Rough Notes on the controversy against Geologists. 483 



increasing and subsiding movement, which left the olive leaf 

 to the dove uninjured ; which probably spared the germs of 

 vegetation ; which bore up the ark in safety, though of a 

 size which, according to the result of the late Canadian 

 experiment of the two large timber ships, would have been 

 strained to pieces in an agitation of the waters, through 

 which a smaller vessel would have passed undamaged. 



There is no geological evidence of the existence of man 

 or his works upon the earth, at an era anterior to the pre- 

 sent by more than 4000 years. The Scriptures assign a 

 date usually supposed to be about 6000 years ago, for the 

 time of man's creation. In this, therefore, the most material 

 of all the facts bearing upon the question — in as much as 

 the whole of the Scriptures are avowedly written not to give 

 an account of the mode of existence of things, or of their 

 origin, but of the origin of man only; — of the cause of 

 his moral degradation through sin, and the remedy for this 

 degradation, through which he may be restored to the high 

 position he once occupied in the moral creation; in this 

 most material, then, of all the questions upon the subject, 

 it may be fearlessly asserted, that the doctrines of geology 

 and of the Scriptures are in perfect harmony. 



But while there is no trace of the existence of man prior 

 to the period of the most recent tertiary formation ; there 

 are most numerous previous deposits of immense thickness, 

 which, according to the lowest calculation, it must have re- 

 quired millions of millions of years to produce, and in these 

 are imbedded vast quantities of animal and vegetable remains, 

 reaching back in a succession of the most varied, and often 

 dissimilar, successive forms, through groups of bewildering 

 number and extent. Nay, there are even enormous rocks and 

 stratifications, composed solely of debris of organised beings 

 once endowed with vitality, in such multitudes, that it is 

 difficult to conceive how the earth could have supported 

 and reared them, even in the time, protracted as it is, which 



