theological reverie on this subject. "The putting together again, of the dislocated remains of the primeval earth, must have been an important part of the office of the subsiding waters." "The object now was, not disruption, and dislocation, and destruction, but to form anew the earth and its heavens, which had been thus destroyed, and by the addition of a vast body of fresh materials not entering into the composition of the old crust of the former, to render it materially different from it." (B. T. p. 491.) It is not necessary to go into a formal exhibition of the absurdity of such views as these. For unless a new school of physico-theologists should arise, and geological science as well as biblical criticism, should revert to their condition one hundred years ago, they will not be adopted. To the taste, as well as the science of that age, they are admirably adapted, and the same may be said of nearly all those parts of Mr. Kirby's treatise, that are connected with geology. We do no injustice to that gentleman, by saying this; while justice to the cause of science, as connected with religion, requires us to do it. But it is a painful duty. We have taken a deep interest in the Bridgewater Treatises, and were thankful that we were going at last, to have a series of works by men of the first scientific eminence in Europe, which we could put into the hands of scientific skeptics, while they should not be able to say, that these writers defend religion only because they do not understand philosophy. But so far as the geology of Mr. Kirby's work is concerned, we are entirely disappointed; and we feel it to be our duty to say that such exhibitions can have no other than a bad effect upon the cause evidently so near Mr. Kirby's heart; the defence of natural and revealed religion. For the inevitable effect upon the skeptical geologist, will be to make him throw aside the work, and we fear the whole series, in disgust. We have before us a letter from one of the ablest living geologists of this description, which well exhibits the effects of such productions. "It gives me pain," says he, "to find a man so estimable in every respect -, compelled to cling to theories impossible to defend, from reasons unconnected with science. It has injured his well earned reputation, and I think has injured the great cause he has at heart, the interests of the christian religion; for this must be the effect of connecting it with opinions which are manifestly no more than the best conclusions that wise and good men of former days, were induced to adopt, when they had but few facts, inaccurately observed, to reason from." These remarks, as it ought to be stated, were addressed to a believer in revela tion. There is another bad effect resulting from the adoption of such untenable and exploded theories by a standard writer. The greater part even of educated men have not the leisure requisite for pursuing the subjects of natural science so accurately as to be able to form independent opinions upon difficult questions connected with it. Hence when a man like Mr. Kirby, of acknowledged distinction in science, and evidently jealous for the honor of natural and revealed religion, advances opinions on the connections of science with revelation, they will have a wide influence and be extensively adopted. And if they happen to be wrong, they will powerfully arrest the progress of truth. Now Mr. Kirby's reputation as an entomologist, and perhaps we may add also as a helminthologist, is deservedly high. But this does not prove that he is at all qualified to decide difficult geological questions; especially when he himself testifies that he is not. Yet his opinions on geology will have nearly as much influence, except among geologists, as if he were well acquainted with the science. Nay, with not a few there exists no small jealousy respecting the views of geologists, as if hostile to revelation; and such will be very glad to range themselves under the banner of a leader in natural history, especially of one whose great object appears to be to bring philosophers back to the word of God, who, he maintains "with the exception of a single sect, who perhaps have gone too far in an opposite direction, have made little or no inquiry as to what is delivered in the Scriptures on physical subjects, or with respect to the causes of the various phenomena exhibited in our system, or in the physical universe." (B. T. Int. p. XL.) So that it would not be very strange if there should be quite a revival in our day of the doctrines of physico-theology; so many germs of which are scattered through Mr. Kirby's work. And if he can speak so mildly and hesitatingly of the extravagancies and dangerous doctrines of Hutchinson, it requires but a slight knowledge of human nature to understand that some of his followers would ere long adopt them. But we will detain our readers no longer on this subject; for we had no intention of reviewing Mr. Kirby's work. We did intend, however, to express our opinions freely; and we now * The Hutchinsonians. resume the history of opinions respecting the deluges of history and geology. Writers upon the deluge early perceived the difficulty of finding water enough on the surface of the globe to cover its continents. Hence they resorted to subterranean abysses of vast extent; and for a long time this opinion seems to have been taken for granted; so that philosophers had little to do, except to point out a method by which these internal waters could have been forced out so as to deluge the surface. Hutchinson, Catcott, and recently Kirby, imagined, that as the waters were driven out, by internal heat according to the latter author, and by the pressure of the air on the surface according to Catcott, the air would rush inward to supply its place, and to prevent the falling back of the waters; and though such an effect must have taken place in defiance of the laws of gravity, yet it corresponds very well with the other parts of their hypothesis, and Mr. Kirby has advanced a principle which makes such apparent inconsistencies no real inconsistencies. "It must always be kept in mind," says he, "that this was not an event in the ordinary course of nature, and a result