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VINDICATION OF GEOLOGY.

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they may be but they have betrayed no small self-sufficiency, along with a shameful want of knowledge of the fundamental facts they presume to write about. Hence, they have dishonoured the literature of this country, by 'Mosaic Geology,' 'Scripture Geology,' and other works of cosmogony with kindred titles; wherein they have overlooked the aim and end of revelation, tortured the book of life out of its proper meaning, and wantonly contrived to bring about a collision between natural phenomena and the word of God.They have committed the folly and the SIN, of dogmatizing on matters which they have not personally examined, and, at the utmost, know only at second hand; of pretending to teach mankind on points where they themselves are uninstructed. Authors such as these ought to have first considered, that book-learning (in whatsoever degree they may be gifted with it) is but a pitiful excuse for writing mischievous nonsense; and that, to a divine or a man of letters, ignorance of the laws of nature and of material phenomena is then only disgraceful, when he quits his own ground and pretends to teach philosophy.A Brahmin, crushed with a stone the microscope that first showed him living things among the vegetables of his daily food.

"It would indeed be a vain and idle task, to engage in controversy with this school of false philosophy; to waste our breath in the forms of exact reasoning unfitted to the comprehension of our antagonists; to draw our weapons in a combat where victory could give no honour. Their position is impregnable, while they remain within the fences of their ignorance.

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Another eminent author, after largely discussing this class of subjects, Dr. Chalmers, says: "We conclude with adverting to the unanimity of Geologists in one point, the far superior antiquity of this globe to the commonly received date of it as taken from the writings of Moses. What shall we make of this? We may feel a security as to those points in which they differ; and, confronting them with one another, may remain safe and untouched between them. But when they agree, this security fails. There is no neutralization of authority among them as to the age of the world; and Cuvier, with

* Discourse on the Studies of the University of Cambridge; passages from p. 148 to 152; 1834.

his catastrophes and his epochs, leaves the popular opinion nearly as far behind him, as they who trace our present continents upward through an indefinite series of ancestors, and assign many millions of years to the existence of each generation."* This eloquent writer cannot have intended to signify "ancestors" and "generations" of the human kind, nor of the existing species of animals; for this would involve a groundless imputation. He probably used these words, without adverting to their proper meaning, and designing only to express animated creatures and the succession of different families and genera.

* Edinburgh Christian Instructor, April, 1814.

LECTURE II.

DEUT. XXXIII. 13, 15, 16. Blessed of the Lord be his land; for the precious things of heaven, for the dew, and for the deep that coucheth beneath,and for the chief things of the ancient mountains, and for the precious things of the lasting hills, and for the precious things of the earth and the fulness thereof.

THIS beautiful passage, from the dying benedictions of Moses, the faithful servant of God, is not recited from any supposition that it has an immediate reference to the subjects of this lecture. It is a sublime thanksgiving to the Most High, acknowledging the eminent advantages which he had prepared for the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, in the approaching partition of Palestine. Their allotment had a moderate line of sea-coast, on which was Joppa, at that time and long after a good port; an ample portion of rich land for pasture and cultivation; and numerous mountains supplying streams of water, and containing excellent stone and lime for building, with iron and copper, in the northern mountains. Thus, the description may be properly adduced as comprehending, along with other objects, the class of providential blessings which belonged to the mineral kingdom, and which are of so great importance to the wealth and prosperity of a nation. That class of blessings, God has conferred upon our country in a far superior degree: and it certainly becomes us to understand our mercies and be grateful for them. Geological knowledge, if pursued in a right state of mind, will much assist us in this duty.

All observation and every experiment prove, that the sensible world around us is in a state of incessant motion

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and change, upon all points of the scale, from the internal movements of the matter composing the simplest and minutest body that we can observe, to the motions of the astral orbs and nebulæ, so overwhelming to our power of conception, or even in imagination to follow them.

Those changes take place not in a fortuitous and confused manner, but in a regular subjection to principles, mechanical and chemical; which, though few and simple, lead to results, very complicated indeed and recondite, yet ever harmonizing with each other and with the whole system of the universe: and thus these changes are supplying employment to the highest powers of mathematical investigation.

Throughout organized nature, the characters of species approach to each other, group themselves into genera, and those again into families and orders, associated by points of resemblance; and thus they constitute a continuous series of structural forms, functions, and operations, which exhibit, in all their variety, a principle of mutual adaptation reigning throughout; and indicate an entire dependence upon an all-comprehending, and allarranging Intellect. The machine of the universe is thus maintained in being and action, by an intelligent Cause and Preserver. It would involve a contradiction to say that the universe is itself that cause. The marks which it bears of dependence on a supreme reason of existence, are incontrovertible. Whether that dependence be conceived of as strictly proximate, or whether the efficiency of the divine power pass through one or ten, ten thousand or ten thousand millions, of intervening agencies, can make no difference. Let the unceasing activity of operation move subordinate causes whose number could not be put down in figures, and whose complication no created intellect could follow; it is still the same. "The excellency of the power is of God." Indeed the latter

SKETCH OF OBJECTS.

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supposition exalts the more highly our view of the divine perfections; the knowledge, wisdom, and power, to which complication and simplicity, remoteness and nearness, an atomic point and all space,-are the same. "GOD IS A SPIRIT. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith JEHOVAH.— HE IS ALL and in all.-In HIM we live, and move, and have our being."

Of this dependent universe, our planet is a part so small that no arithmetician can assign a fraction low enough to express its proportion to the whole. God has appointed it for our habitation, till the great change of death and, on every account, natural and moral, it is to us full of interest. Its constitution, the alterations of structure and arrangement which are incessantly taking place upon it and within it, its living inhabitants, and those races of creatures once possessing vegetable or animal life, but which have ceased to live,-set before us subjects inexhaustible for examination and delight,

The object of this lecture is not to lay down a digest of geological facts. Such a pretension would be absurd, unless we could work upon a larger scale. But I may well feel assured that my friends will not do themselves so much injustice, as would be the neglect of studying diligently some of the best works, and which may easily be obtained.* I have only to present, as concisely as I

* If, for the sake of my younger friends, I mention the works which I can with most satisfaction recommend, omissions must not be understood as intimating any disparagement. Lyell's Elements, and his earlier and larger work, the Principles of Geology, four volumes; Prof. Phillips's Guide to Geology, his Treatises in the Edinburgh Encyclopædia and Lardner's Cyclopædia, two volumes, both works published separately, and that in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana; his Yorkshire Geology, two quarto volumes; his Geological Map of the British Isles; Conybeare and William Phillips's Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales; a work, to our great regret, not yet finished, and of which a revised edition and the completion are earnestly looked for; Buckland's Bridgewater Treatise, two volumes; De la Beche's Researches, his Manual, and his

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