man rejoice to accept, as a perfect standard, the moral judgments of one who has never been subject to those deteriorating forces which he feels to have wrought so mischievously in himself? Will he not accept his will as right, when his own is self-convicted of being wrong? and even when he can not discern the wrongfulness of his judgment, will he not wisely accept God's judgment as right, knowing from experience the subtle and unconscious influences arising from ignorance, evil habits, education, popular opinion, etc., that may have deflected his judgment, but could not affect God's? "The accuracy of all judicial sentences depends on the knowledge, the capacity, the patience, and the impartiality of the judge. Who will venture to claim for the judge, within his own bosom, the possession of those qualifications in a perfect, or even an eminent degree? In what tongue or language has not the blindness of self-love passed into a proverb? Who is the man whose mental vision is not obstructed by some beam, as often as it is directed to the survey of his own heart, or of his own conduct ?"* (3.) As a matter of fact, a man's judgments often change in reference to his own actions, or those of other men. The verdict of his conscience alters according to the representation given to it. New aspects, new relations, new consequences of a certain action are discovered. Every man is aware that a decision of his conscience is not necessarily right, because he thinks it right. He thinks his present decision right, though it differs from a former one, because of the clearer, fuller knowledge upon which it is formed. Accordingly the latter decision, and not the former, is now authoritative, because acknowledged to be right. But may not he acknowledge the judgment of another person, though at variance from his own, to be the right one, because formed upon knowledge far more impartial and complete than his own? and must he not acknowledge a judgment of God to be right, and therefore authoritative, whose will is stainlessly pure, and whose knowledge of the relations and consequences of every action is absolute? His own decision he can not assert to be absolutely right; but the decisions of God he must believe to be absolutely right. Which, * Sir James Stephen's Essays, vol. ii. p. 463. then, must be authoritative to him? In a similar manner we find a diversity in the moral usages and doctrines of different countries; all of these can not be right. "The law of right is one and absolute; nor does it speak one language at Rome, and another at Athens, varying from place to place, or from time to time." How then may this law be discerned, which will end all moral controversies by revealing "the absolutely right," save in the revelation of moral truth by God? (4.) To conclude this chain of reasoning, Mr. Newman believes God to be unchangeably perfect. Suppose, then, (and this question is not in dispute,) that God did give a revelation of moral truth, it must be perfect too. Since the will of God is necessarily and eternally right, Mr. Newman must acknowledge that an exposition of it is also necessarily and eternally right; and this acknowledgment binds it at once as authoritative to him, though his own previous judgments have differed from it. Since Mr. Newman believes in a holy God, this question is reduced to the point, whether he has revealed his will at all? If he has, his revealed will must be right; (for, if not, it is either not his will revealed, or his will, that is, he himself, is evil ;) and if it must be right, it must be authoritative; since, as we proved before, the only authority a moral law can possess is, that it be acknowledged to be right when it instantly becomes obligatory. If then a divine external revelation of moral truth is possible, which Mr. Newman does not deny, there is no essential impossibility, but an essential necessity, in its being authoritative. (5.) On other grounds the same conclusion is reached. Conscience may briefly be defined as "the law of the will." It pronounces a decision upon its spontaneous determinations, according to the influencing motives in each case. The selfdetermining powers of the will which are under the categorical control of conscience, relate to those beings which may be affected by them, namely, ourselves, other finite beings, and God; and our duty defines the right conduct of our will in these various relations.* What then is our *The ancients rightly founded the kúhov, or honestum, in the pérov, or decorum; that is, they considered an action virtuous which was performed in harmony with the relations necessary and accidental to the agent.”—Sir William Hamilton, in his Edition of Reid, p. 89. 