It would unquestionably require a great length of time for the thinest of crusts to form on such a globe; long ages for the immense clouds of gases and vapors in which the mass revolved to be separated into oceans and atmosphere. Then followed upheavals from the ocean's bed, some gradual, some abrupt—the mountains appeared, bleak and bare, dripping only with the ocean's slime. Then came the action of atmosphere and floods of rain upon them. Mountains were melted down and valleys formed. Then followed depressions and more upheavals; vast quantities of the interior lava were thrown to the surface through immense rents in the earth's thin crust, and in time cooled. The ocean receded here and advanced there, mountain chains, islands and continents were as unstable as clouds, when viewed in geological time. Constantly the earth's crust grew thicker and more stable as the mass of molten matter within was more securely confined.
In time vegetation appeared and so did animal life. Still the operation of depression and elevation went on, as is evident from the fact that imbedded in various strata of the earth's crust, at great depths, are found the remains of animals whose species is long extinct; while on mountain tops are found imbedded in rocks in the region of perpetual snow the fossil remains of animals that only inhabit the ocean.
All these changes, necessarily gradual and slow, require periods of time so vast that the finite mind fails to grasp them. The book of nature, made up of the earth's crust, turn to what page of it you will, "tells us of effects of such magnitude as imply prodigiously long periods of time for their accomplishment. Its moments look to us as if they were eternities. What shall we say when we read in it that there are fossiliferous rocks which have been slowly raised ten thousand feet above the level of the sea so lately as since the commencement of the Tertiary times? * * * That, since a forest in a thousand years can scarce produce more than two or three feet of vegetable soil, each dirt-bed is the work of hundreds of centuries? What shall we say when it tells us that the delta of the Mississippi could only be formed in many tens of thousands of years, and yet that is only as yesterday when compared with the date of the inland terraces? * * * If the depression of the carboniferous strata of Nova Scotia took place at the rate of four feet in a century, there were demanded 375,000 years for its completion—such a movement in the upward direction would have raised Mount Blanc. * * * It would take as great a river as the Mississippi millions of years to convey into the Gulf of Mexico as much sediment as is found in those strata. Such statements may appear to us, who with difficulty shake off the absurdities of the patristic chronology, wild and impossible to be maintained, and yet they are the conclusions that the most learned and profound geologists draw from their reading of the book of nature."[[24]]
While not accepting all the conclusions of geologists, and certainly not all their speculations—because they do not know what conditions have existed in the past, nor can they be sure that the forces which they now see operating are the only ones that have operated in all past time—yet the evidence is very clear that the earth has a much greater age than was attributed to it by the orthodox explanations of the scriptural accounts of creation. It is now generally conceded that the six creative days spoken of in Genesis are not six ordinary days, but six long creative periods. So strong is the proof of the great age of the earth, however absurd some of the conjectures of geologists may be considered, that no one undertakes to dispute it.
Thus the ideas of men as to the relation of the earth in time as well as its relation in space have been completely changed within the last century. Illimitable ages of duration corresponding to infinite space, leads up to a grander conception of the universe and prepares the mind for a better comprehension of God and his works.
So far I have considered these changes in the ideas of men relative to the universe as they have been affected by the researches of scientists and speculative philosophers. It now remains to show that while these philosophers have been plodding their way through slow discovery and precarious conjecture towards the truth; wholly apart from them and independent of them, there sprang into existence a philosophy pertaining to duration, space, matter, the earth's place in the universe, the universe itself, the relation of man therein and the Gods which, while running parallel with the truths that scientists have discovered, goes far beyond them, and demonstrates a divine inspiration as its source.
Footnotes
[1]. "Intellectual Development of Europe" (Draper), Vol. ii. pp. 252-4.
[2]. "Intellectual Development," Vol ii. p. 255.
[3]. "Newcomb's Popular Astronomy," Introduction, p. 6.