follow the valleys that have been produced by their disjunction."*

"These inclined strata, which form the ridges of the secondary mountains, do not rest upon the horizontal strata of the hills which are situate at their base, and which form the first steps in approaching them; but, on the contrary, dip under them, while the hills in question rest upon their declivities. When we dig through the horizontal strata in the vicinity of mountains whose strata are inclined, we find these inclined strata reappearing below; and even sometimes, when the inclined strata are not too elevated, their summit is crowned by horizontal ones. The inclined strata are therefore older than the horizontal strata; and as they must necessarily, at least the greatest number of them, have been formed in a horizontal position, it is evident that they have been RAISED, and that this change in their direction has been effected before the others were superimposed upon them."t "Thus the sea, previous to the disposition of the horizontal strata, had formed others, which, by the operation of problematical causes, were broken, raised, and overturned in a thousand ways; and as several of these inclined strata which it had formed at more remote periods rise higher than the horizontal strata which have succeeded them and which surround them, the causes by which the inclination of these beds was effected had also made them project above the level of the sea, and formed islands of them, or at least shoals and inequalities; and this must have happened, whether they had been raised by one extremity, or whether the depression of the opposite extremity had made the waters subside. Thus is the second result not less clear nor less satisfactorily demonstrated than the first, to every one who will take the trouble of examining the monuments on which it is established."

"All admit that the porphyry and trap rocks have been pushed up from below; but probably at a time when the whole was either covered by the ocean, or subjected to an enormous pressure by means of incumbent rocks, which have since been removed."§

66 A glance at the best geological maps now constructed of the various countries in the Northern hemisphere, whether in North America or Europe, will satisfy the inquirer that the greater part of the present land has been raised from the deep."||

"The primitive fluidity of the planets is clearly indicated * Cuvier's Theory of the Earth, 5th ed., p. 8, 9.

+ Ibid., p. 9.

Ibid., p. 10.

Edin. Review, No. ciii., p. 72, Oct., 1830.

Lyell's Geology, vol. i., p. 134, 135.

by the compression of their figure, conformably to the laws of the mutual attraction of their molecules; it is moreover demonstrated by the regular diminution of gravity, as we proceed from the equator to the poles. The state of primitive fluidity to which we are conducted by astronomical phenomena is also apparent from those which natural history points out."*

"All observers admit that the strata were formed beneath the waters, and have been subsequently converted into dry land."+

"All geologists will agree with Dr. Buckland, that the most perfect unity of plan can be traced in the fossil world, the modifications which it has undergone, and that we can carry back our researches distinctly to times antecedent to the existence of man. We can prove that man had a beginning, and that all the species now contemporary with man, and many others which preceded, had also a beginning; consequently, the present state of the organic world has not gone on from all eternity, as some philosophers have maintained."‡

The precise accordance and identity of the words of the apostle with these results of recent scientific investigation, must be obvious to every reader; and it can scarcely be less obvious that that man must have spoken by the inspiration of God, who, looking forward from a remote age to the present time, and back to the beginning of the creation, told at once what scoffers in the last days would say, as clearly as if he had heard them, and described the embyro world as correctly as if he had been an eyewitness of its rising out of the waters.

The order of nature was not the same as it is now when the earth was void, and when not a living thing could possibly have existed in the globe we now inhabit, and when at a subsequent period none was to be found except among shelly strata then vivifying beneath the waters, now raised in mountains and indurated into rock. They who stagger at the belief of anything supernatural forget that there was a time, of which the structure of the earth gives evidence, when the present order of nature, as affecting all animal and vegetable being, did not exist, and when man, who unscrupulously sets God's word aside "in calculating the probability of the continuance of the laws of nature," was not himself created; nor any worm to be found on earth to raise its head against its Maker.

In referring to the original formation of the earth as well as to its final destruction, the apostle, while exposing the

*La Place's System of the World, Harte's Translation, vol. ii., p. 365. + Buckland's Bridgwater Treatise, p. 44.

Address of the President of the Geological Society (Lyell) at the Anniversary, 1837. See Philosophical Magazine for May, 1837, p. 389.

wilful ignorance of scoffers, warns Christians not to be ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. And the fact of the comparatively recent origin of man, by geological demonstration as well as by Scriptural record, the last of created beings on earth, is of itself conclusive against the skeptic that all things have not continued as they were since the beginning of the creation. Nature herself, from the vaunted absolute uniformity of whose laws the power of their Author has been impugned, loudly testifies of the interposition of Almighty and creative power, not only after the earth was divided from the waters, but even after the present order of animal existence, man excepted, had been established.

