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PREFACE.

AN apology is due to those through whose solicitations the following Lectures are published, for the delay which has attended their appearance. This delay has been occasioned, partly by circumstances entirely beyond the author's control, and partly from those additions to their original form, which the result of revision rendered indispensable.

In conducting our inquiries regarding the Age of the World, we have deemed it requisite to fortify the basis of our authority (the Scriptures) against the attacks alike of the Atheist, the Antiquarian, and the Infidel; refuting the alleged eternity of the existence of matter and of the globe, of the first—the claims of a vastly greater antiquity for the history of the human race than that given by Moses, of the second- and the denial of the authenticity of the Sacred Records, of the third. This part of the volume, contained in the "Introductory Essay," will, we trust, be found particularly serviceable to those whose minds are wan dering in the wilderness of uncertainty and conjecture on these important subjects.

Nor, in the prosecution of our inquiries into this matter, is it a little embarrassing to be brought into perpetual collision with the most inveterate prejudices on the one hand, and a certain class of existing facts,

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claiming affinity with the premises whence follow all our deductions on the other. To explain ourselves: The popular theology of the day attributes the creation and formation of the material universe, of which the globe we inhabit is a part, to the work of six natural or solar days, of twenty-four hours-and a strong suspicion of a tendency to Atheism attaches to every suggestion, calculated to disturb opinions which have been pillowed upon the lap of centuries.

This, however, to the contrary notwithstanding,-we feel bound to pay a respectful deference to facts, or what are even claimed to be such. It is asserted, then, in opposition to the above, that "if the world was really created in six days, we should find some evidences of it in the aspect of nature. Instead of this, we find, in the geognostic structure of the earth, the infallible proof of its having existed for (many) ages, and undergone many prodigious revolutions, long before the most ancient nations ex- › isted." These infallible proofs it is claimed, are to be found in the physiological and oryctological discoveries of science, "regarding the strata composing the outer shell of this globe, and the remains of organized bodies which are found in them. It is ascertained that these remains do not occur promiscuously, but in a determinate order, corresponding exactly with that which is given in the first chapter of Genesis" To test the validity of this claim, we undertook the task of a classification of the Mosaic cosmogony of the creation, with the series of strata as given in the geological table of Cuvier. The result the reader will

find by turning to pages 70 and 71. "Thus, human bones are only found in the uppermost, or very newest, alluvial soil. Further down are found the remains of quadrupeds, belonging to a species now extinct; these are mixed with sea shells and marine petrifactions. At a still lower depth are found the exuviæ of alligators, and other amphibious animals, of an appearance unlike any species that now exist; for they seem to have been deposited while the laws of nature, in the animal kingdom, admitted the metempsychosis, (alluded to in ancient tradition) anterior to the introduction of death. Deeper still are found immense beds of carbonaceous matter, which we know is the basis of vegetable substances. Lowest of all are found. strata of common rocks, containing no petrifactions, no traces of carbon. These rocks seem to have been formed when the world was covered by an uninhabited sea."

"From all these concurring argumeuts, it is coneluded that the work of creation occupied immeasurable ages, or ares; and that the vulgar hypothesis, which takes for granted that the earth, from the very beginning, spun round on its axis with its present amazing velocity, is not only unphilosophical, but expressly contrary to the word of God."

Now, these facts admitted (and deny them we cannot) I ask, of what avail is it to denounce their tendency as atheistical, from their supposed contravention of the Mosaic cosmogony? Is not this a premature surrendering up of what may be demonstrated of a coincidence of the Scriptural account of

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the creation with the above discoveries of science, to the vaunting triumphs of the materialist? We think so. And it has been our endeavor, in the sequel of the Introductory Essay, and of the first Lecture of this volume, to reconcile the claims of the one with the history of the other. How far we have been suc cessful, we leave with the candor of the intelligent to decide. Nor, (as we have said,) can we relinquish the hope, that such may be brought to see the utter impossibility of harmonizing the Scriptural cosmogony of the Creation as an inspired production, with the physiological discoveries of the structure of our globe, in any other way: yea more that science, as an handmaid to inspiration, by the rays of refraction, as collected from known existing phenomena in the physical construction of the earth, elucidates and confirms it. Indeed, science, when made subservient to any other end; in other words, when it is relied on as a guide in our search of truth to the exclusion of REVELATION, serves but to furnish evidence of the lamentable defectibility of human reason. On this subject, we are furnished with an inspired admonition, to "avoid profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science, FALSELY so called, which some professing, have erred concerning the faith." Ag

Such, in the sequel of this volume, we have considered the diluvian theory of Cuvier. Such also the theory, that the chaotic mass out of which this earth was formed, was produced by the destruction of one

Mods 1. 1 Tim. vi. 20, 21.

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