The development theory is not more at fault in the rudimentary structure

and primitive size of animals, as brought to light by the deepest

researches of geology, than it is in the perfection and complication

of the several organs with which they were endowed. These organs in

the earlier types ought, upon the principles of this theory, to have

all partaken of the simplicity and sameness of the germinal vesicles;

varying, indeed, in their complexity, as in their completeness, in

proportion as we ascend among the fossiliferous strata. But the facts

are not so. Nay, so far otherwise, that in the very earliest specimens

of Nature’s workmanship we find the mechanism of the parts as minute,

varied, and multiplied, as in those of her most recent productions.

Examine the eye of the Trilobite, the oldest of crustaceans, and the

distinguishing type of the lowest of the fossiliferous rocks. These

creatures swarmed in the Silurian seas. Their destiny was not fulfilled

by the close of the tertiary periods, for they still exist. But in none

of her subsequent creations has Nature displayed greater elaboration in

the parts, or more skillful adaptive contrivance in their arrangement,

than in the visual organ of this palæozoic family. The eye of the

trilobite is formed of four hundred spherical lenses, arranged in

distinct compartments on the surface of the cornea, which again projects

conically upward, so as to enable the animal while resting, or seeking

its food at the bottom of the waters, to take in the largest possible

field of view—this, as it might require, either for the purpose of

defense or attack. Fishes, birds, and mammals, have all, it is well

known, an optical apparatus precisely adjusted to their respective habits

and the element in which they live. Fishes and fowls have their eyes

differently constructed.—The bat, which preys in the dark,—the eagle,

which soars in the blaze of the sun,—and the mole, which burrows in the

earth, have each peculiar and appropriate organisms. But in none is there

greater complication or perfection, than what is manifested in the eye of

these earliest and still living tribes of the waters.

The number of plates or cylinders which compose the eyes of insects, a

higher and more gifted class, differs in different species, amounting

in the ant, so provident and wise, to only fifty, in the house-fly to

eight thousand, and in the mordella to the amazing number of twenty-five

thousand and eighty-eight. And yet how much is all this surpassed by

the astounding mechanism displayed in the eye of the cod-fish, in whose

crystalline lens there have been detected about five million fibers,

every fiber containing about twelve thousand five hundred teeth; and

the total number of these teeth or processes reaching the numerical,

though to us utterly inconceivable, amount of sixty-two billions five

hundred thousand millions! But more than all this. Look at the multiplied

appliances furnished to the humblest and lowest of all living creatures

for performing the functions of an existence scarcely removed above the

vegetable. “The tentacula of polypi,” says Dr. Roget, “are exquisitely

sensible, and are frequently seen, either singly or altogether, bending

their extremities toward the mouth, when any minute floating body comes

in contact with them. When a polypi is expanded, a constant current

of water is observed to take place, directed toward the mouth. These

currents are never produced by the motions of the tentacula themselves;

but are invariably the effects of the rapid vibrations of the cilia

placed on the tentacula. Now, of these organs a single _flustra foliacæa_

has been calculated to possess about 400,000,000.” Thus much for the

Zoophyte class of animals—placed on the extreme verge of organized

bodies—and members of a system of being, according to the development

theory, whose primitive productions are of the simplest kind, the monads

of a germinating vesicle!

Nor will the development theory do better, when it would account for

the diversity of instincts which prevail in the animal kingdom. The

instincts, indeed, it assumes as the cause of all their diversity of

structural organization. But this is to beg the whole question. Geology

carries us back to the beginnings of organic life, when animals, each

after their kind, were already perfected, and endowed with a ready-made

apparatus for the particular sphere of existence assigned them. The

polypi are still a distinct race, unvarying in their instincts, not the

least improved in the building art, still piling up reefs, and doing the

same thing which they did when first created. The nautilus has lived

through all time, swimming his fragile bark as dextrously over the

Silurian seas as he now does amidst the breakers of the Pacific. The

cephalopoda and the finny tribes then warred against each other, and

ever since they meet in mortal conflict. The same with all the great

families which were successively brought upon the stage: species and

genera have changed, the old withdrawn, and new ones introduced; but in

their respective orders—reptiles, insects, birds, and quadrupeds—the

type ever continues, and the instincts remain; and there is no nearer an

approximation to or crossing of each other’s domains now, than when first

summoned into being. Were the development theory true in nature, and the

epochs of geology the myriads of ages assumed, the presumption would

be, that the old primitive forms would have been all obliterated and

figures of creatures substituted, all of the most remote and indistinct

analogies. The _monodal_ races, why have they not all passed away? Had

the reptiles sprung from fishes, why, upon the principle of progression,

should there be fishes still? Had man derived his parentage from the

monkey, why are there so many species of the one class, and only a single

great family of the other? The vegetable tribes have been equally true

to their kind—the fucoids and algæ, still abundant in the seas—the pines

of Mar forest, rivaling in coniferous qualities the most gigantic of the

oldest relics—and the palms and fern trees of Australia maintaining the

very types that flourished in the carboniferous era.

The scheme of creation, moreover, implied in the development theory,

proceeds, as it appears to us, upon an inconsistency of assumption that

is completely at variance with its own leading cardinal principle,

namely, a continuous progression from the less to the more perfect forms

of organic existence. If this be true with the _particulars_, why not

also in the _generals_ of all that is endowed with the mystery of life?

Every great type or class of being, whose remains are detected in

the most ancient rocks of the earth, has still its representatives in

living nature. The two ends of the chain, the infusorial and mammalian

families, are still produced distinct, and each perfect after its kind.

The course of creation is thus always, through indefinite time, returning

upon itself like the fallacy in dialectics of reasoning in a circle,

instead of advancing from the successively higher standards of the

perfected models to still more varied and perfect degrees of excellence.

The circumstances and conditions, too, of the planet are different from

what they were in the palæozoic times, and yet the tribes developed then

are all developed still; different in the species and genera, but of

the same forms and families; not larger, but more frequently less, in

size, and not of better or more complex workmanship. The principle is,

therefore, inconsistent with itself, while it leaves unexplained its own

assumption of progression in _one_ particular direction only, instead,

as it ought to be, in all the primitive types of organic existence.

The theory is imperfect beside, in attempting no explanation of the

inorganic structures of creation; for the original molecules of matter

which assimilated, aggregated, and produced the primary rocks of granite,

gneiss, schist, limestone, should have had their law in this direction as

well as in the other, of progressive perfection. But these rocks, in no

such sense as this, have been repeated or reproduced: matter, essentially

the same, according to the theory of the “Vestiges,” whether organic or

inorganic, has here retrograded rather than progressed; and if we would

contemplate its most elaborate and beautiful forms, either igneous or

sedimentary, we must go, not to the secondary and tertiary formations for

our specimens, but to the crystalline groups of the primary epoch.

Whatever it may have been with Lamarck, it is certain, in the case of

the author of the “Vestiges,” that the speculations originating in

the nebular hypothesis lie at the foundation of all his philosophy.

This Essay would never have been executed, as it could not even have

been imagined, but for the data so abundantly supplied by a universal

star-dust lettering, filling all space and inscribed over all time.

But change the names, and it is only the atoms of Democritus and the

vortices of Descartes that constitute the elements, one and all, of

the modern cosmogony. Cicero in his first and second books “De Natura

Deorum,” has given a full and ample refutation of the former; and his

merit is the greater, when it is considered that the inductive methods

of philosophizing were not in use nor even guessed at in his time. The

argument, as quaintly translated in Ray’s “Wisdom of Creation,” is thus

stated—“If the works of nature are better, more exact and perfect, than

the works of art, and art effects nothing without reason, neither can

the works of nature be thought to be effected without reason; for is it

not absurd and incongruous, that when thou beholdest a statue or curious

picture, thou shouldst acknowledge that art was used to the making of it;

or, when thou seest the course of a ship upon the waters thou shouldst

not doubt but the motion of it is regulated and directed by reason

and art; or, when thou considerest a SUN-DIAL or CLOCK, thou shouldst

understand presently, that the hours are shown by art and not by chance;

and yet imagine or believe, that the world, which comprehends all these

arts and artificers, was made without counsel or reason? If one should

carry into Scythia or Britain such a sphere as our friend Posidonius

lately made, each of whose conversions did the same thing in the sun and

moon and other five planets, which we see effected every night and day in

the heavens, who among those barbarians would doubt that that sphere was

composed by reason and art?”

The inhabitants of this island are no longer the “barbarians.” The

Scythians still are so, and have ever been. Upon the development

hypothesis, might we not pause to ask, has our intellectual, and moral,

and social progress affected our physical condition so as in aught to

change the organic relation of the two nations, barbarous both in the

time of Cicero?

But we proceed:—“A wonder then it must needs be,” continues the

philosopher, “that there should be any man found so stupid and forsaken

of reason, as to persuade himself that this most beautiful and adorned

world was or could be produced by the fortuitous concourse of atoms. He

that can prevail with himself to believe this, I do not see why he may

not as well admit, that if there were made innumerable figures of the

one-and-twenty letters,—in gold suppose or any other metal,—and these

well shaken and mixed together, and thrown down from some high place to

the ground, they, when they lighted upon the earth, would be so disposed

and ranked, that a man might see and read in them Ennius’s Annals;

whereas, it were a great chance if he should find one verse thereof among

them all: for if this concourse of atoms could make a WHOLE WORLD, why

may it not sometimes make, and hath it not somewhere or other in the

earth made, a temple, or a gallery, or a portico, or a house, or a city?

which yet it is so far from doing, and every man so far from believing,

that should any one of us be cast, suppose upon a desolate island, and

find there a magnificent palace, artificially contrived according to the

exactest rules of architecture, and curiously adorned and furnished, it

would never once enter into his head that this was done by an earthquake,

or the fortuitous shuffling together of its component materials, or that

it had stood there ever since the construction of the world, or first

cohesion of atoms; but would presently conclude that there had been some

intelligent architect there, the effect of whose art and skill it was.

Or, should he find there but one single sheet of parchment or paper, an

epistle or oration written full of profound sense, expressed in proper

and significant words, illustrated and adorned with elegant phrase,—it

were beyond the possibility of the wit of man to persuade him that this

was done by the temerarious dashes of an unguided pen, or by the rude

scattering of ink upon the paper, or by the lucky projection of so many

letters at all adventures; but he would be convinced, by the evidence of

the thing at first sight, that there had been not only some man, but some

scholar, there.”

Now, here let there be but the substitution of a few terms—“fortuitous

concourse” for the “nucleated vesicle”—“atoms” that whirl in mazy dance

through indefinite time, for the “stardust” revolving through infinite

space—“transmutation of species” for “the lucky projection of so many

letters”—and the overthrow of the one hypothesis is as ruinously complete

as the demolition of the other.