of the enforcement of her established code of laws, but a miraculous deviation from it, in which their action was suspended, and in consequence of which, perhaps, some were abrogated and new ones enacted in their room. (Br. Tr. p. 15.) We have no objection to considering the Noachian deluge as miraculous. But after this admission it seems very absurd to attempt, as these authors do, to explain the manner in which the event took place, any further than to state the facts just as they are delivered to us in the inspired record: and then when their hypotheses are shown to be in violation of the laws of philosophy, to escape from the difficulty by terming the event a miraculous one. But if we have any reason to suppose this event was brought about by natural agencies, then our reasoning concerning their modus operandi must be in accordance with the known laws of nature. We ought either to discard all reasoning on the subject, or to reason according to the principles of correct philosophy. Other writers have invented more ingenious expedients for forcing the water out of the bowels of the earth. Hooke, a distinguished mathematician and philosopher, whose posthumous works were published at the commencement of the eighteenth century, imagined the globe was compressed so as to force the water out, just as the juice of a lemon is driven out by squeezVOL. IX. No. 25. 14 ing it in the hand; and thus, to say the least, he showed how the depressed portions of the surface might have been inundated. Subterranean agencies, according to him, the same that produce earthquakes, occasioned the depressions and elevations of the crust, which caused the waters to flow out. Ray, a distinguished naturalist and the contemporary of Hooke, had recourse to the hypothesis of a shifting of the centre of gravity of the earth, somewhat after the manner in which Dr. Halley explains magnetism by a mass of metallic iron in the earth, which has a revolution distinct from that of the earth, and is of irregular form. As the attracting centre changed, it would cause the waters successively to deluge and desert the different parts of the surface. Sir Henry Englefield has made some curious calculations to show how a slight expansion of the waters within the globe might produce a general deluge. He assumes that the solid crust of the globe is 1000 miles thick, and that beneath this is an abyss of waters 2000 miles thick, leaving a solid central nucleus 2000 miles in diameter. Assuming that the temperature of the whole globe before the deluge was 50° (Fahrenheit) and that from some cause it was suddenly raised to 83°, he finds, since water expands one 25th of its bulk from freezing to boiling, that this increase of heat would be sufficient to deluge the earth. If the cause of the elevation of the temperature were then removed, the waters would contract to their original bulk, and leave the continents again dry. The great difficulty with this hypothesis, besides its unsupported assumption of a vast internal ocean, is, that several of its conditions (as for instance the accession to, and subsequent abstraction of temperature from the waters,) would demand as great an exercise of miraculous power as to produce a deluge without the intervention of means. In our own day and country, Dr. Silliman has suggested a very ingenious hypothesis to bring the waters of the earth's abysses over the dry land. He supposes vast galvanic arrangements to exist in the bowels of the earth, which might have generated vast quantities of hydrogen, oxygen, and carbonic acid by decomposition, and that these gases, occupying the upper portions of subterranean cavities, would, as they accumulated, force the waters out and cause them gradually to overflow the land, but after their escape the waters would flow back again into these internal reservoirs.* • American Journal of Science, Vol. 3, p. 51. This notion of vast subterranean accumulations of water, however, though quite plausible at the beginning of the present century, has probably been abandoned by nearly every able geologist, since the recent astonishing discoveries concerning central heat. Ingenious therefore as several of the modes are that have been mentioned for forcing out these waters, proposed though they have been by men of the most powerful and logical minds, it is no longer necessary to spend any time in proving them unfounded. The famous Dr. Halley ascribed the deluge to a comet impinging obliquely against the earth. This would change the axis of rotation as well as the length of the day and the year, and the powerful agitation thus given to the waters would drive them with violence over the dry land. This change of the earth's axis, whereby the former equatorial regions have been brought into the northern hemisphere, has been a favorite notion with cosmologists ever since the time of Allessandro degli Alesandri who suggested it in the fifteenth century; and even in our day, it has been advanced with confidence. It was among the fancies of Dr. Samuel L. Mitchell of New York ;* although both Newton and La Place had shown its extreme improbability; and we find it in the recent Geologie Populaire of M. N. Boubee of France. Whiston improved upon this cometic theory of Halley. He thought that the mere appulse of a comet to the earth sufficient to produce the deluge without actual collision. And by a display of mathematical learning of a high order, he made it probable that a comet did actually pass near the earth just previous to the deluge. This he thought would produce a gradually increasing tide, both in the waters upon and within the earth, until the comet had reached its nearest distance from the earth, when the waters would gradually decrease. This theory certainly seemed very plausible; and even Mr. Greenough, late president of the London Geological Society, although he does not avow his belief in it, yet shows it more favor than any other, and says, "we need not be deterred from embracing that hypothesis under an apprehension that there is in it any thing extravagant or absurd." However, since the time when he advanced this sentiment, he has entirely changed his opinion re Cuvier's Theory of the Earth, p. 410. New York 1818. |