CHAPTER XVII.

Cowper and the Geologists. - Geology in the Poet's Days ir State of great Immaturity. - Case different now. - Folly of committing the Bible to a False Science. - Galileo. - Geologists at one in all their more important Deductions; vast Antiquity of the Earth one of these. State of the Question. — Illustration. - Presumed Thickness of the Fossiliferous Strata. - Peculiar Order of their Organic Contents; of their Fossil Fish in particular, as ascertained by Agassiz. - The Geologic Races of Animals entirely different from those which sheltered with Noah in the Ark.—Alleged Discrepancy between Geologic Fact and the Mosaic Record not real. - Inference based on the opening Verses of the Book of Genesis. - Parallel Passage adduced to prove the Inference unsound. - The Supposition that Fossils may have been created such examined: unworthy of the Divine Wisdom; contrary to the Principles which regulate Human Belief; subversive of the grand Argument founded on Design. - The profounder Theologians of the Day not Anti-Geologists. — Geologic Fact in reality of a kind fitted to perform important Work in the two Theologies, Natural and Revealed; subversive of the "Infinite-Series" Argument of the Atheist; subversive, too, of the Objection drawn by Infidelity from an Astronomical Analogy. Counter-objection. - Illustration.

Ir may have been merely the effect of an engrossing study long prosecuted, but so it was, that of all I had witnessed amid the scenes rendered classic by the muse of Cowper, nothing more permanently impressed me than a few broken fossi's of · the Oolite which I had picked up immediately opposite the poet's windows. There had they lain, as carelessly indifferent to the strictures in "The Task," as the sun in the central heavens, two centuries before, to the denunciations of the Inquisition. Geology, however, in the days of Cowper, had not attained to the dignity of a science.

It lacked solid footing as

it journeyed amid the wastes of Chaos; and now tipped, as

with its toe-points, a "crude consistence" of ill-understood facts, and now rose aloft into an atmosphere of obscure conjecture, on a “tumultuous cloud" of ill-digested theory. In a science in this unformed, rudimental stage, whether it deal with the stars of heaven or the strata of the earth, the old anarch of Infidelity is sure always to effect a transitory lodgment; and beside him stand his auxiliaries,

"Rumor, and Chance,

And Tumult, and Confusion, all embroiled,
And Discord with a thousand various mouths."

And so it is in no degree derogatory, to the excellent sense of Cowper, that he should have striven to bring Revelation in direct antithetical collision with the inferences of the geologists.

There exists, however, no such apology for the Dean Cockburns and London "Records" of the present day. Geology, though still a youthful science, is no longer an immature one: it has got firm footing on a continent of fact; and the man who labors to set the doctrines of Revelation in array against its legitimate deductions, is employed, whatever may be his own estimate of his vocation, not on the side of religious truth, but of scepticism and infidelity. His actual work, however excellent his proposed object, is identically that of all the shrewder infidels, — the Humes, Volneys, Voltaires, and Bolingbrokes, — who have compassed sea and land, and pressed every element into their service, in attempting to show that the facts and doctrines of the Bible traverse those great fixed laws which regulate human belief. No scientific question was ever yet settled dogmatically, or ever will. If the question be one in the science of numbers, it must be settled arithmetically; if in the science of geometry, it must be settled mathematically; if in the science of chemistry, it must be settled experimentally. The

Church of Rome strove hard, in the days of Galileo, o settle an astronomical question theologically; and did its utmost to commit the Bible to the belief that the earth occupies a central position in the system, and that the sun performs a daily revolution around it: but the astronomical question, maugre the Inquisition, refused to be settled other than astronomically. And all now believe that the central position is occupied, not by the earth, but by the sun; and that it is the lesser body that moves round the larger, not the larger that moves round the lesser. What would have been the result, had Rome, backed by the Franciscan, succeeded in pledging the verity of Scripture to a false astronomy? The astronomical facts of the case would have, of course, remained unchanged. The severe truth of geometry would have lent its demonstrative aid to establish their real character. All the higher minds would have become convinced for themselves, and the great bulk of the lower, at second hand, that the Scripture pledge had been given, not to scientific truth, but to scientific error; and the Bible, to the extent to which it stood committed, would be justly regarded as occupying no higher a level than the Shaster or Koran. Infidelity never yet succeeded in placing Revelation in a position so essentially false as that in which it was placed by Rome, to the extent of Rome's ability, in the case of Galileo.

Now, ultimately at least, as men have yielded to astronomy the right of decision in all astronomical questions, must they resign to geology the settlement of all geological ones. I do not merely speak of what ought, but of what assuredly must and will be. The successive geologic systems and formations, with all their organic contents, are as real existences as the sun itself; and it is quite as possible to demonstrate their true place and position, relative and absolute. And so long as certain fixed laws control and regulate human belief, certain inevitable

deductions must and will continue to be based on the facts which these systems and formations furnish. Geologists of the higher order differ among themselves, on certain minutiæ of their science, to nearly as great an extent as the Episcopalian differs in matters ecclesiastical from the Presbyterian, or the Baptist or Independent from both. But their differences militate no more against the great conclusions in which they all agree, than the theological differences of the Protestant churches against the credibility of those leading truths of Christianity on which all true churches are united. And one of these great conclusions respects the incalculably vast antiquity of the earth on which we dwell. It seems scarce possible to over-estimate the force and weight of the evidence already expiscated on this point; and almost every new discovery adds to its cogency and amount. That sectional thickness of the earth's crust in which, mile beneath mile, the sedimentary strata are divided into many-colored and variously-composed systems and formations, and which abounds from top to bottom in organic remains, forms but the mere pages of the register. And it is rather the nature and order of the entries with which these pages are crowded, than the amazing greatness of their number, or the enormous extent of the space which they occupy (rather more than five miles), — though both have, of course, their weight, that compel belief in the remoteness of the period to which the record extends. Let me attempt elucidating the point by a simple illustration.

In a well-kept English register, continuous from a distant antiquity to the present time, there are many marks demonstrative of the remoteness of the era to which it reaches, besides the bulk and number of the volumes which compose it, and the multitude of the entries which they contain. In an earlier volume we find the ancient Saxon character united to that

somewhat meagre yet not inexpressive language in which Alfred wrote and conversed. In a succeeding volume, the Saxon, both in word and letter, gives place to Norman French. The Norman French yields, in turn, in a yet succeeding one, to a massive black-letter character, and an antique combination of both tongues, which we term the genuine old English. And then, in after volumes, the old English gradually modernizes and improves, till we recognize it as no longer old: we see, too, the heavy black-letter succeeded by the lighter Italian hand, at first doggedly stiff and upright, but anon bent elegantly forward along the line. And in these various successions of character and language we recognize the marks of a genuine antiquity. Nor, in passing from these, the mere externals of the register, to the register itself, are the evidences less conclusive. In reading upwards, we find the existing families of the district preceded by families now extinct, and these, in turn, by families which had become extinct at earlier and still earlier periods. Names disappear, - titles alter, the boundaries of lands vary as the proprietors change, - smaller estates are now absorbed by larger, and now larger divide into smaller. There are traces not a few of customs long abrogated and manners become obsolete; and we see paroxysms of local revolution indicated by a marked grouping of events of corresponding character, that assume peculiar force and significancy when we collate the record with the general history of the kingdom. Could it be possible, I ask, to believe, regarding such a many-volumed register, with all its various styles, characters, and languages, its histories of the rise and fall of families, and its records of conquests, settlements, and revolutions, - that it had been all hastily written at a heat on a Saturday night, some three or four weeks ago, without any intention to deceive on the part of the writer, -- nay, without