Thus geology, while it reveals a succession of animal types, pronounces

each after its kind perfect in its own degree and measure of organic

development. The oldest known fossil fish (the Onchus Murchisoni, and

inhumed in the lowest fossiliferous beds), belongs to the highest type

of the Cestraciont division of the vertebrata. What they were made at

first, they all vindicate their capacity of continuing to the end. The

various tribes and orders had their own limits of organization, their

own sphere within which the functions of each were to be performed, and

adapted to the condition in which they were placed, each reaped the full

enjoyment that divine benevolence had appointed. Man was the last in the

course of successive creation, endowed with the highest and most enlarged

capacities, and, allied to none, was constituted the priest of nature,

that he might collect the silent praises of the universe, and offer them

to the Creator in intelligent devotion.

But here it is, when we have reached this link of the chain, that the

most vitiating element in the whole doctrine of progressive development

is manifested. The anti-theism and materialism, involved inevitably and

undisguisedly in the noxious dogma, are brought out in bold relief.

This dogma implies, that the cosmical arrangements and all the organic

transmutations of living types, are none of them directly the result of

any personal, immediate creative actings on the part of Deity. These

arrangements, from the beginning, are all dependent on one unchanging

law, applicable alike to organic and inorganic bodies, to the mysterious

principle of life, and to things inanimate,—to mind as to matter. The

simple effect of this may appear to be, the removal of the Creator merely

a step farther from his own works, which he can still hold in the hollow

of his hand, and bend whither He will. But the statement goes a great

deal farther. It strikes directly at the root of all moral distinctions

as well as of all revealed truth. The creature man, upon this hypothesis,

the last link in the terrestrial chain, comes not from his Maker’s

hands “made in his own likeness.” He too is the product of a natural

law, evolved after a long series of metamorphoses, to whose operation

the moral and the physical are equally subject,—the soul and the body

alike the result of its rigid inflexible agency. Front the fire-mist and

electro-nebulous matter, which is assumed to have originally filled all

space, Man, along with suns and stars, and all planetary bodies, derived

the first germ of his being. At first gaseous, it became in process of

time concrete. There was no life until the electric spark, struck in some

mysterious way from the dance of atoms and wild whirl of the elements,

vivified the germ with this newly-developed principle. Then the germinal

vesicle became a self-moving, self-acting thing—not at first, but after a

series of changes, adapted into the type of the human family, whose life

was but the life for ages of the animals that have perished, and are now

fossilized in their various formations. THE PRINCIPLE OF LIFE, in short,

as implied in this account of its origin, is the same essentially with

the light and heat that sparkle and glow in the rolling orbs which deck

the firmament!

Much of the development theory is built upon the influence of the

instincts as manifested in the lower tribes. Let its abettors listen to

the indignant cry of THE WHOLE FAMILY OF MAN against this theory of his

origin; and say, if there is not an instinct here, peculiar and distinct,

to vindicate his claim to a separate and distinct position in the great

system of being. “Quanta ad eam rem vis,” says Cicero, “ut in suo quoque

genere permaneat.”

The continental philosophy, at no time for the last century, has partaken

of a religious, healthy tone. It has been profoundly subtile in its

speculations and analysis, but never truly spiritual. The author of the

“Vestiges,” from his own turn of mind, has been all the more enamored of

it, and, unwittingly dragged into its vortex, has been carried far beyond

the ken of all rightful philosophies. These are not the subjects of

legitimate investigation. Man has no plummet-line, in all his armory of

science, wherewith to sound them. Grant that in the manner now described,

the human race originated, and became living creatures—destined, it may

be, to undergo new changes and to ascend into new orders of being—the

animal nature to be perfected in the progressive modifications of his

type. But the divine ethereal spark, as men vulgarly dream of themselves,

what account is given of this? The soul, what? and whence derived? The

thinking principle of mind,—where its place, and what provision made

for its efflux, in the nebulous ether? The inference unquestionably

is, that if such be its source, the human UNDERSTANDING must be of the

essence of matter out of which it evolved,—glorious as the sun and fair

as the moon,—but not the heavenly element, animate with the immaterial,

incorruptible being of Divinity. But this is not the teaching of geology.

Through all the story of its undefinable epochs, and in the myriad

sarcophagi of its extinct generations, there is no record, no trace of

man. He stands, utterly and far apart, from every fossilized thing, while—

“The most distant star’s invisible beam,

Or comet on his farthest journeyings,

Or all the extent which philosophic ken

Has given to infinite space, the elastic soul

Springs over”——

and claims kindred with the image of the heavenly, whence it came, and

whither it seeks and aspires to return.

While, therefore, to wild speculations like these nature and geology

give no countenance, but demonstrate the reverse to have been the course

of creation in all the present, and in every past epoch,—that races,

like individuals, have their terms of existence,—that all die out or are

violently exterminated,—and that new families are created, adapted to

the changes which have taken place, and organically distinct from all

that preceded them,—there is, at the same time, a theory of progression

and development distinctly traceable in all the divine actings in this

world. This view of things is in every stage of it visibly dependent upon

His will, as it emanates directly from His appointment, and stands in

pleasing contrast to the rationalist phasis of creation.

“Wisdom’s artful aim

Disposing every part, and gaining still

By means proportioned, her benignant end.”

CHAPTER III.

ANALOGICAL ORDER—PHYSICAL AND MORAL—OF PROGRESSION.

The author of the “Vestiges” devotes two chapters to what he terms

general and particular considerations respecting the origin of the

animated tribes. He regards it as a thing completely demonstrated,

or as requiring so little proof as to be taken for granted, that the

inorganic elements all took together by a process of natural law,

which Deity was not required to superintend, but simply to begin. He

supposes, hypothetically, that this also would be the case with the

organic structures, that, in the originating of the first tribes, God

supplied the materials, and that natural law assimilated and fashioned

them into their different orders and families. This might be predicated

of the Creator, he fancies, as the mode in which he _would_ act; and

by removing him a step away from his own works, and allowing all the

subsequent genera and species of the epochs of geology to go out and to

come in according to the same process, his special interference in such

arrangements is rendered unnecessary; and the greater honor is reflected

upon operations in themselves so complicated and vast, and yet all so

minutely, orderly, and prospectively ordained.

We need not employ more than a sentence in reply to this mode of

reasoning. Hypothetically I would say, if God was to create a world at

all, and to store it with living creatures, he would do all these things

_directly_ of Himself. He created every individual particle of the

original matter, in all their infinitesimally minute and myriad atoms. We

do not know how, nor the manner thereof. But every one of them required

his _special_ interference singly, as in combination and a whole; and had

not Deity so specially acted with the parts as with the mass in willing

them into being, none of them, of any kind or quality, would have been

in existence.—Why not the same _manner_ of creating as to the species,

genera, and orders of the animated tribes? These required not less His

direct personal interference than the elementary particles and minims

out of which they were formed; and superintendence in the one case is

as dignified, if the term may be so applied, as in the other. Admit the

omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence of Deity—and the author admits

them all—and any other mode of reasoning is wholly nugatory—as useless in

science as it is inadmissible in fact—as inconsistent with the subtilties

of the profoundest analysis as with the conclusions of the most confiding

theology.

But the creation of the world by God being admitted, it is no less true,

and it is equally a necessary truth, that the arrangement and disposition

of its parts, the order and succession of its events, are each

immediately an effect of the great First Cause. As no material substance

could originate itself, so neither could it impart the principle of life,

or construct the organization through which that principle is manifested

and maintained in the exercise of its functions. Equally impossible is

it for the course of events, the motion of the elements, the growth of

plants and animals, and all those subtile processes in nature by which

objects are produced and distinguished, each after their kind, to be the

results of chance, or of any inherent, underived properties existing

in the things themselves. Whether God acts _mediately_ by a course of

nature originally established, or _immediately_ and _constantly_, by the

same divine agency which produced all things at first, and impressed

upon each its peculiar properties, may be a question in philosophy,

but none in theology. We indeed may speculate respecting the manner of

the Divine acting, and may speak of that manner as the laws according

to which the system of nature proceeds; but we cannot doubt the source

whence the chain of events takes its rise, or wherefore it is that

there are order and regularity in the arrangements of the universe. And

while everything is of God, and the course of nature precisely such

as He intends upon whom the whole is dependent, it is interesting to

find the closest analogy subsisting between the actings of the Divine

Being in every department of his supreme and universal government.

The scheme of revelation manifests itself to be of God, not only by

the peculiar testimony of prophesy and miracle to which it appeals,

but by the resemblance which it bears, in the order and character of

its dispensations, to the established constitution of creation and

providence;—so intimate and striking as, in fact, to leave no doubt, in

every impartial mind, that the author of the one must be the author of

both.

We have already stated that a progression is manifested in the order

and arrangement of the rocky masses which compose the earth’s crust—in

the nature and qualities of its mineral contents—and in the various

revolutions which are indicated by the fossil organic remains that lie

entombed in the strata of the interior. Take the most useful of all

the sections of the earth’s crust, namely, what is denominated the

carboniferous or coal formation, here we have a regular sequence or

series of beds resting one upon another, and all so disposed, from the

lowest to the highest, as to be most suitably adapted for reaching and

bringing to the surface the inclosed treasure. Nor did nature all at once

bring to maturity those prodigious masses of plants and vegetables of

which this wonderful deposit is composed. Her flora seems to have been

upon a limited scale at first, until the earth, being prepared for its

accumulation and preservation, throws from its teeming bosom, with a

profusion unknown before or since, the vegetable matter out of which our

coal is formed. Consider, again, the dip and dislocation of the strata

connected with it, and you have a proof of a new order of causes being

brought, subsequently, into operation, before coal could be available for

man’s use. Examine, next, the vast accumulations which repose upon the

coal—the curious relics which are imbedded in them—the evidences thereby

afforded of relative changes in the sea and land—of the elevation of

mountains, the denudation and formation of valleys—and you cannot fail to

infer, from all this, that the surface of the earth was not always as it

now is; that there was a period when man could not have existed on it;

and that for him who was the last in the order of all God’s creations, it

was gradually and progressively prepared as a suitable habitation.

When, again, we advert to the _course_ of creation, there is a gradual

progression from the little to the great, from the insignificant, if

we may apply such a term comparatively to any of the works of God, to

the noble and the grand. Each of the links that compose the mighty chain

is perfect in its kind; each serves to connect and illustrate the link

that borders next to it; each is adapted to its place in the system, so

that the lowest could not be exalted, nor could the highest be brought

down, to answer the purposes of any inferior member of the series. A

pebble has more attraction to the eye than any of the colorless particles

which compose the soil; but from the pebble the fruits of the earth

can derive no nourishment. The lichen or the moss which adheres to the

solid rock may be inferior in beauty and attraction to the lily of the

valley, or the lofty cedars of Lebanon; but the latter will not grow in

the barren regions of the north, and without the former, hundreds of

insect and animal tribes would perish. Man constitutes the principal link

in the chain of visible creation; he is higher than the highest of the

animal race; and do not the superior endowments and blessings of man,

however eminent in themselves, appear still more eminent and valuable

by contrasting them with the inferior powers, the ruder enjoyments, the

meaner and more sordid passions, of the lower creatures? which yet amply

display the wisdom and goodness of their Author, both in their frame and

state, in the relation which they have, and the connection which they

hold with the orders above and below them. Looking upward, again, what

is man but a lower link of that chain of beings which, like its Author,

reacheth through immensity? Thousands, nay, millions of spiritual orders

may possibly fill up the chasm, if that be possible, between the human

and Divine nature, and who, by the very contrast with man’s estate, may

have a juster knowledge and a more grateful relish of their own refined

and spiritual natures. Take away, indeed, “the human face divine,” and

there would be one note of praise less in the great temple of Jehovah;

but, while angels could not fulfill the purposes of man in the order of

creation, the perfections of the Godhead are infinitely more exalted

by their activity in a purer sphere—their keener visions and juster

apprehensions—their unclouded faculties—and their sublime and lofty

contemplations, all corresponding with the clearer manifestations of

divine truth, light, and glory, vouchsafed to them.

