o which the
rocky archives of the earth extend. Respecting the origin of these
general laws and arrangements, or the condition of the earth before
they originated, it knows nothing. In like manner a botanist may
determine the age of a forest by counting the growth rings of the
oldest trees, but he can tell nothing of the forests that may have
preceded it, or of the condition of the surface before it supported a
forest. So the archaeologist may on Egyptian monuments read the names
and history of successive dynasties of kings, but he can tell nothing
of the state of the country and its native tribes before those
dynasties began or their monuments were built. Yet geology at least
establishes a probability that a time was when organized beings did
not exist, and when many of the arrangements of the surface of our
earth had not been perfected; and the few facts which have given birth
to the theories promulgated on this subject tend to show that this
pre-geological condition of the earth may have been such as that
described in the words now under consideration. I may remark, in
addition, that if the words of Moses imply the cooling of the globe
from a molten or intensely heated state down to a temperature at which
water could exist on its surface, the known rate of cooling of bodies
of the dimensions and materials of the earth shows that the time
included in these two verses of Genesis must have been enormous,
amounting it may be to many millions of years.

There are two other sciences besides geology which have in modern
times attempted to penetrate into the mysteries of the primitive
abyss, at least by hypothetical explanations--astronomy and chemistry.
The magnificent nebular hypothesis of La Place, which explains the
formation of the whole solar system by the condensation of a revolving
mass of gaseous matter, would manifestly bring our earth to the
condition of a fluid body, with or without a solid crust, and
surrounded by a huge atmosphere of its more volatile materials,
gradually condensing itself around the central nucleus. Chemistry
informs us that this vaporous mass would contain not only the
atmospheric air and water, but all the carbon, sulphur, phosphorus,
chlorine, and other elements, volatile in themselves, or forming
volatile compounds with oxygen or hydrogen, that are now imprisoned in
various states of combination in the solid crust of the earth. Such an
atmosphere--vast, dark, pestilential, and capable in