482 Rough Notes on the controversy against Geologists, 



was merely cursed with barrenness, and with a tendency to 

 produce noxious and troublesome weeds ; a curse since then 

 denounced* and executed, on account of the sins of the 

 inhabitants, against Judea and other lands, once the most 

 fertile of the earth. The omission of any notice of such 

 a revolution in the sacred pages seems quite decisive upon 

 this point, especially when we see in them a most detailed 

 description of a lesser geological change, that in which the 

 cities of the plain were destroyed by a miraculous eruption 

 of fire, and their site converted by the subsidence of the 

 ground into the bed of the Dead Sea. 



Similar to such a baseless idea is the common and poeti- 

 cal one, supposed to be derived from the Scriptures, that 

 death, in any shape, and among any class of beings, was 

 unknown in the world before the fall of man. We need not 

 say that nothing on this point can be legitimately deduced 

 from Holy Writ ; for that refers solely to man, the anomalous 

 connecting link between the material and spiritual worlds, 

 and partaking of the nature of both. Geology shews decided- 

 ly, that, long before man was created, certain living beings 

 ceased to exist on the earth just as they do now, and that 

 such a destruction of life was contemplated even, and form- 

 ed a part of the great plan, as the races of animals, necessa- 

 rily carnivorous, were fully as numerous then as they are 

 now. 



The deluge of Noah's era, though cordially received and 

 admitted by the geologist upon the authority of Scripture, 

 and as an important event in the moral history of man, is in 

 a geological view, of no interest ; the traces left by it being 

 insignificant in comparison of those made by previous great 

 currents of water. This, from the relation in the Bible, 

 was to be expected. Its continuance on the earth was short ; 

 and it was not a violent rush of waters, but a gradually 



* Deut. xxviii. 23. 