Descend, in short, as low, or rise as high as we may, in the scale of

being, we will still find something inferior, something superior; and

not more remote from each other in the extreme points are the minims of

nature intimated to us by the microscope, and the magnificent systems

above which the telescope has disclosed to view, than are the wonderful

differences and infinite range subsisting among living organized

substances, from the vegetable to the animal, from the irrational to the

intellectual, and from the intellectual to the spiritual and divine. But

one class cannot complain of the superior advantages of the class above

it. The constitutions of all are precisely adapted to their respective

places in the scheme of things, and the desires of all, according to

their various capacities, are suitably gratified. Each is happy in its

sphere, and still subservient to the higher happiness of others. The

garden is the insect’s paradise, man is lord of the brute creation,

angels are principalities and powers when compared to the knowledge and

the happiness of man. “Consider,” says the author of “Paradise Lost,”

“that great

Or bright infers not excellence: the earth

Though, in comparison of heaven, so small,

Nor glistering, may of solid good contain

More plenty than the sun that barren shines:

Whose virtue on itself works no effect,

But on the fruitful earth.”

When we turn to the _dispensations of providence_, we find the same

principle prevailing in the communication of all its gifts—of them

all, whether evolved in the natural or moral course of events. The

many blessings which the mere diffusion of the solar rays imparts are

not obtained all at once; the early dawn, the meridian splendor, the

softening shades of twilight, are each accompanied with distinct and

peculiar enjoyments to man and beast. Observe the course of the seasons:

after winter come the gentle zephyrs of spring, the glowing heat of

summer, to be again succeeded by the rich though milder beams of autumn.

The seed which is deposited in the ground scarcely at first exhibits

signs of life; but from that seed the green stalk gradually ascends,

the ear is formed, the corn is produced in the ear, and man gathers from

it his daily bread. Behold the new-born infant—the most helpless and

imbecile of all nature’s productions—what labor, watchfulness, and care,

before he comes to the maturity of manhood! how slowly do the powers

of intellect expand! what diligence requisite for the moral culture of

the heart! how gradual and progressive the whole steps by which he has

been trained for the business and enterprises of life! Look now into

the crowded city, where thousands and tens of thousands of rational

beings have passed, and are all passing, through a similar process of

discipline; consider how many generations have passed away before it

attained to its present greatness; its wealth, its buildings, its schools

of instruction, its temples of solemn worship; its philosophers, poets,

orators, and statesmen; its laws, manners, sciences, and fine arts, are

the accumulation, the work, and the growth of centuries. It is the same

with nations as with individuals, and with all nations and countries as

with one; the blessings of civilization are gradually diffused, sometimes

retarded, and often buried for ages beneath the inroads of barbarism; but

again emerging in greater abundance, taking a firmer step, and advancing

onward and wider than before. And at last, from the favored position on

which we have been placed, we see before us the certain prospect, in the

increased facilities and means of communication which are now opened

up, that they will be still more universally imparted, until truth,

righteousness, and peace, cover the face of the whole earth.

Consider now, under the same progressive aspect, the _scheme of

revelation_. Here we find the same analogy prevailing from the less to

the greater, from the smallest tokens of the Divine favor, to the full

and boundless manifestations of inexhaustible love and mercy.

From the fall to the restoration of man, the expressions of God’s

interest in our condition are limited and obscure; but the plan is

defined and the means arranged in the only way that was proper to

display his goodness and make us sensible of his mercies. The blessings

conferred upon the people of God, before the law and under the law,

were chiefly temporal. Hence the rites and ceremonies of their worship

were purposely of such a nature, and so multiplied, as principally to

operate through the medium of the senses. Hence the various symbols of

the Divine presence, when God personally, as it were, descended among

them, and over-awed them by his visible glory. Hence the giving of the

law amidst thunders, and lightnings, and shakings of the mountains, when

external nature under its most appalling aspects bore testimony to the

severe justice of the Divine character, and seemed to intimate, in a way

which even the most hardened sinners would understand, how dreadful must

be the judgments of their incensed and supreme Lawgiver. The Israelites

were not sufficiently removed from their natural state to be as yet

capable of a religion purely spiritual, like the Christian; and hence it

was, that every later dispensation of God excelled the former, even as

the trumpet on Mount Sinai “waxed louder and louder,” every succeeding

blast transcending those that went before. The prophets rose above the

ritual law, and showed men a more excellent way of worshiping God than by

external performances, thereby preparing their minds for the reception of

the Gospel. The tabernacle was no longer used after Solomon’s temple was

built, but was laid aside, as the temple itself was “when the fullness

of the time was come;” and as the sanctuary and tabernacle preceded the

temple, so the glory of the latter was to be greater than that of the

former, by the appearance of Him who was greater than the temple, whose

mission was distinguished by more numerous miracles, and by sublimer

and more important truths than had been before manifested to the world.

Behold a higher dispensation still, when, after the state of grace ends,

the state of glory shall commence; where all knowledge shall be imparted

and all truth unvailed, where imperfection and sin shall no more adhere

to us, and where, after the experience of millions of ages spent in the

enjoyment of heavenly happiness, we shall be still advancing in glory and

felicity, and attaining to higher measures of the increasing strength and

ever-growing splendor of the sons of God.

These analogies may be extended. The wisdom and goodness of a God,

for example, equally appear in the late and partial promulgation of

Christianity, which is sometimes considered an objection against its

truth, but which, in fact, is in perfect accordance with the same

principle of progression which we have been illustrating in the general

economy and arrangements of all God’s proceedings.

The gifts of nature are not imparted universally, nor in the same

measure to all. The discoveries of science are the result of long

and patient investigation. Herbs have been allowed to run waste for

centuries upon centuries, of which the medicinal virtues have only

recently been discovered. Through how many ages had mankind been left

in ignorance of the properties of the magnet, and the simple apparatus

of the compass-box, braving all the perils, and tossed about on the

unknown wastes of the ocean? How much did the progress of knowledge and

education suffer, during the lapse of so many generations, for want of

the printing-press? What oppressions and cruelties have been practiced

upon the different nations of the earth, through means of bad laws and

bad government, of which even yet many are learning but the elements? And

how is it that of one and all these things—the truths of science, the art

of healing, the principles of navigation, the discipline of wholesome

instruction, the enactment of good laws, and the various blessings of

civilized life—more than two-thirds of the human race are in these latter

ages still entirely destitute? God governs both in the kingdom of nature

and in the kingdom of grace, and any objection, therefore, against the

truth of revelation that may be built upon these grounds, goes equally

to dethrone the Almighty from any share of interest in the government of

the universe. But the Gospel, in fact, would have been premature before

the actual time of its appearance; the history of providence in former

ages could not have been appealed to, the sacrifice of the Redeemer

had not been understood without the legal sacrifices preceding, the

prophesies would have been unfulfilled, and the world would have been

unprepared for a worship so pure and spiritual, a morality so searching

and uncompromising, and a faith so lofty and exalted, had there not been

much previous training and discipline, through the instrumentality of

patriarchs, prophets, and legislators. One of the most striking proofs,

in short, of the Divine wisdom in the dispensation of grace, is its

harmonizing so exactly with the established course of nature. This is

manifested more especially in the manner in which the heavenly blessings

with which it is fraught have been communicated—slowly, gradually,

and partially at first, more fully and generally diffused as men were

prepared to receive them, and, when “the fullness of the time” had

arrived, imparted freely and in the richest abundance unto all; light

after light, truth after truth, and mercy upon mercy, all in such order

of succession, that the former illustrate and recommend the latter, while

the last are only a preparation for future and still greater mercies.

And so it has been with the whole Course of Creation—the succession of

strata, of animal and vegetable tribes, and with man and the adaptive

provision for his higher destiny. This is a doctrine of development and

of progression, widely different from that of the “Vestiges,” more in

unison with the Creator’s wisdom and the Creator’s care:—a speculation

worthy of a separate treatise, namely, the progress and development of

man’s intelligent, moral, and spiritual being as indicated in THE COURSE

OF REVELATION.

CHAPTER IV.

CAUSES OF EXTINCTION OF ORGANIC LIFE.

When the palæontologist has completely established his position, that

all the organic phenomena of primeval times have resulted from the

impress of original structure, in opposition to the theory of progressive

development and transmutation of species; and when he can trace, also,

corresponding changes in the mineral formations in which the fossil

remains are imbedded, the important inquiry has still to be made into the

causes of the extinction of so many races of the animal and vegetable

kingdoms. Introduced successively upon the surface of the earth, was

there always a physical and necessary relation betwixt the living tribes

and the varying conditions of the surrounding media in which their lot

was cast? And do the differences in the one explain the changes in the

organic functions of the other?

When we look back to the earliest of the fossiliferous rocks we can

discover something in the nature of their materials themselves which

would cause the destruction of their organic tribes. The Silurian strata

have been violently disturbed, and much molten matter, during the period

of their deposition, injected among them; and by causes such as these,

life would suffer greatly, and whole races be suddenly destroyed. Even

the strong incased ganoids and placoids of the Devonian period could not

always be able to subsist and bear up against the spasmodic throes that

produced the conglomerates. Animals preyed likewise upon each other, and

by this means kept up then, as now, the general average and balance of

life. But in none of these modes can anything like a LAW be inferred,

any stated provision be detected, for the outgoing and the incoming of

the different genera and species which successively peopled the globe.

The rocks differ, as the organisms differ, age to age, from each other:

but the series of changes traced in the one class of phenomena, furnish

only a few data by which to determine as to the alterations that would be

produced in the class cotemporaneous.

No land animals have been found in any of the formations beneath the

new red sandstone. No quadrupeds existed before the tertiary age. And

the monster lizards which so exuberantly sprang into existence during

the middle secondary epoch, had all disappeared when these terrestrials

occupied the stage. Wisdom we can trace in all the arrangements; care

and goodness are everywhere apparent. The seas swarmed with marine

animals, while the terrestrials could scarcely have subsisted on an

upheaving earth and new forming land. Quadrupeds roamed not over fields

so diversified by the lakes and slimy lagoons in which the Saurians found

their convenient habitation. And beyond the simple fact, that Divine will

so ordained that such things should be, both in the animal and mineral

changes in the history of our planet, we have only a ray of light to

guide us in interpreting the revolutions and destructions which are

therein so indelibly recorded.

