ver us: they do not
extend into the _yesterday_ of the globe, far less touch the myriads of
ages spread out beyond. Dr. Chalmers had taught, more than a quarter of
a century previous to this time, that the Scriptures do not fix the
antiquity of the earth. "If they fix anything," he said, "it is only the
antiquity of the human species." The Doctor, though not practically a
geologist at the time, had shrewdly weighed both the evidence adduced
and the scientific character of the men who adduced it, and arrived at a
conclusion, in consequence, which may now be safely regarded as the
final one. I, on the other hand, who knew comparatively little about the
standing of the geologists, or the weight which ought to attach to their
testimony, based my findings regarding the vast antiquity of the earth
on exactly the data on which they had founded theirs; and the more my
acquaintance with the geologic deposits has since extended, the firmer
have my convictions on the subject become, and the more pressing and
inevitable have I felt the ever-growing demand for longer and yet longer
periods for their formation. As certainly as the sun is the centre of
our system, must our earth have revolved around it for millions of
years. An American theologian, the author of a little book entitled the
"Epoch of Creation," in doing me the honour of referring to my
convictions on this subject, states, that I "betray indubitable tokens
of being spell-bound to the extent of infatuation, by the foregone
conclusion of" my "theory concerning the high antiquity of the earth,
and the succession of animal and vegetable creations." He adds further,
in an eloquent sentence, a page and a half long, that had I first
studied and credited my Bible, I would have failed to believe in
successive creations and the geologic chronology. I trust, however, I
may say I did first study and believe my Bible. But such is the
structure of the human mind, that, save when blinded by passion or
warped by prejudice, it must yield an involuntary consent to the force
of evidence; and I can now no more refuse believing, in opposition to
respectable theologians such as Mr. Granville Penn, Professor Moses
Stuart, and Mr. Eleazar Lord, that the earth is of an antiquity
incalculably vast, than I can refuse believing, in opposition to still
more respectable theologians, such as St. Augustine, Lactantius, and
Turretine, that it has antipodes, and moves round the sun. And further,
of this,