LECTURE III. ROMANS XI. 36. Of HIM, and through HIM, and to HIM, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. SOME of the most important positions affirmed in the preceding lecture could not fail to be perceived by my attentive hearers, to be at variance with certain sentiments or interpretations, which are extensively received under the supposition of their being declared, or at least implied, in the Holy Scriptures. It is now my duty to state, in particular detail, what those sentiments and opinions are; and in what manner they stand in contradiction to the facts in the natural history of the earth, to which we have adverted. My auditors will do me the favour to observe, that I speak of opinions and interpretations; the sentiments which men have taken up, and promulgated as the declarations of the Bible. We have not yet arrived at the part of these lectures in which we shall have to examine whether those interpretations are the genuine sense of the divine oracles. It would not be proper to anticipate that inquiry: yet I cannot but be anxious that my friends should keep constantly in mind the avowal made in the first lecture; namely, my conviction that those interpretations are erroneous. solicit this favour as a protection to myself from being understood, in this and the following lecture, to cast any doubt upon the truth and authority of the Scriptures. It is not the word of God, but the expositions and deductions of men, from which I am compelled to dissent. I I. It is a prevailing opinion that the dependent universe, in all its extent, was brought into existence by the almighty power of its Creator, within the period of the six days laid down in the first portion of the Book of Genesis; chap. i. throughout, and ii. 1-3, where the editorial division should have been made, as the whole is evidently a connected and complete narrative. The same conclusion is also drawn from the language of the fourth com mandment; "In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is.” Exod. xx. 11. To this mode of understanding the Scripture, the discoveries of geological science are directly opposed. Excepting, [possibly but not certainly,] the higher parts of some mountains, which at widely different epochs have been upheaved, and made to elevate and pierce the stratified masses which once lay over them, there is scarcely a spot on the earth's surface which has not been many times in succession the bottom of a sea, and a portion of dry land. In the majority of cases, it is shown, by physical evidences of the most decisive kind, that each of those successive conditions was of extremely long duration; a duration which it would be presumptuous to put into any estimate of years or centuries; for any alteration of which vestiges occur in the zoological state and the mineral constitution of the earth's present surface, furnishes no analogy, (with regard to the nature and continuance of causes,) that approaches in greatness of character to those changes whose evidences are discernible in almost any two continuous strata.* It is an inevitable inference, unless we are disposed to abandon the principles of fair reasoning, that each one of such changes in organic life did not take place till after the next preceding condition of the earth had continued through a duration, compared with which six thousand years appear an inconsiderable fraction of time. Among other facts, it is to be observed that the instances referred to often involve an increase of temperature to a great amount. For example, it is proved, by the clearest evidence of vegetable remains, that, in what are now temperate or extremely cold climates, there prevailed, during the periods of the earlier secondary rocks, a mean of temperature equal to that of the hottest region upon the present surface of the globe, or probably greater. It is also shown, by such evidence as every physiologist and every chemist knows to be satisfactory, that, at the periods referred to, the earth's atmosphere (by being loaded with carbonic acid) must have been so different from that which we possess, that the present kinds of animals breathing by lungs, and many kinds *Sec. ed. As the term stratum is used with some latitude, so as to be applied to both the greater divisions and those which are less marked, I beg to have it understood here as denoting the principal classes. † Another evidence of this fact has been adduced by Prof. Edward Forbes, in the characters of the fresh-water shells which are found in the more recent strata preceding the present surface. These prove, by abundant instances, that Britain possessed a which do not so breathe, could not have existed. Now the evidence, from various points of physical reasoning and from wellknown historical facts, is ample, that the same state that now subsists, as to temperature and the constitution of the atmosphere, has belonged to our planet ever since the day that God created man and the animals connected with man. An objection may arise from the recollection that some commentators have supposed, as the mediate cause of the longevity of the antediluvian patriarchs, a peculiarly salubrious quality in the atmosphere, which they also suppose to have been destroyed by the deluge, or in consequence of it. But this is an imaginary hypothesis involving heavier difficulties than what it professes to remove; and, if it were to be accepted, it would add to the weight of reason for the interposition of an immensity of time between the deposition of the carboniferous lime-stone, for instance, and the present epoch; because the condition of the atmosphere which geological evidence evinces to have belonged to the remote period of which we have been speaking, was the reverse of salubrious, or better fitted to support life than our present common air; it would have been instantly, or in a few moments, fatal to man or to any such lungbreathing animals as now exist. But, while the general evidence for an antiquity of the earth, so great as to set