the interest and value of the science, will add to its attractiveness, its dignity, and its usefulness; and, in place of an enemy, show it to be what it legitimately is, a natural and efficient auxiliary of religion. QUESTIONS. Does this view of the mode, in which the matter of the strata was introduced into the ocean, suggest the reason that the waters were so prolific of minute animals that were invested with coverings of silex and lime? What is it? Does this view suggest a solution of the origin of rock-salt? What is it? Is its origin explicable on the common theory? What bearing on this view of the rapidity with which the strata were formed, has the softness which the strata appear to have retained at the time of their upheaval? What proof is there that they were then soft and pliable? What are the various forms in which the strata are bent? How is their being forced into this shape accounted for by De La Beche? Do their flexures and contortions show that their upheaval must have been completed before they lost their pliancy, and therefore, that it must have taken place rapidly? Does their upheaval while in a soft state furnish an explanation of the denudations they have undergone? What is the testimony of Professor Rogers, respecting it? Would the rapid elevation of hills and mountain ranges have created violent currents and agitations of the ocean, which would necessarily have torn the strata up, if soft, and washed them off, from large areas? Could however, such erosions and denudations as they have undergone, ever have taken place, if, at the time of their upheaval, they had possessed their present hardness? Does their softness at their upheaval suggest the reason that rivers in a brief period cut their deep channels through rocky strata? Might the Niagara have thus excavated its present bed back from Lake Ontario to the falls in a very brief period? Is there any reason to believe it would ever have worn the rocks away in such a form, had they not been in a plastic condition? Does the elevation of the mountains while in a plastic state, suggest an explanation of the formation of the large masses of rounded stones and pebbles that are found in their vicinity? Explain the manner in which they may have been formed? Do they abound on the slopes and at the feet of the Andes? Is it the judgment of geologists that they were derived from those mountains? State Mr. Darwin's views. Are they found in great masses at the feet of the Appalachians? Does the distance from the high ranges of the mountains at which they are lodged, show that the currents by which they were borne there, must have rushed with great violence? Do these views indicate the reason that no human remains are found in the strata? Do geologists allege that as a proof that man did not exist till after the strata were formed? Is it a just ground for that conclusion? Is there any reason to suppose that Europe or this country was inhabited by man before the flood? As all our present mountains, as was shown in a former chapter, were raised from the ocean since the deluge, and as the strata with which they and the continents at large are covered, were formed beneath the ocean, is it not clear that the present continents and islands, all of which are covered with the strata, must have continued to be buried in the ocean, at least most of the time till the deluge; and if so, is not that a sufficient reason that no human relics are found in the strata? Is it not probable that the lands that were inhabited anterior to the flood, and were submerged at that catastrophe, were situated at a vast distance from Europe and this continent, and are now beneath the sea? If so, does not that explain the non-existence of human remains in the strata of Europe and America? Is it not clear then, that the fact that no human remains are found in the strata of Europe or America, is no ground for the inference that man did not become an inhabitant of the world, till after these strata were formed? Is it not supposable that the area of the Asiatic continent at first raised above the ocean after the deluge, was of moderate extent, and that the great processes by which the strata were completed, and the continents and islands elevated to their present positions, were continued for a period afterwards? May it not have been because the earth was of but a narrow extent at its first emergence, and requiring but few animals to stock it, that so small a number was preserved in the ark? May it not be presumed that as other regions were fitted for the residence of living creatures, they may have been called into existence by new creations? Does this supposition render the existence of the land animals whose relics are fossilized consistent with the sacred history of the creation and the deluge? Did those animals undoubtedly live after the deluge? Would two, three, or four hundred years after the lands became generally inhabitable, have been sufficient for the growth of all the large animals, whose period is proved to have followed the deluge by the fact that their relics are buried in the upper strata and soil that were formed after the elevation of the great mountain ranges, which took place as was shown in Chapter VII, after the flood? Does the fact that certain classes of animals that once occupied the waters and the land, have disappeared, and others have taken their place, prove that long periods were occupied in those changes? May not the destruction of those classes that have perished, have taken place rapidly? Must not the creation of their successors have taken place instantaneously? Does the freedom of many of the relics of the bulky animals from decay, indicate also, that their period cannot have been more remote than three or four thousand years? Is it credible that bones of the Mastodon buried in the soil near Niagara, could continue there as Sir C. Lyell supposes, through thirty thousand years, without undergoing more than a slight decomposition? Does not the perishable nature of those relics confute the supposition that they can have dated at an earlier period than the ages that immediately followed the flood? Are these various facts then sufficient on the one hand, to confute the theory of the great age of the world; and on the other, to show that the facts of the strata are consistent with the history in Genesis, of the 412 THE STRATA FROM THE INTERIOR OF THE EARTH. creation and deluge, and vindicate that record from the charge of error? Should it be said that though we have shown that the great processes of geology may have taken place in the manner we have indicated, we yet have not demonstrated that they took place in that manner; what is the reply that should be made? Is it enough for our object to show that the strata themselves do not prove the great age of the world? What are the points by proving which we have established that? State how those points have been proved? Is it enough for geologists to set aside our conclusion, that the facts of the strata are consistent with the history in Genesis, to say that we have not demonstrated from the strata themselves that they were formed since the epoch of the six days creation? What must they prove to set that conclusion aside? Must they not show that the strata cannot have been formed in the period and in the manner we have indicated? But can they show that the requisite materials did not exist in the depths of the earth? Can they show that there were no agents sufficiently powerful and active to raise those materials to the surface? Can they show that if they had been ejected into the ocean, they could not have been so diffused and deposited, as to have formed the existing strata? Or can they show that such a construction of the crust of the earth, is inconsistent with any of the other processes to which it has been subjected? If then, they cannot disprove any of those great facts, is it not manifest that they cannot prove that the strata were not formed in the manner we have represented? And if they cannot prove that, is it not clear that they have no ground for their assumption, that the facts of the strata are irreconcilable with the Mosaic history of the creation and deluge? THE END. THE THEOLOGICAL AND LITERARY JOURNAL. EDITED BY DAVID N. LORD. Issued quarterly, on 1st of July, October, January and April. PUBLISHED BY FRANKLIN KNIGHT, 138 NASSAU STREET, N. Y. Besides Essays and Reviews on the modern doctrine of Geologists respecting the age of the world, there is in the Journal a series of articles on the principal philosophical and scientific theories of the period, that touch in a measure the |