which the searching qualities of the human mind. have deduced from external Nature. If there are opinions and facts of science, which seem to compromise the received records of Revelation, we must take them to the Bible, for their refutation or establishment. Under the sanction of commentators, who existed long before geology sprang into being, we have read that holy volume in a certain form of interpretation. If a more enlarged exposition is demanded, and grounds are given for so receiving it, we go at once to the Bible, and investigate, with the care and caution which such an object exacts of us, whether it will bear the sense which is endeavoured to be fastened on it. A new principle is offered to the judgment, deeply affecting the Scriptures; and knowing that they are true, we unhesitatingly try it by the test which they afford to us. The antiquity of former opinions bears no manner of weight with them. Men judged after their knowledge; which is precisely the thing that is required of ourselves.

Fears, however, have been felt by some, lest religion should suffer by the advancement of Geology, and have dreaded to try it by the test we have mentioned. But the Bible, in the most emphatic sense, is TRUTH; and it is not for a moment to be borne, that it cannot sustain the severest and closest scrutiny that men may think right to apply to it; nor that tortured by the rudest hand, it will not come forth from the ordeal pure and holy, as that Work whose framer was God. I conceive him to be no real friend to religion who would scruple to bring any theory whatever, which affected its sanctions, to

the standard of the Bible. It matters not what its design, nor what its apparent strength; let it be of the greatest or the slightest moment; still I cannot, in either case, regard that man as truly venerating the Word of God, who could dread, for a single instant, its full and perfect triumph. If right, the theory must be in accordance with the Bible; if false, opposed to it. I confess, that under this restriction, I cannot perceive the point of danger, from any advances, which the labours and increasing knowledge of the human mind enable it to make on the past expositions of the Holy Writings; nor can I conceive how authenticated facts of science can militate against the Truth.

There seems, however, no sufficient reason for extending these remarks. The system, if it survive, must stand by its own merits. It will better conduce to our design to enter upon some few of the leading facts which have been brought forward, and the results stated to have been attained by them. Our thought rests upon two great divisions of the subject. The Discoveries of the Geologists and an Examination of Genesis, in connexion with those Discoveries.

The directing principle of modern researches is chiefly grounded upon that great law which was originally laid down by Hutton, towards the latter part of the last century,—that "all the past changes on the globe have been brought about by the slow agency of existing causes." It seems impossible to establish a principle of greater soundness and judgment in a science so abstruse and difficult; nor one which, followed up steadily, gives fairer promise of

bringing it eventually to perfection. Nature, say the geologists, acts by certain and known laws; and those laws have existed from the time of the earth's creation. The phenomena which are at the present moment in action on its surface, are of the same character as those which have been seen from the most distant ages; and they will continue in force until God shall think fit to intervene, and supersede them, by an immediate act of his own power. From the earliest historic ages, with one* memorable excep tion, the same periodical convulsions,-the same alternate changes,-the same decay and reproduction, -the same modes of destruction and renewal have successively been exhibited. The archives of human knowledge tell of no new laws or principles which Nature has received; nor any which, formerly exemplified, have ceased from their operation. We have heard neither of increased, nor of diminished powers. The ways of God must of necessity be uniform and equal. He has adapted the earth for certain ends. It is destined in his counsels, as we learn from Revelation, to fulfil a definite cycle; and it seems incompatible with such a design that it should receive two sets of laws, variable, and changing with the different ages of its existence. We cannot believe that at former æras sudden forces, acting with prodigious violence, were let loose for a certain period upon the earth; uprooting and lacerating its surface, and reducing its pristine elements to confusion;-neither can we receive that statement as truth, which would assert long intervals

* The Deluge.

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