436 CONSISTENCY OF GEOLOGY WITH SACRED HISTORY. 



1. The present earth was formed from the ruins and fragments of 

 un earlier world, re-arranged and set in order during the six days 

 of the creation. 



This explanation has been given by men of powerful minds — strong- 

 ly impressed with the overwhelming evidence which the earth presents 

 of innumerable events, and of progressive development through suc- 

 cessive ages. It therefore honestly meets the difficulty, and fully 

 grants the necessity of allowing sufficient time for the series of geo- 

 logical formations. It is, however, unsatisfactory ; because it does 

 not provide at all for the regular successions of entombed animal 

 and vegetable races, and for the progressive consolidation, often in 

 long continued tranquillity, of the strata which are formed around 

 the organic bodies, and also for the numerous alternations and repeti- 

 tions of these strata, frequently, as in the coal fields, in a regular or- 

 der. All this demands time, and seasons of protracted repose, inter- 

 rupted indeed by occasional elevations, subsidences, and other con- 

 vulsions and catastrophes. In order that the solution above stated 

 may prove satisfactory, it is necessary that the earth should be, what 

 it actually is not, a confused pile of ruins, not only of loose fragments, 

 such as are now found on its surface, but they must be consolidated, 

 to form all its mountains and strata. Ruins, the mountains and strata 

 do indeed, in many places, contain, but they form only a portion of a 

 vast structure, in which ruins have no part. 



The earth is unlike Memphis, Thebes, Persepolis, Babylon, Balbec 

 or Palmyra, which present merely confused and mutilated masses of 

 colossal and beautiful architecture, answering no purpose, except to 

 gratify curiosity, and to awaken a sublime and pathetic moral feel- 

 ing; — it is, rather, like modern Rome, replete indeed with the ruins of 

 the ancient city, in part rearranged for purposes of utility and orna- 

 ment, but also covered by the regular and perfect constructions of 

 subsequent centuries. 



This theory, if it provide at all for the primitive rocks, must assign 

 their crystallization and consolidation to a period of indefinite geolo- 

 gical antiquity, and it must also admit that they have undergone more 

 recent modifications, particularly in being upheaved by subterranean 

 force, and thus elevating, not only themselves, but the superincumbent 

 strata. 



The hypothesis has, however, great merit, inasmuch as it admits, in 

 the long-gone-by ages, of just such events and successions as geology 

 has proved to have taken place ; but it adds a general catastrophe, 

 which has not happened, and it implies a reconstruction of the crust 