The mollusca and shell families appear and depart along with the

calcareous deposits which inclose their remains; but we know as much

of the source of the one as of the range and limit of, or the causes

which destroyed, the other. Orthoceræ and nautili have survived all

changes, and have maintained in the types by which they are represented

their old instincts and predaceous propensities. The holoptychii and

dipteri perished, just as the materials of the new red sandstone were

being deposited, and whose identity, in all essential mineral qualities,

differs in nothing from the old red in which they are entombed. The flora

of the carboniferous age came and went with the suddenness and entireness

of an eastern dynasty, the gorgeous spoils of which are all that remain

to attest its former greatness. The mammoths, dinotheriums, and kindred

pachyderms of the tertiary groups had all left the earth on the dawn of

the human epoch. And now, since the commencement of that epoch, we find

that entire families have become extirpated, that species of others have

been driven from their former localities, and that generally, both of

vegetables and animals, the geographical distribution is being, year by

year, greatly modified. During the last century, the introduction into

Germany of some new species of insects, and their multiplication, utterly

destroyed forests of vast extent; and every year, in some quarter of the

globe, we hear of equally mighty catastrophes produced by equally minute

insidious causes.

The organic things of earth, it would thus appear, have their terms of

existence of longer and shorter duration, and the race at last dies out

equally with the individuals which compose it. No better reason for this

can be assigned, than that such is, and has always been, the course of

nature. Particular families of plants and animals are cotemporaneous

with particular groups of rocks: with these they are observed for the

first time; at the close of the deposit, all farther traces of their

remains are lost; and, in so far, there is ground for arguing that the

same general causes were concerned in effecting the successive changes,

organic as well as inorganic, of the periods and formations in question.

What these causes were, it may never be permitted to science fully to

determine. It was indeed, the opinion of Cuvier, that in the mammoth

epoch a change of climate effected the destruction of this giant family

of pachyderms. This change of climate has been accounted for by Murchison

and others, especially in Siberia, where so many remains are found, by an

elevation of the country to the height of one or two hundred-feet above

its former level. And doubtless, by such a change, animal as well as

vegetable life must, in many specific forms, have been greatly affected.

There can be little doubt, however, of the most perfect adaptive

arrangements prevailing through all the geological epochs, some of which

have been plausibly conjectured. As reptiles, for instance, differ from

birds and mammals, in having a lower and simpler structure of the lungs

and heart, and therefore a less active performance of the respiratory

functions, they become less dependent on the atmosphere or oxygen for

existence. “Hence,” says Professor Owen, “from their extraordinary

prevalence in the secondary periods, under varied modifications of size

and structure, severally adapting them to the performance of those

tasks in the economy of organic nature which are now assigned to the

warm-blooded and quick-breathing classes, the physiologist is led to

conjecture that the atmosphere had not undergone those changes, which

the consolidation and concentration of certain of its elements in

subsequent additions to the earth’s crust may have occasioned during the

long lapse of ages during which the extinction of so large a proportion

of the reptilian class took place. And if the chemist, by wide and

extended views of his science in relation to geology, and mineralogy,

should demonstrate, as the botanist from considerations of the peculiar

features of the extinct flora has been led to suspect, that the

atmosphere of this globe formerly contained more carbon and less oxygen

than at present, then the anatomist might, _à priori_, have concluded

that the highest classes of animals suited to the respiration of such a

medium must have been the cold-blooded fishes and reptiles. And beside,

the probability of such a condition of the zoological series being

connected with the chemical modifications of the air, the terrestrial

reptiles, from the inferior energy of their muscular contractions, and

still more from the greater irritability of the fibers and power of

continuing their actions, would constitute the highest organized species,

best adapted to exist under greater atmospheric pressure than operates on

the surface of the earth at the present time.”

By parity of reasoning it may be inferred, that as great changes would

be effected in the waters of the globe as in the constituents of the

atmosphere; and, while thus preparing for the introduction of new

families of animals, the destruction of already existing tribes may

be as conclusively imagined. The various calcareous deposits in the

mountain limestone, magnesian, oolite, and chalk periods, would imply

very different qualities in the condition of the ocean; an infusion or

abstraction of ingredients as favorable to the existence of one kind of

animal life as they would be destructive of another. A period of great

plutonic action, too, when vast masses of melted matter, charged with

metallic and other substances, were poured over the bed of the sea, could

not fail to have considerable influence upon many of the inhabitants of

the deep; and while providence was making arrangements for an increase,

or diversity, or for higher types of animal life, the existence of other

forms and classes was ordained to terminate.

The introduction of new and higher races upon the earth has thus been

accounted for. “Through such a medium as the air,” says the authority

quoted above, “approaching in a corresponding degree to the physical

properties of water, a cold-blooded animal might even rise above the

surface, and wing its heavy flight, since this would demand less

energetic muscular actions than are now requisite for such a kind of

locomotion: and thus we may conceive why the atmosphere of our planet,

during the earlier oolite periods, may have been traversed by creatures

of no higher organization than saurians. If we may presume to conjecture

that atmospheric pressure has been diminished, by a change in the

composition, as well as by a diminution of the general mass of the air,

the beautiful adaptation of the structure of birds to a medium thus

rendered both lighter and more invigorating, by the abstraction of carbon

and an increase of oxygen, must be appreciable by every physiologist. And

it is not without interest to observe, that the period when such change

would be thus indicated by the first appearance of birds in the Wealden

strata, is likewise characterized by the prevalence of those dinosaurian

reptiles, which in structure most nearly approach mammalia, and which in

all probability, from their correspondence with crocodiles in the anatomy

of the thorax, enjoyed a circulation as complete as that of the crocodile

when breathing freely on dry land.”

Again, it is conjectured—“The first indications of the warm-blooded

classes would appear, if introduced into the reptilian era, under the

form of such small insectivorous mammals as are known at the present day

to have a lower amount of respiration than the rest of the class; and the

earliest discovered remains of mammalia,—as, for example, those in the

Stonesfield oolite,—are actually the jaws of such species, with which are

combined the characters of that order, Marsupialia, which is most nearly

related to the oviparous vertebrata.”

It has been seen that igneous and aqueous agents have remodeled, from

time to time, the physical geography of the globe. Can it admit of a

doubt that changes in the physical structure of the earth’s surface

will be accompanied with other changes in the organic productions of

extensive areas? Species, it is well known, both of plants and animals,

are limited to particular localities of variable, and often of no great,

extent. If marine, an alteration in the sea bottom will prove fatal to

many. If terrestrial, an increase of altitude, the conversion of dry land

into marshes and lakes, or of lakes and marshes into meadow and arid

loamy soil, will completely alter the flora and fauna of the district

in question. Look into any estuary or rocky pool along the shore of the

ocean, swarming with testacea, and crustacea; every bowlder incrusted

with corallines; the rocks carpeted all over with fuci, waving with

every ripple their long graceful branches, or smoothing and polishing

their sides in the violent currents; creeping things, too, innumerable

shy stealthy creatures, darting amid the shingle, or burrowing in the

sands; and the finny tribes, of all forms, glancing and sparkling like

living gems in the dark green thickets. This is one description only of

tens of thousands of such phenomena around the islands of Great Britain.

An elevation of a few feet, and what myriads of animals, whose only

habitat are these ocean caves, would perish, and their races be forever

blotted from the things that were! These shores have witnessed many such

upheavals. Not a plain, hill, or rock, in the whole continent of Europe,

but once formed the bed of the sea. Even now, what a vast influence does

mineralogical structure alone exercise over the economy of life, both as

to the number of individuals and the character of species frequenting

particular localities. Trees as well as plants have an adaptation to

certain kinds of soil, and once firmly rooted, birds, insects, and

creeping things, will also resort thither in quest of shelter or of food.

Aquatic fowl, the waders and swimmers of our sea-shores, have their

favorite haunt among the breakers or calm bays, whose submarine rocks

furnish pasturage and shelter to molluscs, crustaceans, and fishes;

while, again, over the marshy, the oozy, the sandy, the gravelly, or the

rocky beach, other families, both terrestrial and marine, maintain their

respective ascendency.

M. Agassiz is just now pursuing his favorite researches in exploring

the lakes and rivers of America, where he has already detected many

things new and old to enlighten the western _savans_ in the boundless

riches of their mighty dominions. He has succeeded in capturing, on Lake

Superior, species of fishes hitherto unnamed. He has likewise been

able to dredge up from the same deep waters, specimens of the garpike

(_Lepidosteus_), whose representatives have been found in the oldest

palæozoic deposits, and in the deposits of all succeeding times. Suppose

these lakes to be suddenly drained of their waters—and which, according

to the chronometrical details of Niagara, must one day come to pass—and

many species of animals and plants would cease to exist, not merely by

the violence of the action, but by the simple alteration of the aqueous

character of the districts. Many animals, indeed, will be able to escape,

and to betake themselves to other localities amidst slow or even rapid

superficial changes. The camels and antelopes of the desert may sink

under the sirocco and be buried in the sand; but, in other circumstances,

they will be able to bear up and carry themselves to fertile lands, as

the steady, irresistible march of the sand-flood invades their former

pastures. The Sahara of Africa has been gradually extending and widening

in its desolating sterility, until it now covers a region of about

582,000 square miles; how many, in consequence, of the vegetable and

animal races, have thus been deprived of their appropriate nutriment,

and become extinct? How many examples of similar devastations, but upon

a far greater scale, does almost every one of the geological epochs

furnish? The central region of France abounded with lakes, attracting to

their arborescent banks the huge pachyderms of the tertiary age, when the

Auvergne cones blazed out, pouring floods of lava over lake, marsh, and

plain; and thus obliterating and silting up entire races, the great and

the small, terrestrial and lacustrine, and now constituting the pictorial

wonders of the age that produced, and the convulsions that destroyed them.

There is reason to believe that species in the ancient world were

possessed of a wider geographical range than in after periods. But the

causes of extirpation were also of wider operation. The old formations

are all greater than the new, receding in extent as they descend in

time. And if we are to regard alterations of climate, changes in the

constituents of the atmosphere, subsidence of land and elevation of

sea-bottom, intrusion of igneous rocks, the escape and circulation of

noxious gaseous matter, as among the _causes_ which have led to the

extinction of the successive organic tribes in the several geological

epochs, so do we find the _effects_ approximating to a scale of

corresponding magnitude. But the real terms and boundaries of all are in

the hands of Him who made them. We see but a part, and know only in part,

of the secondary means of destruction.

CHAPTER V.

TIME, AND THE GEOLOGICAL EPOCHS.