at nought our attempts at estimation, may be compendiously understood by any one who will take moderate pains in studying the appearances of stratification and the characters of organic remains; it ought to be kept in mind that there is a multitude of facts, of a more minute description, and which present themselves on every hand to the practised geologist, each of which has great importance, but the sum of which amounts to an irresistible body of argument. It would be unreasonable to expect that all, of even liberally educated and well informed persons, should be sufficiently versed in Natural History, Chemistry, and the doctrines of mechanical force, to be able readily to apprehend and duly to weigh those facts and the deductions from them: but the claim is reasonable that, in such cases, we should satisfy our warmer climate that can be assigned to the human period. Zoo-Geological Considerations, &c. in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History; vol. vi. 1841, p. 242. Many such evidences occur in the fossil animal remains of older periods. [It is maintained by Prof. Agassiz and others, as probable, that there has been one at least intercalated period, in which our northern hemisphere has been subjected to a temperature very much lower than its present mean.] selves by giving credit and honour where credit and honour are due. We feel no difficulty in thus relying upon conclusions drawn, in the way of mathematical reasoning, by Newton, Bradley, Laplace, and the Herschels; and, were we to indulge the monstrous supposition that such men were willing to deceive, we know that there are thousands able and ready to detect the minutest error, and expose any misstatement, if such there were. Upon this ground, therefore, I may take a few sentences from a mathematician and man of science, from whom, in the first lecture, I derived an important citation, and who, till his recent resignation, filled the chair of Newton. In his work, "The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise," Mr. Babbage has the following words: "In truth, the mass of evidence which combines to prove the great antiquity of the earth itself, is so irresistible, and so unshaken by any opposing facts, that none but those who are alike incapable of observing the facts and appreciating the reasoning, can for a moment conceive the present state of its surface to have been the result of only six thousand years of existence.Those observers and philosophers who have spent their lives in the study of Geology, have arrived at the conclusion, that there exists irresistible evidence, that the date of the earth's first formation is far anterior to the epoch supposed to be assigned to it by Moses; and it is now admitted by all competent persons, that the formation even of those strata which are nearest the surface, must have occupied vast periods, probably millions of years, in arriving at their present state." Pp. 67, 78. As another example, I may mention that Mr. Charles Maclaren, in a valuable contribution to Geology, very recently published, estimates a single period of volcanic quiescence, during which strata of coal, shale, sandstone, and limestone were deposited over the site of the basaltic hill called Arthur's Seat, at Edinburgh, at five hundred thousand years.* Let it be observed that these are not random guesses, but founded upon knowledge and consideration.† This is indeed a cumulative argument. It arises from a number and variety of considerations which, without exaggeration, we may call inexhaustible. The active geologist can scarcely enter *Geology of Fife and the Lothians; p. 37. Edinb. 1839. upon any new field of observation, or repeat his survey of former ones, but he meets new proofs, or the strengthening of what he before possessed. The evidences, taken separately, are not equal in clearness and cogency. Some of them have a vast amount of independent weight: others are less striking, particularly to an unpractised observer: but they all bear in one direction: and their united force is such as to awaken surprise that any intelligent person can be found, who is capable of resisting it. It is the case, as in all arguments of this description, that the multitude and diversity tend to embarrass us, and the difficulty lies chiefly in selection and arrangement. II. Another opinion, which has been and perhaps still is received extensively, not only by those who hold the former position, but by many who disallow it, is this: that the state of the earth's surface, immediately before its being brought, by the wisdom and power of God, into the condition destined for the reception of man and his contemporaneous living creatures and plants, was one of universal dissolution from a former condition; and which consisted in a mixture of water and much earthy matter, producing an ocean of muddy substance, half liquid, half solid, completely enveloping the globe: and that also the atmosphere was perfectly dark, or nearly so; either because its constitution, as a regulated compound of nitrogen and oxygen, and endowed with the properties of transmitting and refracting the rays of light, was not yet effected; or because it was so filled with the densest watery vapour as scarcely to allow a passage to the light, so that, if not absolutely yet comparatively and sensibly, had a human being existed to employ his eye upon it, it might be called "darkness." This sentiment has been supposed to be contained in the words of the sacred record; "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.” Gen. i. 2. Now this interpretation will not consist with facts briefly stated in the preceding lecture; (Prop. xxvii.) Those statements I am happy in being enabled to confirm and illustrate by the authority of one whom talent and science, unwearied personal toil in the exploring of many of the most important districts of Great Britain and Ireland, and a mind disciplined by severe studies, have formed into one of the most eminently accomplished Geologists. |