John Anderson

“ It could not originate itself, and just the more as it is viewed in its mere materiality, so much the stronger and irresistible the conclusion that there was no potentiality inherent in itself to cause it to begin to exist. Strip these hills of all their verdure—remove from the mind all consideration of their beauty, variety, and softness of outline—divest that landscape of its ebb and flow of tide—of all that constitutes the scene one of the most charming on the face of the earth, and in its desolation and sterility you would still in idea revert to a period when it was not. ”

“ Who now can fancy a limit to the social movement with which that vast hemisphere is heaving all over—the advancing tide of its population spreading in every region—the forests cleared and covered with a net-work of railways, the rivers bridged from end to end with a navy of steamships—and all vivified and in motion through the agency of this long undiscovered product of the earth? Geological time rolled on, and the surface of our planet was replenished with the hidden treasure, and the man of science has no numbers to reckon the years that are past. ”

“ Machinery is transcendently surpassed, in the forms of every organic thing beneath or around, in minuteness, adaptation, and balancing of parts,—the steam-engine in energy and power—the ship by a more refined and skillful equipment of ropes, pulleys, and sails—and the telescope is not for a moment to be compared with the human eye in the beauty of its construction, the power of its movements, the amazing swiftness and variety of its glance.—But there is design and intelligence manifested in the works of man. ”

“ Can you deny to other matter, argues the geologist, a similar tenacity of self-preservation, the vitality of impress which merely records the uniformity of the laws and constitution of nature, and which intimates that, through all past time, there were showers to cheer and to refresh the products of the earth? Truth becomes more marvelous than fiction when traced in researches such as these—showing the illimitable range over time and space permitted to human inquiry—and producing, at the same time, things both of heaven and of earth scarcely to be dreamt of in human philosophy. ”

“ Geology, I should thus conclude, admits us a step nearer than any of the other sciences, even than astronomy itself, to the actings of the divine Architect. The revolution of every season demonstrates a providence—the workings of a perpetual miracle—in its sustaining energies. But geology shows us, not the mere annual renovation of things already existing, but the circumstances under which they began to exist. The fiat of Omnipotence peals through the bounds of creation. The earth and the seas obey. We see new things starting into being. ”

“ Leave us, says the geologist, to grope our own way: mystical as our records are, we disturb no established truth, and imagination delights to lose itself in the far-distant past. Let not, says the divine, the speculations of a new science—a science of yesterday—be mixed up with more important matters of religion: we are within the sacred precincts of revelation, and our oracles give forth no dubious meanings—no isoteric doctrines for the initiated only.
The marvels of geology certainly are, in every view that can be taken of them, deeply interesting to the mind. ”

“ We may be reminded of the numberless ages required for the production of coal, that man’s experience is but of yesterday, and himself an ephemeral of a moment as compared with the revolutions of time recorded on the fabric of the globe. This record, we have reason to think, should be vastly abridged. But grant it, for the sake of argument, in all its indefinite dimensions, and still the answer is, that a moment in a question of this kind is just as instructive as the lapse of a million of years. Time, while it witnesses change, does not create or of itself produce anything. ”

“ There, remote from human habitation, the geologist sees as it were two conditions of the world,—the one, the shattered framework and fragments of its early convulsions, huge mountains prostrate and crumbling beneath his feet,—and the other, the spring-heads of renewed vitality collecting in countless dripping rills, each to sustain its own little plot of pasturage and flowerets, not the less welcome that they are all so rare and alpine, and looking in their freshness as if they were there purposely to cicatrize and heal up the deep scars in the rugged precipices around. ”

“ The science which introduces to such sights and studies, occupies no mean place among the various branches of human inquiry. To neglect to decipher what is so indelibly recorded on these pages of creation, is willfully to shut oneself out from what has been actually preserved for information—a voice from the past, which speaks in the same distinct articulate language as the present of the fiat of Omnipotence. No object is mean or contemptible which divine wisdom has formed, and no subject is unworthy of investigation which illustrates His ways and works during any period of creation. ”

“ Mark the analogy, therefore, ere you scoff at the credulity of the geologist, or the power of the rain-drop to transmit an image of itself through so many revolutions and ages of the earth’s history. How impalpable a substance is light! how readily effaced its impressions, or intercepted its brilliant colorings, by the interposition of the frailest creation of matter—an insect’s wing, the covering of a leaf, the disc of a flower-petal. ”

