In short, whoever will thoroughly study this subject will be satisfied that Dr. Ehrenberg does not exceed the truth when he asserts, as the result of his inquiries, that “experience shows an unfathomableness of organic creations, when attention is directed to the smallest space, as it does of stars, when revealing the most immense.”—Prichard, p. 8.
He who follows out the revelations of the telescope, as it penetrates deeper and deeper into space, will feel, when he has seen the remotest object which its power discloses, that there must certainly be a vast unknown region beyond, infinitely exceeding that one over which he has passed. Just so is it with the microscope. It penetrates to an astonishing distance into the infinitesimal forms of organic and inorganic matter; but every improvement in the instrument reaches a new and equally interesting field; and the conclusion forces itself upon the mind that there are regions beyond of indefinite extent, teeming with countless millions even of organic beings, of a size much more diminutive than those yet discovered, and with inorganic forms too minute for the imagination to conceive. Indeed, we can no more set limits to creation in the direction pointed out by the microscope than in that laid open by the telescope. We hence get a most impressive conception of divine wisdom and benevolence, which could thus bestow exquisite organization and life upon atoms minute beyond the power of the imagination to conceive. Indeed, it seems to me that the lesson is even more striking than the contemplation of vast worlds in rapid and harmonious motion; because the latter seem to demand only infinite power, but the former requires infinite wisdom to direct infinite power.
In the seventh and last place, geology has given great enlargement to our knowledge of the divine plans and operations in the universe, and in the following particulars:—
1. It expands our ideas of the time in which the material universe has been in existence as much as astronomy does in regard to its extent.
To those not familiar with the details of geology, this will probably seem a startling and extravagant assertion. There has been, and still is, an extreme sensitiveness in the minds of intelligent men on this subject. And I highly respect the ground from which their apprehensions spring, viz., a fear that to admit the great antiquity of the globe would bring discredit upon revelation. And yet I believe the most candid and able theologians of the present day do not fear that to admit the existence of the matter of the world previous to the six days’ work of creation, is inconsistent with the Mosaic statement. But if we allow any period between its creation and the six demiurgic days, it is no more derogatory to Scripture to make that period ten millions of years than ten years. For if the sacred writer would pass over ten years in silence, he could, with the same propriety, pass over ten millions. Now, the longer I study geology, the nearer do my ideas approximate to the latter number as a measure of the earth’s duration. Let us contemplate a few facts. We are able to trace the geological changes that have taken place on the earth since man’s existence upon it with a good deal of accuracy. For since his remains are found only in alluvium, we must regard all changes that took place previous to the deposition of that formation to have been of an earlier date than his creation. Now, what are the changes which the last six thousand years have witnessed? In some places, the agency of rivers and other causes have made an accumulation of alluvial matter to the depth of not more than one or two hundred feet, although in particular places it is several hundred feet. These deposits have been pushed forward at the mouths of some large rivers, so as to cover hundreds, and even thousands, of square miles. Oceanic currents have also made deposits in the bottom of wide seas of considerable extent; and in some limited spots these deposits have been consolidated into rock. The action of frost and gravity, also, has crumbled from precipitous ledges angular fragments enough to form a slope of detritus sometimes a hundred feet high. The polyparia, or coral builders, have advanced their work only a few feet in thickness during this period, and soils have accumulated in some places about as much. Volcanic action has occasionally thrown up a new island from the ocean’s bed; but only a few of them have been permanent. Some tracts of country, in no case more than a few hundred miles in extent, have, by the same agency, been raised a few feet, or sunk down the same amount. But after all, the earth’s surface remains essentially the same as when man was placed upon it.
