THE term Geology is derived from ge, the earth, and logos, word, or discourse; and is therefore equivalent to a treatise concerning the earth. The direct object of this science is to unfold the solid substance of the earth, to discover by what causes its several parts have been either arranged or disorganized, and from what operations have originated the general stratification of its materials, the inequalities of its surface, and the vast variety of bodies that enter into its composition.

It will be evident, that to go into the details of this science can form no part of the object of this work; but there are a few branches of the subject which we cannot be allowed to pass over, in consequence of their intimate connexion with some important particulars of the sacred writings.

There is no necessity to revive here the controversy which once disturbed the Grecian schools, concerning the eternity of matter, and the spontaneous formations of atoms. Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and others, continued to maintain the barrier against the influx of principles so destructive of the moral happiness of man. Dr. Cudworth, in his True Intellectual System of the Universe,' spent the better periods of his life in bringing forward their ancient arguments, connected with the advantages of modern literature, with a view to put the free-thinkers of his time entirely out of countenance. Moralists, poets, and divines, acknowledge their obligations for his labors. But truth must still be clad in armor. The warring passions of men against the laws of heaven, ever raise their weapons against the doctrines of revelation. Every now and then, a new enemy approaches our flanks, wishful that we should not perceive his manœuvres till he has struck the blow. He approaches in the garb of science, and gains our ear as the friend of reason and of truth. Having obtained some ascendancy by his wisdom, and pleased us by his eloquence, he slides imperceptibly to the eternal war which the ocean has waged against the cliffs and promontories, and to the immeasurable periods which our continents have endured.

Now, if these doctrines be really founded, and by fair deductions, from the characters of the earth, then Moses is in error, and the ancient patriarchs were ignorant of the origin of the world; then the claims of revelation are nugatory, and impositions on the credulity of the public. If the history of nature do not afford arguments, and speak with a thousand voices of conviction to the mind,—if the earth itself do not furnish chronometers of a comparative juve->

nile existence, we have but to retire in vanquished silence, leaving the palm in the hand of infidelity. Because, if matter really be eternal, the Being to whom we ascribe the glory of creation, is dependent on matter, and no longer a free, but a necessary agent, who ought not to be adored, because he cannot hear or save.

Just the reverse of this is the Christian faith. We believe that the Supreme Being alone is eternal, independent of all creatures, and infinitely happy in himself. We regard the creation as a voluntary overflowing of his goodness, that intelligent beings might be happy in the contemplation of his works, and in the enjoyment of his favor. We admire the creation in order to adore the Creator. We see all nature full of his perfections. In the immensity of the creatures, and in the variety of their forms, we trace the wisdom of a God, who, in the formation of every creature, and the connexion of cause and consequence, had every possible plan before him, and has, in all cases chosen that which was best. Foreseeing the solar influence of the torrid zones, he has provided cooling fruits to allay the heats of fevers, breezes almost constant to cool the air, and provided the camel with an upper stomach, to hold a supply of water while crossing the parched deserts. Equally aware of the northern cold, he has there provided more solid food for man, the warmest wools for sheep which prefer the hills, and soft and open furs for beasts which pierce the thicket. Every creature in the mineral, the vegetable and the animal kingdom, alike discovers his wisdom, his goodness, and his care. Hence arises the impossibility of superadding the least improvement to the works of nature; for whatever has once received the finish of God, can never receive the smallest augmentation from the genius of man.

