taught the doctrines of Christianity. St. Columb was the founder of a religious fraternity called Culdees; the members of which laboured as Missionaries, preaching the Gospel in various parts of Scotland, Ireland, England, and Wales. They did not acknowledge the supremacy of the Romish Pontiff, nor receive the gross errors taught by the Romish Church. Iona was, for many ages, regarded as a place of great sanctity; it was designated the "holy island;" and many persons of distinction, from superstitious motives, were buried there. The Tract Society has published, as one of its "Monthly Series," this volume, containing much interesting information respecting the ancient history and present condition of the island. contains also some valuable notices of the ancient Druids. We have marked one passage in the work, which we suppose has been erroneously printed. It states "that the tower of the Cathedral at Iona, sixty feet high, stands on four cylindrical pillars, of a clumsy Norman design, about ten feet high, and three inches diameter." Three feet is much more likely

than three inches.

It

Puritan Gems; or, Wise and Holy Sayings of the Rev. Thomas Watson, A.M. Edited and arranged by the REV. JOHN ADEY. Copy 18mo. 128pp. J. SNOW.

AN admirable selection of short sentences, containing weighty truths, forcibly and admirably expressed. Many of them are gems of great beauty and brilliance. They will afford much instruction and delight to the contemplative Christian. The little volume in which they are contained is a small cabinet of precious jewels.

The Child's Own Book of Poetry, Original and Selected. Medium 18mo. 172pp. RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY.

CONTAINING a pleasing variety of pieces in verse, on moral, entertaining, descriptive, and sacred subjects. The work also contains numerous woodcuts. It will be well received by that class of readers for whose use it has been designed.

The Herald of Peace. New Series, quarto, Nos. I. and II.

WE are glad to see this useful publication enlarged, and wish success to the object which it ably advocates.

ON GEOLOGY AND THE INDEFINITE ANTIQUITY OF THE WORLD.

A Lecture delivered by the REV. M. BAXTER, before the JAMAICA COLONIAL READING SOCIETY.

(Concluded from page 377.)

II. Having considered the Stratified Structure of the Earth, we proceed, in the next place, to the consideration of such indications as human inquiry supplies of its extreme antiquity. And these indications are supplied,

1. By its Stratification. Stratification is the work of time. It is a process which is carried on, in the present state of the globe, at an exceedingly slow rate, though on a most extensive scale.-The quantity of solid matter

In

which is annually carried down to the ocean by the various rivers of the globe, as well as that which is carried by other streams into its inland lakes, must necessarily be very considerable. But once carried down, it is gradually converted into new Strata on the bottom of lakes and oceans. various circumstances, the agencies to which these formations are attributable will produce different results, and deposit strata, more or less rapidly, in a given time. Hence the difficulty of determining on a definite scale of geological time. But what cannot be known definitely, may be known approximately, and we are acquainted with some facts, connected with stratification, which may guide in our approximations towards a solution of the question concerning the antiquity of the globe. We know, for instance, that it takes a century to add six inches to the strata at the bottom of a lake, and that it has taken nearly two thousand years to form the stratum of peat on a moor near Stirling, in Great Britain. Now, with these facts before us, it is natural to put such inquiries as the following:-If two thousand years have been necessary to the formation of a stratum of semi-coal (for the peat is not even now a perfect coal formation), how much more time would be requisite to the formation of twenty-five layers of perfect coal, such as occur in the coal district of Northumberland, in England? Shall we reckon the formation of perfect coal to have been effected at the same rate as the peat, which falls very far short of a perfect formation? If so, then, fifty thousand years is the least time that can be supposed to have been employed in the formation of the coal in this large coalfield. But this question gives birth to another. If the formation of the coal strata in that district could not be a work of less than fifty thousand years, what shall we say of the period necessary for the formation of the systems of strata in which it is found embedded? Shall we calculate this at the rate at which shale is deposited at the bottom of a lake? In that case the period would be more than 240,000 years: in addition to the 50,000 just named, and M'Culloch thinks 200,000 years as a most moderate computation for the period during which was carried on "the production of the coal series of Newcastle with all its rocky strata." We have said that a lake does not deposit strata at the rate of more than six inches a century, but some of the countries in which those lakes exist present to the geological observer in the first group of secondary strata a formation of 3,000 feet thick, which at this rate must have been the work of 600,000 years. Only let the inquiry be pursued with respect to stratification in general, and let the geological period be determined according to the most moderate scale, and I shall be much astonished if any, even the most sceptical, should hesitate to subscribe to the views of Mr. Babbage on this question, in the following quotation from the ninth Bridgewater Treatise—

"In truth," says that eloquent writer, "the mass of evidence which combines to prove the great antiquity of the earth itself is so irresistible, and so unshaken by any opposing facts, that none but those who are alike incapable of observing the facts and appreciating the reasoning can for a moment consider the present state of its surface to have been the result of only 6000 years of existence. Those observers and philosophers who have spent their lives in the study of geology have arrived at the conclusion, that there exists irresistible evidence that the date of the earth's first formation is far anterior to the epoch supposed to be assigned to it by Moses: and it is now admitted by all competent persons that the formation even of those strata which are nearest the surface must have occupied vast periods, probably millions of years, in arriving at their present state."