“ And how is it that of one and all these things—the truths of science, the art of healing, the principles of navigation, the discipline of wholesome instruction, the enactment of good laws, and the various blessings of civilized life—more than two-thirds of the human race are in these latter ages still entirely destitute? God governs both in the kingdom of nature and in the kingdom of grace, and any objection, therefore, against the truth of revelation that may be built upon these grounds, goes equally to dethrone the Almighty from any share of interest in the government of the universe. ”

“ And now, in the unwearied march of science, often baffled but never cast down, it has been announced as the probable solution of all the changes of the past, the progression of the whole solar system, whereby the earth, and all the sister planets, are dragged through infinite space, and brought successively within the sphere of new constellations—now in a hotter and now in a milder efflux of ether—combining its own with a more general movement in a universal whirl—and thus constantly subjected, in all its parts, to ever-varying external influences! ”

“ The everlasting hills are still there on their old foundations—the remarkable variety of structure, which, all around the city they so marvelously present, still speaks in impressive language of order and disruption, stability and change—and underneath, in the imperishable forms of buried generations, are the records of a history in which man has no part, and with which his destiny would seem in no wise concerned. ”

“ The magnificent work of creation, whose course we have been tracing in some of its primordial arrangements, in the geological phenomena of the earth’s crust, and in its relations to the vast planetary system of which it is a member, is the result over all of design and intelligence. The changes wrought in the earth’s structure and framework, from period to period, have not been brought about by merely mechanical changes of physical conditions. There are order and method in the inorganic, no less than in the organic forms, into which matter in any of the earth’s revolutions has been cast. ”

“ In the rocks of the three families lie, in profuse abundance, the organic remains of the epochs which produced them—cast like wreck among the silts and sands now hardened and upheaved into mountains—the peaks of Skiddaw and Snowdon, of Plinlimmon and Helvellyn, once the beaches or floors of our ancient seas.
The Cumberland group of mountains, with its varied scenery and lakes, is surrounded with the carboniferous rocks—as bright and lovely a picture, set in a framework of jet or ebony, as the mind can contemplate. ”

“ The mind seizes with a firmer grasp, and advances with a steadier pace over the fields of creation, because there is a Creator whose invisible Godhead is understood from the things which are made. And now, in search of truth, one and the same through all things, religion and science go hand in hand, sanctified and enlightened by the union, and imparting the most salutary lessons from the physical and moral revelations of Him whose path is in the deep places of the earth, and who for the display of his own glory has become the Instructor and Redeemer of the world. ”

“ All men possess it, for all men are so constituted, that they cannot look upon creation without the idea of a Creator accompanying and flowing from the act. The conception will be obscure, vague, and indistinct, according to the capacity, improvement, and general knowledge of the individual. But the conception is there, as necessarily as the effect follows the cause, the shadow the substance, the image the object which occasioned it. The heavens declare the glory of God, the firmament shows his handiwork, the earth bears the traces of his path. ”

“ How often, I have argued, in the leisure hours of life do we find men idling away their time, wasting it in vain talk, or consuming it in the most trifling pursuits, when a most interesting branch of science can be learned by wandering over the green fields, the rocky dell, the mountain side, or by the walk at even-tide, and there to hold converse with the Creator’s works and the records of his will? ”

“ The charm that spell-bound the human mind for ages, is not dissolved when, with ruder intent, we traverse these rocky solitudes, listening to the echo of our obedient hammer, learning the secrets of the universe amidst the voices of the everlasting hills, and seeing the wonders of the material world throwing light on the wonders of the spiritual. ”

“ Wonders there are in geology. But its most seeming fables are realities. The placoids and ganoids of the silurian and devonian age, the exuberant flora of the carboniferous, the giant birds of the triassic, the matchless reptilian forms of the oolite, the microscopic organisms of the chalk, the colossal mammoths and mammalia of the tertiaries, were all as veritable productions of the island as the most familiar grains, grasses, and domesticated breeds which minister to our daily wants. How obscure, uncertain, and limited the range of human history! ”

“ And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters!
We every day see the conversion of water into steam, and steam into air; and the air, like the ocean, receiving every substance into itself. But, nevertheless, it is not inferred that there is any augmentation to the volume of the atmosphere, any increase or essential change upon its original mass. Without the existence of this fluid, the earth would have been no suitable place for any of its living inhabitants, vegetable or animal. ”

