Year: 1875




AT no point has modern science ap-
peared to impinge more heavily on the
Bible than in the relations of geology to
the narrative of creation in Genesis. No
triumph of inductive science is greater
than that by which it has given us a con-
nected history of the genesis of the earth
and its inhabitants through long series
of ages anterior to man, and on no point
has the Bible appeared to insist more
strongly than on its six creative days
The apparent difference has given rise to
swarm of attempts at reconciliation,
and there has been no want of strict de-
nunciation of the impiety of Hume on
the one hand and of the bigotry of the
ologians on the other. Happily. however,
so much light has now been cast upon the
subject that few intelligent men see any
contradiction between the conclusions of
geology and the doctrine that "in six
days God created the heavens and the
earth. The subject is, however, well
worthy of some attention if for nothing
else as an example of how the greatest
apparent difficulties may fade away when
boldly encountereds


Nothing can be more surely established
as the basis of scientific induction than
the vast length of the periods revealed
by the strata of the earth's crust Some





that enormous stretch of l00,000,000 of
years which is regarded as the shortest
possible time which may have elapsed
since a solid crust first formed on the
cooling earth. To understand this, we
may condense into a few propositions the
great leading results of scientific investi-
CATION of the earth:


l. The widest and most important gen
eralization of modern geology is that all
the materials of the earth crust, to the
greatest depth to which we can penetrate,
are OF such nature as to prove that they
are not unchanged and primitive rocks,
but the results of the operation
of causes of change now in progress
They may be such things as conglomer-
ates, sandstones, shales, and states, all of
which are the debris of older rocks,
broken down into pebbles, sand or mud
or they are limestones made up of the
ruins of corals and shells, or coal and
ores, accumulated by the agency of veg
etable matter; or they may be substances
analogous to the lavas and ashes of mod
ern volcanoes; or they may be rocks that
are aqueous in their origin and now
hardened and altered by heat. But
everywhere we see the evidence of change
under natural laws still in force.


2 This being ascertained, we can next
affirm that in regard to the manner in
which successive deposits from water
have been piled upon each other, regu-
lar succession can be traced in the strata
or beds of the earth, giving us chrome
logical sequence of deposits extending
throughout the whole time since the sea
first began to receive into its bourn the
debris from the wasting land.


3. This series of rock formations ac-
quires an immense increase of scientific
value from the fact that organic remains
of the animals and plants inhabiting the
earth at the different stages of its pro-
gress are revealed in the successive dy-
nasties of life different from that now ex
isting and from each other, so that we
can divide the geological history not
merely by series of beds of rock alternat-
ing with each other, but by a series of
faunas and foras which have occupied
the earth successfully from the dawn of
life until now


f. The lapse of time embraced in this
geological history of the earth is enor-
nous. 1t is difficult to give an idea of
this without entering into details out of
place here. A few facts must suffice. In
the modern period, which includes the
time of man and the lower animals. his
contemporaries, such facts as growth of
coral GS6lS anu Tie OSpOSl6 Ol S6Qlm6nG
at the mouths of rivers, give lapse of
time to be measured by tens of thousands
of years Passing to a single formation
of older dates-the coal formation-thus
as seen in Nova Scotia, shows in a
single section so beds of coal, overly
lying each other, and about 100 fossil
forests, all successive. Without reckon
ing the time necessary for deposition of
the thousands of feet of sand and mud
hardened into stone that inclose their
beds, the growth of so many peaty beds,
often of great thickness. with the growth
of so many for forests and the time in
volved in the emergencies and subsi-
dences of the land necessary to their ap-
pearing as they now do, must have re-
ouired ages, compared with which the
modern period dwindles into insignifi-
cance The accumulation of even one
bed of coal may have required as long a
time as that covered by human history.
Again, the numerous great limestones, of
immense thickness. and covering vast
areas, are composed altogether of shells
of mollusks or corals. Such limestones
give us for the lowest estimate of time
the lapse of vast ages. Geological time
thus grows upon US the more that we ex-
anime.


Turn now to the first chapter of Gene
sis, and see how we are to reconcile these
vast forests with creation in six days.
1t would not serve our purpose here to