2. But we proceed to show, that the argument for the extreme antiquity of the globe is supported by a large amount of evidence derived from the existence of organic remains of extinct classes and species in nearly all parts of stratification, the difference between the organic remains and

existing species being increasingly great as you descend from the highest to the lowest class of strata. On this point Philips observes

"Everywhere the tertiary fossils are closely analogous to existing types; but in all countries the fossils of the primary strata appear to belong to a very different series. Wherever the systems of European strata can be paralled; in North America; the Himalaya; Australia; so much of analogy is evident in organic reliquæ as to prove that the successive changes of physical conditions and the coincident changes of organic life, were operated over very large parts of the globe, and nothing yet known forbids us to believe that they were universally felt, though in unequal degrees, and under differences of circumstances."

Now, if it be admitted that, as a general rule, strata were originally deposited in water, much in the same way as we observe the same thing to be done in the present circumstances of the globe, it must be admitted also, that the inhumation of organic remains occurred contemporaneously with the formation of the strata in which they occur, and, therefore, are generally of the same age as those portions of the strata in which they were found imbedded. But you have just heard, on the authority of Professor Philips, that "organic remains," as a general rule, bear a close resemblance to each other, or are identical in species in the corresponding systems of strata all over the world, where observations have been made. Besides, the number of distinct species is greatest in the highest groups of strata, and least in the lower. Thus, for every one hundred feet in the tertiary formations, there are one hundred and forty-one species of organic remains; in the cretaceous, there are only seventy; in the oolitic, forty-five; in the saliferous, eight; in the carboniferous, four; and in the primary fossilliferous, only two distinct species for every one hundred feet. Now what are the conclusions to which these facts lead? They are,

1. That in the earliest periods of stratification, organic being was least abundant on the surface and in the waters of the globe. If this were not the case, the terrible convulsions to which your attention has already been called, must have caused particular portions of these strata to be most abundant in these remains, which is contrary to observation. They being seventy times less than in the tertiary; thirty-five times less than in the cretaceous; twenty-two times less than in the oolitic; four times less than in the saliferous, and two times less than in the caboniferous. And,

2. The facts show that as stratification advanced, there must have been at various times a new exercise of creating power to call into existence new forms of organic and animated being, in larger numbers than in the earliest epoch, to fill up the blanks made by the destruction of the primitive denizens of the globe.

3. That the extinct species generally must have been brought into being at various epochs vastly more remote than the period of the Adamic creation. This last epoch is generally admitted to have been not more than six thousand years earlier than the present time. But that interval is not sufficient for the deposition of more than one-third of even the tertiary class of strata; utterly insufficient to account for the deposition of the whole of the strata of that class, and absolutely ridiculous when spoken of as the period during which was effected the deposition of all the other systems, measuring from six to ten miles in thickness! Not to mention the time necessary for the upheaval of the vast mountain masses, or those igneous processes by which sedimentary strata were subsequently converted into metamorphic rocks, or the vast periods necessary for the disintegration of those particles of the earlier strata, which, by the joint action of fire and of water, were consolidated into the strata of later date, or, finally, for the life and death of those numberless living creatures whose exquisite microscopic shells have been consolidated by myriads into solid rock. For,

in addition to the slow process of stratification, it must be remembered that each of all the myriads of individuals that have been found entombed in the various compartments of this great charnel house, had a period for its lifetime, and must have required also an enormous period for its petrification; so that the argument is cumulative, and acquires increased weight from every view in which the subject can be regarded.

It only remains for us now to notice another great fact which supports the reasoning in favour of a pre-Adamic world. It is, that neither man nor contemporary animals have been found, except in the surface soil, in superficial strata, or in rocky caverns. If man and contemporary animals existed in the early epochs of the globe's history, it is inconceivable that not one of these should have been found imbedded in the lower strata, which contain thousands of distinct species of animated beings. If the distribution of those remains had not been general in the same systems of strata, it might have been supposed that man, and contemporary animals, had escaped by being absent from the locality in which other species and genera perished. Or, if there only had been found a few remains of extinct species, it might have been supposed possible that so small a number of species, once the contemporaries of man, had gradually become extinct, since the period of the Adamic creation. But when the distribution is general, and nearly all the remains are of extinct species or genera, such an explanation cannot be entertained even for a moment.

