GEOLOGY. 321 



Trent has its source, the coal dips the opposite way, varying in all 

 places, according to the flood- washed shores on which the timber 

 was deposed. How weak then must be the argument of Mr. 

 Kirwan, that bovey coal is coeval with the creation, because calca- 

 reous rocks also contain 27 parts of a 100 of carbon. No doubt, 

 all the families of coal, deficient of carbon, and veiy slaty, are 

 largely mixed with the turbid deposits of the deluge. 



Our attention must next be directed to the formations of nature, 

 in the alluvial or newly stratified earth, in which all the laws of 

 affinity and attraction would act with full effect. It is, however, to 

 be remarked, that much of the matter laid on by the deluge, as rocks, 

 flint, and minerals, being already formed, are the detritus of former 

 strata, not liable to change. Yet the heterogeneous masses would 

 produce an immensity of formations, by the conflict of their compo- 

 nent parts. These, though weaker in the resources of energy than 

 at the first creation, would be the same in operation. The waters 

 oozing through every strata, from their subterraneous currents, 

 and the atmospheric air, every where attendant on those cur- 

 rents, would aid th.e crystallizations of the earth. Every essence 

 of nature would collect and concrete in the struggle. The whole 

 alluvial masses would therefore change in color, change in quali- 

 ty, change in character, and diversify in species. The silica would 

 granulate in all dimensions, and assume their tints, as in the first 

 creations ; the more calcareous masses would concrete into the ya- 

 jrious species of limestone ; white the more neutralized alumine 

 nyoHkl vary ite .colons and qualities, as it participated of surround- 

 ing substances. The whole would then, by the expansion of latent 

 heat, and the diminution of moisture, break by fissures into masses, 

 as they now are found to exist.* 



But the researches of modern geologists have given abundant 

 confirmation to sacred history, not only with respect to the origin 

 of the earth, and the universal deluge, but also with regard to the 

 age of the earth. Early in the last century, and indeed, until with- 

 in a few years, several geological phenomena were considered, by 

 superficial inquirers, as indications that the creation of the globe we 

 inhabit was an event much more remote than the sacred history 

 represents it: the same theorists even went so far as to profess a 

 belief that it existed from eternity. These opinions were kept in 

 countenance only so long as geology was in its infancy. Every suc- 

 cessive step which has been taken in the improvement of this sci- 

 ence has served to show their fallacy. The investigations of the 

 latest and most accurate philosophers have afforded proof, little 

 short of demonstration, that the earth, at least in its present form, f 



* Sutcliffe's Introduction to Geology, pp. 2029. 



Mr. Faber, in order to meet the objections of some of our geologists, which nre found- 

 ed on the fossil phenomena occurring in the st. rata of the earth, maintains, that the six 

 dimiurgic day* were periods of vast but uncert ain length, during which some mighty re- 

 volution occurred, to which the origin of there strata are to be attributed,, rather than to 

 the deluge of Noah. Treatise onthe Three Dispensations^ . i. cA. 3 



