SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES.

[A.]

Referred to at pages 11 and 292.

DISSERTATION ON THE LAWS OF

ORGANIZED NATURES,

INVOLVING THE NECESSITY OF DEATH; AND ON GEO

LOGICAL STUDIES IN GENERAL.

In the Congregational Magazine for November, 1837, the inquiry was proposed, under the signature of T. K. "Could there be death, by violent and painful means, before the entrance of sin had deranged the order of a holy world, or had given occasion for bringing into action the instruments violent death?"

To this, the following answer was returned: and, as it has been made an object of controversial attack by Mr. Mellor Brown, and as it may contribute some further illustration to several of the topics treated in these lectures, I have thought it not unsuitable to be here introduced, omitting a few sentences.

The question of your correspondent, T. K., merits the most serious attention. It forms one, and probably the heaviest, of the two great difficulties which Christians feel in relation to the discoveries and doctrines of modern

Geology; the first is the alleged necessity of admitting that God had put forth his creating energy from an era impossible to be even conjectured, but stretching back, through immeasurable periods, from the adaptation of the earth, to be the abode of a new race of creatures, with MAN at their head. I have said, alleged necessity; because that qualifying term is proper at the outset of an inquiry: but, though I cannot now undertake this part of the discussion, I am bound to profess that there is no doubt in my own mind. I must even go so far as to express my conviction, that it is perfectly impossible for any intelligent person to understand the facts of the case, and sit down with any modification of the sentiment which supposes our globe to have been created a few thousand years ago. But it is much to be lamented, that many well-meaning persons have imagined themselves qualified to decide this question, while really unacquainted with the essential parts of the argument; having probably derived what they suppose to be a competent measure of knowledge, from a perusal of some one or two books, lofty, and even haughty in assertion, but ignorant, to a degree almost incredible, of the very grounds on which the inquiry must proceed so as to have any reasonable prospect of success. Indeed, Geology, as a science deduced by the severest logic from phenomena which, when once fairly ascertained, a man can no more doubt of, (I think I speak not too strongly,) than he can doubt that it is day when he sees the sun, can scarcely be said to have come into existence till within the last thirty or forty years; for it is within such a period that Dr. William Smith's discovery of characteristic fossils to each stratum and series of strata, laid a foundation, on which many most cautiously practical and reasoning geologists have built, and from which, by general accordance, the epithet has been applied to him, the father of Geology. Yet, at this hour, many excellent persons are reposing upon the belief that one

theory is about as good as another, that the primary doctrines which prevail among geologists are nothing but ideal hypotheses, not at all advanced beyond plausible conjectures, mostly at variance with each other, and that, as fast as one theory is set up, it is found to be wrong by some succeeding inquirer; so that, upon the whole, we may rest satisfied that the right theory has not yet been discovered, and that the phenomena are not yet justly understood, nor their real bearings discerned. Of such persons there can be no hope, unless they will take pains in more ways than one, and to a degree which they have not yet dreamed of. It is no wonder that Geology has risen so high within but the last fifteen years, and has attracted to it the most gifted minds in this and other countries: for it is based upon the evidence of sense, in the laborious and protracted examination of mines, mountain-regions, and less dangerous places without number; and it demands, in order to its successful cultivation, an acquaintance with at least the principles of chemistry, electricity, mineralogy, zoology, conchology, comparative anatomy, and (as the papers of Mr. Hopkins and Sir J. F. Herschell have recently shewn) of the sublimest mathematics. Thus Geology maintains relations with the whole sphere of natural knowledge; and, above all, it bears a most important reference to THEOLOGY and BIBLICAL studies, that we may know truth, and maintain it against both well-meaning believers, and ill-meaning unbelievers, and may magnify "the wondrous works of Him that is PERFECT in knowledge."

I had no design of launching out thus: let me return to the occasion first mentioned. But I must put down thoughts as they arise, not having time to arrange them very particularly.

The question is, how can we admit the existence of animal pain and death, before “sin entered into the world, and death by sin?"

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1. The matter of fact must be ascertained. Is there evidence, such as cannot be set aside, of such facts as the following? That the state of the surface of our globe has been changed by submersion under oceanic or lake water, and frequent elevation and drying, a great number of times, (say 30 to 40;) that each of those successive states continued during a vast period, which it would be presumptuous to conjecture, but which might very moderately be taken at many thousands of years; that, in every one of those states, (till, in the descending order, we arrive at the very early strata,) we find the unquestionable remains of animals, or their shelly habitations; that these are not huddled together, as if drifted on by a torrent, or thrown into a hole, but are disposed in horizontal, or what was once horizontal, order, spread over large surfaces, often of the same family or tribe, in all stages of their growth, preserving the most delicate parts of their form, and thus shewing that there they had quietly lived and died; that of these humble beings, many are shewn, by the structure of the shell, to have been carnivorous; that, in some far more recent members of the secondary class of strata, are found the skeletons of gigantic lizard-formed animals, with their stomachs remaining under their ribs, and those stomachs still retaining the more solid relics of their food, among which are fish-scales, and bits of bone; and that every stratum has its own characteristic animal and vegetable remains, the differing natures of which indicate great and progressive alterations in temperature and other circumstances. All these are familiar facts to the geologist. He sees those remains in the midst of hard rocks, yea, often composing the chief substance of those rocks; he digs them out; he sends them to the British and other Museums, or to be preserved in private collections; and

* Recent, in a geological sense, but if compared with our common measures of time, we confess ourselves unable to give an equation. Untold thousands of years before the adjustment of the earth for the human race, would be no extravagant expression.