ned in their favor. We find him thus
summing up a general survey of the mountains of the globe:--"Look upon
these great ranges: in what confusion do they lie! They have neither
form nor beauty, nor shape, nor order, no more than the clouds in the
air. Then, how barren, how desolate, how naked are they! How they stand
neglected by nature! Neither the rains can soften them, nor the dews
from heaven make them fruitful. I give this short survey of the
mountains of the earth _to help to remove that prejudice we are apt to
have_, or that conceit that the present earth is regularly formed....
There is nothing in nature," adds this writer, "more shapeless and
ill-figured than an old rock or a mountain."

I leave it to my audience to determine how far this depreciatory
view,--whether regarded as that of Dr. Burnet or of the modern
anti-geologist,--agrees with the estimate of the higher minds, or
whether it manifests the proper respect for the adorable Being who, in
his infinite wisdom, made our world what it is. Let me next show that
some of even the abler and more respectable anti-geologists exhibit no
very profound veneration for the letter of Scripture, when, instead of
bearing, as they think, against the deductions of their opponents, they
find it directly opposed to fancies of their own. It is held by not a
few among them, that at the Deluge the sea and land changed places. When
the waters receded, it was found, they allege, that the old land had
become ocean, and the old ocean had become land; and as there are
certain rivers which are described in Scripture as flowing beside Eden,
and which, judging by the names given them, still exist, it has become
imperative on the assertors of the hypothesis to show that the rivers
which now drain tracts of what they hold was then sea, and that fall
into seas which they hold were then land, could not by any possibility
have formed the boundaries of the old Adamic garden. Let us mark how Mr.
Granville Penn,--certainly one of the most extensively informed of his
class,--deals with this difficulty.[41] There are, he argues, certain
great corruptions of Scripture. What had been at first written as
marginal notes by uninspired men, and were in some cases very erroneous
and absurd, came in the course of transcription to be transferred,
wholly by mistake, from the side of the page into the body of the text;
and thus, in at least a few places, the Scriptures were vitiated, and
now declare, ins