Geology and Revelation / or, the Ancient History of the Earth, considered in the geological facts and revealed religion.

by Gerald Molloy

With this sketch of Geological Chronology before us, we can now more fully realize to our minds the story we are told about the formation of the Earth’s Crust. In the earliest age to which Geologists can trace back the history of the Aqueous Rocks—for they do not profess to trace it back to the beginning—this Globe of ours was, as it is now, partly covered with water, and partly dry land. The formation of stratified rocks went on in that age, as it is still going on, chiefly over those areas that were under water—not indeed throughout the entire extent of such areas, but over certain portions of them to which mineral matter happened to be carried by the action of natural causes. And the Earth was peopled then as now, though with animals and plants very different from those by which we are surrounded at the present day. Some of these happened to escape destruction, and to be embedded in the deposits of that far distant age, and have thus been preserved even to our time. And these strata with their Fossils are the same that we now group together under the title of the Laurentian Formation: which being the oldest group of stratified rocks we can recognize in the depths of the Earth’s Crust, occupies the lowest position in our table of Chronology. Ages rolled on; and the Crust of the Earth was moved from within by some giant force, the bed of the ocean was lifted up in one place, islands and continents were submerged in another, and so the outlines of land and water were changed. With this change the old forms of life passed away; a new creation came in; and the Laurentian period gave place to the Cambrian. But the order of nature was still the same as before. The deposition of stratified rocks still continued, though the areas of deposition were, in many cases, shifted from one locality to another. And the organic life that flourished in the Cambrian times left its memorials behind it buried in the Cambrian rocks. Then that age, too, came to an end, and gave place in its turn to the Silurian: and this was, again, followed by the Devonian. Thus one period succeeded to another in the order set forth in our table; and every part of the globe was, in the course of ages, more than once submerged, and covered with the deposits of more than one age, and enriched with the Organic Remains of more than one creation.

As we advance upward in the series of Formations we soon perceive that the Fossil Remains, which, in the earlier groups were scanty enough, become profusely abundant, until even the unpractised eye cannot fail to mark the peculiar character of each successive period;—the exuberant vegetation of the Carboniferous, with its luxuriant herbage and its tangled forests, its huge pines, its tall tree-ferns, and its stately araucarias: the enormous creeping monsters of the Jurassic, the ichthyosaurs, the megalosaurs, the iguanodons, which filled its seas, or crowded its plains, or haunted its rivers; and higher up in the scale, the colossal quadrupeds of the Miocene and the Pliocene, the mammoths, the mastodons, the megatheriums, which begin to approximate more closely to the organic types of our own age. But amidst these various forms of life, the eye looks in vain for any relic of human kind. No bone of man, no trace of human intelligence, is to be found in any bed of rock that belongs to the Primary, Secondary, or Tertiary Formations. It is only when we have passed all these, and come to the latest formation of the whole series, nay, it is only in the uppermost beds of this Formation, that we meet, for the first time, with human bones, and the works of human art.

Thus it appears pretty plain, even from the testimony of Geology, that man was the last work of the creation; and that, if the world is old, the human race is comparatively young. These broken and imperfect records, which have been so curiously preserved in the Crust of the Earth, carry us back to an antiquity which may not be measured by years and centuries, and then set before us, as in a palpable form, how the tender herbage appeared, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit according to its kind; and how the Earth was afterward peopled with great creeping things, and winged fowl, and the cattle, and the beasts of the field; and then, at length, they disclose to us how, last of all, man appeared, to whom all these things seem to tend, and who was to have dominion over the fish of the sea, and the fowl of the air, and every living thing that moveth upon the earth. We do not mean to dwell just now upon this view of the history of creation so clearly displayed in the records of Geology. But we shall return to it hereafter when we come in the sequel to consider how admirably the genuine truths of this science fit in with the inspired narrative of Moses.

It may here, very naturally, be asked, if the records of Geology give us any information as to the manner in which each period of animal and vegetable life was brought to an end? Did the old organic forms gradually die out, and the new gradually come in to take their places? or were the one suddenly extinguished and the others as suddenly produced? This question has been a subject of controversy among Geologists themselves; and therefore it is somewhat outside our scope, since we propose to exhibit only that more general outline of Geological theory which is accepted by all. Nevertheless, as it is a question that must needs occur to the mind of every reader, it seems to call for a few words of explanation as we pass along. In the early days of Geology, it was commonly held that each great period was brought to an end by a sudden and violent convulsion of Nature. The Crust of the Earth was burst open in many places all at once; the bottom of the ocean was upheaved with a tremendous shock; the waters, driven from their accustomed bed, rushed with furious impetuosity over islands and continents; and the whole existing creation perished in a universal deluge. Then succeeded an interval of chaotic confusion, and when at length the waters subsided, and dry land again appeared, a new age in the history of the Globe was ushered in, and the Earth was again peopled by a new creation.

