

OF A FORMER WORLD. 9 



at liberty to conceive, was called into being, but the 

 question is completely undetermined ivhen that time was. 

 An interval as long as the imagination can entertain may 

 be placed between the first operation of Divine power, and 

 the subsequent arrangement of the globe for the habita- 

 tion of man. The record allows room enough for all those 

 wonderful changes and transformations to transpire, the in- 

 dubitable memorials of which are discovered in the deep 

 and dark places of the earth, which, after ages of entomb- 

 ment, have been commanded to show themselves ; but yet, 

 as if to prevent man from becoming proud amid the triumphs 

 of his genius, he is checked at once in the endeavor to 

 measure the interval, the vastness of which he can discern, 

 which will ever remain to us in the present state, invested 

 with the obscurity that marks the number of the ocean's 

 sands. There has been, however, no little flippancy and 

 contraction of mind evinced by many who have carped at 

 the demands of geological time, for time is long or short ac- 

 cording to the particular standard we employ in its mea- 

 surement." Milner. 



At the first step we take in geological inquiry, says the 

 Rev. Dr. Buckland, we are struck with the immense period 

 of time which the phenomena presented to our view must 

 have required for their production, and the incessant changes 

 which appear to have been going on in the natural world ; 

 but we must remember that time and change are great, only 

 in reference to the faculties of the being who notes them. 

 The insect of an hour contrasting its own ephemeral exist- 

 ence with the flowers on which it rests, would attribute an 

 unchanging durability to the most evanescent 'of vegetable 

 forms, while the flowers, the trees, and the forest would as- 

 cribe an endless duration to the soil on which they grow ; 

 and thus, uninstructed man comparing his own brief earthly 

 existence with the solid frame-work of the world he in- 

 habits, deems the hills and mountains around him coeval 



