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grow in our conviction of their perfect coincidence with the truths of Genesis. Genesis is God's tongue telling us what things are; Geology is God's finger pointing out the portraits of things that are: God's voice is audible in Genesis ; God's hand is visible in Geology. The first, that is, God's word, is perfect, uninjured by a flaw; the second, or God's work, is imperfect, tainted by sin, and injured by a thousand incidents and occurrences, which make it not so clear and perspicuous as it was when it came from the hand of God, and was pronounced by him to be very good.

The first great fact that I will deal with, and the one that really involves the whole subject, is the real or supposed antiquity of the earth. Is the earth six thousand years old and no more, or is it older? The common interpretation of Genesis says, it is six thousand years old; the discoveries of Geology prove to my mind incontestably, that the component material structure of this globe, and much that is under the outer crust of this globe, are, it may be, hundreds of thousands of years old. I believe that this earth is not merely six thousand years old; the last collocation of it on its upper surface is of that age; the last arrangement of its surface is so, but the materials of the globe, the strata that are below, of which I will give you satisfactory evidence, demonstrate that it is not thousands, but hundreds of thousands of years old: and yet I am abundantly satisfied there is no contradiction between these, the last discoveries of Geology, and the first text of Genesis, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

Supposing, then, we penetrate the surface of the globe, or the crust that surrounds it, like the skin of an orange or the shell of an egg, we find as we descend, successive strata, or, if I may use a more homely expression, cakes of different formations composed of different substances, lying on each other for some nine miles in depth, by what geologists call

superposition; the one regularly and always (except as we account for it on other principles) lying above the other. You know what an onion is; it is composed of successive coverings; we take off one complete, then another, then another; that onion, if each of its lamina were only of a different substance from the other, would be in structure almost a complete picture of the exterior crust of the globe. First of all, and lowest of all, we have the primitive rock, which we call granite, the stone of which Waterloo Bridge is built, found in Aberdeenshire and in parts of Cornwall; then above the granite, the gneiss; above that, are the Silurian beds, called so from the ancient inhabitants of that part of our country, the Siluri. We have then the old red sandstone, the coal formation, and, as the last, the alluvial deposit, in which remains of the human race are found. This order is always preserved except there be an interruption, or an irruption, or break, by some great convulsion or slow process in some past history of the globe. Many of these specific formations you will notice above the granite, are composed of what geologists call lamina, that is, successive leaves deposited one above the other, giving proof that the one cake was hardened by long lapse of years before the next cake, or lamina, was deposited on it, and became solidified by the same process. You will find, too, if you look at the lower lamina, or the lower cake, and upon its upper surface you will see, evidences of the ripple of the waves, washing it, wasting it, and rubbing it. You will find again upon the same upper surface, the foot prints of birds, the footsteps also of beasts, and the marks of leaves; and these impressions upon the upper surface of the lower one, are exactly transferred to the lower surface of the next higher, or upper cake, that must therefore have been deposited softly and slowly upon it, showing that the upper surface of the lower lamina, or cake, become hardened,

had been the scene of long traffic, like a turnpike-road, and then the immense ocean above deposited its detritus, or its mud, (as you may call it,) very gently and gradually upon the upper surface of the said lower and long hardened stratum, and received the impression just as the printer's page receives the impression from the types, thereby proving that a long period intervened before the upper laminæ fell, and were formed upon the lower, and became hardened with time. That one fact indicates immense intervals, because it shows that the lower surface had been trodden by animals, washed by the waves, hardened by the lapse of years, and only after it had been completely hardened did another stratum fall down upon it in a soft and plastic state, and assumed impressions on its lower side, from the hardened upper of the leaf below, and ultimately it also hardened, and became the basis again of other deposits.

In the third place, there are formations consisting of very different materials, some derived from the older rocks, others from processes of very slow progress. To give an illustration, granite is, as I said, the primitive, the lowest rock; and next above that is the gneiss. This is composed of exactly the very same materials as the granite. Upon your looking at the granite you will see the felspar, mica, and quartz, composing it, are beautifully mingled, and blended, and crystallized, sparkling like diamonds; but if you look at the gneiss, or, as it is called, the whinstone, you will see that the same materials - mica, felspar, and quartz -have in its case been reduced into a complete powder, which geologists in their technical language call detritus, and has afterward become consolidated. This gives evidence that the upper surface of the granite had been ground down by the washing of waters, or by some ceaseless, restiess process, and the detritus of the granite thus made has been mixed with the mighty ocean above, and

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afterwards gradually deposited, and slowly hardened into what is called whinstone, or gneiss. This one fact is proof that a long period must have elapsed, before there was worn off so much dust or detritus from the hard granite, as could thus be deposited and formed into immense blocks of superposition gneiss, hundreds of feet in thickness; irresistible evidence, therefore, that long geological periods must have intervened between the granite formation and the next above it.

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Let us now turn to the Silurian formations, as they are called; these consist of coral. Everybody knows what coral is- the secretion of very minute insects. It has been actually ascertained, that the beds are formed by these small insects, at the rate of about six inches in a hundred years. Now if we find coral beds hundreds of feet in thickness, and as we know the rate at which the coral insect makes its formations, we can easily calculate it must have taken hundreds of thousands of years to form some of the vast strata that are beneath the crust on which we tread, and that compose the substance and mass of this globe. It is absurd to say the coral was created, it is clearly the work of insects.

Again, the coal formations were once gigantic forests, and the coal that we now burn in our fires was once pine, or oak, or beech, or some sort of wood, which has been, by some great convulsion, and by moisture, and heat, and age, turned into that carbonaceous or carboniferous substance, we commonly call coal. That coal must have occupied immense periods in its formation from wood into coal, is obvious from the nature of the process. One of the readiest proofs of this is, that a peat moss is a coal bed in its infancy. There is one peat moss near Stirling, which can be proved to be two thousand years since it was a forest, from certain Roman remains found in it. It is in the process of becoming

carbonized, and would probably take ten thousand years more to be turned into coal. We, therefore, argue that these coal formations prove, incontestably, additional to all I have said, that the globe of which they form a part, has been filling up, and shaping itself, under the presidency of Him who made and governs it, for hundreds and thousands, aye, tens of thousands of years!

Another proof of the antiquity of the earth may be taken from the chalk cliffs. All, or many of us, have visited Ramsgate, Margate, and Dover. What do you think those chalk cliffs are? Just vast masses of dead seainsects and shells, turned into that alkaline powder, which we term chalk. The microscope of the philosopher has been turned upon it, and it is now matter of demonstration. It is absurd to say, that these vast masses were thus created. I was lately at Ramsgate, and spent a few hours minutely examining these cliffs. You see a long line of flints, then a mass of white chalk, then flints again, then an immense mass of white chalk. Just think that these gigantic banks of chalk were all living, swarming creatures, that must have been deposited from water, and that you have them now in their petrified state! The only thing that has puzzled geologists are the layers of flint-stones. They cannot explain how it comes to pass, that in every chalk cliff we see successive parallel and horizontal lines of flint-stones, three or four feet from one another. How these nodules of flint came into that position, geologists have been unable to determine, and no conclusion has been arrived at, to give satisfaction to those who are competent to investigate that question.*

Again, some of these formations, while in the fixed order

*It has been conjectured lately, what perhaps we shall be able to prove, that these flints were originally sponges, and if so, it will strengthen the evidence we are collecting.

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