383 
sufficient accuracy, or whether the arguments which they em- 
ploy have been weighed with the requisite care, we shall assume 
that their conclusions are correct ; and, after briefly stating 
them, we shall consider some of the inferences to which they 
lead. 
Conclusions of Geologists. 
During a lengthened course of ages the earth remained 
destitute alike of animal and of vegetable life ; at least, no 
trace of organized existence has hitherto been discovered. At 
an after-period, a period, however, very remote from the pre- 
sent, life began to manifest itself in some of its lowest forms. 
Since that time it has been exhibited in a great variety of spe- 
cies and genera. Abundant evidence is afforded that there 
have not only been innumerable generations of plants and 
animals that have lived for their appointed season and then 
passed away ; but that species after species, and genera after 
genera, have lived and died, and been entombed, since life 
first dawned on the globe. 
The history of the earth/ s varied conditions has been divided 
into more than thirty epochs, or formations, as they are usually 
termed, which are distinguished from one another by the pecu- 
liarity of their organic remains. The vegetation that covered 
the earth in the earlier eras, and the living creatures that then 
inhabited it, were very different from those that afterwards 
appeared ; and these again were altogether unlike those that 
now exist. There seems also to have been a gradual change 
in the material or physical condition of our planet. Its outer 
crust, in the earlier ages, appears to have been subjected to 
subterranean action of a far more formidable kind than any 
that is experienced in the present day. A larger proportion 
of the carboniferous element was diffused through the atmo- 
sphere, and there is reason to conclude that the average tem- 
perature of the globe was much higher than that which now 
prevails. 
Two things more especially press themselves on the notice 
of the inquirer, who takes a general view of the conclusions 
to which geologists have come, without allowing his thoughts 
to be distracted by a minute attention to details. These are, 
the vast duration of the epochs that are past, and the uni- 
formity of system that has been exhibited in the course of 
creation and providence. 
The Vast Duration of Former Epochs. 
The more carefully we consider the subject, the more are we 
