The Science of the Day and Genesis (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. THE ANTIQUITY OF THE EARTH. Geology, as an inductive science, had its origin as late as 1807, in the formation of "The London Geological Society." In some matters it is only yet seeking its nov area; in others it has reached solid standing. It has disabused 'the mind of the idea that the earth as it is now constituted was spoken instantaneously into existence by immediate divine fiat. That not divin fiat immediately and instantaneously, but natural agencies mediately and by long process have built up the earth's crust in its present form, is proven by what we find in that crust, collated with what we see taking place continually about us. The geologist sees on the sea-beach, delta, lake shore, or bottom to-day, layer after layer of sand gently laid down; he sees now forming calcareous rocks embedding implements of man's art and man himself, the fossils of the future; he sees wood buried becoming lignite in its process of transformation into coal; he sees the bones of existing species of animals buried in sediment; he sees volcanoes thrusting forth their melted rock; he sees corals forming their islands, reefs, atolls, and shells agglutinating; he sees the workings of chemical affinity and voltaic action. He now passes from the surface of the earth down into its depths; he turns over leaf after leaf of the stone book. On each leaf he sees distinctly traced the impress and seal of the very agents he finds to day in action at their incessantly modifying work on the crust of the earth all round about him. The rocks of the earth's crust are now to him a new revelation. As he turns over their stone leaves, he recognizes the earth's own handwriting; he reads there its autobiography, ? a writing that can be no forgery. Says the geologist, " I find verified in the rec...