322 SCRIPTURE NATURAL HISTORY. 



cannot have existed longer than appears from the Mosaic account. 

 The absolute falsehood of many positive assertions, and specious 

 inferences hostile to the scripture chronology, has been evinced : 

 and thence has arisen a new presumptive argument in support of 

 the authenticity of that volume, which contains the most ancient 

 and the most precious of all records.* 



* Kirwan's Geological Essays, and Miller's Retrospect, cited by Shaw, Panorama of 

 Nature, p. 14. Mr. Townsend, in his ' Geological and Mineralogical Researches,' has pre- 

 sented us with some excellent GEOLOGICAL CHRONOMETERS, as Deltas, Lakes, Estuaries, 

 Drift Sands, and Mouldering Cliffs. From all these chronometers, consisting in effects 

 which result from known causes, operating since the existence of our continents, and 

 of which the progress within known times is indicated by monuments, he justly draws 

 this conclusion, that our continents are not of a more remote antiquity than has been as- 

 signed to them by the sacred historian in the beginning of his Pentateuch. p. 403. 