“ The deductions and sweeping inferences of geologists may be often vague and uncertain; but a science, whose direct aim is to decipher the records of the past and compare the successive types of animal life upon the earth, deals with important objects, and leads to salutary trains of thought, keeping continually before the view the Fountain-Head of all being; and adding a new proof to the sublime doctrine, that Man who is privileged so to range through creation and time will himself outlive a term of existence, measurable by a few points of space and a few moments of eternity. ”

“ Now, in nature, we find the same indications of design, the same surprising combinations of skill, instruments framed with matchless wisdom and the most exquisite contrivance. Nay, all here, in every department of creation, leaves human ingenuity at an immeasurable distance. No statuary can rival that which is exhibited in the rocks, gems, and crystals of the earth. ”

“ Nothing, indeed, at first sight can appear more barren of every point of interesting illustration than the rocky masses of the earth. Tear off the grassy covering which conceals, while it freshens, the outer crust of the globe, and to mere disorder and confusion there seems to be superadded the more repulsive features of sterility and death. ”

“ Is it too much to assume that the philosopher, as well as the poet, is all his life-long captive to first impressions, that the scenes of his boyhood claim “a local habitation” for many of his future speculations, and that his most matured trains of thinking have been dependent upon casual circumstances? Born and educated in the shadow of the Grampians, who can doubt that the spirit within was early stirred to lofty views as he gazed upon their elevated forms, and wondered how their peaks rose so high in air, and were thus lifted above the valleys? ”

“ I never look at a piece of granite, fragments of which are strewed on every heath, without being reminded of Paley’s inaccurate and disparaging comparison betwixt “the stone” and “the watch,” in his celebrated argument for the existence of Deity. Take a specimen fresh and living from the rock, or from any bowlder that meets you on the way. There is not a stain in all that composite mass: how bright every ingredient! No workmanship of man can rival it in its closeness of texture, beauty of color, distinctness and delicacy of shading and outline. ”

“ The views of nature thus opened up are boundless and infinite, in either terms of the scale, ascending or descending. The immensity of things on the one side, and their minuteness on the other, carry them equally beyond the reach of direct observation, and the intervention of means must in both cases be provided, ere they can become the subjects of human perception and examination. But what is it to me, some will reason, if there lie within the depths of space myriads of rolling worlds, when I see them not, and whose revolutions can in no way affect my condition on earth? ”

“ Man cuts down the forest, and applies it in its green, woody state to his own use.—The waste is reclaimed. The desert he makes his habitation; a place of beauty and civilization. The moral triumphs over the material, the spiritual over the earthy, and his charter-right is to subdue all things to himself. Thus the geologist cannot, if he would, forget or overlook the remarkable human epoch in which his own lot has been cast. ”

“ Thus geology takes us up to the beginnings of creation—shows us the ingredients and arrangements of matter—lays bare the foundations of our earthly dwelling, the divisions and conveniences of its apartments—and seeing wisdom in adaptation, design in endurance and suitability, we infer, upon equally irresistible grounds, that the earth is of God, and manifests in everything the perfections of its Author. The scheme of creation, in all its parts and relations, we may never know ”

“ The coal trade of Great Britain is nearly in the proportion of three to two of that of all the other nations of the world; while in superficial area her coal measures are to those of the United States only as 11,859 square miles to 133,132 square miles. What a vision of the future is hereby disclosed! If rightly employed, if the arts and progressive development of society at all keep pace with the means provided, the human race in the New World have a destiny to run, and a work of civilization to accomplish, to which the Old, in its brightest achievements, can furnish but a faint analogy. ”

“ Out of the Ægean a finer group of islands is nowhere to be threaded—some scarcely raised above sea-level—some towering into the clouds, as in the lofty peaks of Mull, Jura, and Rum, with an altitude almost equal to their length—most of them glorying in names soft and euphonious as the choicest of classic Greece—and yet, all fragmentary and disrupted, as if but yesterday shivered by the thunder cloud. ”

“ The perfections of the Supreme Being are, in like manner, as distinctly notified in the works of creation as the fact of the mere existence of a designing Creator. The immensity of the universe clearly demonstrates the power in which it originated, and by which all its movements are still sustained, guiding the infinite systems of celestial bodies and the geological revolutions of our own planet with the same ease that it watches over and upholds the minutest objects in existence. ”