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... enter causes, could never produce so steady an effect over a vast extent, and in circumstances so extremely diversified. Let us take, for an example, the basin of any great river; as of the Danube, and its numerous branches. These branches, though they wind from every side through a vast labyrinth, come to join the main trunk, with courses of such uniform declivity, that they are rarely dammed up into lakes, or precipitated into cataracts. How comes it about, that from the Alps on the one hand, and the Carpathian mountains on the other, the waters have found canals by which, notwithstanding the innumerable inequalities that abound in this tract, they are conducted with a regular descent over an extent of many thousand square miles?
Among the multitude of agents which Nature employs in her operations, there is only one, the waters themselves, to whom this work might be safely entrusted. These, by occupying the original depressions of the surface, and by rising to such heights as enabled them to form a communication with one another, would require nothing but time to bring the surface into its present condition. Nature herself would furnish the instruments or tools necessary for the work. The running of the waters, the stones, the gravel and earth that they would carry along with them, the masses of ice that would occasionally be formed, would serve to open up a passage to the sea; and the Danube, with its thousand branches, would come at last to discharge its waters, through one main trunk, into the Euxine. In this way has been formed the whole system of valleys now existing on the surface of the earth, and, of consequence, the whole form and shape of the mountains is to be regarded as the work of the waters themselves, determined, in their first operations, by the primitive inequalities of the surface, and modified, during their whole action, by the position and the structure of the rocks through which they had to cut their way. The waters, it is obvious, were not opposed, in these operations, merely by loose earth, or other unconsolidated materials.
they were opposed by the hardest rocks, and were constantly resisted by a power which nothing but the lapse of ages could enable them to overcome. In the Essay before us, rivers are considered as working only on sand or mud; but the removal of these is a small part of the task which they have had to perform. They have had the rocks themselves to cut down; and they clearly express their having done so, when the rock is hard enough to retain, for a long time, the impressions which it has received. A narrow channel hollowed out of the solid rock, of great depth, and no broader than is sufficient to contain the torrent that runs in it, leaves no doubt as to the agent by which it was made, and one as to the fact, that a great length of time has been required. In the estimate here made of the action of rivers, all the operations of this kind are excluded. In the same manner, with respect to the coasts, the view taken is equally limited; and it is only those low shores formed of alluvial deposits that come within the scope of the argument.
We must therefore object, both to the rate of working, as our author has stated it, and to the quantity of work that has been performed. From the celerity with which the contention of a river and a tide may throw up a bar at the mouth of the former; from the rapidity with which the wind may transport hills of moveable sand on a low coast, or with which vegetables, by the stagnation of water, may be converted into peat, we cannot reason at all as to the time which a torrent will take to cut through a rock of marble, of granite, or of silex. Yet the latter are the great operations which the rivers have had to perform; and they only get the perpetual supply of mud and sand and gravel with which they are provided, by corroding and disintegrating the hard substances that oppose their course. Such seems to us the fair estimate of the work that was necessary to be performed, before the surface of the land, as it was left by the waters of the sea, could attain the form which it has at the present moment. If there is any other physical agent that can be shown to be adequate to the same effect, we shall be content that the waters should share with it the glory of performing the great work that we have ascribed to them. But if there is no such agent; if there is no power of any kind that has the necessary force, and, must more, the principle necessary to direct that force, we shall be under the necessity of acquiescing in the conclusion just deduced, and of considering it as one of the fixed and ascertained facts in the natural history of the globe.
The next part of the argument considers the proofs, arising from tradition, of a great catastrophe and subsequent renewal of the human race. It is here assumed, as a point already proved, that the natural history of the globe every where informs us, that the commencement of the present order of things cannot be dated from a very remote period. We have just seen, however, that the argument brought in support of this assertion, is by no means conclusive; and, that so far as the question is purely physical, and relates to the earth itself, no doubt can be entertained that the present order goes back to a period much beyond the limits of historical record. Our author is of the contrary opinion. "It is easy to see, " says he, " that though naturalists might have ranged sufficiently wide within the limits prescribed by the book of Genesis, they very soon found themselves in too narrow bounds; and when they had succeeded in converting the six days employed in the work of creation, into so many periods of indefinite length, their systems took a flight proportioned to the periods which they could then dispose of at pleasure. " To the charge that is here made, we believe that most Geologists will be obliged to plead guilty; and, though we do by no means think hat it is the business of theory to explain the first origin of things, or the events that must have happened during the six days referred to by our author, whether they are to be literally or figuratively understood; yet, we admit that it would be very difficult to suppose that even the series of changes which are the legitimate objects of geological discussion, can be brought completely within the limits of a few thousand years. The concessions even of the most sound theologians admit, that the literal interpretation of the Mosaic account of the origin of things is not essential to an orthodox system of religious belief. We have the authority of the late Bishop HORSLEY to support us in this assertion; which is also admitted by the editor of this Essay, in a preface which is certainly not chargeable with any undue liberality of sentiment.