The contrast, therefore, between the believer and the unbeliever is wide and striking. While the mere geologist contemplates the mines and abysses of nature,-while he is awed by the falling of precipitous cliffs,—and while he trembles at an imaginary sinking of continents, and the consequent rise of others out of the sea, he looks into the abysses of his tomb-the tomb into which he is about to fall and rise no more: whereas, the Christian student looks through all nature with cheerful eyes. When he sees the mineral kingdom abounding in beauties, beauties which in their kind equal those of the vegetable and animal kingdom, he is transported with the thought, that the God who made all these beauties by his fiat, is himself infinitely more glorious than his works.*

From the surveys which have been made of the solid crust of the earth, so far as it has been penetrated into, it is evident that the rudimental materials of the globe existed at its earliest period, in one confused and liquid mass; that they were afterwards separated and arranged by a progressive series of operations, and an uniform system of laws, the more obvious of which appear to be those of

*Sutcliffe's Introduction to the Study of Geology, pp. 4-6. It is much to be regretted that this excellent little work is not more generally known.

gravity and crystallization; and that they have since been convulsed and dislocated by some dreadful commotion and inundation that have extended to every region, and again thrown a great part of the organic and inorganic creation into confusion.

Hence have originated the Plutonic and the Neptunian hypotheses: the former ascribing the origin of the world, in its present state, to igneous fusion; the latter, to aqueous solution. Both of these theories are of a very early date, and both of them have been agitated in ancient as well as in modern times, with considerable warmth and plausible argument. The principal champions of the Plutonic system, in later times, are Dr. Hutton, Professor Playfair, and Sir James Hall; names of high literary rank, but most powerfully opposed by the distinguished authorities of Werner, Saussure, Kirwan, Cuvier, and Jameson, who are supported by the general voice of scientific men.

Of these theories, the Plutonic is perhaps best entitled to the praise of boldness of conception and unlimited extent of view. It aspires, in many of its modifications, not only to account for the present appearances of the earth, but for that of the universe; and traces out a scheme by which every planet, or system of planets, may be continued indefinitely, and perhaps forever, by a perpetual series of restoration and balance.

With this system the Neptunian forms a perfect contrast. It is limited to the earth, and to the present appearances of the earth. It resolves the genuine origin of things into the operation of water; and while it admits the existence of subterranean fires to a certain extent, and that several of the phænomena that strike us most forcibly may be the result of such an agency, it peremptorily denies that such an agency is the sole or universal cause of the existing state of things, or that it could possibly be rendered competent to such an effect.

More especially should we feel disposed to adhere to this theory, from its general coincidence with the geology of the Scriptures. The Mosaic narrative, indeed, with bold and soaring pinions, takes a comprehensive sweep through the vast range of the solar system, if not through that of the universe; and in its history of the simultaneous origin of this systern, touches chiefly upon geology, as the part most interesting to ourselves; but so far as it enters upon this doctrine, it is in sufficiently close accordance with the Neptunian scheme, with the great volume of nature as now cursorily dipped into. The narrative opens with a statement of three distinct facts, each following the other in a regular series, in the origin of the visible world. First, an absolute creation, as opposed to a mere remodification of the heaven and the earth, which constituted the earliest step in the creative process. Secondly, the condition of the earth when it was thus primarily brought into being, which was that of an amorphous or shapeless waste. And thirdly, a commencing effort to reduce the unfashioned mass to a condition of order and harmony. In the beginning,' says the sacred historian,

'God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form and void: and darkness was upon the face of the deep, (or abyss). And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.'

We are hence, therefore, necessarily led to infer that the first change of the formless chaos, after its existence, was into a state of universal aqueous solution; for it was upon the surface of the waters that the Divine Spirit commenced his operative power We are next informed, that this chaotic mass acquired shape, not instantaneously, but by a series of six distinct days or generations, (that is epochs), as Moses afterwards calls them (Gen. ii. 4): and apparently through the agency of the established laws of gravity and crystallization, which regulate it at the present moment.

It tells us, that during the first of these days, or generations, was evolved, what, indeed, agreeably to the laws of gravity, must have been evolved first of all, the matter of light and heat; of all material substances the most subtle and attenuate; those by which alone the sun operates, and has ever operated upon the earth and the other planets, and which may be the identical substances that constitute his essence. And it tells us, also, that the luminous matter thus evolved produced light without the assistance of the sun or moon, which were not set in the sky or firmament, and had no rule till the fourth day, or generation: that the light thus produced flowed by tides, and alternately intermitted, constituting a single day and a single night of each of such epochs or generations, whatever their length might be, of which we have no information communicated to us.

