34 
PROPER SUBJECTS OF 
Chapter III. 
Proper Subjects of Geological Enqiiiry. 
The liistoiy of the earth forms a large and 
complex subject of enquiry, divisible at its out- 
set, into two distinct branches; the first, com- 
pi’ehending the history of unorganized mineral 
Higgins on the Mosaical and Mineral Geologies, 1832; and 
more especially to Professor Sedgwick’s eloquent and admirable 
discourse on the Studies of the University of Cambridge, 1833, m 
which he has most ably pointed out the relations which Geology 
bears to natural religion, and thus sums up his valuable opinion 
as to the kind of information we ought to look for in the Bible ; 
“ The Bible instructs us that man, and other living things, have 
been placed but a few years upon the earth ; and the physical 
monuments of the world bear witness to the same truth ; if the 
astronomer tells us of myriads of worlds not spoken of in the 
sacred records; the geologist, in like manner, proves (not by 
arguments from analogy, but by the incontrovertible evidence of 
physical phenomena) that there were former conditions of our 
planet, separated from each other by vast intervals of time, 
during which man, and the other creatures of his own date, had 
not been called into being. Periods such as these belong not, 
therefore, to the moral history of our race, and come neither 
within the letter nor the spirit of revelation. Between the first 
creation of the earth and that day in which it pleased God 
to place man upon it, who shall dare to define the interval? 
On this question scripture is silent, but that silence destroys not 
the meaning of those physical monuments of his power that God 
has put before our eyes, giving us at the same time faculties 
whereby we may interpret them and comprehend their meaning.” 