308 duty towards God? Considering the boundless relations in which we are connected with him, this must be the first and weightiest announcement of conscience in directing our will. What do we owe-what ought we to do-to him? Rectitude consists in doing right towards every being with whom, in the exercise of our will, we are related; the chief and essential element of rectitude or rightdoing will, therefore, consist in our conduct towards God. If, then, he has enjoined upon us a command which it is his pleasure we should obey, does it not, upon this showing, become essentially and intrinsically right for us to obey, apart from its inherent or apparent rectitude on other grounds, which simply means, when investigated, that its fulfillment is discerned to be beneficial to ourselves and our fellow-men? Conscience announces what is right towards God as well as towards man; and its most imperative sentence is, that man should obey and honor God. Now suppose that in the treatment of our fellowmen we had conceived a certain mode of action to be right, and God has command ed us to adopt a different course of action; which, then, is right? Two momenta here hang in opposite scales of the balance our conceptions of what we owe to our fellow-men, our knowledge of what we owe to God; which shall kick the beam? To whom, in such a conflict of obligation, do we confessedly owe the most? Ought we to give the supremacy to our fellow-men or to God? Let it be remembered that every such conviction of our duty to our fellow-men is formed upon our notions of what will conduce to their welfare. In the boldest expression of this dilemma, its form accordingly will be: "The welfare of man against the will of God." Such antagonism in reality is impossible; but even if the conscience were forced to decide between these two The revealed will of God, if incontestably proved to be such, is authoritative against all other convictions of duty; for conscience plainly asserts the duty of obedience to God to be the highest and over-ruling duty of man. We are happily never forced into such a dreadful dilemma as that we have stated above; for no wise man will maintain his own conceptions of right-dealing towards his fellow-men against the clear assertion of their wrongfulness by God. He will at once admit that error has crept into his calculation of human interests, or some secret passion has jaundiced the eye of conscience, and he will not asseverate his judgment to be right against that of God. But even if he does, he must also judge it right to obey the com. mands of God; but between the contradictory duties, the latter is the most urgent and inevitable in its claim; conscience declares the right of God to stand first. We trust we have fairly expunged the veto which Mr. Newman interposed upon the prosecution of any argument in proof of the inspiration of the Bible, because of some à priori impossibility which he had discovered, and which precluded the necessity of any further deliberation or even doubt on the matter. His opinions are widely spread, and link themselves closely with the most plausible objections against biblical inspiration; so that we resolved to investigate them at length, in order to simplify our future inquiries. OUR purpose in this paper is to take a broad and comprehensive view of such of the aspects and phenomena of our planet as are usually included under the head of Physical Geography; the relations of land and water, of plain and mountains, of earth and air, of heat and cold. But as the present is only comprehensible when interpreted by the past, we propose to take a rapid glance over the probable history of our globe from the earliest times; indicating the general laws which have obtained in preparing the earth for its present inhabitants; and which are still in operation, slowly yet surely working revolutions which only require lapse of time to be as mighty as those of which the traces are self-written on the pages of the earth's crust. One consideration must be premised. The subsequent brief sketch of the development of a molten mass into a life-bearing world, must not be understood as a veritable history. However strong the evidence, it is still but inferential. The events related must be considered only as a hypothetical account, which will serve to explain present appearances - things which might or may have happened in the form or succession mentioned, consistently with observed facts; serving synthetically to bring such facts in a more graphic manner before the mind's eye, than could be done by any merely analytic method. The reader will therefore please to imagine before each statement, some qualifying phrase, implying only strong probability or theoretical likeli PRESENT. tion of this primary one, through the mechanical agency of water. Above these, again, we find other and still more nume. rous rocks, which have resulted from these, as they from the granite; but with an important difference-animal and vegetable life has appeared; and as the water has worn down the solid matter, bearing it away to form other sedimentary strata, these latter have become the tombs of such forms of life as were there present. Hence our history, which for purposes of illustration we may conceive thus. Long, long ages ago, during which centuries or millenniums may count as units, our globe existed as an intensely heated or melted mass of matter, slowly cooling by radiation into space. Very slowly cooling; for between it and space was a thick vaporous mass, preventing rapid radiation. This vaporous mass contained all the water which now forms our rivers, oceans, and springs; as well as all that exists in the present atmosphere. At length a period arrived when a crust was formed over this melted sphere, of uncertain thickness, still inclosing a melted nucleus, destined from time