which geological phænomena have been brought about, are now agreed in admitting the lapse of very long periods of time to have been an essential condition to the production of these phænomena."

Now, under Dr. Buckland's safe and cautious guidance, we approach the text of Genesis; owning, on the one hand, its inviolable authenticity; and on the other, acknowledging that the history of a fact cannot be more authentic than the fact itself; that both the history and the facts it records

*"'Tis a dangerous thing," says Burnet, "to engage the authority of Scripture in disputes about the natural world, in opposition to reason; lest time, which brings all things to light, should discover that to be absolutely false, which we had made Scripture to assert ;" and v. Burnet on the Deluge, 1. xxxix.

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Both reason and the Scriptures are to be looked upon as of Divine original; God is the author of both. He that made the Scriptures made also our faculties; and 't were a reflection on that Divine veracity for the one or the other to be false when rightly used. We must therefore be careful and tender of opposing these to one another, because that is in effect to oppose God to himself," &c. Burnet, i.

are the works of God: the one by the workmanship of his hands, the other by the illumination of his spirit. That one belongs to natural religion, the other to revealed: that both are submitted to the reason of man, as evidences by which he is to believe; that they cannot be contradictory, if perfectly understood and rightly interpreted; if science and criticism are both confident of their investigations, they can neither weaken nor destroy each other. What difficulties exist, have arisen from the imperfect nature of our knowledge, our means of correctly interpreting either science or scripture being too limited to enable us to discover the perfect truth, and to reconcile the two. Owing to some parts being wanting, the separate portions of the map of knowledge have not fitted in to each other. We are acquainted only with some geological phænomena, not with the whole; and we are not agreed in the exact interpretation of the language of Scripture, in which the records of these phænomena are revealed to us. There are points, it must be confessed, not yet reconciled, and over which the veil of an awful obscurity is still suspended; but that forms surely no reason why other parts which are harmonious should not be candidly explained and acknowledged. Geological phænomena do not contradict the declaration of the divine books; and when they differ from them, the geologist is ready to own the imperfection of his knowledge; he owns that the science which has only lately received a name, is furnished with but few facts, compared to what it may expect, and is still in its infancy; and he waits for the hand of art to unroll for him some new papyrus long buried in the laboratories of nature, which will form a bright and authentic commentary on the text of Scripture.

Dr. Buckland prefaces his remarks with the following observation :"If the suggestions which I shall venture to propose, require some modification of the most commonly received and popular interpretation of the Mosaic narrative, this admission neither involves any impeachment of the authority of the text, nor of the judgment of those who have formerly interpreted it otherwise,-in the absence of information as to facts which have been but recently brought to light and if in this respect Geology should seem to require some little concession from the literal interpretation of the Scriptures, it may fairly be held to afford ample compensation for this demand, by the large additions it has made to the evidences of natural religion in a department where Revelation was not designed to give information." Dr. Buckland then proceeds to answer those who expect to find in the Scriptures an historical account of the creation of the world independent of that part which connects itself with the history of the human The design of the Bible is to give the moral history of Man,* and not a philosophical system of nature. It was written for those to whom it was immediately addressed, as well as for all succeeding generations ; written for the ignorant as well as the learned; to those who walked in darkness, and those who lived in the light of science. It was written as a popular book; for it was addressed to all people. Had it expressed itself in philosophical language, it must have waited for the days of Newton and

race.

"The history of the introduction of Man upon the globe, was undoubtedly the sole object of the first chapter of Genesis; not any revelation of facts in natural history, or of physical events, which, being unaccommodated to the notions of the age, would have withdrawn the attention from these truths as to the moral destinies of mankind, which it was all the great purpose of the inspired writer to reveal." v. Quart. Rev. lxxxvi. 414.