THE PKE-ADAMITE EARTH. 



Tertiary period, was the last to which the earth would be sub- 

 jected, but every probability, based upon analogy to the past, 

 points to the very opposite conclusion. When we affirm, there- 

 fore, that a moment must arrive when what we call the present 

 world will be destroyed* when man, and all his monuments, will 

 be involved in one common destruction, when 



" The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces, 

 The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 

 Yea, all that it inherits shall dissolve ; 

 And, like an unsubstantial pageant faded, 

 Leave not a rack behind," 



we declare no more than all the analogies of the past history of the 

 Earth confirm. 



But such finality will not, as Shakspeare implies, involve the 

 " great globe itself." The law of periodicity which characterises 

 in a manner so remarkable all the other phenomena of nature, 

 reappears in the acts of creation itself, and pronounces in terms 

 not to be misunderstood the future fate of the present tenants of 

 the earth, and shadows forth its future destination. The con- 

 vulsion which will sweep away man and his works, and the 

 tribes of animals and vegetables created for his use, and will 

 entomb their remains, will be followed by a calm of nature, 

 after which, if we are to trust in the permanency of the play of 

 those creative laws which have hitherto characterised the opera- 

 tions of Divine power, a new assemblage of organised beings will 

 be called into life, and a new flora will clothe the earth. Intel- 

 ligences will preside over this new world with faculties as much 

 exalted above those with which man in all his pride is endowed, 

 as the understanding of man himself is above that of the apes, 

 monkeys, and baboons which were at the head of the population 

 of the last period of the Tertiary age. 



566. The short account of the Creation given in the first chapter 

 of Genesis is in accordance with the results of geological discovery, 

 in as complete a manner as would be possible in so brief a summary, 

 destined, not to instruct the world in geology, but, without 

 violating truth, to convey a general notion of the work of Omni- 

 potence in the process of creation. Light was first created, that 

 is, the universally diffused ether, by whose properties not only 

 light, but heat and probably electricity and magnetism, if not 

 gravity itself, severally exist. The firmament was next made, 

 that is, space and the stars in countless numbers which occupy it, 

 each of which is a centre of attraction to a group of surrounding 

 bodies, and among these stars the sun. 



567. According to Genesis, the organic creation was produced 

 in four successive intervals of time, figuratively called Days, as 



158 



