great quantity of some of the testaceous and other organic fossils which are found in several of the underlying masses.

But here again appear manifest illusion and unwarranted deductions; do the rocks take centuries or myriads of ages to become hardened and solid? We have a striking instance to the contrary in granite itself. Mr. Kirwan mentions an incident which proves that even granite will agglutinate from its own sand, even amid running water, in seventy years.*

It will also be a proper question to make, whether the induration of the underlying rocks is at all necessary to occur before others are deposited upon them? Here again nature itself supplies us with the answer; that this previous hardening is not essential, and may never have taken place; because it is found that even now, at this late age of the world, granite itself, in many parts, is existing under the earth in a soft state, with other strata superimposed upon it. This fact occurs in Scotland as well as in Cornwall and elsewhere; ‡ nor is it confined to this primitive and compact rock; for the subterraneous sandstone occurs in this soft state. Quartz likewise. So limestone occurs "That granite

*His words are in his volume published in 1794. may be produced, at this day, from the agglutination of its own sand, we have an evident proof in the mole constructed in the Oder in the year 1722. It is 350 feet in length, 54 in height, of that breadth at top, and 144 at bottom. The walls were made of blocks of granite, fastened with iron cramps; the chinks stopped with moss, and the space between the walls filled with granite sand.

"THIS SAND, by the oozing of the water impregnated with iron, or other causes, is now at last rendered so hard and compact, as to prevent any more water from traversing it, and cannot be distinguished from natural granite."-Hartz. 91. Kirwan's Elem. Miner. vol. i. p. 340.

† Mr. Bakewell says, "Granite varies in its hardness. I was told in Cornwall, that, got from a considerable depth in the quarry, it is so sofr when first raised, that it can be easily sawed into blocks; but it soon acquires great hardness by exposure to the air. In the mountains of Auvergne the granite is extremely soft, and the feldspar appears earthy. This is probably the original state of the stone."-Bakewell, Geol. p. 103. Dr. Boase also mentions, "the alternation of soft and hard granite, so common in several parts of Cornwall. The former frequently contains parallel contemporaneous veins of quartz and shorl, which abound in tin."-Boase's Prim. Geol. p. 23.

"The deep-seated granite veins in the quarries of Rubislaw, near Aberdeen, are not only flexible, but so soft, as to receive an impression; becoming hard after exposure to air."--Dr. McCull. Geol. v. i. p. 124.

"In Sky, I have seen a sandstone which could be moulded like dough when first found."-"There is a sandstone from China, which, when immersed in water, may be compressed by the hand."--Ib. p. 124.

"In Sky, I have found masses of granular quartz or sandstone

with this peculiar impressibility.* The slates likewise have it, and even the basalts differ in this respect ; and this circumstance is found to occur in the most distant regions of the globe.

Even the gem-like minerals are found to be in this condition, so that the conjecture is not unreasonable, that all the rocks of the earth may have been in this state; especially such as were formed with the accompaniment or under the agency of water. T This fact disproves the idea of the earth being a redhot mass gradually cooled down.

The rational inference from these circumstances is, that no long intervals of time were required for the successive deposition or super-imposition of any of these masses, but that every one might have been laid upon the other as soon as it suited the Creator's plan that it should be; this indeed seems obvious from another consideration, that mass presses mass, according to its gravity. The upper weight condenses the lower, if it be at all yielding, into the most compact state

which could be moulded by the hand when first taken from the earth, but which in the same manner became solid in a few days."-McCull.. Gool. v. i. p. 204.

The well-known limestone in Sunderland is flexible."-Ib. p. 124. The Scottish slates are softer under the earth than when taken from it, and soon harden in the air. "They are subdivided into single slabs; a process which ought to be gone through within an hour or two after quarrying, as the rock otherwise becomes too dry to be split to advantage. The slates are blue and green. The green is rather softer, though found in the same bed."-Mr. Blacke's Report, p. 101-4.

"Mr. Williams says, I have seen quarries of this rock dug for the high roads, where the softer friable matter exceeded the hard masses in quantity,"-Will, Miner. v. i. p. 416.

A letter from Freemantle, on the Swan river, in Australia, in 1834, stated, "Stone is found at two feet under the surface of the ground. It is soft when first dug, and hardens when exposed to the air."Standard, 12th July 1834. So in New-Zealand, the jade or greenstone, near the Shannon, "is soft when first dug up, but by exposure to the air becomes as hard as agate, and some transparent."-Metropol. 1834, p. 324.

"Minerals, rigid and hard as glass in our cabinets, are often flexible and soft in their native beds; a case, which in my own experience occurs in asbestos, sahlite, tremolite, and chalcedony; and which is said also to happen in the beryl."-McCull. v. i. p. 120.

"It is probable that strata formed under water may have once been flexible."-McCull. vol. i. p. 124.-"If it has not been oftener observed in rocks, it is because we have rarely any access to them, except near the surface, where they have already lost their water.-It is, in fact, known, that many are not only soft, but partially flexible when wet or when first procured from the quarry."-Ib.

which the pressure of its gravity can force it to. It must do this, and it cannot do more; and it will thus operate, whether the upper is superimposed on the lower at the interval of a day, or a year, or of ten thousand years; therefore all the rocks may have been laid on each other, according to their natural laws, as quickly as the Creator chose to order their succession; no length of time was essential to this operation.

