G E O 



[ 105 ] 



G E R 



quently called in the aid of religious 

 feeling to thwart and oppose the progress 

 of scientific knowledge ; and it is too 

 much to be feared that did the same 

 power now exist, the geologists of the 

 present day might suffer the same perse- 

 cutions that Gallileo Gallilei did, and 

 that the works of Lyell, Buckland, De la 

 Beche, Conybeare, Murchison, Phillips, 

 Sedgwick, Mantell, and a host of others, 

 would swell the catalogue of the forbidden 

 list. 



Why, it may be asked, should persons 

 whose religious opinions are founded on 

 the basis of immutable truth fear the 

 elicitation of truth ? or what has religion 

 to fear from the minutest, the most 

 searching, investigation ? Let it ever be 

 borne in mind that, on the one hand, 

 truth can never be opposed to truth, and, 

 on the other, that error is only to be effec- 

 tually confounded by searching deep and 

 tracing it to its source. 



Nothing can be more unfounded than 

 the objection which has been taken 

 against the study of natural philosophy, 

 and, indeed, against all science, that it 

 fosters in its cultivators an undue and 

 overweening self-conceit, leads them to 

 doubt the immortality of the soul, and 

 to scoff at revealed religion. Its natural 

 effect on every well regulated mind is, 

 and must be, directly the reverse. Minds 

 which have long been accustomed to date 

 the origin of the universe, as well as that 

 of the human race, from an era of about 

 six thousand years back, receive reluc- 

 tantly any information, which, if true, 

 demands some new modification of their 

 present ideas of cosmogony, and, as in 

 this respect, geology has shared the fate 

 of other infant sciences, in being for a 

 while considered hostile to revealed reli- 

 gion; so, like them, when fully under- 

 stood, it will be found a potent and con- 

 sistent auxiliary to it, exalting our con- 

 viction of the power, wisdom, and good- 

 ness of the Creator. 



" It may fairly be asked," says Chalmers, 

 " of those persons who consider, physical 

 science a fit subject for revelation, what 

 point they can imagine short of a commu- 

 nication of omniscience, at which such a 

 revelation might have stopped, without 

 imperfection or omission, less in degree, 

 but similar in kind, to that which they 

 impute to the existing narrative of Moses. 

 A revelation of so much only of astro- 

 nomy as was known to Copernicus, would 

 have seemed imperfect after the disco- 

 veries of Newton ; and a revelation of the 

 science of Newton would have appeared 

 defective to Laplace. And unless hu- 

 man nature had been constituted other- 

 wise than it is, the above supposed com- 



munication of omniscience would have 

 been imparted to creatures, utterly inca- 

 pable of receiving it, under any past or 

 present moral or physical condition of 

 the human race. Does Moses even say, 

 that when God created the heavens and 

 the earth he did more, at the time alluded 

 to, than transform them out of previously 

 existing materials ? Or does he ever say 

 that there was not an interval of many 

 ages between the first act of creation, de- 

 scribed in the first book of Genesis, and 

 said to have been performed l in the be- 

 ginning,' and those more detailed ope- 

 rations, the account of which commences 

 at the second verse, and which are de- 

 scribed as having been performed in so 

 many clays ? 



"Let no one, therefore, be checked in 

 his enquiries into the history of the globe 

 by anything but the good rules of philo- 

 sophical induction, which are essential to 

 the right use of the intellectual strength 

 which God has conferred upon man, to be 

 exercised on the mighty works of nature ; 

 arid least of all let him be deterred from 

 the pursuit of truth by the vain and im- 

 pious dread that he may go too far, and 

 penetrate too deeply into those mysteries, 

 which, among their other uses have this 

 one, namely, that they continually excite 

 to activity the soul of man ; and, the more 

 they are studied, lead to deeper delight, 

 and more awful contemplation of their 

 glorious and beneficent Author." 



Geology, aided not only by the higher 

 branches of physics, but by recent disco- 

 veries in mineralogy and chemistry, in 

 botany, zoology, and comparative ana- 

 tomy, is enabled to extract from the ar- 

 chives of the interior of the earth, intelli- 

 gible records of former conditions of our 

 planets, and to decipher documents, which 

 were a sealed book to our predecessors. 

 Thus enlarged in its views, and provided 

 with fit means for pursuing them, geology 

 extends its researches into regions more 

 vast and remote, than come within the 

 scope of any other physical science, ex- 

 cept astronomy. Davy. Buckland. 



Herschell. Chalmers. Lyell. Phillips. 



Mantell. Bakewell. 

 GEOSAU'RTJS. A fossil saurian of the oolite 



and lias formations. 

 GERM, (oerme, Fr.germe, It.grermen, Lat.) 



1. In botany, the swollen base of the 

 pistil, forming the rudiment of the fruit 

 and seed. 



2. The embryo ; origin. So long as the 

 offspring has no independent existence, 

 but participates in that of its parent, it is 

 called a germ. The separation of the 

 germ is called generation. 



GE'RMINANT. (germinans, Lat.) Sprout- 

 ing ; beginning to grow. 