It tells us, that during the second day, or generation, up rose progressively the fine fluids, or waters, as they are poetically and beautifully denominated, of the firmament, and filled the blue etherial void with a vital atmosphere. That during the third day, or generation, the waters more properly so called, or the grosser and compacter fluids of the general mass, were strained off and gathered together into the vast bed of the ocean, and the dry land began to make its appearance, by disclosing the peaks or highest points of the primitive mountains; in consequence of which a progress instantly commenced from inorganic matter to vegetable organization, the surface of the earth, as well above as under the waters, being covered with plants and herbs bearing seeds after their respective kinds; thus laying a basis for those carbonaceous materials, the remains of vegetable matter, which are occasionally to be traced in some of the layers or formations of the class of primitive rocks, (the lowest of the whole), without a single particle of animal relics intermixed with them.

It tells us, that during the fourth day, or epoch, the sun and moon, now completed, were set in the firmament, the solar system was finished, its laws were established, and the celestial orrery was put into play; in consequence of which the harmonious revolutions of signs and of seasons, of days and of years, struck up for the first time their mighty symphony. That the fifth period was allotted exclusively to the formation of water-fowl, and the countless tribes

of aquatic creatures; and, consequently, to that of those lowest ranks of animal life, testaceous worms, corals and other zoophytes, whose relics are alone to be traced in the second class of rocks or transition formations, and still more freely in the third or horizontal formations; these being the only animals as yet created, since the air, and the water, and the utmost peaks of the loftiest mountains, were the only part as yet inhabitable. It tells us, still continuing the same grand and exquisite climax, that towards the close of this period, the mass of waters having sufficiently retired into the deep bed appointed for them, the sixth and concluding period was devoted to the formation of terrestrial animals; and, last of all, as the masterpiece of the whole, to that of man himself.

Such is the beautiful, but literal progression of the creation, according to the Mosaic account, as must be perceived by every one who will carefully peruse it for himself.

Thus, in progressive order, up rose the stupendous system of the world the bright host of morning stars shouted together on its birth-day; and the eternal Creator looked down with complacency on the finished fabric, and 'saw that it was good.'

Before we notice the changes induced on the earth by the deluge, it is proper to meet the objection made by some geologists against the Mosaic history, derived from the marble tablets, which, in many instances exhibit broken shells, and fossil-teeth, evidently worn with mastication. To this it is replied, First, that testaceous marbles are never found at any great distance from the present level of the sea. Secondly, that from the creation to the deluge, the sea, as now, would make war on promontories, and deposit her erosions on calmer shores. Thirdly, that the shells so covered in places where the under strata were disposed to promote the formation of marbles, by the ascension of the marmorous fluid, would unite with the matter so laid on, and concrete into the beauteous masses in which they are now found. Consequently, the noble author of The Beauties of Christianity seems injudicious, in the ascription of a mutilated and imperfect work to the all-perfect Being. The very day,' he says, 'that the ocean poured forth his first waves, he doubtless laved rocks already worn by billows, shores strewed with fragments of shell-fish, roaring gulphs and naked cliffs, which protected th sinking coasts against the ravages of the waters.'

In other places the turbid deposits of the sea, containing salts, magnesia, and marine acid, holding a considerable quantity of minerals in a state of solution, would, attracted by the combining and concreting essence of the under strata, repeat all the other formations of primitive nature, though in smaller masses. To these must be added the lava, which in other places was rolled on the vallies by volcanoes, and the bursting of mountains, where the sea had a rapid access to their latent fires. These considerations, respecting the state of the antediluvian earth, may assist the lovers of nature to account for the formation of many alluvial rocks and strata, which we cannot with confidence say were formed since the deluge of