torrents--hundreds of millions
of ages would not effect the work. But if the earth was created in such
a shape as would rationally be considered the best adapted for future
stratification; if its crust consisted of the various elements of which
granite and other rocks are composed; if these materials were ejected in
a granular or comminuted form, and in vast quantities by submarine
volcanoes generated by the chemical action of these elements upon each
other; and if, after being diffused by the currents of the ocean, and
consolidated by its vast pressure, the underlying strata were baked and
melted and crystallized into granite[361]--a very few centuries would
suffice. Until these indispensable preliminaries are settled, geology
can make no calculations of the length of time occupied by the formation
of the strata."

But instead of saying so, he _imagines_ that God chose to make the earth
out of the most impossible materials, by the most unsuitable agencies,
and with the most inadequate forces; and that therefore a long time was
needed for the work. In short, to revert to our illustration of the
house-building, he _supposes_ that Almighty God built the earth with the
ox-team, and employed only the same force in erecting the building,
which he now uses for doing little jobbing repairs. Almost all
geological computations of time are made upon the supposition that only
the same agents were at work then which we see now, that they only
wrought with the same degree of force, and that they produced just the
same effects in such a widely different condition of the earth as then
prevailed. It takes a year say to deposit mud enough at the bottom of
the sea to make an inch of rock now; _and if mud was deposited no
faster_ when the geological strata were formed, they are as many years
old as there are inches in eight or nine miles depth of strata. But this
is not the scientific proof we were promised. How does he prove that mud
was deposited at just the same rate then as now? The very utmost he can
say is that it is a very probable supposition. I can prove it a very
improbable supposition. But it is enough for my present purpose to point
out that, probable or improbable, it is _only supposition_. No proof is
given or can possibly be given for it. Any conclusion drawn from such
premises can be only a _supposition_ too. And so the whole fabric of
geological chronology, upon the stability of which so many Infidels are
risking the sal