and necessary tendency of such doctrines as those which we have now laid down. It will be necessary to return to one particular topic to which we have already alluded. The atmosphere which exists throughout and over the world is known to us to exist to a certain extent only by means of electrical appearances. We are now pretty well aware that it is by means of a current of electricity that the earth revolves upon its axis, and that this current is continually passing from north to south-not from the north to the south of this world only, but from the northward to the southward throughout the whole system-and for anything that we know to the contrary, throughout much larger systems of the same character. We are able to ascertain this, by tracing the time and place at which it first makes its appearance; we can track that current of electricity whereby the world is thus made to turn upon its axis; and as it goes through on its passage, we can follow it from point to point. And we are able by an artificial current, created under similar circumstances, or circumstances which we consider to be similar, to turn round a globe placed as we believe the earth to be. So that we have, in the first place, the proof which is derived from artificial means-namely, from creating a current of electricity, and thereby causing a globe to revolve; and we have also the proof derivable from the fact that our own globe does revolve, and that a current of electricity passes through it under such circumstances. Near to the globe itself the atmosphere is sufficiently dense to give the visible evidences of electric action; and this electric action presents the appearance of the Aurora Borealis, entering our globe at the north, and passing out at the south. And it is worthy of observation, that the phenomena of the Aurora Australis, as it is called, at the southern pole, are widely different from those at the northern pole, and that they respectively present precisely the appearances which would be expected from the electric current entering at the north, and passing out at the south. This is interesting to us, as revealing an additional fragment of the laws whereby God sustains his own creation, showing to us the means whereby he is pleased to give us the vicissitudes of day and night, and, probably, of summer and winter. And if we find the same physical laws obtaining, and the same physical agency employed in other worlds which we observe in this-if

the same power which causes our globe to revolve, walks on in its magnificent career throughout creation, dispensing the same blessings, and causing the same effects, surely we cannot suppose that spiritual blessings are confined to us, and that the boundless love of our Almighty Creator is not similarly manifested throughout a thousand worlds, conferring happiness on incalculable multitudes of intelligent creatures.

Such are among the facts which have been but recently made known by the researches of science. Are they not sufficient to show us, that by rightly reading the Book of Nature, we are at the same time reading the Book of God; that by contemplating the laws of his creation under their true and proper aspect, we are obtaining some insight into the laws of his being? And when we speak of the laws of his being, whose will is his law, and by whose WILL all things in heaven and earth are regulated, we can but be filled with adoring reverence that he hath been pleased to reveal to us his laws at all; ⚫ and may take up the language of the psalmist, and say, "Oh! how I love thy law! It is my delight to meditate therein day and night." In that law it is that we find the most wondrous proof of his power; and, above all, it is in that law that we find the most marvelous manifestations of his love. We here learn much concerning the grandeur of him who hath made us—we learn more concerning our own apparent insignificance; and again that apparent insignificance vanishes, and we see the awful dignity of our nature and position. The echo comes to us from the depths of the Divine essence into the depths of our own-to use reverently the language of the psalmist, "Deep answereth unto deep!" The mind pauses at the awful grandeur of the revelations made to it

"The soul folds its pinions in amaze,

And light comes down from the blue depths of heaven,

Clearing away the mists that frailty spreads

Over the mind's horizon. Such the hours

When angel visitants with saints of old
Held solemn converse, and the awful voice

Of the ALL-HOLY ONE was heard by man!"

Our nature assumes a grander and more stupendous development when we consider that he who hath constituted all these laws, and

hath created all these systems, condescended to take it-that he I chose to dwell in this our world-that for our sakes did he suffer the infirmities of our fallen condition—and that he hath finally called us, not to what we were before he came, not to what we were before the fall, but to reign with him forever in his own empire of light.

7

CHAPTER IV.

GEOLOGY.

CHRONOLOGY OF MOSES-SANCTIONED BY ALL REVELATION-PERFECTLY CLEARHOW FAR CONSISTENT WITH MODERN DISCOVERIES-PROGRESS OF GEOLOGYSTRATA AND THEIR PERIODS-FOSSIL REMAINS-EXTINCT ANIMALS-PAROXYSMAL THEORY-THEORY OF SIR CHARLES LYELL-STEPS OF A SCRIPTURAL GEOLOGIST-HINDOO CHRONOLOGY-CHINESE CHRONOLOGY-PREADAMITE DEATHREST OF GOD FROM CREATION-FUNCTIONS OF CARNIVORA-TWO CREATIONS RELATED BY MOSES--OBJECT OF THE MOSAIC HISTORY-GEOLOGY YET IN ITS INFANCY-FINAL APPEAL TO REVELATION.

THE subject of the present chapter is one replete with difficulties, and of so extensive a character, that we cannot hope to present more than a few of its leading facts; to give a few hints how the subject may best be pursued, so as to make the discoveries of modern geologists tally with the account given in the book of Holy Writ.

In the first place, so far as the chronology of Moses is concerned (for therein lies the principal difficulty), we must either take that chronology just as we find it, or lay aside altogether our belief in the book. In other words, if we feel ourselves at liberty to reject the chronology of Moses, we may on the very same grounds reject the history; and for this simple reason, that the chronology of Moses is so perfectly clear that it is absolutely impossible to misunderstand it, the apparent discrepancies are so accurately accounted for, and the labors of various chronologists have been applied to them with so much successful research, that there remains no other ground for objection than this, namely, that Moses was not inspired, and that consequently the authority of Moses is not to be received as giving to us the Divine Word.

We are, then, to choose between these two things. Either we must take the book of Moses, with its chronology, as we find it,

rectifying that chronology in accordance with the system on which it is written, or admit that Moses has no right to assume a divine authority, and give up all the support and sanction which Christianity derives from his works. Now, we cannot for a moment doubt that the writings of the Jewish lawgiver are of divine authority. We have already seen that they are so received by the Jews, who were well able to distinguish the divine from the human; and they have been confirmed by the authority of Christ our Lord. But, at the same time we are not at liberty to deny facts, especially when presented by those whose judgment we cannot dispute, and who have no other motive in the investigation of them than that of arriving at the truth. It will be, therefore, a great support to us in putting together the grounds of our Christian faith, if we are able to show that the discoveries of good and wise men, men having no other object than the promotion of science and the investigation of truth, are not contrary to but do rather corroborate and support the records of Moses. Then we shall have the authority both of human science and of God's inspiration to the same fact, and shall find one additional argument in support of that great theory, that truth is ever the same, that it will ever present to us the same facts, and lead us in the same direction.

When men first began, in the light of modern science, to investigate the nature of the globe, they saw that according to the appearances of its component parts a much longer period must have elapsed for the settling down or accommodating of certain strata in the earth than that given by the ordinary modes of interpreting the records of Moses. For if, as it was generally understood, the days in which the works of creation were finished were six days equal in length to our own, and at the expiration of that period men began to live just in the same manner and according to the same laws as they do now, then, making a small allowance for the time during which man remained in a state of innocence, it might be said that rather more than six thousand years had elapsed since God had called all things out of nothing by "the Word of his power," and made the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them. them. It was soon perceived that such a period of time was altogether insufficient to account for the phenomena of the terraqueous globe; there are single strata which