But we are aware, it may still be asked, as indeed it lately has been, "Why might not God have created the crust of the earth just as it is, with all its numberless stratifications and diversified formations complete ?" The analogy for such an exercise of creative power is supposed to be found in the creation of Adam, not as an infant, but an adult, and in the production of the full-sized trees of Eden. Let us hear how Dr. Harris meets the objection. He says, "The reply is direct: the maturity of the first man and of the objects around him, could not deceive him by implying that they had slowly grown to that state. His first knowledge was the knowledge of the contrary. He lived partly to proclaim the fact of his creation. And could his own body, or any of the objects created at the same time, have been subjected to a physiological examination, they would, no doubt, have been found to indicate their miraculous production in their very destitution of all the traces of an early growth; whereas, the shell of the earth is a crowded storehouse of evidence of its gradual formation. So that the question, expressed in other language, amounts to this: Might not the God of infinite truth have enclosed in the earth at its creation evidences of its having existed ages before its actual production ? Of course the objector would disavow such a sentiment. But such appears to be the real import of the objection, and as such, it involves its own refutation."

In conclusion, we must advert to an inquiry as to what is the bearing of the geological discovery on the Mosaic account of the creation. Some individuals, we are aware (having, it would scem, a doubt as to the consonance of the Word of God with the works of God), have maintained that geology teaches one thing on this subject, and the Bible another. They maintain, for instance, that the Bible teaches the creation of the material universe on the first day mentioned by Moses, and that "the beginning" was the commencement of the first day of the Adamic creation. Others, of very much greater judgment, have maintained that the expression “in the beginning," designates the period of the origin of the materials of the Universe, but not the commencement of the first day. In support of this view, they adduce two distinct kinds of argument.

The first is based on the geological facts just referred to, which require the existence of an antiquity for the globe, and of the various extinct species of " organic remains," much greater than can be ascribed to the

origin of man, and of contemporaneous animated beings. The principle of this argument is, that the God of nature and the God of revelation must be consistent with each other, which could not be the case, if the words "in the beginning" were understood of the commencement of the first day of the Adamic creation; for in that case, many of the geological phenomena would be inconsistent with the interpretation given to the record.

The second argument is based on the critical construction of the passage which stands at the beginning of the Book of Genesis, which they render "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, but the earth was without form and void." Now they hold that the first part of the passage is an independent proposition, which simply announces the origin of the materials of the Universe at an indefinite period before the creation of man, and that the disjunctive "but" is employed to separate between the period of the origin of the Universe, and the commencement of that epoch when after the last great geological revolution, "the earth was without form and void,” and the Divine Being commenced that fashioning of material things, which had its completion in the last act of the six days.

To this it is objected, that in the Book of Exodus we are told "in six days God made the heavens and the earth." To which it is replied, that this must be understood as an allusion to the work of six days, which consisted in fashioning materials that in the "beginning" were brought into being out of non-existence. And further, they affirm, that the original word, in Exodus, is properly translated by the English words " to make" or "to model," while the original word for create in the first verse of Genesis signifies primarily creation out of nothing, in which sense it is understood by all parties in the passage under consideration. This is the ground on which Chalmers, Pye Smith, and Buckland, have defended revelation, and shown the accordance between the Mosaic record, and the modern discoveries in Geology.

But it has been intimated in some quarters that this is a forced interpretation, adopted for the purpose of making the writings of Moses harmonize with modern discovery, and parties adopting it are charged with being unduly biassed in favour of geology. Never was any thing more unfounded! The leading view in this interpretation has been taken, not only by Christians, but by some of the most learned of the Jewish commentators from the earliest times.

Professor Wiseman, in his lectures on Revealed Religion, has collected the views of the earliest Christian writers on the sense in which the first verse of the first chapter of Genesis is to be understood, and as those individuals must have been totally free from the influence of modern geological discoveries, perhaps even "A Disciple" will admit them to have been sufficiently unbiassed in the formation of their opinions. Dr. Wiseman, in alluding to these writers, says

St. Gregory Nazianzen, after St. Justin Martyr, supposes an indefinite period between the creation and the first ordering of all things. St. Basil, St. Cæsarius, and Origen, are much more explicit; for they account for the creation of light prior to that of the sun, by supposing this luminary to have before existed; yet so, as that its rays were prevented by the dense chaotic atmosphere from penetrating to the earth; and that this was, on the first day, so far rarefied as to allow of the transmission of the sun's rays, though not the discernment of its disk, which was fully displayed on the fourth day.

In like manner we find Calvin regarding the first verse in Genesis as an independent axiom; an opinion, in which he is followed and supported by Bishop Patrick. Dr. Jennings, alluding to this matter, says, "the Mosaic account does not seem to be designed for an account of the whole creation of God;" and Dr. Wardlaw, who, though one of the greatest men of the age,