The origin, however, of society, and the renewal, if not the beginning of the human race, we most readily admit, cannot, with any regard to the testimony, either of sacred or profane writers, be carried back to a very remote period. IT must be admitted that it goes back no farther than six or seven thousand years; and all that we contend for is, the liberty of placing it somewhat beyond the latest of the dates which have been assigned to it, and to which CUVIER seems desirous that it should be reduced. "The Pentateuch, " he observes, "has existed in its present form, at least ever since the separation of the ten tribes under Jeroboam, when it was received as authentic by the Samaritans, as well as by the Jews; and this assures us of the actual antiquity of that book being not less than two thousand eight hundred years. Besides this, we have no reason to doubt of the book of Genesis having been composed by Moses, which adds five hundred years to its antiquity. "Moses and his people came out of Egypt, which is universally allowed to have been the most anciently civilized kingdom on the borders of the Mediterranean. The legislator of the Jews could have no motive for shortening the duration of the nations; and would even have disgraced himself in the estimation of his own people, if he had promulgated a history of the human race contradictory to that which they must have learnt by tradition in Egypt. We may therefore conclude, that the Egyptians had at this time no other notions, respecting the antiquity of the human race, than are contained in the book of Genesis. " Here we must remark, that this learned and ingenious writer, in defending the Mosaic chronology, has employed an argument in which the wound and serious theologian will hardly acquiesce, viz.
that MOSES derived his information concerning the origin of the world, and of the deluge, from the traditions of the Egyptians; and that he could not have ventured to teach opinions concerning these matters, different from those commonly received. This, however, is to form a notion of the Legislator of the Jews, very little agreeable to the character in which he appears in his own writings; and by no means consistent with the superiority which his religious system undoubtedly possessed above those of the nations by which he was surrounded. We have here an instance of the danger of mixing religious and philosophical opinions with one another, and a proof how readily, as Lord BACON long ago observed, from the union of these two things the corruption of both is likely to ensue; a fantastical philosophy on the one hand, and a heterodox religion on the other. Whatever be determined on that point, it seems material to remark, that the deluge, such as it is described by MOSES, cannot well be supposed to have left any proof of its existence among the monuments of the mineral kingdom. Its duration was too short to have allowed such monuments to be produced.
The face of the earth was covered by the waters above the tops of the mountains, only for the space of five months, or 150 days; and, after the end of that time, the waters were abated. Now, the increase of the mass of waters, even to the height of 20, 000 or 25, 000 feet above their present level, and their continuance for five months at that height, if it was attended with no violence, with not tempests nor earthquakes, (and it is not said that it was so attended), is not likely to have produced any marks or vestiges on the surface, which the lapse of a few years would not efface. We are not at liberty to engraft on the sacred text, any commentaries or speculations of our own. A miraculous event must be received just as it is given by the inspired writer. There is no room for reasoning on principles of analogy about what is confessedly supernatural, and placed beyond the sphere to which analogy extends. The waters, therefore, are to be understood as raised up quietly to the great height at which they stood, and to have continued in that state just 150 days; and, if so, the destruction of land animals, and the deposition of a coat of mud over the surface of the earth, are the only consequences which we can infer with certainty to have taken place.
When the waters subsided, the dead carcasses would, many of them, be carried down into the sea, or, where they remained, would soon be consumed, in the midst of the luxuriant vegetation which would quickly cover the earth, during the almost entire absence of the animals destined to feed on it. The coat of mud would be washed down by the rains, or added to the general mass of vegetable mould. It seems probable, therefore, that this great catastrophe, destined to cut off men and animals, would produce no other durable effect upon the surface of the earth; none certainly that could be supposed to remain distinctly visible, at the distance of some thousand years. We are therefore at a loss to know what the Editor means to speak of when he says, "the Deluge, one of the grandest natural events described in the Bible, is equally confirmed, with regard to its extent and the period of its occurrence, by a careful study of the various phenomena observed on and near the earth's surface. " It would be highly satisfactory, no doubt, if this pious and learned naturalist, would point out any of the phenomena now existing which may fairly be called monuments of the deluge; understanding that deluge to be just what it is recorded to have been, without any such commentaries as have sometimes been applied to it. It must be the genuine deluge of the Scriptures, not that which has been so highly colored by the eloquence of BURNET, or so nicely analyzed by the geometry of WHISTON; must less those reciprocation's of the universal water so familiar to the followers of WERNER; nor even the torrent, or the debacle, of PALLAS and SAUSSURE: It must be the simple and quiet ascent of the waters above the tops of the mountains, their sojourning there for 150 days, and their peaceable retreat. We conceive that such an event could not record itself in any other way than by the deep impression it must make on the minds of the few who survived the general calamity.
If we are in an error, we shall be glad to be set right. The antiquity and origin of nations is a subject of great difficulty, and one where the light is so scanty, that there is no apology for dogmatic assertion. Though we think that there is reason to go farther back than the ordinary computation seems to authorize, we do not suppose ourselves entitled to draw this conclusion with perfect decision. Neither, on the other hand, can we admit with this commentator, that the age of the human race is, in the work before us, satisfactorily determined by an appeal to natural appearances; and that the pretended great antiquity of some nations, so much insisted on by certain philosophers, is thereby shown to be entirely unfounded. We mean not in any degree to blame the intentions of the learned Editor; but it is impossible to shut one's eyes against the effects which such insinuations as the preceding are calculated, if not intended, to produce. They are calculated to hold up those who do not acquiesce in the opinions contained in this work as objects of suspicion, and as men who cherish notions unfavorable to religion.
This, however, is not an interpretation that should rashly be given to mere literary or scientific speculations. The system of COPERNICUS might as well be stated, as it once was, to be inconsistent with the authority of the Scriptures; and all those who hold the reality of the earth's motion, should be considered as disputing the authenticity of the sacred writings. It is unnecessary to expose the error of opinions, not more hurtful to the interests of science, than contrary to the spirit of religion. The state of the question seems to...
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Research essay sample on Book Of Genesis Surface Of The Earth
