OF CREATION . 



arrangement of the different parts of the earth's crust, 

 without which there could be no connected or reason- 

 able account of events. 



The proof of such a condition is, however, at hand, 

 and requires only that the very commonest appearances 

 of nature should be studied. No one can visit a chalk 

 or sand pit, or look for one moment at a stone quarry, 

 no one can consider the appearances so commonly 

 presented by a sea-cliff, a cutting for a road, or a sink- 

 ing for a well, without being perfectly convinced that 

 the limestones, sandstones, and clays, of which a great 

 part of the earth's crust is made up, were not thrown 

 confusedly together, but are arranged in some degree of 

 order, lying upon one another in regular beds or strata. 

 A very little inquiry into the way in which these strata 

 rest upon one another, is amply sufficient to prove that 

 order does exist in the arrangement of the greater 

 proportion of the materials of the earth's crust ; 

 and the more strictly this inquiry is carried out, the 

 more convinced will the observer become of the great 

 fact, that there is a history to be learnt a succession 

 of events to be described. 



But it may be said, and with great reason, that the 

 mere fact of order in the arrangement of these super- 

 ficial materials proves nothing more than that they 

 were deposited in succession, and they might either 

 have been so placed at the first creation of the world, 

 or, since the whole bears marks of aqueous action and 

 of disturbance, that the successive beds may have ar- 

 ranged themselves as we find them during some great 

 deluge. But the possibility of this is contradicted 

 by appearances presented to the observer of nature at 

 every turn, and by the result of every investigation, 