The speculations of geology respecting the arrangement and position

of the mineral masses of the earth are matters of direct observation,

falling immediately under the cognizance of the senses, and whose

verifications are both numerous and conclusive. But a question thereupon

arises which is not so easily dealt with, namely, as to the periods of

time that have elapsed during the various successive epochs or formations

described. Looking at the current operations of the laws of nature, and

supposing their uniformity in past ages, a scale of increment is laid

down for the several deposits of which the earth’s crust is composed. An

approximation is made as to the number of years required for each, and

the result is, that the geological estimate embraces an inconceivably

lengthened and bewildering series. The calculation proceeds not by

hundreds, or thousands, but by millions of the terms of our numerical

notation: and, as the fossiliferous strata alone are reckoned at about

seven or eight miles in thickness, the time that has elapsed since the

first appearance of life upon the planet, has also been made a matter of

measurement. Accuracy as to any precise definite amount, is not, indeed,

pretended; but no estimate, it is said, made upon purely geological data,

falls short of vast enormous periods, which will only bear to be compared

with the cycles of astronomical phenomena, and not with the brief

fleeting days of man’s existence.

What account, then, is to be made of this reckoning according to the

popular opinions respecting the origin of the world? Will it be accepted

by the Christian, who confides in the Mosaic chronology of the work of

creation? What is that chronology? Can the geological and the sacred be

compared or reconciled with one another?

I. There is one important deduction to be established from these

investigations which meets us at the threshold of the inquiry, namely,

that geology clearly and distinctly shows there is a BEGINNING to the

course of creation as respects the crust of the earth and its organic

forms of life. The stratified rocks all manifest succession in their

order of deposition, and, therefore, also succession in time. Some are

prior to and older in formation than others; and all of every class

and quality, demonstrate principles of arrangement in conformity with

law and design. We never, for example, get back to a period, however

deep we go into the interior, in which we find the matter of the earth

assuming, as it were, different modes of existence, or arranging itself

according to affinities of which we have no experience. Over every

material substance, the rocks of the oldest as of the newest formation,

the same physical forces are seen to be operative. The granites, with all

the molten amorphous masses of every age, are composed of ingredients

brought together and aggregated in proportional quantities, and according

to definite principles of attraction. But throughout the whole series

and succession of deposits, we never come to a point at which matter has

been formless, or free from the operation of law, endlessly quiescent, or

when no controlling designing hand was rendering it plastic and obedient

to its will.—As with the arrangements of matter, therefore, so likewise

with its origin. We revert in both cases to a necessarily prior cause.

And geology, vast and inconceivably great as may be its cycles, proclaims

over all its past antecedents and depths of accumulation, that TIME, not

eternity, is indelibly recorded.

This truth is rendered still more apparent and intelligible, when we

consider the various families of plants and animals of which the earth

has been the theater. These organic structures at once speak to the

mind of creative interference. No principle that we know of inherent in

nature could, of itself, originate these forms. The first thing of life

indicates an intelligent Creator. But epoch after epoch passes away,

and along with them their living tribes generally perish. Succeeding

races, of different characters and habits, are called into existence.

The earth is again peopled—again to be swept of all its garniture—the

land and ocean to change places—creatures of another mold, suited to

both, again to be brought into existence. These phenomena all speak, not

only of a beginning, of successive periods of time, but also of direct

superintendence over the course of events from age to age.

It is the same with the formations themselves in which the organic

things are imbedded. The course of creation progresses, but always under

such breaks and renewals as clearly to manifest, that the same power

which watches over the organic, is operative also in respect of the

inorganic structures of the earth. Various are the genera and species of

once animate forms, imbedded in the different strata beneath our feet;

but equally various are the strata themselves; as a new race arises,

so are there new forms of rocks produced along with them. And when we

compare the two extremes of the fossiliferous strata, the silurian and

the tertiary, or any of the intermediate—the old red sandstone and the

oolites, the carboniferous and the chalk—we find that the rocks are just

as various in quality, structure, and appearance, as are the animals

which existed and perished during their respective epochs. The lines of

demarkation are distinct. They may sometimes run into each other, so as

to leave it doubtful where the one series ends and the other begins; but

so it is with the organic remains themselves, a few of an antecedent

epoch living into and invading the province of another, when the limit

is reached, and the family altogether disappears. The same law holds in

the great mineral masses of the earth’s crust. Rocks are of different

families, even as plants and animals are; and over the entire surface

of the globe, they display in their various suites such changes and

diversities as demonstrate an interfering hand and a new creative energy.

Indeed, there is, it may be avowed, a much greater diversity of type in

the mineral groups themselves than in their organisms, the living genera

and species of one formation differing, often, less from each other than

do the rocky matrices in which their remains are imbedded.

II. But, in estimating _the time_ that elapsed during the formation of

the various sedimentary strata, are geologists warranted in assuming such

principles of calculation as have been adopted?—There are two aspects

under which the subject may be approached—the one, as respects the

formative process of rocks—the other, the probable duration of life in

the different epochs, or rather, as connected with the formations which

indicate the epochs.

1. OF THE FORMATIVE PROCESS. How long the earth existed before being

brought into a habitable condition for either vegetable or animal bodies,

geology has no means of determining. The primary crystalline beds are

the oldest rocks of which we have any knowledge: we can penetrate at

least to no antecedent matter, bearing the record of its own age, out

of which these rocks were produced. We are warranted, therefore, in

accounting for their origin, to remount at once to the initial creative

act which called them into being, and the presumption is, that no

great length of time was occupied in this arrangement. The Divine will

commanded, every particle obeyed, and all took their places. The eruptive

rocks are of comparatively sudden growth: they are not the result of a

gradual deposition, but of igneous fusion in the interior of the earth,

and elevated to the surface through the operation of forces of rapid

activity. How long our planet was in thus assuming form, and the dry land

appearing, we have no certain means of judging, except by looking to

the end of its creation, and assuming that the “void” was not permitted

indefinitely to continue. The occupancy of life at once exalts the work

and illustrates its purpose.

The fossiliferous strata were formed in different circumstances and under

different conditions, when the course of nature, if we may so speak,

was fully established, and the train of events under the operation of

physical law commenced its onward march. The oldest of the fossiliferous

deposits is the Silurian. It likewise constitutes one of the greatest

depth, as well as of extent, on the surface of the globe. The position,

generally, of the silurian beds, is along the line of the great

mountain-chains, except in Russia, where they spread over the interior,

and thin out into smaller dimensions, and where, from the absence of

the intrusive rocks, they are only semi-indurated. This system of rocks

was, therefore, formed in circumstances the most favorable for rapid

accumulation, amidst such primal operations of nature as have never

been repeated upon the same scale of magnitude. The first shaping-out,

if we may so speak, of the earth’s surface, in the elevation of its

mountain-ranges and corresponding depressions of the sea-bottom, bears

all the marks of a single cotemporaneous act, not completed in a moment

of time indeed, but continued through a period of unparalleled spasmodic

agency. Every region shared in the convulsive movements, and the whole

earth, in one and the same age, was begirt with mountains. These violent

throes were accompanied everywhere with violent action upon the already

consolidated masses. Disintegration would keep pace upon them with the

rate of uprise. And as the bare jagged rocks unprotected with herbage,

friable and just rending from the fire, were lifted suddenly above the

waters, the waters in turn would dash violently upon their sides and

broken serrated crests, and so become as rapidly filled again with all

the waste and spoils of the period. The changes now going on, and the

rate of increment of the land above sea-level, the occasional appearance

and disappearance of an island, the slow but constant action of the waves

upon the coast, and the detrital matter borne down by the rivers, can be

no measure of the effects of forces and agencies such as were then in

operation. The Mississippi, within a quarter of a century, it has been

ascertained, brings down little more than a half of its former spoils.

The organic remains, accordingly, which have survived the silurian

period, belong chiefly to the molluscous classes, and thin filmy fucoid

vegetables; the structures, in short, which were best calculated to live

during the period in question, and to remain undestroyed throughout its

agitations.

The old red sandstone series is likewise of vast extent, both in depth

and superficial area. The scale of its mass corresponds with the scale

of the forces which produced it—the magnificent operations amidst which

it was accumulated. This was a period of great and frequent trappean

eruption. Hence the conglomerate red offers a splendid specimen of rapid

formation. This member of the devonian suite consists of large masses of

gneiss, quartz, mica-slate, and hornblende rock, cemented in a paste of

silicious sand, probably the debris of dissolved granite. The included

portions bear all the marks of attrition, of violent tossing about in a

troubled sea. Estimate the thickness of the whole deposit at its maximum

of nearly ten thousand feet—consider what vast agencies were still at

work, in tearing up and carrying off the spoils of the mountains—probably

with but little pause or intermission in the violence of the action—and

thus, not so much in the light of remote antecedents as of comparatively

associated formations, will we be warranted in regarding these early

courses in the work of creation. The fishes of the period all speak of

its spasmodic character, mailed, plated, and completely inclosed in

strong horny integuments; their heads, some of them, of entire uncovered

bone, and their caudal fins propelling with the whole force of the

vertebral column,—conditions of structure which give indications of

the stormy seas whose waves they had to buffet, and of the conserving

properties by which their forms and outlines have been transmitted to us

so wonderfully entire.

The carboniferous class of rocks have all the marks of a very peculiar

formation, constructed for a special purpose, and elaborated amidst an

extraordinary state of things. Here we meet with vast accumulations of

vegetable, calcareous, and metallic substances, for which we detect no

anterior preparations. The coming on and the outgoing of the whole coal

series are as distinct as they are surprising. To what are we to compare

them? By what scale of time are we to adjust the terms of their growth?

Proceeding upon the existing laws of nature, calculations have been

made as to the rate of increase, for a year, of pure vegetable matter,

over a given area. The Ganges, Nile, Amazon, Mississippi, La Plata, and

the other mighty rivers of the earth, have been appealed to as to the

quantities with which they are annually charged. The forests, with their

load of every revolving season, have been weighed, when their decadence

of leaves, fruits, branches, and all the gatherings from the flood and

storm have been duly taken into account. The result is, according to this

method of solving the problem, that about six hundred thousand years

were occupied in the production of the whole coal series.—It must be

admitted, in any attempt to reduce this number, that the violent forces

of the antecedent periods cannot be admitted as data of circulation;

throughout the whole of the carboniferous era, a state of repose seems

to have universally prevailed. But then all the living productive

powers of nature were just as violently in operation as the others were

quiescent, and the result in the one case bears a proportion to the

result in the other. If inorganic matter was rapidly collected by the

action of violent causes, so under an extraordinary state of things, of

climate, moisture, atmosphere, and other physical arrangements, organized

bodies, vegetable and animal, would multiply as rapidly. A condition of

nature that produced uniformity of vegetation over the entire surface of

the globe, as the coal deposit everywhere manifests, and all of gigantic

dimensions in every family of plants, is not merely to be denominated

_tropical_, and its results calculated by a scale of existing weights

and measures. In many places of the earth, even now, several harvests

are reaped within the year. Who can set bounds to their number, or guess

the prodigious increase, when the whole earth was covered with a flora,

not only of unrivaled exuberance, but of uniform distribution nearly

on every part of its surface? But a test of indisputable value, for

ascertaining the rate of increase in the sandstones and shales embraced

within the coal-measures, occurs in the case of those fossil trees which

are so frequently found in an upright position, or but little inclined

to the plane of stratification. These are numerous in every coal-field,

and are often traced through several layers or beds of rock. The fossil

trees of Craigleith and Granton were about fifty feet in length, and

lying at an angle of scarcely twenty degrees to the strata in which

they were imbedded. Their passage through the solid rock, therefore,

cannot be estimated at less than fifteen to twenty feet, that is, a

mass of sandstone of corresponding depth must have been formed, during

the comparatively short period that trees of lofty stature were able

to resist the destroying action of the elements, to say nothing of the

chances of currents, hurricanes, and other agents breaking them in

pieces. This _instantia crucis_ may be extended to every sandstone bed

of the formation, and thus serve to exercise a salutary restraint upon

the mind in its imaginary conceptions of the enormous periods of time

required for the accumulation of the whole series.