Now, compare these slight changes with those which have preceded it, through the operation of the same agencies, since the first existence of animals upon the globe. I will not contend, with some distinguished geologists, that these same changes have always operated with the same intensity as at present. But there are several circumstances which show that the depositions from water could not have been essentially different in ancient and modern times. Now, just compare six or eight miles in thickness of the fossiliferous deposits of the previous periods with the two hundred feet of alluvium accumulated during the historic period; and, after you have made all reasonable allowance for the greater intensity of action in former times, you will still find yourselves confounded by the incalculable time requisite to pile up such an immense thickness of materials, and then to harden most of them into stone; especially when you call to mind the numerous changes of organic life, and the vast amount of animal remains which they exhibit. A superficial observer might lump such a work, and crowd it into a few thousand years. But the more its details are studied, the longer does the period appear that is requisite for its production. Each successive investigation discovers new evidence of changes in composition, or organic contents, or of vertical movements effected by extremely slow agencies, so as to make the whole work immeasurably long.
But when we have gone back to the commencement of animal existence on the globe, we have taken but one step in our review of its early history. The next backward step embraces that wide period during which the stratified, non-fossiliferous rocks—far thicker than the fossiliferous—were deposited; probably by the agency of fire and water. Or if we adopt the metamorphic theory of Mr. Lyell, we shall be still more deeply impressed by the length of that period, during which these rocks were in a course of deposition, consolidation, and metamorphosis. For he supposes them originally deposited from water, just as mud, sand, and gravel now are accumulating in the ocean’s bed, and to have enveloped organic beings, as similar materials now do. Next the whole were consolidated, so as to form the exact prototype of the existing fossiliferous rocks; and finally it underwent almost complete fusion, by the slow propagation of internal heat upwards, until all the organic contents were obliterated, and a crystalline structure was substituted. Nay, according to this theory, other systems of rocks, of an analogous character, may have preceded the present primary stratified ones, and have been at length entirely melted into the unstratified; so that we cannot say when organic life first began on the globe. But I will not press this theory, because most of the ablest geologists reject it, at least in its full extent. And we have a period long enough to confound the imagination, if we take the common view, which supposes the non-fossiliferous rocks to have been deposited from water, at a temperature too high to admit the existence of organic beings.
We have now gone back to that point in the earth’s history when a crust had begun to form over the shoreless ocean of melted matter, of which we have reason to suppose it was then composed. Shall we attempt to trace back that history any farther? The light does, indeed, grow dim, and the clew more and more uncertain, the farther we recede along the track of the earth’s existence. Still there are some scattered rays that seem to recall to us a condition of the earth still earlier than that in which it constituted a molten globe. It may have been dissipated into vapor, like a comet, or a nebula; and subsequently, by the slow radiation of its heat, have been condensed into an opaque, though a melted, incandescent mass. Several analogies certainly throw an air of plausibility over this hypothesis. And if such was, indeed, the earliest condition of the earth, the time requisite to condense it into melted matter must have been longer than any other period of its history.
Who, now, at all familiar with the dynamics of geological agencies, shall undertake to give an arithmetical expression to the periods that make up the world’s entire history? Not only does the reasoning faculty fail to grasp the entire sum, but even imagination, as she flies backwards through period after period, tires in the effort, and brings back not even a conjectural result. The same feeling does, in fact, come over the mind, which she experiences when astronomy has hurried her from world to world, from sun to sun, from system to system, from nebula to nebula, and yet she seems no nearer to the limits of creation than when she started. We know certainly that there are limits; because matter cannot be infinite. But we cannot conjecture where they are fixed. We know, also that there was a time when this world did not exist, an epoch when its entire mass was spoken into existence by the fiat of Jehovah; because the Bible expressly declares it. But that epoch is unrevealed. If there is any truth in geology, it was certainly more than six thousand years ago. Nay, that science carries us as far back into the arcana of time as astronomy does into the arcana of space. Neither the distance in the one case, nor the duration in the other, can be estimated. But there is a sublime inspiration in the effort to grasp the subject; and I see not why there is not as much grandeur and high gratification in the idea of vast duration as of vast expansion. And I see not why we do not gain as much enlargement of our conceptions of the plans of Jehovah respecting the universe in the one case as in the other. We cannot but infer, from the pre-Adamic state of our world, that it must have subserved other purposes than to sustain its present inhabitants.
2. In the second place, geology gives us impressive examples of the extent of organic life on the globe since its creation.