concordant voices of Inspiration and of Nature raising one united song to the glory of their common Author, the heavenly chord will vibrate within our own hearts, and modulate there a concurrent adoration.

What then are those recently-established facts of Geology, which claim now the application of these principles of Scriptural interpretation here advanced? The next step in our investigation will be the consideration of this point. It is incumbent to ascertain if the foundations in Nature's newly-claimed domain be sure and solid, before we can expect that longcherished interpretations will be willing to give way, and build up new conceptions upon the advanced ground offered. It is purposed, however, in this investigation, only to advert to that one class of explored geological phenomena, which may establish the far-stretching Antiquity of the Earth, anterior to the recorded commencement of the human economy. This pre-Adamite condition of our Globe will, however, involve many other matters respecting antique worlds, which, although not here specifically discussed, are constituents in the marvellous circle of Geological Wonders, and alike bespeak the immensity of the Earth's great Architect and the benevolence and skill of His continuous creative work.

CHAPTER II.

EVIDENCES OF THE EARTH'S ANTIQUITY.

39

W°

Come, frankly read the rocks, and see

In them the Earth's biography;

Let mountain pil'd on mountain tell
Its antique age, and every shell

In fossil form, its tale unfold,

Of life's bright day, through time untold.
And gathering use from great and small,
See good in each, and God in all.

WONDERS are the prolific offspring of our circumscribed experiences. When brighter rays of intelligence enter, and dissipate the mists that oftentimes surround objects, or delusively reflect them, then their wonderment ceases, and, like the Spectre of the Brocken, or the beautiful illusion of the Fata Morgiana, the marvellous revelation may raise our astonishment indeed, but not our incredulity. Apparently there are no wonders so extraordinary as Nature's wonders; no disclosures so marvellous as those which she is constantly unfolding-not as miracles, out of the course of her regular path, but as the result of those grand perpetual laws which her Divine Author has affixed upon her evolutions, for the evolving of His own gracious purposes in the government of the world But in strict pro

priety of speech, there are, in reality, no wonders in Nature; nothing is in her domain impossible; nothing there, beyond the range of the conceivable and the attainable.

Nature is but the name for an effect
Whose cause is God.

And who can put a limit to Omnipotence! who can set a boundary around the Eternal Mind! or circumscribe how long, how magnificently, or how variously His power may exert itself, either in peopling the immensity of space with living worlds; or in occupying the immensity of time with continuous revolutions of those worlds; or in re-arranging their primeval elements into new creations; or applying their imposed laws in evolving new combinations and results ;-producing, in short, all those astounding operations,-manifesting more and more His Almightiness,-which are continually, by the progressive discoveries of science, being brought to light. For the Supreme, for purposes of wise intent, has not been pleased to disclose to any age, or any race of men, all the wide dominions of His creative energy at once: there is, in His discovery of Himself as the original Architect, and the continuous Artificer of the universe, a gradual unfolding of his magnificence to view. He raises up one powerful mind after another, who shall open, at one time, one portal of his vast Temple, and at a succeeding time, ano

ther; and even at some periods, glimpses seem to be permitted into the very penetralia itself of His inmost shrine, and the primeval springs of nature are almost laid bare to the enquiring gaze of man. But while any particular department in nature's domain may remain only partially opened, or any peculiar phenomena are being gradually adumbrated, these fresh or indistinct exhibitions of God's natural operations are apt to assume, in the eyes of the uninitiated, the character of marvellous fables; and it is long before they can so far be divested of their wonderment, as to be admitted into the creed of the popular mind.

This has been the fate of most of those striking scientific disclosures which have elevated the intelligence, or ministered to the eventual blessing of mankind. And we of the present day are no wiser than our forefathers in this respect. How long was it before the discoveries of Copernicus were regarded but as a fabulous wonder, and the now universally admitted revolutions of the planetary orbs rescued, even by the learned, out of the pages of the marvellous. How slow were men to hear, but as a wonderment of sportive fancy, that the supposed four elements of earth, water, fire, and air, were no elements of nature at all, but mere combinations of various substances, and thus destitute, in themselves, of any elementary character. How late the period when even philosophers regarded, but as a marvel

lous wonderment, the reported production of Ærolites, and how many have smiled, when reading the pages of Livy, at the credulity of the Roman multitude, who believed in the recorded, and now universallycredited, shower of meteoric stones. How within the range of our own experience, has it been received only as a wonder of the day, that the curling steam we may see rising from the bubbling vessel before us, was one of Nature's most potent operators, while now the marvel is on every hand dispelled by the most ponderous masses being moved by its agency, as if by a giant's hand, or ourselves transported from place to place with a rapidity almost rivalling the very wind. And still more the sense of incredulous wonder has hardly yet passed away, that thoughts and words can be conveyed afar, winged with the very lightning's flash, and the electric telegraph, annihilating all space, open a communication between mind and mind, from one end of the Empire to another, in a few moments of time.

These are a few familiar instances where the wonderment has passed away, when the hand of the Almighty Artificer has more clearly revealed itself in the fuller development of his marvellous works. And these disclosures, when they severally occur, are most important to be recognized and adoringly applied. Such expanded manifestations of the Divine skill and goodness are pages of wisdom not guilt