"We need not," says Mr. Lyell, "dwell on the low antiquity of our species, for it is not controverted by any geologist; indeed, the real difficulty which we experience consists in tracing back the signs of man's existence on the earth to that comparatively modern period when species, now his contemporaries, began to predominate. If there be a difference of opinion respecting the occurrence in certain deposites of the remains of man and his works, it is always in reference to strata of the most modern order," &c.*

The conclusion to be plainly and legitimately adduced from this fact alone, as fatal to the hypothesis of Hume, and as directly applied to subvert it, is, still more happily, not left to the theologian. For, ready to our hand and coming timely to our aid, the following extract, too precious to be curtailed, supplies an illustration of its conclusiveness in this respect, from the same source from which the bane flowed, before it was, as now it is, followed by the antidote. And may not the Christian hence augur well and hope much, not only for the final triumph of the gospel, of which he can never doubt, but for the admission, by such an opening, of a more glorious light than has heretofore entered into the mind of many a dark idolater of mere human science? It must, at least, be pleasing to see how, on the abjuration of wilful ignorance, the progress of knowledge, when rightfully followed out, prepares the way for the wisdom that is from above; or how, in those pages wherein the very predicted saying of the scoffers in the last days was once advocated, the very argument also, implied in the words of the apostle, has now been as unconsciously urged to expose the utter fallacy of the delusion.

"The science of geology is very properly referred to, for the striking example which it offers of the successful application of the hypothesis of uniform causation properly understood. Present phenomena and their causes have been

* Lyell's Geology, vol. i., p. 153, 154.

most skilfully combined and used, so as to furnish us with the story of a period which has itself transmitted for our information nothing but mere strata and deposites. But the late discoveries in geology lead irresistibly to another observation. It is one of still greater importance; for it seems to us to be Fatal to the THEORY [Hume's] which we have presumed to call a misconception of the uniformity of causation, as signifying an UNALTERABLE sequence of causes and effects. Those who have read neither Cuvier nor, Lyell are yet aware that the human race did not exist from all eternity. Certain strata have been identified with the period of man's FIRST appearance. We cannot do better than quote from Dr. Pritchard's excellent book (Researches into the Physical History of Mankind) his comment and application of this fact. It is well known that all the strata of which our continents are composed were once a part of the ocean's bed. There is no land in existence that was not formed beneath the surface of the sea, or that has not risen from beneath the water. Mankind had a beginning; since we can look back to the period when the surface on which they live began to exist. We have only to go back in imagination to that age; to represent to ourselves that at a certain time there existed nothing in this globe but unformed elements; and that in the next period there had begun to breathe and move, in a particular spot, a human creature; and we shall already have admitted, perhaps, the most astonishing miracle recorded in the whole compass of the sacred writings. After contemplating this phenomenon, we shall find no difficulty in allowing that events which would now be so extraordinary that they might be termed almost incredible-our confidence in the continuance of the present order of things having been established by the uniform experience of so many ageswould at one time have given no just cause for wonder or skepticism. In the first ages of the world, events were conducted by operative causes of a different kind from those which are now in action; and there is nothing contrary to common sense or to probability in the supposition that this sort of agency continued to operate from time to time, as long as it was required; that is, until the physical and moral constitution of things now existing was completed, and the design of Providence attained.' (Vol. ii., p. 594.) No greater changes," continues the reviewer, "can be well imagined in the ordinary sequence of cause and effect, such as constituted the laws of nature, as they had been previously established, than took place on the day when man was, for the first time, seen among the creatures of the earth.”* A plain fact may sometimes put down the most confident

* Edinburgh Review, No. civ., p. 396, 397.

boasting. And the great argument which, in the opinion of its author, was to be useful as long as the world endures, is found, on examining its texture, to be marred, like the girdle that was hidden by the prophet for a season, and as to its intended use, to be profitable for nothing. The seeming strong tower, when close contact is tried, proves of aërial and impalpable form, and the attempt is vain to grasp the shadow of a reason where there is nothing but the "baseless fabric of a vision." The wonder-working delusion, conjured up by the great metaphysical necromancer of modern times, by which he was to cheat the world out of all belief in revelation, may be detected and exposed by any child who can read a verse of the New Testament; just as the infantine charm and dread, which have their unknown source in the magic lantern, are gone so soon as the scene is opened or the light of day is let in.

"A miracle," says Hume, "is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.”*

But as all things have NOT continued as they were at the beginning of the creation; as the laws of nature are not unalterable, but have been altered; as a change, since their origin, has been introduced, great as any change can be well imagined, it is as clear as any proof can possibly be, that any argument which rests entirely on their presumed absolute inviolability is founded not on a fact, but on a falsehood, and is therefore necessarily devoid of all truth as well as of all reason. The like cause can never more indubitably produce the like effect, than the recent origin of man, of which the geological date is engraven on the earth, gives demonstration of the interposition of almighty and creative power, and of the operation of the first Great Cause; to which surely it must be admitted that all things are subservient and subordinate. The palpable proof of the exercise of this power, after the present terrestrial order began, shows that experience is on the side of miracles, and that the same Almighty Being who ordained the laws of nature, and afterward introduced a mighty change, may possibly, for wise purposes, better known to himself than to man, suspend them again. It cannot therefore be, from the very nature of the fact, that there is a direct and full proof against the existence of any miracle; for, instead of there being any soundness in so absolute a rule, as scoffers on a false assumption have laid down, the denial of a miracle, "perhaps even of the most astonishing miraclc recorded in the whole compass of the sacred scriptures," would be the denial of an admitted fact.

* Hume's Essay.