ON INCREDULITY WITH RESPECT TO GEOLOGICAL FACTs. 59 
Next, I may mention the geologic age ofthe earth. None of 
us would affirm, I presume, that this can be obtained from the 
Bible. ‘In the beginning” the heavens and earth were created 
—and that beginning may have been 6,000 or 6,000,000 years ago 
for what the Scriptures tell us. If you once allow that the hills 
were formed in the bed of the sea by sediment regularly and 
therefore slowly deposited, the idea of immense periods of time at 
once takes possession of the mind: we can, however, form no 
definite ideas of these, because we do not know the rate of deposi- 
tion. Try to imagine how long one of our own hills—Keep Hill 
—would take in its formation: the white sediment dropping 
slowly to the bottom, year by year, as each animal died, and its 
shell sank and decayed, or was covered up: then think that the 
eretaceous formation in its greatest thickness has been set down 
at 1,200 feet —that the thickness of many formations beneath it is 
as great—-that there have been several beds of clays and sands 
deposited over it many hundreds of feet in depth,—how many 
ages would thus be consumed? Recollect that the chalk mass 
itself is made up of animal remains, chiefly microscopic, whose 
tenants must have flourished before the chalk was formed into 
ranges of hills—must have belonged to this earth when peopled by 
different animals to those now roaming about—how long did they 
exist asaclass? Omitting the Oolite, Lias, Trias, coming next in 
order under Cretaceous Rocks, let us notice the Coal Measures 
several thousand feet in thickness : they consist of beds of pure coal 
stratified between beds of clay and sandstone ; the coal itself con- 
sists of vegetable matter; how long did the plants and trees 
flourish before they were embedded ? how long did it take to form 
a bed of sandstone over them; how long for another period of 
vegetation? another bed of sandstone? a third and perhaps a 
fourth? The mind recoils from the calculation. 
The Falls of Niagara are often appealed to as a proof of a greater 
age for the earth than that generally allowed. They are situated 
at the farther end of a gorge or passage seven miles long. The 
proofs are perfect that the Falls were once at the lower end of this 
gorge—that the river, falling over this ancient escarpment, by 
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