CHAPTER IV.

GEOLOGY.

CHRONOLOGY OF MOSES-SANCTIONED BY ALL REVELATION-PERFECTLY CLEAR-HOW FAR CONSISTENT WITH MODERN DISCOVERIES-PROGRESS OF GEOLOGY-STRATA AND THEIR PERIODS-FOSSIL REMAINS-EXTINCT ANIMALS-PAROXYSMAL THEORY-THEORY OF SIR CHARLES LYELL-STEPS OF A SCRIPTURAL GEOLOGIST-HINDOO CHRONOLOGYCHRONOLOGY-PREADAMITE DEATH-REST 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.

CHINESE

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 labours 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 into existence by "the Word of his power," and made the heavens and the earth, and all the host of 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 must have taken far more than those six thousand years for their formation; and what can be said to the discoveries of astronomy which have been already pointed out, relative to worlds and systems, the light from which must have taken at least two hundred millions of years before it could have reached our planet. So that however great the space of time occupied by the deposition of the strata in the body of the earth, it sinks into positive insignificance, when compared with those enormous periods, with which astronomy makes us familiar, and which come to us on still better authority, because capable of more mathematical proof, than that on which geological facts rest."

For these reasons many have rejected much of astronomy and nearly all of geology; and they have been a little urged towards this extreme course, by the ill use made by some infidel writers of certain geological and astronomical facts. Dr. Harris, in his "Pre-Adamite Earth," thus speaks on the use of theories :

"There is a wide interval between the extreme which makes everything of a principle, and that which seeks security from it by abandoning the principle altogether. As surely as the mind is one, the truth to which the mind is preconfigured is one. On this ground it is that we argue from the known to the unknown; approach a subject of inquiry under the guidance of an antecedent probability as to what we shall find in it; and employ analogy and hypothesis as instruments of scientific discovery. 'How,' inquires Plato, can you expect to find unless you have a general idea of what you seek?' The mind,' says Lord Bacon, 'must bring to every experiment a "precogitation," or antecedent idea, as the ground of that "prudens quæstio," which he pronounces to be the prior half of the knowledge sought-' dimidium scientiæ.' Indeed, is not the Novum Organum itself of hypothetical origin? When Newton said, "Hypotheses non fingo," he did not mean that he deprived himself of the facilities of investigation afforded by assuming, in the

Here, then, we find ourselves upon the horns of a dilemma. We find given, in a manner that cannot be misunderstood, and which we cannot deny, a certain series of events: we find, on the other hand, that according to the ordinary mode of interpreting the records of Moses, those records give us a history not only discordant with, but contradictory thereto. It is as though we found somewhat in Scripture denying the fact of man's mortality, telling us that two and two do not make four, or something equally contrary to what we know to be the existing order of nature. There remains, therefore, but one mode of reconciling the discrepancies and of obviating the difficulty, namely, to remember that a man whose

first instance, what he hoped ultimately to be able to prove. Without such assumptions, science could never have attained the present state; they are necessary steps in the progress to something more certain; and nearly everything which is now theory was once hypothesis. Even in purely experimental science some inducement is necessary for trying one experiment rather than another.' These hypotheses, as the language implies, are only provisional. They must be of a nature to admit of verification; and be actually sub. jected to a test which shall confirm or explode them. In the same provisional manner might principles derived from the domain of revealed theology be advantageously carried into the province of nature. There is a true deductive method in science as well as a false; and there is a right method of employing theological principles in philosophy as well as a wrong. Everything depends on the manner in which they are employed. The inductive conclusion must be kept distinct from the speculative assumption. However fruitful the deductive principle may be, it can be used only for suggestion, not for demonstration; the proof of the view suggested must be of the same nature with that of the subject investigated or discussed."