to time to burst forth in volcanic eruptions; and by the development of elastic gases, to break in fragments superimposed strata, or upheave from the depths of the ocean islands, mountains, or mighty continents. This crust presented the rough and uneven surface noticed on all scoriæ, mountains and valleys representing the elevations and depressions. When the temperature was still further reduced, so as to admit of the existence of water in a fluid form Underlying all the varieties of surface on the surface, the vaporous mass began presented to us by the earth, whenever to discharge itself in torrents of rain upon our investigations have penetrated to suf- the earth-torrents to which the heaviest ficient depth, we find granite, the founda- falls of the Brazils are but as a light sumtion of all known rocks. This is a crys- mer shower. The effect of these streams talline structure, bearing unmistakable of water, at a high temperature, was to evidence of having originally been melted. grind and wear down the edges and subAbove this we meet with certain other stance of this granitic crust, carrying the rocks, which have without doubt been proceeds into the valleys, where they formed by the destruction or disintegra-formed the primary stratified rocks, the hood. not argue conversely that those forms of which we find no remains were actually absent from this early world. There may have been both land animals and vegetables of a certain order, and yet the physical conditions not have been favorable to their preservation. It is not until after the deposition of the Old Red Sandstone, that we find unequivocal marks of the existence of an extensive terrestrial flora; nor is it until a still later period that any except very slight traces of a terrestrial fauna appear. The fossils, however, that do appear in these earliest strata are most instructive, and are sufficient of themselves to destroy the so called Lamarckian or "development" hypothesis, so ingeniously brought forward in the Vestiges of Creation. For in them we find representatives of all the four great divisions of the animal kingdom-the Radiata, the Mollusca, the Articulata, and the Vertebrata. These last were only represented by fishes; but by fishes of so high an order, as to be perfectly conclusive on the point in question; as is fully and elaborately demonstrated by Hugh Miller, in the Footprints of the Creator. Gneiss, the Micaschist, and the Clay-slate; | ence of their representative types, we can all these being nothing more than granite mechanically disintegrated, and more or less altered subsequently by pressure from above, and perhaps heat from below. During this time the valleys were partially filled up, and the hills worn down; and a surface of dry land and water produced, in general aspect of hill and dale, not altogether unlike that which was to be hereafter. There were mountains and lakes, and continents and ocean; probably at first no rivers proper. These are the drainages from districts; and so long as the only exposed land was granite, we can scarcely speak of drainage. But, ever and anon, the force of the internal fire changed the relative levels of the surface; the bottom of the ocean was upheaved, and the primitive hill covered with the displaced ocean. Then from the recently formed strata began a copious drainage, which settled itself into channels, as we see the water ooze from the soaked sand on the sea-shore, and wear for itself channels in its substance, when the tide is retreating. And thus were formed rivers, mighty torrents compared with which it is probable the Amazon and the Ganges would appear but tiny brooklets. Of this we shall have occasion to give illustration hereafter. It seems to have been a blank world at this time, a world of cloud, and storm, and chaos; no living creatures peopled the waters, no trace of vegetation softened the hard and barren aspect of the rock. But a Voice was heard, and the earth and the waters brought forth abundantly. The heavy rains and the rushing waters are still ceaselessly eating away the rocks, both the granite and the primary strata, and forming of them new layers at the bottom of the ocean, which will, by and by, be upheaved to become dry land, plain or mountain, as the case may be; but these strata are no longer the mere disintegration of preceding ones they contain the first evidences of life; the fauna and flora of that age are interred within them, and become the records of the most interesting and important period in the world's history. The earliest organic remains with which we meet are those of marine animals; even the few traces of vegetable life observed are chiefly of a fucoid nature. But although we may safely aver that all the organic traces indicate clearly the exist During all the past history of the earth, the general law attached to the solid parts of the structure seems to have been, that they should alternately form part of the sea-bottom and the dry land. Immense thicknesses of strata were formed at the bottom of lakes, or seas, or in the huge deltas of rivers, consisting of the debris of the then existing land, and the remains of the animals and vegetables that dwelt on land and in water. Then by the expansion of the elastic gases underneath the