The carboniferous epoch was immediately succeeded by a period of great

violence and of vast disturbance in the solid crust of the earth. Hence

the broken inclined position of the coal strata, and the injection of

so much igneous matter, forming often ridges and hills of considerable

elevation. The new red sandstone, the overlying deposits, would share in

all the activity of the time. A celerity of increase, on a scale of more

rapid accumulation than existing causes could produce, must consequently

fall to be admitted to the rocks of this family: so much, indeed, was

the plutonic agency then in force, that the rock-salt and gypseous

beds are ascribed to its influence. From this period downward, the

formations are all of more contracted dimensions, the basins narrowing in

superficial area to the upper tertiaries, which partake of the character

of local rather than of universal deposits; while the evidences here are

innumerable that, until the globe settled into its present form, and

assumed its present arrangement of seas, continents, and mountains, the

land and water were continually changing places, the crust and framework

subject to constant upheaval. The Cordilleras and Himalaya constituted,

in those days, the bed of the ocean. What law of nature was not in

violent activity ere they attained their sublime altitudes! How many

rivers changed their courses! how many mountains were washed to their

summits! how many hills melted like wax at the voice of their Creator,

amidst convulsions which swept the earth so repeatedly of its living

tribes, and bared as often the bosom of the great deep!

We have not, in this enumeration of the mineral strata of the earth’s

crust, as yet spoken of any of the calcareous deposits. They are very

numerous, some of them of prodigious thickness, and belong to the

formations of every epoch. There is not one, but many, alternations of

limestone connected with every such formation. Whence the source of

all this material? The primary beds are not in sufficient mass to have

furnished supplies for every succeeding age. The mountain limestone

alone, of the middle secondary epoch, contains more calcareous matter

than is to be found in the three antecedent periods. The lias, oolites,

and chalks are likewise of vast thickness. The beds of the tertiary

group are less considerable; but in the gypseous marls, and numerous

alternating bands throughout the clays and sands of the formation, there

is the clearest evidence that the stores of nature were still abundant.

Nor are they yet exhausted. What supplies in every river, sea, and

ocean of the world! What countless myriads of living animals are now

employed in elaborating the material! And when we again inquire, whence

is it all? the answer is, that throughout all time, a wise and bountiful

Providence has thereby provided the pabulum for its successive creations

of organized bodies—the law of their nature is to pile up rocks—and in

all the monuments of the past, we discern the style and architecture of

the builders of the present. Look, then, to your still active, living,

working chronometer. With what incredible swiftness do these minute

creatures ply their labors! how many fathoms of coral reef will they

rear in a season! When the hapless mariner returns, after a brief short

interval, what hazards to run from structures which now for the first

time appall him with their formidable barriers! Millions of years! Not

even thousands are needed to construct islands, and to pillar the floor

of the ocean, over vast expanded areas, with broad, massive, indurated

rock.[13]

2. THE PROBABLE DURATION OF LIFE IN THE DIFFERENT EPOCHS. The geologist

will tell us not to look at one but at the various families, of all

kinds and of all habits, which his science has brought to light, and so

many of whose remains he has disinterred from the earth. Every formation

abounds with them. They flourished through every epoch. The epochs are

many. The tribes which existed and perished in them are many. To allow

time for the coming in and the going out, and the fulfillment of their

various destinies, what an untold, incalculable amount of ages must

have elapsed! Now, give the millions of years supposed, and the wonder

some may not hesitate to confess is, that there are so few, and not

so many, of the former creatures of the earth which have re-appeared

in our geological catalogues. The fossil regions of Great Britain, an

epitome of the world, have been well explored, and the statement of fact

stands nearly as follows:—Leaving out of consideration all the shelly

and lime-building tribes, the numbers of the other families of animals

hitherto found and described are, in the various groups of the silurian

system, eight genera of only one order of fishes; in the devonian, of

two orders, there are under forty genera, and not many more species of

fishes, in the carboniferous, of three orders, there are about fifty

genera, and a hundred species of fishes; in the permian and triassic, of

three orders, there are twenty genera, and fifty species of fishes and

reptiles; in the oolitic, of four orders, there are sixty genera, and

two hundred and twenty species of fishes, reptiles, and mammals; in the

wealden, there are, of three orders, twenty-five genera, and thirty-eight

species of fishes and reptiles; in the cretaceous, of six orders, there

are fifty genera, and eighty species of fishes, reptiles, and birds; in

the tertiaries, of seven orders, the genera are about one hundred and

fifty, and two hundred and twenty species of fishes, reptiles, birds, and

mammals: thus making in all about four hundred genera, and seven hundred

species of the larger families of living creatures during the whole

currency of the geological epochs. The current epoch contains, exclusive

of microscopic organisms, nearly two millions of species of vegetable and

animal bodies existing on the terraqueous globe; and of which there are

about eight thousand species of fish alone existing in our present seas.

When we take, instead of Great Britain, the whole explored geological

field of the world, the result, so far as the argument is concerned,

will be strengthened, not weakened. The formations of other lands are

simply, with slight variations, a repetition of our own. The same genera

of animals are everywhere prevalent. The specific types are likewise in

many instances identical. The silurian organisms of Russia are so like

those in our own island, that “no English geologist,” says Murchison,

“acquainted with the organic contents of the Wenlock limestone, can

view the Calymena Blumenbachii, C. macrophthalma, C. variolaria, and

other Trilobites associated with the Leptœna depressa, L. euglypha,

Terebratula reticularis, and many corals most familiar to him, without

at once recognizing in the upper strata the distinct representative of

that British formation.” Various other fossiliferous identities are

farther alluded to, when it is added—“In taking leave of Scandinavia,

we must specially advert to the close relations which exist between its

lower and upper silurian groups, and those of Great Britain and distant

parts of the world. Of 133 silurian fossils which we brought back or

noted on the spot, at least eighty-four are British, and from twenty-five

to twenty-seven are North American species. In this comparison the

identity of the upper silurian groups of the Baltic and Great Britain

is, indeed, most surprising; for, among seventy-four Scandinavian

species, upward of sixty are common to the strata of this age in both

countries, and of these, fifteen to sixteen species are also found in

the upper silurian rocks of America.” The devonian fossils are equally

striking in their resemblances and extensive geographical distribution.

Similar representatives are detected, and still more abundantly, in the

carboniferous formation—universal specific types of the fauna of the

epoch. One remarkable instance has been stated—upon the authority of M.

L. Von Buch—that the _Leptœna lata_, so typical of the silurian rocks of

Britain, is specifically the same with the _Leptœna sarcinulata_, which

is no less prevalent in the Russian carboniferous strata, and continued

even throughout its uppermost members. Our field of review, therefore,

contains a fair proportion of the various fossils of the world, specific

and generic. The formations lying before us throughout our base-line,

give a true indication of the state and conditions of life during the

several epochs, while in number and variety of individual forms they are

above the average.

Need it then be urged, that no such incalculable cycles of ages would be

required for the whole of this catalogue of animals fulfilling in their

several epochs their allotted destiny upon the earth? Compared with the

mass of inorganic matter in which they are entombed, their relics are

literally as nothing. Only here and there, of certain classes, at remote

intervals often, there is a fossil or its impression. And so entire and

well-preserved are these organisms, that we have reason to presume there

has been no great obliteration, absorption, or utter waste of the races

to which they belonged. On the contrary, as their distribution is so

persistent in their respective formations throughout the globe,—the same

genera and species being common to the four quarters of the world,—the

presumption is, that specimens of nearly all the tribes that ever dwelt

on the earth or swarmed in its waters have been handed down to us;

and thus the number of the actual relics found becomes, as it were, a

chronometer or measure of the ages during which they subsisted.

Look again at the demands of geology. Upward of SIXTEEN MILLIONS OF

YEARS[14] are supposed to have elapsed since the creation of life upon

the earth. The lowest of the rocks, in which that life has found its

grave, have been reached. Their contents, upward, have been examined and

catalogued. How many generations of animals must have subsisted within

that period? How many individual skeletons must have been entombed

and preserved, seeing that things of the filmiest texture, plants and

animals, have been inclosed and handed down to us entire? Quadruple

the ages of every one of the existing denizens of sea and land, and

still, what countless millions of generations, succeeding each other,

have lived and died during the eras that were to run? Geology presents

us with her list, her whole lengthened organic roll, of scarcely four

hundred generic, and less than eight hundred specific forms, gathered

out of all the past cemeteries of the dead. The cemeteries themselves,

of such vast walls and dimensions, may, according to the present mordant

powers of the elements and the capacity of rivers for the transport of

mud, have required the calculations usually assigned for their erection.

But where, the question will ever recur, where is there anything like a

corresponding amount of animal exuviæ apart from the calcareous supplies,

to be found in the successive formations, conforming in any approximation

to the existing powers and capacities of parturient nature? The fossil

remains, inclosed from the beginning to the end of the inconceivable

cycles of time, are the remains only of a few great families: their

skeletons are admirably preserved, or their casts are minutely and

accurately engraven on the rock; and do they not look as if they were the

_identical individuals_ which rose in the dawn and were buried in the

setting of their own geological epoch!

If we go still farther into details, the results will be found startling

enough. Let us select one of the periods, the old red sandstone, for

illustrating our views. The period assigned for this formation embraces a

term of about, we shall suppose, according to the geological distribution

of time, a million or two of years. This formation consists of three

great subdivisions, every one of which contains their distinct specific

forms, and hence their separation into the lower, middle, and upper

groups. This was pre-eminently the fish epoch—finners which roamed in

undisturbed possession of every sea on the surface of the globe. Dropping

into the waters, and speedily silted up in the sands, the skeletons

were in the best of all possible circumstances for preservation; and

accordingly, the specimens of the period constitute the wonder of the

geologist, for their enameled freshness and perfect outline of figure.

