Gerald Molloy

“ The existence of Fossil Remains is, then, a fact. Go where you will through the civilized world, and every chief town has its Museum, into which they have been gathered by the zeal and industry of man; descend where you can into the Crust of the Earth,—the quarry, the mine, the railway cutting,—and there, notwithstanding the plunder which has been going on for two centuries or more, you will find that the inexhaustible cabinets of Nature are still teeming with these remains of ancient life. ”

“ We are told in reply that this giant power dwells in the interior of the Earth itself, and is no other than the subterranean heat of which we have already spoken. This vast internal fire acts with unequal force upon different parts of the shell or Crust of the Earth, uplifting it in one place, and in another allowing it to subside. Now it is violent and convulsive, bursting asunder the solid rocks, and shaking the foundations of the hills: again it is gentle and harmless, upheaving vast continents with a scarcely perceptible undulation, not unlike the long, silent swell of the ocean. ”

“ Then again, look at that marvellous kingdom of minute animalcules, in number almost infinite, which only within the last few years the microscope has revealed to our wondering eyes. They swarm around us in the air, in the earth, in the water. Millions of them would fit in the hollow of your hand; many hundreds might swim side by side, without crowding, through the eye of a cambric needle. And they too, we can hardly doubt, must have flourished for centuries in countless myriads, unseen and unknown by man. ”

“ And so, too, we get novel and unexpected views of God’s Omnipotence, when, through the science of Geology, we come to understand the vast and harmonious series of secondary causes by which he has brought the Crust of the Earth into its present form and shape. The impress of His hand is stamped upon His works; and all that is wonderful and attractive in Nature is but the token of His power and the shadow of His beauty. ”

“ The hardest rocks are burst asunder, great blocks are detached from the mountain side, and sent rolling down its slopes, or tumbling over crags and precipices, until at length they come to rest in shattered fragments at the bottom of the valley. In this condition they await but the coming of the winter’s torrent to be borne still further on their long journey to the sea.
The fearful havoc done in this way by the alternate action of sun and frost contributes in no small degree to the fantastic and picturesque forms assumed by the mountain peaks of Switzerland. ”

“ They sweep along the shores of continents, and carry away the accumulated fragments of rock, which had first been rent from the cliffs by the waves of the sea, and then borne out to a little distance by the tides: they pass by the mouths of great rivers, and receiving the spoils of many a fertile and populous country, and the ruins of many an inaccessible mountain ridge, they hurry off to deposit this vast and varied freight in the deep abysses of the ocean. ”

“ When we are brought, for the first time, face to face with these countless relics of a former world, we are impressed with a sense of wonder and bewilderment. That the skeletons before us, though now dry and withered, were once animated with the breath of life; that the trees now lying shattered and prostrate, and shorn of their branches, once 199 flourished on the earth, we cannot for a moment hesitate to believe. But beyond this one fact, all is darkness and mystery. ”

“ Now, this principle of reasoning is the foundation on which the ablest modern Geologists claim to build their science. The untiring hand of Nature is ever busy around us: they ask us to come and look at her works, and to judge of what she has done in past ages, by that which she is now doing before our eyes. She is still, they say, building up her strata all over the globe, of limestone, and sandstone, and clay; she is still lifting up in one place the bed of the ocean, and in another submerging the dry land ”

“ Not a few varieties of the Coral-producing Zoophytes are to be found in actual living reality on our own coasts, where the curious student may examine for himself their habits and general structure. But it is in the warmer regions of the Earth that they are developed in the greatest numbers, and decked in the brightest hues. Those who have seen them through the crystal waters of tropical seas, swarming in countless multitudes on the clear white sand below, speak with enthusiasm of their luxuriant profusion and of their striking beauty. ”

“ In the physical sciences it is a common principle of reasoning to account for the phenomena that come before us in nature, by the operation of natural causes which we know to exist. Nay, this principle seems to be almost an instinct of our nature, which guides even the least philosophical amidst us, in the common affairs of life. When we stand amongst the ruins of an ancient castle, we feel quite certain that we have before us, not alone the monument of Time’s destroying power, but also the monument of human skill and labor in days gone by. ”

