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mical inquiry and the statements in the Mosaic record, if we hold fast to the literal interpretation of the six days. But I have already proved that this interpretation is not the only one which can be justified exegetically; and my next lectures will show that it cannot be brought into harmony with other results of scientific inquiry. No doubt, even if we adopt the other explanations of the Hexameron, it cannot be proved that they agree with the results of astronomical inquiry, in the sense that the Bible teaches the same as does astronomy. But there could be no greater mistake than to require such a thing of the Bible. Here, as elsewhere, its task is to teach only that which is of importance to its religious object. By restricting itself to this, it does not forbid man to find out by his own investigations more about the creation than the Bible tells him; and the theologian should recognise with thankful admiration all that astronomy has discovered with respect to the extent of the star system in space and in time, and not criticize these discoveries in a narrow-minded spirit.

Hundreds of years ago, God may have caused the splendid primæval forests to grow, which in our day have been seen with reverential surprise for the first time by the eye of the bold traveller, or the scientific man thirsting for knowledge; what then if it were true, as astronomers say, that many thousand years ago God sent forth the rays from the farthest stars,— those rays which now meet our eye when we look up to heaven, indifferently, inquiringly, or devoutly. "I have loved thee with an everlasting love," saith the Lord.1

1 Jer. xxxi. 3.

XII.

GEOLOGY. NEPTUNISM AND PLUTONISM.

GEOLOGY is the science which investigates the inner structure of the earth. It endeavours to discover the phenomena which occur in consequence of this structure; and from these it deduces the laws according to which these phenomena themselves must occur, either in historical sequence, or in their connection with one another. The groundwork of this science is the investigation of the earth's structure as it at present exists ; as it were, the anatomy of the earth, or, rather, of the crust of the earth which is alone accessible to us. Having ascertained these facts, it then endeavours to derive from them a knowledge of the entire earth; to draw conclusions about the condition of its interior, and about its earlier stages up to the time of its first existence. The purely empirical part of the science, which is concerned with the composition and the present condition of the earth, is also called geognosy; and by geology or geogony is thus meant the inferential part of the science which is concerned with the origin and development of our planet. But, practically, these two branches of the science can hardly be distinguished from one another; and accordingly they are now-a-days usually united in the term geology. Mineralogy is distinguished from geology in so far as it is concerned

with the knowledge and classification of the separate minerals of which a great part of the earth's crust is composed. Another branch of geology is palæontology, the science which deals with fossils and petrifactions, the knowledge of the organic bodies of the animals and plants which are found in a more or less altered condition embedded in the crust of the earth. This will be specially discussed later.

At present we are concerned with that part of geology which deals with the ancient conditions and earlier developments and changes of the earth. Experience teaches us that the surface and crust of the earth are still subject to important changes, and the nature of the crust obliges us to assume that similar changes must have taken place in former years. The inquiry into the present condition of the earth's crust, into the forces which produce the changes in it, and the laws under which those changes occur, afford us therefore a means of ascertaining what earlier changes have taken place. The history of the earth in this sense is, it may said, engraven in the earth's crust, and geology deciphers the chronicle. No doubt, as I have already observed, the chronicle to be deciphered is not yet completely before us, because our knowledge of geognostical facts is still incomplete,' and we cannot hope ever to know this chronicle thoroughly. And what we do possess of this chronicle resembles in one respect the cuneiform letters of Assyria and Babylon; savants must first find the key to the discovery, must discover the meaning of separate signs, and of the words which they

1 Vogt, Grundriss der Geologie, § 2.

be

? The geological record is a history of the earth, imperfectly preserved,

compose, before we can read and understand the writing. But it is an uncontested fact that, up to this time, the chronicle has been read and interpreted by experts in very different and sometimes contradictory ways; and from this laymen may conclude that geologists have not got very much farther in their attempts at deciphering it than have Rawlinson, Offert, and Schrader in theirs. This is the less surprising, because geology is still a comparatively recent science, as it has only been pursued according to a strictly scientific method for about half a century.

In comparing the results of geological inquiry with the Bible, we must therefore distinguish between facts which are ascertained by observation, hypotheses founded on incontestable conclusions, and suppositions which are simply probable or possible; between statements which are recognised as true by all competent authorities, and those which are asserted by some and disputed by others.

All modern geologists, who deserve the name, acknowledge that all hypotheses about the former history of the earth must be based upon its present condition, upon the forces now at work and the laws which now exist; and that all those hypotheses must be rejected which begin by assuming that formerly different laws of nature were in force. The only question on which they do not agree is this: Have the causes which are now at work always existed in

and written in an everchanging dialect. Of this we possess only the last part, which describes but two or three countries. A few chapters only of this part have been preserved, and of each page, only a few lines. Cf. Lyell. Also Jahrbuch für Deut. Theol., 1861, p. 696. Darwin, Origin of Species, p. 317.

a like measure, with equal force, and to the same extent as they do now?-this view is supported especially by the English geologist Sir Charles Lyell ;— or, as others say, may we assume that such causes have worked differently at different times, and in ancient times much more powerfully than at present? According to the first theory, the course of the earth's history would have been comparatively quiet; according to the second, its development would have often been interrupted in ancient times by great catastrophes, revolutions, and convulsions. The effects which those who hold the latter theory, the Convulsionists, or Catastrophists as they are called by their opponents, believe to have been caused by such events, the quietists or uniformitarians" explain by assuming a

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1 Leonhardt, Geologie, ii. p. 70: "It is extremely arbitrary to assume that all the geological phenomena have been brought about by causes similar to those which are at work in these days, and that those causes have never possessed greater force than they have had since the present order of things. Nature does not now work as she did formerly; for the circumstances are no longer the same. We see the great series of Neptunian deposits divided off into a certain number of groups. This leads us to the thought of a series of sudden violent catastrophes, of which each one was able to change the form of the seas, and the course of rivers over vast tracts, and which were separated from one another by periods of comparative quiet in each region." Sir Roderick Murchison, speaking in the year 1865 (see Athenæum, Sept. 16, 1865, p. 376), says: "I adhere" (in opposition to Ramsay, Jukes, and Geikie) "to my long cherished opinion as to the great intensity of power employed in the production of dislocations of the crust of the earth. . . . Admiring the Huttonian theory . . . I maintain that such reasoning is quite inadequate to explain the manifest proofs of convulsive agency which abound all over the crust of the earth. . . . Placing no stint whatever on the time which geologists must invoke to satisfy their minds as to the countless ages which elapsed during the accumulations of sediment, I reject as an assumption which is at variance with the numberless proofs of intense disturbance, that the mechanical disruptions of former periods, and the overthrow of entire formations, as seen in the Alps and many mountain chains, can be accounted for by any length of existing causes."

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