«£4 Mr. Brande en the 



posed, upon the present occasion, to adopt ; to shew the interest 

 and the usefulness of the study in its various applications, as 

 illustrating the natural history of our planet ; as unfolding those 

 adjustments of inanimate nature which are calculated to display 

 the wisdom of the creation ; as leading us to results useful in 

 the arts of life; and as propounding to the inquisitive mind 

 an infinite variety of questions and speculations connected with 

 the causes of the effects which we now perceive ; with the 

 events which they announce as having happened at remote and 

 <)"bscure periods of the history of the Earth ; and with the various 

 revolutions and changes which our globe seems destined to un- 

 dergo, by the continued operation of the powers now active; 

 and by that perpetual warfare of the elements to which its sur- 

 face is continually submitted. The bare mention of these, the 

 genuine and legitimate objects of Geological science, naturally 

 brings to the mind the awful and magnificent account of the 

 creation, conveyed to us in scriptural history; and geological 

 writers have not unfrequently attempted to combine their specu- 

 lations with the announcements of holy writ. — Mixing up the 

 chronology of Moses and the history of the deluge with their own 

 short-sighted speculations, and with observations hastily made 

 and imperfectly reasoned upon, they have presumed, on the one 

 hand, to verify and illustrate, and on the other, to question and 

 controvert. But the arrogance of imperfect knowledge is nearly 

 equally prevalent in both ; " nothing," says Lord Bacon, " is 

 more pernicious than to canonize error:" and again, adverting 

 to the blending of natural philosophy with sacred writ, he 

 calls it *' seeking the dead among the living," and justly ob- 

 serves, that *' such vanity is so much the rather to be restrained 

 and suppressed, as from the wild mixture of divine things \vith 

 human, arise, not only fantastical philosophies, but heretical 

 religions." Far, therefore, from endeavouring to explain or 

 controvert the arguments which have thus been by some annexed 

 to, and blended with, geology, I shall altogether omit them, refer- 

 ring such as are interested in the legitimate part of the discussion 

 to the masterly work of Mr. Granville Penn, entitled " a Com^ 