The productiveness of fish is prodigious, the cod-fish multiplying at the

rate of three millions and a-half, mackerel at about half a million, and

most of the other tribes at a corresponding high ratio. Count now how

many generations, of every one of the species of the separate groups of

the old red sandstone series, would exist and multiply during a period

of so many hundred thousand years. The modern epoch and its breeders

have scarcely reached their six thousand. When six times six have been

added, and sixty times more have been added to these, they will still be

a third short of the term allotted to the favored denizens of the olden

time. And where, amidst the well-protected few that have yielded up their

remains, are the traces of the myriads upon myriads that perished and

were buried along with them? To the genus Homo, the head of creation, few

think of the earth, as it now is, being the abode for periods reckoned

by millions of years. Nay, within his as yet brief period, how many of

his cotemporaries have already passed from the stage, extirpated, many

of them, by his own direct agency? The dodo, and his fellow islander the

solitaire, and other brevipennate birds,—probably, too, the elk and the

urus,—certainly from this island the beaver, the wolf, and the bear, and

just as certainly, at no distant day, the extinction of many other races

will follow in the onward progress of civilization. But as now, so in all

past ages, superior power, or a more dextrous instinct, have led to their

extirpation. Their destiny was fulfilled, and the race perished. And as

we are reasoning upon the known laws of nature, whence the geologist only

seeks a footing for his vast cycles of time, so, we venture to affirm, is

he bound to abide by the test of his own selection, and to read therein

the terms of life granted to the families of earth. The modern epoch

shows the outgoing of genera as well as of species within the limited

compass of a few thousand years—gives reasonable indications of the

probable extinction, speedily and at no distant period, of hundreds of

others,—these families possessed, all of them, of as enduring structures,

and of higher types of existence, than those of the older epochs,—and,

therefore, upon every fair ground of analogy, are we justified in

concluding that there can be no such diversity of ages, under one and the

same system of nature, as that of hundreds of thousands of years to the

living tribes of earth.

When such premises are made the grounds of such inferences, and, again,

when the geologist reiterates the statement that these great periods of

time correspond wonderfully with the gradual increase of animal life, and

the successive creation and extinction of numberless orders of being,

and with the incredible quantity of organic remains buried in the crust

of the earth, we have just to remind him that betwixt _great_ periods of

time, and the _gradual_ increase of animal life, there is no necessary

connection. However long and indefinite the time connected with the

rocky formations, certain it is that the successive organic tribes were

created within a period that admits, and can admit, of no calculation

whatever, not even of any analogical illustration from experience or the

known laws of nature. The species, however numerous, of every epoch were

called at once into being, not gradually but instantly, by the fiat of

an all-creative act. Their multiplication and increase depended upon the

law of their nature; but how long they were to be privileged to multiply,

in one unvarying specific form, according to that law, is a point that

comes legitimately within the range of experience and the calculations

of existing life. Let not things which differ, therefore, be mixed

together. The organic and the inorganic types, in the act of formation,

cannot be compared. And no argument can be adduced from the fact of the

mere numbers of animal species, or of their individual increase, in

support of the assumed length of any geological epoch. Species as well as

individuals have perished, and gone out within the narrow limits of our

own epoch, and yet have multiplied in progeny through countless myriads.

The same course of argument applies to every one of the formations, to

some of them of vast thickness, even more conclusively, where we find

the same species persistent throughout the group, and the same genus

often extending over two or three entire formations, embracing periods

of geological time of as many millions of years. Thus the _Leptœna

lata_ of the Silurian age lives on to the close of the Carboniferous;

the _trilobite_, earliest of living creatures, has its representatives

still in our modern seas; the mail-clad _holoptychius_ existed through

the whole of the Devonian and Carboniferous eras; and equally remarkable

is the fact that the _Onchus Marchisoni_, the oldest fish yet detected

in the rocks of the earth, is a creature more allied to the existing

genus _Spinax_ (the dog-fish) than to any other family of relics

inclosed in all the intermediate ascending series of deposits. Among

the infusoria it is ascertained that there’ are two kinds of living

_Gallionellæ_ identical with the fossil species in the Richmond clays of

Virginia; while again, in geological botany, we have all the types of

the coal formation still flourishing with the sane gigantic forms in the

continents and islands washed by the Pacific.

3. THE SUPERFICIAL ACCUMULATIONS. The argument of the geologists, for

their indefinite periods of time, proceeds mainly upon the assumption

that the present and the past operations of the laws of nature are nearly

uniform; or, in other words, that the existing rate of increment of

detrital and alluvial matter, in seas, deltas, and rivers, is to be taken

as the standard throughout the various geological epochs. Tried by the

test of the superficial accumulations, the subject is brought within a

manageable compass, the definite is substituted for the indefinite, and

the scale of accumulative power in the ancient will be in the ratio of

its erosive and transporting agency in the modern epoch. The products of

volcanoes also fall to be considered in estimating the effects of causes

now in operation.

The _bowlder clay_ comes first and legitimately within the scope of this

estimate; for, whatever theory of its formation be adopted, whether

by the sudden submergence of a vast arctic continent and consequent

upbreaking of the icy regions of the polar seas, by the sweep of a

universal deluge, or a violent upheaval of the bed of the ocean, certain

it is that the materials were brought together by rapid spasmodic action.

This deposit covers the whole of Northern Europe, much of Asia, and

extends over the vast continent of North America, as far as the 42° of

latitude: it varies from a hundred to several hundred feet in depth: and

thus, so far as quantity and extent of superficial area are concerned,

the bowlder clay formation may be compared with any of the older rocky

formations of the interior. But no geologist has ventured to speculate

about an indefinite cycle of years, as the condition of the planet during

the drift and accumulation of these rude and plastic materials.

The _sands_ and _gravels_ which succeed are likewise of great depth,

spread over extensive valleys, and rise on the acclivities of hills

five and six hundred feet above the level of the sea. This may be

regarded, all of it, as the collect of the current epoch; and within the

period of civilization and history and the arts, what sand-floods have

been carried to every quarter of the globe, covering entire regions,

devastating cities, and obliterating the very traces of man’s dominion

over countries once subject to his use. Nor would fossils be wanting to

complete the analogy, as the _dunes_ along the shores of every continent,

and especially on the coast of the North Sea in Norway, Denmark, Holland

and Belgium, only require consolidation in order to represent with living

instead of extinct species, the fossiliferous deposits of anterior times;

more particularly the Molasse and Nagelflue of the Swiss Alps. Near

Tours, in France, there is a bed of oyster-shells which is twenty-seven

miles long, with a corresponding breadth, and twenty feet thick. And in

the United States there are beds far exceeding this: a stratum, nearly

continuous, has been traced from the Eutaw Springs in South Carolina,

to the Chickasaw country—being six hundred miles in length by ten to a

hundred miles in breadth.

When we descend from the land to _the sea_ we find equally extensive

accumulations, spread over the bottom, or raised along the tide-level

in the form of bars, shoals, and banks. The whole eastern coast of the

United States[15] is bordered throughout by a line of sand-banks and

islands, of various forms and outline, but very uniform in their mineral

ingredients, being composed for the most part of a fine, white, and

quartzose sand. On the coasts of the southern states, the Carolinas

and Virginia, they form a chain of low islands, separated from the

coast by a series of lagoons; while higher up, on the southern coasts

of New England, they occur as submarine ridges, parallel to the coast,

and separated from each other by wide channels. To the north, these

arenaceous deposits are still more extensive, forming vast submarine

plateaux, such as the St. George and Newfoundland banks. And at the

bottom of all the bays and creeks of that much indented land, prodigious

_siltings_ are going forward, not under the form of narrow ridges, but

as broad connected strata or flats; consisting seaward of very fine

sand, and more inward of a coarse gravel, and in not a few instances of

_calcareous mud_, where the deposit takes place in the vicinity of coral

reefs. The same processes are in operation around every island and by

the shores of every continent where tidal action favors the deposition

of the materials—the result as now ascertained, not so much of rivers,

as of oceanic currents. The depth of these sands it is impossible to

determine; but thousands of feet may not reach their soundings. And as

to organic remains, they are most favorably situated and composed for

attracting and sustaining every kind of marine creature: it is upon the

banks that border the coast of North America that the most extensive

fisheries are carried on, because these are the abodes of those myriads

of invertebral animals—the molluscs, annelides, and zoophytes, types of

the older formations—which serve for the food of fishes, the ctenoids and

cycloids of maritime enterprise. And thus, co-extensive with the littoral

territories of the ocean, we have all the elements and ingredients of a

FORMATION, completing within the human epoch, that may almost rival the

Old Red Sandstone itself.

Nor does the analogy terminate in the production, whether of one or many

beds, of sand and gravel deposits. Simultaneously with these, there will

be siltings and accumulations of various kinds of materials arranging

themselves, at different depths, over the bottom of the ocean. The beds,

too, will have their edges slid over each other, and where maintaining

a degree of parallelism, the inclination of the more remote members of

the suite will correspond with the increasing depth of the sea bottom.

Then the imbedded remains will be as various as the different kinds,

genera, and species of animals that frequent the different localities;

nor will eruptive matter be always wanting to give diversity to the

scene, indurating, dislocating, and disarranging the relative position

of the deposits: Until we have formed, _within our present seas_, the

whole complement of a geological formation—the calcareous, muddy, sandy,

gravelly suites, cotemporaneous in origin and growth, with all their

diversity of fossils, living and imbedded at the same period—some beds

consisting entirely of microscopic or other marine bodies—some composed

of vegetable and other mixed materials—some where the land and waters

have mingled their spoils together—and all to be united and agglutinated

into one great composite system by the dykes and eruptions of submarine

volcanoes.

These processes are all now in active operation; and, without straining

the argument, the clear undeniable inference is, that, as the amount of

materials accumulated and arranged in the modern, so will be the ratio

of increase in the more ancient periods of the earth’s history and

revolutions. And hence thousands, not millions of years, would, upon such

inductions, be the scale of reckoning as to time.

But to state the argument in this form is vastly to underrate the

forces of nature in the primeval times. There are, on the contrary, the

strongest reasons for believing that the two classes of phenomena can

bear no proportion to each other, either as to the manner of or the

periods occupied in their formation. The bulk of dry land, compared with

water, was then, as all geological appearances testify, perhaps only a

twentieth instead of a third part, as now, of the supermarine area of

the globe. How infinitely greater, therefore, would be the action of the

waters over all the materials subject to their disintegrating power,

whether upon the islands and continents already raised above their waves,

or upon the immense submarine tracks of rock just lifting up their peaks

and waiting to be elevated into air? Nor in alluding to volcanic products

can we fail to perceive how immensely inferior are the modern to those of

the palæozoic ages, when all the great mountain-ranges were bursting into

position; the American continent, not as now with a few isolated eruptive

centers, but rending all over, as the mighty Andes and Cordilleras were

rising above the deep and assuming outline; and in every quarter of the

globe the plutonic, erosive, and denuding agencies were upon a scale

of corresponding magnitude. Leibnitz, in his “Protogæa,” has long ago

anticipated these views, where, in the masterly sketch of his leading

geological canons, he distinctly refers to the more intensive energy with

which physical causes must have acted in primordial times; and considers

that these disruptions of the earth’s crust, from the disturbances

communicated to the incumbent waters, must have been attended with

diluvial action on the largest scale. The _maximæ secutæ inundationes_,

thereby occasioned, had produced their natural effects, when the period

of repose succeeded—the _quiescentibus causis, atque aequilibratis,

consistentior emergeret rerum status_, as he so beautifully describes one

out of many recurring stages of paroxysm and repose during the Course of

Creation.

