of entire rest and inactivity to have succeeded, in which Nature, as it were, recovered her strength, and prepared for new ruin and convulsions. Either fact is directly opposed to the known order of Nature. The forces which were originally put forth are in constant and unintermittent exercise. The agency of fire, bursting forth in earthquakes and volcanoes, which was formerly experienced, is felt at the present moment in active and extended influence. The scene is changed, but not the power. Scarcely a single territory exists in Europe, in which are not discovered the craters of extinct volcanoes. They are seen in every direction. A period has passed in which they raged in destructive violence. The scene has changed. The same terrific power is now exhibited in America and in Asia, stretching out in two vast chains of mountains, each several thousand miles in extent. There has been no interval of inactivity and quiescence ;-no cessation from the law; and without doubt the time will arrive, by the mere continuation of the existing cause, when these continents, like Europe, shall be comparatively free, and hitherto untouched regions become the theatre of their display. It is the same with other powers, which, in the hands of God, are instruments for carrying into effect his great designs in the formation of the present system. There is presumptive evidence of the strongest character, that those regions of the earth which arise out of the sea, and form our continents and islands, were at some distant periods submerged under its waters; and that those portions of the world which form the great basin of the sea, raised. above its surface, were formerly the dwelling-place of the inhabitants of the earth. In short, that the land and the sea have changed places. But if there should be any firm grounds for this opinion, by what means shall we suppose the change to have been effected? By a sudden elevation and depression of the moieties of the world? That certain islands and continents sank down, and that others arose to supply their place? Who, for a single moment, with the slightest reflection on the ordinary workings of God's providence, would yield his mind to such an opinion? By no means. We have a sufficient resolution of the problem in the operation of existing causes;-in the known laws of Nature which, carefully noted for ages, have never been seen to vary. Every year, at the present time, beholds the very change we speak of in incessant progress. The sea and the land are unintermittently changing places. The land lost on one part of the world, is compensated by land gained in another. A thousand causes are in action to promote these effects. The absorbing power of water; the earthquake; the volcano; the estuary; all contribute to this gradual interchange, and unite in modifying and regenerating the earth's surface. It is true, that the alteration may seem slow, and even insignificant, at any given spot, and calculated by the term of a single century; - but to judge fairly, we must not confine our range to our own limited vision, and to the means of our own personal observation, but must take into account their ceaseless effects upon every nation of the globe; and judge not by years, but by the lapse of ages. Not even a treatise on geology appears without containing remarkable verifications of this statement. Indeed it is scarcely possible for those, who have not made this science a branch, at least, of their ordinary reading, to conceive the magnitude of the changes which have taken place within a comparatively few years, and are still in the course of an almost daily occurrence. Lyell * has, amongst others, collected a vast number of evidences on this point. I refer to two instances, taken, almost at random, from his work. "In the year 1806, a new island, in the form of a peak, with some low conical hills upon it, rose from the sea among the Aleutian islands, north of Kamtschatka. According to Langsdorf, it was four geographical miles in circumference; - and Von Buch infers from its magnitude and from its not having subsided again below the level of the sea, that it did not consist merely of ejected matter, like Monte Nuovo, but of solid rock upheaved. Another extraordinary eruption happened in the spring of the year 1814, in the sea near Unalaschka in the same Archipelago. A new isle was then produced of considerable size, and with a peak three thousand feet high, which remained standing for a year afterwards, though with somewhat diminished height.” ↑ "In the Caraccas, near where the Caura joins the Orinoco, between the towns of San Pedro de Alcantara, and San Francisco de Aripao, an earthquake, on St. Matthew's day, 1790, caused a sink* C. Lyell, London, 3 vols. 8vo. 1st Ed. + Vol. i. p. 470. ing in of the granitic soil, and left a lake eight hundred yards in diameter, and from eighty to a hundred in depth. It was a portion of the forest of Aripao which subsided; and the trees remained green for several months under the water.' Now it is impossible, but that events of this nature, joined as they are with so many other assisting causes, must, in the course of ages, effect vast changes in the earth's surface, -so much so, that in the end the land will have become sea, and the sea land. The researches of the geologist tend to prove this fact by direct evidence. He has facts to adduce, which assure us incontestably, that in large inland districts, separated from each other by wide intervals, and scattered over various parts of the globe, this has been the case. We look to the means, and we find ample powers of accomplishment in the existing laws of nature, dary workings of God's Providence, the seconwithout fly a name ing for aid to the apparently more direct and easy cause of supernatural interference. In selecting the opinion of Conybeare on these changes, of no mean authority, - we but express, in words, the ideas of all modern geologists. In his Introduction, he states, that, "From the occurrence of the marine remains, lately noticed, occupying as they do rocks spread over two-thirds of the surface of every part of our continents which have been explored; and rising to the highest situations, even to the loftiest summits of the Pyrenees, and still more elevated points of the Andes, it is an inevitable in* Lyell, vol. i. p. 473. + Conybeare, Outlines of Geology. ference, that the greater part of those continents have not only been covered by, but have been formed of materials collected beneath the bosom of - that we inhabit countries which we the ocean; Allowing this position, the mind advances at once to the question of TIME. If there be truth in the reasoning; if we can believe that our continents were once lost to view amid the depths of the ocean, can we at the same time give our faith to the assertion, that these alternations have been effected within the confined space of six thousand years? From existing causes, it is quite clear they could not. Rapid as is their progress, at the greatest it is but a comparative rapidity; requiring cycles where that computation would admit only of years; and extending the earth's duration to a sum, of which the Mosaic chronology would form a single unit. If we concede the fact, we must either allow the free operation of natural causes to the antiquity required; or suppose a violent suspension of them, which would be wholly incompatible with human exis tence. This, however, is taking by far too simple and plain a view of the case. It merely supposes a balance between land and water, and that the one has risen by the depression of the other. The real difficulty of the question of Time, arises from the complication of the phenomena, indicated in the crust or superficies of the earth; the immensity and variety of the deposits; their aqueous and their ig neous orgin; the diversified nature of the remains imbedded in them; and the prolonged and distant |