THE GENESIS OF THE EARTH. 6 



are familiar, and the inevitable conclasion gains on us 

 that we must be approaching a beginning, though this 

 may be veiled from us in clouds and thick darkness. 

 How is it, then, that there are " Uniformitarians'^ in 

 geology, and that it has been said that our science 

 shows no traces of a beginning, no indications of an 

 end ? The question deserves consideration ; but the 

 answer is not diflBcult. In all the lapse of geological 

 time there has been an absolute uniformity of natural 

 law. The same grand machinery of force and matter 

 has been in use throughout all the ages, working out 

 the great plan. Yet the plan has been progressive 

 and advancing, nevertheless. The uniformity has been 

 in the methods, the results have presented a wondrous 

 diversity and development. Again, geology, in its 

 oldest periods, fails to reach the beginning of things. 

 It shows us how course after course of the building 

 has been laid, and how it has grown to completeness, 

 but it contains as yet no record of the laying of the 

 foundation-stones, still less of the quarry whence they 

 were dug. Still the constant progress which we have 

 seen points to a beginning which we have not seen; 

 and the very uniformity of the process by which the 

 edifice has been erected, implies a time when it had 

 not been begun, and when its stones were still repos- 

 ing in their native quarry. 



What, then, is the oldest condition of the earth 

 actually shown to us by geology, — that which pre- 

 vailed in the Eozoic or Laurentian period, when the 

 oldest rocks known, those constituting the foundation- 