Whatever views may be adopted on this momentous question, I shall

conclude by observing that it is not necessary, in support of the one

here advocated, to assume that the secondary causes which have produced

the geological phenomena referred to, were different in kind from those

in operation at the present day. But it is asserted that such physical

causes must have been immensely increased, in the degree and intensity

of their action, by the very different condition of the planet, and the

circumstances under which, in consequence, they began to operate. As

to the _millionade doctrine_, if I may so term it, there are in every

view the greatest difficulties in the way of its adoption,—errors of

calculation somewhere to be corrected, inconsistencies to be reconciled,

conditions of organic life gratuitously assumed and to be rectified.

It matters not, indeed, whether we take the organic or the inorganic

structures of the several periods as the gauge of their probable

duration—the living tribes that existed throughout such periods, and

whose relative ages we can approximate to—or the dead rock in which the

remains are interred, and in the accumulation and arrangement of which

so many extraordinary agencies have been demonstratively concerned. The

laws of nature, in the one case, are nearly uniform; species as well

as individuals have their limited terms of existence; and experience

establishes the fact, that the living tribes of the modern epoch have,

in several instances, become extinct within a comparatively short period

of time. The operations of nature, in the other case, are subject to

vast diversity, great and sudden changes, and apparently limited by no

ascertained maximum of development. And thus combined, so far as our

present state of knowledge extends, the inference is warrantable, that

in the geological register the error may be one—of MILLIONS of years’

reckoning!

CHAPTER VI.

THE MOSAIC RECORD—ACCOUNT OF CREATION.

The conclusion attempted to be established by the preceding mode

of reasoning, is not of the kind, nor will it be so satisfactory

as, many desiderate. The sacred chronology, according to the common

interpretation, remains as it was; and no harmony can thus be established

betwixt it and the deductions of geology. Bring down the epochs to

thousands instead of millions of years, and still the DAYS of Scripture

are not explained. The historical and the scientific accounts of the

course of creation are just where they were, the one based on the word

of its Author, the other resting on rash or doubtful interpretations

of the phenomena of nature. Leave us, says the geologist, to grope our

own way: mystical as our records are, we disturb no established truth,

and imagination delights to lose itself in the far-distant past. Let

not, says the divine, the speculations of a new science—a science of

yesterday—be mixed up with more important matters of religion: we are

within the sacred precincts of revelation, and our oracles give forth no

dubious meanings—no isoteric doctrines for the initiated only.

The marvels of geology certainly are, in every view that can be taken

of them, deeply interesting to the mind. The volume of creation, read

in the light of its discoveries, is traced back through pages which

have been long hid from day; and these now make known to us a story

of life and death, of activities and enjoyments, of catastrophes and

revolutions, which surpass in wonder the inventions of the mere romance

writer, or all that regulated genius can pour “from pictured urn” of her

most fascinating lore. But be the time occupied in the elaboration of

these records what it may, the records themselves have an actual being,

and a language of intelligence indelibly impressed upon them. They are

genuine, authentic documents of their author. They may be misinterpreted.

Inferences may be deduced from them for which there is no warrant;

constructions put upon passages which they will not legitimately bear;

or the true key of the volume, in its great leading truths, may not as

yet have been found. Still the work is of God, wholly and entirely the

writing of his own hand.

Revelation is also His work; and, claiming to be from the same authority

as the other, rests its pretensions to be received as an authentic

document upon the ground of creation. It gives details, and enters into

explanations of the nature and origin of creation; and it declares that

the same Divine Being who made the heavens and the earth, has also

recorded their history and revealed his will to man. It is by no mere

casualty, therefore, or as a matter of indifference, that the Bible

commences its narrative by an account of creation. That account is there

as the foundation of one of its own claims to belief, testifying to its

credibility that it is of God; that He placed it there, not as a skillful

writer would do his preface, but because of the fact, that the invisible

things of his nature are to be seen and understood by the things which

are made.—What is thus declared upon the subject of creation, is likewise

liable to misinterpretation. It may not be read aright. But of the

account itself there can be no question,—that it is given as a real, as

it ever must be regarded a true one, of the Divine operations.

In order, therefore, to arrive at any just conclusions respecting the

comparison to be instituted betwixt the geological and the revealed

account of creation, we shall first inquire into the kind, as well as

amount, of information contained in the Mosaic record. The rendering of

the term “day” will then fall to be considered in relation to the order

of events indicated in both accounts.

I. The narrative proceeds with a fullness and minuteness of detail, which

clearly show a purpose in the writer. Did Moses actually mean to trace

the whole of creation in its primordial course and outline? Assuming

that he did, the phraseology is pointed and admirably suited to its

subject. Admitted into the presence-chamber of the Creator, he sees the

instruments with which he works, the rapidity with which he executes, the

subserviency of all being to his will, the arrangement and disposition

of all things at his pleasure. Knowing, as we now do from the highest

authority, _what_ was the work of creation, and _whence_ it originated,

the intelligent mind discerns also the suitableness of the description,

and the Divine selection of words employed to record it. There is

inspiration in the pencil, as well as omnipotence in the hand, which

traced out the plan of creation, and brought it into existence. The Cause

willed, and the effect immediately was,—IN THE BEGINNING GOD CREATED THE

HEAVEN AND THE EARTH.

Here, betwixt God and his work there are no intermediate agencies,—no

pause or rest in the act of coming into being. A material universe is

designed, and the substance of it is instantly produced. The inspired

historian proves that he was inspired, by the brevity of the history of

the event, by the employment of words so perfectly adapted to the nature

of the act. He proves farther, that we have here indicated the precise

course of creation, and that he meant so to represent it—that the heavens

and the earth are of one and the same act—that the physical universe,

through all its dominions and remotest spheres, started at one and the

same time into being. The sun, moon, and stars were now all formed, as

well as our own planet. The stellar systems were everywhere arranged;

and the worlds of matter had their places all assigned them through

infinite space. This part of the Divine actings must not be confounded

with the farther evolution of creation as described in the work of the

fourth day, which has reference manifestly to the division of time and

the appointment of the seasons, through the revolution of the planetary

worlds.

The condition of the earth as it first came from the hand of its framer

is next alluded to. It was “without form and void,” and involved in

darkness; that is, the arrangements necessary to constitute a habitable

globe, were not completed. There was no diversity of surface—no division

into hill and valley, into seas and rivers; the air, the dry land, and

the waters, had not yet assumed their respective places. Form was not

yet stamped upon the matter of the globe. Consequently it was also

VOID, or without inhabitants. Neither vegetables nor animals were

there. They could not exist before these necessary adaptations for life

were adjusted. Let the reader note this stage of the work. Marking the

precise, definite phraseology of the inspired writer, let him seriously

reflect whether he has here before him the first state of the new world,

or the shapeless ruined aspect of one of its subsequent geological

transformations? None of the elements, he will not fail to observe, have

been described as yet existing in separation. The course of creation has

not advanced so far; and, if it had done so, no geologist pretends to

assert, that at the close of any one of his epochs, the laws of nature

were abolished, and all things reverted to their pristine formless

condition. With what propriety, then, may it be asked, can an opening

be made in this part of the narrative wide enough to embrace, or to

have intercalated into it, all the phases of an archaic earth under his

numerous formations, and the vast cycles of time in which they had been

evolving? The language employed admirably represents what we can well

suppose the original physical state of the planet to have been; and that

state accords better with the first than with the last, or any of the

intermediate series of the geological changes. And the earth was without

form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit

of God moved upon the face of the waters; and thus gave shape and outline

to the planetary mass.

The light was thereupon produced. We are not told whence, nor out of

what. Like all the matter of the universe, it started into being at the

call of the Creator, suddenly, as its own brilliant flashing emanations

over the darkness at this hour. Then came day and night; and this

implies, that there came along with them the revolution of the globe

and the commencement of motion in the astral universe. The production

of a firmament or atmosphere is next alluded to, and in immediate

connection with this part of the work, whereby a medium was provided for

the diffusion of the light and the play of all that beauty and variety

of coloring by which the earth was to be adorned. “And God said, Let

there be light: and there was light; and God divided the light from the

darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night.

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and

let it divide the waters from the waters.”

Light, the subtilest and fleetest of all elements, has nearly eluded

every effort of man to detect or analyze its essence. It travels swift as

thought through infinite space. It spreads its ethereal force over every

opposing obstacle. It gives brilliancy to the gem, form to the crystal,

color to the flower, health to animal life, and is so indispensable to

every existing condition of existing physical nature, that, were the

mandate of its creation revoked, we know just as much of its principle

as to see in its annihilation a relapse into that state of chaos when

all things were without form and void. Not only the beauty of organic

structure, but the molecular arrangement of the mineral mountain masses

of the earth, would, in all probability, have been an impossible

condition of matter without the existence and agency of light. And

light, whether glowing in the solar disc, gleaming in remotest stars, or

breaking and sparkling in the rain-drop, what revelation has science made

of it beyond its properties of luster and activity?—We trace its effects;

we discern its influence upon all bodies; but when we would go deeper,

and seek to know it essentially and in itself, we can only speak of it as

the utterance of Him who said,—LET THERE BE LIGHT.

Nor has science made any attempt, at least no successful one, to

account for the origin of the atmosphere. Its constituent elements

are known. They are every day made the subject of direct experiment.

The solution and ascent of water in the air is also a matter of daily

visible occurrence. But by what process this great mass of impalpable

fluid was brought together, enveloping the entire earth, and suspended

as a curtain over our heads, no ingenuity or dexterity of man has been

able to determine. There is no evidence by which to explain it upon the

principles of natural law, slowly elaborating the materials, and piling

them high in the starry vault. The atmosphere, indeed, must ever stand in

the original formation, the result of the immediate creative act, brought

together in all its volume and vast incredible capacity of receiving

and holding in its grasp the gaseous residue of all earthly things. And

what of its electricity, its magnetism, the aurora and its streaming

meteors,—its thunder, lightning, clouds, and rain,—all, shall we say,

the instantaneous effect of the authoritative command? AND GOD SAID, LET

THERE BE A FIRMAMENT IN THE MIDST OF THE WATERS!

We every day see the conversion of water into steam, and steam into air;

and the air, like the ocean, receiving every substance into itself.

But, nevertheless, it is not inferred that there is any augmentation

to the volume of the atmosphere, any increase or essential change upon

its original mass. Without the existence of this fluid, the earth would

have been no suitable place for any of its living inhabitants, vegetable

or animal. Therefore was it created; therefore does the account of its

creation stand in the order in which we find it in the Mosaic narrative;

and, therefore, from this very circumstance, are we not warranted to

infer that we have before us a description of the actual genesis of

things—that it is not a remodeling or transformation of the old, but

the veritable course under which all creation was at first brought into

being, form, and parts, that the inspired writer intends to record?