78 



THE CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHER. 



thrown down several hundreds of feet from (he 

 places it appears originally to have occupied. 

 &quot; Two miles north of Newcastle,&quot; says Mr. 

 Townsend, &quot;one great dyke or fault throws 

 down the coal 540 feet at the distance of 3 miles 

 it is cut off, and thrown down again 240 feet.&quot; 



An evidence of the effects which could be 

 produced only by a general deluge, is also af 

 forded by those organic remains to which I have 

 already adverted, and particularly by those im 

 mense quantities of marine shells, which have 

 been discovered in situations so elevated, and 

 in places so far removed from the sea, as to 

 prove that they were left there by a flood ex 

 tending over the whole globe. At Touraine, in 

 France, a hundred miles from the sea, is a bed 

 of shells stretching 9 leagues in extent, and 20 

 feet in depth, and including shells not known to 

 belong to the neighbouring sea. Humboldt 

 found sea shells on the Andes at an elevation of 

 14,120 feet above the level of the sea. The slaty 

 mountain of La Bolca, near Verona, is famous 

 for petrifactions, among which are enumerated 

 more than one hundred species of fish, natives 

 of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, here as 

 sembled in one place. 



It appears, therefore, that the researches of 

 geology confirm the fact of a universal deluge, 

 and thus afford a sensible proof of the credibility 

 of the sacred historian, and, consequently, of 

 the truth of the doctrines of Divine Revelation. 

 But, besides the testimony which this science 

 bears to the authenticity of Scripture History, it 

 exhibits some of the grandest objects in the his 

 tory of the physical operations of Divine Provi 

 dence. It presents to our view, in a most im 

 pressive form, the majestic agency of God, in 

 convulsing and disarranging the structure of our 

 globe, which at first sprung from his hand in 

 perfect order and beauty. When we contem 

 plate the objects which this science embraces, 

 we seem to be standing on the ruins of a former 

 world. We behold &quot; hills&quot; which &quot; have melt 

 ed like wax at the presence of the Lord,&quot; and 

 &quot; mountains&quot; which &quot; have been carried into 

 the midst of the sea.&quot; We behold rocks of 

 enormous size, which have been rent from their 

 foundations, and rolled from one continent to an 

 other the most solid strata of the earth bent 

 under the action of some tremendous power, 

 and dispersed in fragments through the sur 

 rounding regions. We behold the summits of 

 lofty mountains, over which the ocean had rolled 

 its mighty billows confounding lands and seas 

 in one universal devastation transporting plants 

 and forests from one quarter of the world to an 

 other, and spreading universal destruction among 

 \he animated inhabitants of the water and the 

 earth. When we enter the wild and romantic 

 scene of a mountainous country, or descend into 

 the subterraneous regions of the globe, we are 

 ever) where struck with the vestiges of opera 



tions carried en by the powers of nature, upon a 

 scale of prodigious magnitude, and with the ex 

 ertion of forces, the stupendous nature of which 

 astonishes and overpowers the mind. Contem 

 plating such scenes of grandeur, we perceive tho 

 force and sublimity of those descriptions of Deity 

 contained in the volume of inspiration: &quot;The 

 Lord reigneth, he is clothed with majesty ; in his 

 hand are the deep places of the earth, the 

 strength of the hills is his also. He removeth the 

 mountains, and they know not : he overturneth 

 them in his anger ; he shaketh the earth out 

 of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble. 

 At his presence the earth shook and trembled : 

 the foundations also of the hills moved; and were 

 shaken, because he was wrath.&quot; &quot; Thou cover- 

 edst the earth with the deep, as with a gar 

 ment ; the waters stood above the mountains 

 At thy rebuke they fled ; at the voice of thy 

 thunder they hastened away.&quot; While retracing 

 such terrific displays of omnipotence, we are na 

 turally led to inquire into the moral cause which 

 induced the benevolent Creator to inflict upon the 

 world such overwhelming desolations. For rea 

 son, as well as revelation, declares that a moral 

 cause must have existed. Man must have vio 

 lated the commands of his Maker, and frustrated 

 the end of his creation ; and to this conclusion 

 the sacred historian bears ample testimony. 

 &quot; God saw that the wickedness of man was 

 great in the earth, and that every imagination 

 of the thoughts of his heart was only evil con 

 tinually : and Jehovah said, I will destroy man 

 whom I have created, from the face of the earih, 

 both man and beast, and the creeping thing, and 

 the fowls of the air.&quot; 



ASTRONOMY. 



Another science which stands in an intimate 

 relation to religion, is Astronomy. 



This sublime science teaches us the magni 

 tudes and distances of the heavenly bodies, their 

 arrangement, their various motions and pheno 

 mena, and the laws by which their movements 

 are regulated. It presents to our view objects the 

 most wonderful and sublime ; whether we consider 

 the vast magnitude of the bodies about which it is 

 conversant their immense number the velocity 

 of their motions the astonishing forces requisite 

 to impel them in their rapid career through the 

 regions of the sky the vast spaces which sur 

 round them, and in which they perform their re 

 volutions the magnificent circles they describe 

 \.\\esplendour of their appearance or the impor 

 tant ends they are destined to serve in the grand 

 system of the universe. Having adverted to this 

 subject, when illustrating the omnipotence of 

 the Deity, I shall here simply state a few addi 

 tional facts with respect to the general appear 

 ance of the heavens, the bodies which Com 

 pose the planetary system, and the discoverie* 

 which have been made in tne region of the siara. 