As you coolly reflect on what is most likely to be the true chronology of nature, you will probably be disposed to think, that all these extraordinary opinions and supputations of time, for the origination and past duration of our world, really arise from one common source; from a disbelief or forgetfulness of the great truth which these Letters urgenamely, that earth, and all its organic beings, are the creation of God: his planned and deliberate creations; the specific, designed, and effectuated formations of his allpotent intelligence. You will perceive that the vast lapses and successions of time which some geologists contend for, rest upon the assumption and hypothesis that all the rocks and masses of the earth have been formed from what they term natural causes; and that by these they mean such laws, sequences, changes, or phenomena as are now in ordinary or perceptible operation. Supposing that none other than these have been concerned in the construction of our globe; observing how these act now, and reasoning from them, and the changes they cause, they infer, that agents and agencies like these, operating in the same ratio and manner, must have been as long as they have computed in composing the world we live in into the state in which we find it.

Now, on ideas and deductions of this sort, the remark is obvious, that if no other cause or power has framed our world than the natural agencies with which we have become visibly acquainted, it is quite immaterial what length of time the advocates for this notion choose to demand, or its opponents to concede. They may claim, and we may grant, as many myriads or millions of ages as they prefer. For if there has not been a Creator, it is not of the least consequence to us how the world has come together, nor is it possible for us ever to know; as in that case there could not be any revelation of the truth to us. One man has a right to indulge his fancy as much as another; each will be in

collision with the rest; every one will support his own theory, and dispute every other; and neither will have any certainty, superiority, or foundation, or be entitled to any authoritative predominance.

But on such an hypothesis as that of the omission or denial of a creation and a Creator, we may also say, that not only three or six hundred thousand years would elapse before such a world could be framed, but that as many myriads of millions of years and ages would also occur, before such a construction could take place. For, however they might multiply their series, the truth would still remain, that none of the elements of matter could, in any flux of time, not even in an eternity, move and arrange themselves into that skilful, scientific, and admirable fabric; or into those combinations, adaptations, and system of things which constitute our earth, and its planetary system, and their organic occupants.

It is even a contradiction to suppose that the natural causes now in operation could have formed our world. It is from its completed formation that they arise, and are what they are. They are the produced, not the producers. Natural causes are the result of creation, not its makers. They arise from the construction, compositions, positions, and mutual relations and arranged agencies of the created things; but they have not fabricated these. All the laws of nature in our world are posterior to its structure, not the anterior framers of it. It is the artificial creation of all things by an intelligent Artificer, which gives to all natural laws and causes their very existence. They are not in being until the fabric and the mechanism are completed; until each is placed in such relative positions, and in such compounds, and endued with such properties, and associated with such moving agencies, as we can become cognizant of, and from which they originate.

Take water as an instance. This is a special and specific composition of a definite quantity of oxygen and a definite quantity of hydrogen. There can be no laws of water until it is made; but oxygen and hydrogen no more tend to form water, nor of themselves could form it, than any other of the numerous things which also consist of them. Neither oxygen nor hydrogen could, or ever would move itself in that exact proportion, and so unite with the VOL. II.-A a

other as to form water. To suppose them able to separate themselves from their several elementary accumulations in the precise quantities necessary to form the aqueous fluid, and to agree together to combine in these quantities only, and in firm and lasting union, and specifically to form water, is to give to each of them a mind, a thought, a foresight, a plan, a will, a resolution, and a spontaneous self-motive for this special purpose, which would make every particle of each an intelligent, thinking, and choosing being. This idea would be preposterous. Some designing and intellectual being, exterior to their matter, must have been existing when water was formed; who conceived the idea of such a substance as water, and that it should be an important part of his earthly fabric; who saw that such a mixture, in such proportions of oxygen and hydrogen, would form the aqueous substance; and who, therefore, by special action of his will and power, caused the due quantities of each element to separate from the rest, to move towards each other, and to enter into that contact and adhesive combination, by whose continuity water would arise.

As soon as water was thus formed the properties and the laws of water would begin, but not before. They could not have any anterior existence. They are not in the oxygen; they are not in the hydrogen. They could not be before water was. This is a clear and decided example, how the laws of nature and the properties of things arise from creation, and subsequent to it, and never form or produce it; for the same reasoning is applicable to every substance of nature, and to all its laws and agencies.

The laws of water are also not the laws of water in the abstract only, but are likewise the particular laws which its properties occasion or display, in the special circumstances under which it is placed. When they act with the laws of gravity as a mass, the operation, and therefore the law of that operation, depend upon the quantity of the fluid which is in action. The very laws of the ocean waves arise from a union and co-operation with the laws and force of the agitating winds. The breeze and the ripple do not produce the same effects, nor act under the same laws, as the rolling swell which heaves its masses without a wind, nor as the overwhelming billows which the tempestuous hurricane is agitating nor are the laws of the same fluid in the placid

: