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the whole heaven, were covered. And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth." To prevent the literal interpreter of scripture from availing himself, of the argument to be derived from this fact, Geology denies the fact itself, and maintains that the deluge was not universal. "What need," says Hitchcock, "for the sake of destroying man, occupying probably only a limited portion of one continent, was there for depopulating all other countries and islands, inhabited only by irresponsible creatures, who had no connexion with man?" He is reminded that Moses says that the Ark rested upon Mount Arrarat, and that if the waters covered the top of that mountain, they must have been universal. This he considers a mistake and observes, "the probability is, that the true Arrarat, lay much further South." In his opinion, a slight change in the "interpretation of the Mosaic account, would make it consistent with the notion that all traces of the deluge have disappeared!" If the Bible required the modifications suggested by this writer, it would not be entitled to the confidence of man.

Sth. Geology assigns no sufficient reason for

All things were

the existence of disease and death. at first "very good." It is admitted on all hands, that a change took place, and that disease and death are deteriorated conditions of the creature. How is this accounted for on Geological principles? Professor Hitchcock asserts, "that death existed in the world untold ages before man's creation, while physiology proves it to be a universal law of nature." These bold asseverations are unsupported by an atom of evidence. So far from death being in accordance with the "law of nature," that law described every thing as being "very good!" Dr. Cumming is equally explicit:

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The evidence to my mind," he remarks, "from reading-from careful and dispassionate reading upon this very point-conveys an irresistible impression that death existed in our globe hundreds of thousands of years ago, very long before the present surface, configuration, and arrangement of the earth on which we now live." The Dr. informs us that he obtained his evidence from "reading," and indicates the sources whence his authors derived their information, when he remarks, "In addition to millions of dead creatures, we find one of these Saurian monsters excavated from the depths of the earth, with a smaller animal in its

jaws, having been crushed just as it had seized its prey!" Dr. Cumming was not prepared to encounter this geological "monster," and concluded, after examining his carniverous teeth, that he must have lived before Adam and been "crushed" with his breakfast in his mouth! Now supposing a person to take up one of Dr. Cumming's books, where he speaks of a primitive plough, and maintain, from certain circumstances in the narrative, that the Dr. is describing the mechanism of a steam plough. You remind him that the steam plough, like Geology, is the result of modern science and was wholly unknown, to the antidiluvian husbandman. He meets you with two arguments, 1st.-Steam has always existed since there were fire and water upon the earth-it is the effect of a "natural law." 2nd.-A "monster" piece of metal had been found in Yorkshire, six miles down in the earth, perforated like one of the plates of a steam boiler; while a shapeless piece of iron had been discovered in the vicinity of the ancient Paradise, which, in the opinion of Geologists, had been used, "at a very remote period," as a plough-share. You might admire his ingenuity, in the appropriation of these relics of antiquity, but you could scarcely compliment a judgement that had been convinced by such unsatisfactory

evidence. Dr. Cumming accounts for the existence of death before Adam, on principles as untenable as his deductions from the "Saurian monster" referred to. "I do not assert," he observes, "that the angels' sin was the cause of the death that existed prior to Adam's creation, but I do assert that we have the fact that sin occurred prior to man's creation; and it does not seem unreasonable, or contrary to analogy, to say, that the disorganization of all animal being, prior to Adam's creation, may be the rebound and the result of the sin of those angels who kept not their first estate, and rebelled against God, whose residence may have been this very earth, prior to its fitting up for the dynasty of man." It is much to be regretted that men like Dr. Cumming, should publish such crude and immature speculations as are only calculated to strengthen the tendency to scepticism in the human mind. We may now say, that we also have read copiously on this subject and examined with much attention the remarkable specimens exhibited in the "British Museum," and in the "Museum of Practical Geology," and that our reading, reflection, and observation, have carried to our mind the most solemn conviction that six thousand years are quite sufficient to account for all the phenomena brought to

M

light by Geological science. Readers and writers, that have a taste for the marvellous, are seldom confined within the limits of legitimate enquiry. Let the reader mark how clear and decisive is the language

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of scripture on the subject before us: 'By one man sin entered into the world; and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned!" According to the geological theory, "death," did not then "enter into the world;" it had swept off innumerable races of plants and animals before Adam was created, and now extended its ravages to man. It was scarcely necessary to have cursed the earth with barrenness and " every beast of the field," with suffering and death, if the whole creation had been groaning and travelling in pain for "hundreds of thousands of years!" When our first parents saw vegetation decaying around them, the animals convulsed with pain, and the corpse of Abel carried from the field, it does not appear that they regarded these calamities as the legitimate effects of a "universal law of nature."

"Man's first disobedience

Brought death into the world, and all our woe!"

Just as when a great chieftain falls, by an act of treason, his estates are confiscated and his children, and even his servants, are brought to indigence by

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