earth's crust, these strata were upheaved to form dry land, and the displaced waters overflow the previous earth. This, in its turn, was covered with fresh deposits similarly formed, in time to be again raised and depressed. All these strata were originally deposited horizontally; but owing to the forces mentioned, they have been repeatedly broken across in every direction, and displaced and even inverted; so that different strata of great thickness have been found superimposed on each other in exactly the reverse order to that in which they were originally formed. Had it not been for this constant disruption of the successive strata, our knowledge of the earth's structure must have been almost exclusively con fined to the last deposited strata, and of the earlier history we could have known nothing. The coal-fields, which now play so important a part in man's history, would, but for this law, have been as utterly unknown to us as though they were hid at the very center of the earth. Thus it is, also, that our mountains generally possess an apex of granite, or some primary rock; having been formed by the fracture of a mass of strata, and the uptilting of the central broken part; whilst the sides-always one, sometimes both present, as we recede from the apex, the broken ends of the original strata, at different degrees of inclination; and at the base usually a more or less horizontal layer, deposited after the elevation of the mountain. By this we are enabled to state with some precision, the relative ages of mountains, as their elevation dates from a period between the depositions of those strata that are tilted up at an angle to the horizon, and those that are found horizontally at or near the base. By this means we learn that some of our comparatively insignificant British hills were grown old in centuries long before the giant Alps and Himalayas were upheaved from the depths of the ocean. forming beds of great extent."* The crinoids, or stone-flowers, rival in beauty the sea-anemonies of our own coasts; the hard rocks are covered over with Brachiopods and a few Conchifera. But the dominant race is that of the Cephalopods, allied to our cuttle-fishes-the "lords and tyrants of that creation;" some of them probably of dimensions formidable enough, singly or combined, to inspire terror in the ferocious shark-like fishes which are here and there to be seen, though not in great numbers. † Many ages have passed away, and we have a widely different scene to contemplate. Our latitudes of the northern hemisphere present a great ocean studded with islands, large and small, from which the waters reach perhaps to the poles. There has been a deposition previously of the Old Red Sandstone; this has been built upon by fresh multitudes of polyps, and the whole has been broken up by internal agencies into shallow basins, the broken ridges of which form the islands. These are clothed to the water's edge with a dense tropical vegetation, among which are prominently visible the lofty, widespreading Lepidodendron, the elegant tapering Sigillaria, gigantic tree-ferns, We can not follow, step by step, the with innumerable pines and firs, all geological history of our planet; a history girt round with creepers and parasitic composed of vastly extended periods, each plants, climbing to the topmost branches with its own special characteristics, and of the loftiest among them, and enlivening, its own flora and fauna; generally sepa- by the bright and vivid colors of their rated from each other by broad lines of flowers, the dark and gloomy character demarkation, and by the almost total ex- of the great masses of vegetation." It tinction, at the close of each era, of their would almost appear as though the ener respective organic species-the types be-gies of nature were monopolized by the ing preserved, but the special forms disappearing entirely. We will briefly glance at a few imaginary scenes, suggested by the geological phenomena of our own islands and neighboring latitudes. We are standing on a barren coast of the Paleozoic epoch; the surf is breaking over reefs and low islands of coral, all around and upon which innumerable polyps are toiling, age after age, preparing immense masses of limestone for our future hills. The sea is "peopled with countless myriads of those unsightly animals, the trilobites, swimming near the surface of the water with their backs downward, looking out constantly, and sinking at the slightest approach of danger from beneath; while the remains of successive generations of these creatures, mixed with mud and sand, are rapidly VOL. XLIX-NO. 2 66 vegetable creation, for terrestrial animal life is scarce. The dense forests are silent and still; no birds are flitting from tree to tree; we see nothing of quadruped or reptile; only a few insects appear to tes tify that all animal life is not absent; the sea, however, is abundantly peopled. Heavy rains fell, and the streams rushing violently down the steep hills carried away the leaves, branches, and trunks of the trees into the neighboring bays. Here they accumulated age after age, undergoing chemical changes from bituminous springs and other agencies, pressed upon heavily by superincumbent deposits, till finally they were converted into what |