“ So it has been from the beginning, and so it is found to be even now, in this last age of the Geological Calendar. For even within historic times mountains have been suddenly upheaved from the level plain; and many parts of the Earth’s Crust have been subject to a slow, wave-like movement, rising here and subsiding there, at the rate of perhaps a few feet in a century. Sometimes, too, the fiery liquid itself has burst its barriers, and poured its destructive streams of molten rock far down into the peaceful, smiling valleys. ”

“ But no: he will find on inquiry that the vast majority belong to species which for centuries have not been known to flourish on the Earth; and that many of the strangest forms before him have been dug up almost from beneath the very soil on which he stands,—from the quarries of Surrey, of Sussex, and of Kent, and from the deep cuttings on the many lines of railway that diverge from the great metropolis of London. The life they represent so vividly is, indeed, widely different from that which flourishes around us; but it is the life not so much of a far distant country as of a far distant age. ”

“ He does not create at once, as He well might do, the great oak of the forest; but He allows the seed to sink into the earth, where it is watered by the gentle dews of Heaven, and fructified by the genial warmth of the sun; soon it puts forth a tender germ; the germ, in time, imbibing the elements of its support from the air and the earth, becomes a sappling, and the sappling a tree, which spreads its huge branches on every side, and serves for many purposes of ornament and of use. ”

“ Wherever we turn we have before us a curious and interesting picture, ghastly though it is, of the social, political, and domestic life of those ancient times, of the glory and the shame that hung around the last days of Pagan Rome;—in the theatres and the temples, in the shops and the private houses, in the graceful frescoes, in the elaborate mosaics, and, not least, in the idle scribblings on the walls, which, with a sort of whimsical reverence, have been spared by the destroying hand of Time. ”

“ Though we come forward, therefore, among those whose duty and whose glory it is to uphold Revelation, we are by no means jealous of the wonderful ardor, and we may add, the wonderful success, with which the study of Geology has been lately pursued. We have too much confidence in the truth of our cause to apprehend that it can suffer in any way from the progress of Natural Science. It is our conviction, rather, that the more thoroughly the works of Nature are understood, the more perfectly they will be found to harmonize with the truths of Revelation. ”

“ Geology is not a house of cards that it may be blown down by a breath. It is a hypothesis, a theory, if 158 you will; but no one can in fairness deny that behind this theory there are facts,—unexpected, startling, significant facts; that these facts, when considered in their relation to one another, when illustrated by the present phenomena of Nature, and skilfully grouped together, as they have been by able men, disclose certain general truths, and suggest certain arguments, which do seem to point in the direction of those conclusions at which Geologists have arrived. ”

“ Geology leads us down into the depths of the Earth, and there, unfolding to our view a long series of strange unwritten records impressed on lasting monuments by the hand of Nature, it proceeds to trace back the history of our Globe through myriads of ages into the distant past. ”

“ If we are at liberty to admit an interval of indefinite length between the creation of the world and the work of the Six Days, there is certainly nothing which forbids us to suppose that, during this period, the earth should have undergone many revolutions, and have been peopled by countless tribes of plants and animals, which, as age rolled on after age, came into existence, and died out, and were succeeded by new creations. ”

“ On the morning of the fatal day—it was the first of November, 1755—the sun rose bright and cheerful over the devoted city, no symptom of impending danger was visible in the sky above or on the Earth below, and the gay-hearted people were pursuing their accustomed rounds of pleasure or business, when, suddenly, at twenty minutes before ten o’clock, a sound like thunder was heard underground, the Earth was violently shaken, and in another moment, the greater part of the city was lying in ruins. ”

“ But now that the world is ringing with the wonderful discoveries of Geology, which seem to point more and more clearly every day to the extreme Antiquity of the Earth, it becomes an imperative duty to examine once again with all diligence and care the Inspired narrative of the Creation, and to consider well the relation in which it stands with this new dogma of Physical Science. ”

“ We feel quite satisfied that the great Creator of the Universe did not bring suddenly into existence the withered remains and broken fragments of animals which had never lived; that He did not stamp upon the massive rocks, buried in the profound recesses of the earth, the impress of a luxuriant vegetation which had never flourished ”