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." +

3

"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, the secondary workings of God's Providence, - without flying for aid to the apparently more direct and easy cause of supernatural interference. In selecting the opinion of Conybeare on these changes, a name 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.

C

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;

may truly call' factas ex æquore terras.'

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 igneous orgin; the diversified nature of the remains imbedded in them; and the prolonged and distant

æras which, by fair and equitable deduction, are developed by these discoveries. These form the true obstacle; and compel the mind, either to an enlargement of the received chronology, or to an assertion, that the secondary laws now in action, were not the laws which were first given by God to the earth. A bold assertion! one more difficult of proof, we should imagine, than the supposed error it would condemn; and which has this farther difficulty to contend with, that it assumes an amendment of the Divine counsels :-in other words, that God found the original laws of nature so imperfect, that he thought fit to alter them to their present state. They have either been from the beginning as they which demands a prodigious antiquity;

now are,

or they have been changed from a state of wondrous and almost inconceivable activity to their present equable, and comparatively quiescent state, which is averse from the experience of mankind.

The grandeur of the deposits on the earth's surface is very forcibly and simply set forth by a writer, well versed with his subject, in the "Christian Observer,"* in an analysis of the series of fossiliferous strata. It has this advantage, that it places in an exceedingly clear light a portion of those vast and successive barriers, which the faith of the adherent of the literal history must surmount, before he can rationally yield his mind to the common belief. He pursues his subject in this manner.

"1. These the fossiliferous strata-have been undeniably sedimentary deposits, which have accu

* Christian Observer, June, 1834, p. 380.

mulated in a fluid state; as is evident from the manner in which they have taken impressions of the imbedded strata, and filled every cavity in them.

"2. The aggregate thickness of the European series of fossiliferous strata, which emerge from beneath one another, like the edges of so many cards swept slantingly aside, cannot amount to less than eight or ten miles, if considered collectively as superimposed. This will convey some idea of the vast masses with which we are concerned.

"3. This vast mass is subdivided into hundreds of strata, each distinguished by its peculiar organic remains; not huddled together, but arranged in definite groups with as much precision as in the drawers of a collector's cabinet. These remains often consist of shells with delicate spines, so brittle, that they could not have been removed from any distance without destruction; and they appear therefore, to have lived and died in their present locality. These numerous strata may be conveniently subdivided into four principal groups, A, B, C, D,—of each of which, it may be proper to say a few words.

"A, The lowest fossiliferous rocks, consisting of many beds of coarse slate, shell, sandstone, and limestone, alternating in many series. Mr. Murchison has recently published an account of the upper portion (probably not more than half this series) as seen on the borders of Wales; of which the aggregate thickness is about 20,000 feet. The remains are various marine zoophytes and testacea, for the most part of a very peculiar character. Teeth, and some of the bones of vertebral fishes, are sometimes found, but they are rare. Vegetables, like those of