TBRTIARY FORMATIONS. 107 
harmless, and consistent with a sincere attachment to the Christian 
faith, hutas the only one that can beentertained by person of a sound 
and enlightened mind ; and the objection raised against it was, that 
it seemed to be at variance with the literal meaning of the sacred 
writings. Such aretheconsequencesof supposingthat whatwe may 
regard as a literal interpretation of the language of the scriptures 
should interfere with the freedom of philosophical inquiry. 
OF TERTIARY FORMATIONS. 
56. A principal source of the errors into which men have fall- 
en, and of the unsound doctrines they have embraced in the 
science of Geology, is to be found in their assumptions respecting 
the age of the earth, which has very generally been held not to 
have existed more than a few thousands of years. The creation 
of man, was supposed to have been immediately consequent upon 
that of the soil on which he was to tread, and as the descendants 
of Adam are given in regular succession, down to the date to 
which profane history ascends, a reverence for what was sup- 
posed to be recorded as true in the sacred volume, shackled the 
spirit of free enquiry. And even after it was observed that 
without abandoning our belief in the divine origin of the scrip- 
tures, or rejecting any of the statements contained in them, we 
may assign a greater antiquity to the earth, men were slow in 
appropriating the eternity which we know must be already past, 
to the production of the changes that the crust of the globe has 
evidently undergone. As in the first attempts at navigation, it 
was a small arm of a bay, or a river, that was passed, next there 
was a tedious and winding voyage along the shore, and always 
within sight of land, and it was not till ages had elapsed, that the 
mariner learned to commit himself fearlessly to the broad ocean 
— so, when it began to be generally admitted that the earth had 
existed, and been the dwelling place of living beings, prior to the 
creation of man, geologists seemed filled with a strange apprehen 
sion and dread of the past eternity, and contented themselves with 
the opinion that the earth might be some few centuries or thou- 
sands of years older, than had been previously supposed. They 
were fearful of embracing the idea that the earth though not eter 
nal, might be of an age, in comparison with which, the existence 
of man upon its surface sinks into insignificance. The tendency 
of modern discoveries in geology has been, to enlarge immeasura 
bly the supposed term of its past duration. 
We have heretofore given the names, and the order of succes- 
sion, of a long series of secondary strata, occupying the south- 
eastern part of England, (Sec. 29,) and stated that the races 
which are entombed in the oldest of these strata must have differ 
ed widely from such as now inhabit the earth ; but that there is 
a gradual approach in the more recent strata, to the type of such 
as are found living in the existing oceans. The most recent of 
