16 RELICS FROM THE WRECK 



ordinary agencies of Nature, require the imagination to 

 stretch its visual glance through the vista of a past eter- 

 nity, or at least through a lapse of ages, as inconceivable in 

 duration, as the distances of the spheres are in the field of 

 space. 



" Were we to assert," says the Rev. Dr. Buckland, " that 

 the present continents of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, 

 were once wholly immersed under the waters of the ocean, 

 and that after rising at different spots in low newborn 

 islands* they gradually acquired their present configu- 

 ration ; nay, that the whole materials of which both the 

 present continents and their islands are composed, have 

 resulted from the denudation of continents and islands 

 which have been worn away, or finally sunk under the all- 



* One circumstance may well surprise us, and that is, to find in the 

 Bible mountains distingushed in two classes, very nearly in the manner as 

 they are distinguished by science into primitive and secondary. Thus in 

 the 104th Psalm, a composition of incomparable poetical beauty, the pro- 

 phet gives us an idea of the formation of the earth ; he represents it to us 

 as still covered with the waters of the deep as with a garment. The 

 waters stood above all the mountains, but many of these eminences became 

 elevated, and rose above their level; the waters then retired and fled. 

 New mountains then appeared, and valleys, and plains ; the lowest parts of 

 the globe were formed at their feet. Two principal epochs, then, must 

 have been in the mind of the prophet, from the time of the rising up of 

 the heights which appear on all parts of the globe ; these two epochs cor- 

 respond to the formation of primitive and secondary mountains. 



Reference is even made to the force by which they have been elevated : 

 it is represented as proportionate to the elevation to which their eminen- 

 ces have been raised, being most powerful when employed in elevating 

 the mountains properly so called, and weaker when its efforts were limit- 

 ed to the raising of the hills above the valleys. In its figurative style, it 

 compares the elevation of the former to the skipping of rams, and that 

 of the latter to the leaping of lambs. Newton esteemed the Bible "the 

 most authentic of ah 1 histories;" Hale said, "none was like unto it for 

 excellent wisdom, learning, and use ;" Boyle considered it " a matchless 

 volume, impossible to be too much studied or too highly esteemed ;" and 

 Locke pronounced it as " consisting of Truth without any mixture of Error 

 for its matter." 