But this old theory has gradually given way as the Stratified Rocks have been more and more fully examined, and at the present day it is almost universally abandoned. Geologists have observed that the same species of Fossil Remains which prevail in the upper beds of one Formation, are met with also in the lower beds of the next, though in less numbers and mixed up with new species; and that, as we ascend higher and higher into the later Formation, the old species gradually become more and more scarce, while the new gradually become more and more numerous; until at length the characteristic forms of one age have disappeared altogether, and those of the succeeding age have attained their full development.

For this important fact, which was brought to light within the last half century, we are mainly indebted to the unwearied researches and great ability of Sir Charles Lyell. Speaking of the Formations of the Tertiary Epoch, to which, as is well known, he has principally devoted himself, this distinguished writer thus sums up the result of his long investigation:—“In passing from the older to the newer members of the Tertiary system we meet with many chasms, but none which separate entirely, by a broad line of demarkation, one state of the organic world from another. There are no signs of an abrupt termination of one fauna and flora, and the starting into life of new and wholly distinct forms. Although we are far from being able to demonstrate geologically an insensible transition from the Eocene to the Miocene, or even from the latter to the recent fauna, yet the more we enlarge and perfect our general survey, the more nearly do we approximate to such a continuous series, and the more gradually are we conducted from times when many of the genera and nearly all the species were extinct, to those in which scarcely a single species flourished which we do not know to exist at present.”[86] Hence he concludes, and his conclusion is now the common doctrine of Geologists, that the extinction and creation of species has been “the result of a slow and gradual change in the organic world.”[87]

It was long argued against this view, that we often meet, especially in the Primary and Secondary Formations, two groups of strata in immediate contact, in which there is a perfectly sudden transition from one set of Fossil Remains to another altogether different. Each group contains a countless variety of species, and yet there is not a single species common to the two. Does it not appear that in such a case the organic life of one period was suddenly destroyed, and that of the next as suddenly introduced? Not so; there is one link wanting in the argument. It must be shown that these two strata which are now in immediate contact were originally deposited in immediate succession. But this it is impossible to prove: nay, it must needs be very often false. We have before observed that the areas of deposition were limited in every age, and were ever shifting from one locality to another. Therefore it must have been a frequent occurrence that, after one bed of rock was formed, the process of deposition ceased altogether in that locality, and did not begin again for many ages. Thus a long lapse of time often intervened between the deposition of two strata, which were laid out one immediately above the other. Furthermore, we have also seen that whole groups of strata may in any age be swept away by Denudation; and then the rocks which are next deposited in that locality, will be in immediate contact with strata indefinitely more ancient than themselves. From these considerations it is plain that two groups of strata which are now found in juxtaposition, may have been deposited in two Geological ages widely remote from each other. And consequently a sudden transition from the Organic Life of one group to the Organic Life of the other affords no proof of a sudden transition from the Organic Life of one Geological Period to the Organic Life of that which next succeeded. We may observe, however, that the recent researches, which have contributed so much to fill up the interstices of the Geological Calendar, have conduced in no small degree to fill up likewise some of the more remarkable gaps or chasms in the succession of Organic Life. It is, therefore, not unreasonable to suppose that, as our knowledge of the Earth’s Crust becomes more and more minute, the sudden breaks in the continuity of the scale will be still further diminished and the successive stages of gradual transition will be made more clearly apparent.

This subject has been very happily illustrated by Sir Charles Lyell:—“To make still more clear the supposed working of this machinery [for the deposition of Stratified Rocks and the preservation of Organic Remains], I shall compare it to a somewhat analogous case that might be imagined to occur in the history of human affairs. Let the mortality of the population of a large country represent the successive extinction of species, and the birth of new individuals, the introduction of new species. While these fluctuations are gradually taking place everywhere, suppose commissioners to be appointed to visit each province of the country in succession, taking an exact account of the number, names, and individual peculiarities of all the inhabitants, and leaving in each district a register containing a record of this information. If, after the completion of one census, another is immediately made on the same plan, and then another, there will, at last, be a series of statistical documents in each province. When these belonging to any one province are arranged in chronological order, the contents of such as stand next to each other will differ according to the length of time between the taking of each census. If, for example, there are sixty provinces, and all the registers are made in a single year, and renewed annually, the number of births and deaths will be so small in proportion to the whole of the inhabitants, during the interval between the compiling of two consecutive documents, that the individuals described in such documents will be nearly identical; whereas, if the survey of each of the sixty provinces occupies all the commissioners for a whole year, so that they are unable to revisit the same place until the expiration of sixty years, there will then be an almost entire discordance between the persons enumerated in two consecutive registers in the same province.

“But I must remind the reader that the case above proposed has no pretentions to be regarded as an exact parallel to the Geological phenomena which I desire to illustrate; for the commissioners are supposed to visit the different provinces in rotation; whereas the commemorating processes by which organic remains become fossilized, although they are always shifting from one area to the other, are yet very irregular in their movements. They may abandon and revisit many spaces again and again, before they once approach another district; and besides this source of irregularity, it may often happen that, while the depositing process is suspended, Denudation may take place, which may be compared to the occasional destruction by fire or other causes of some of the statistical documents before mentioned. It is evident that where such accidents occur, the want of continuity in the series may become indefinitely great, and that the monuments which follow next in succession will by no means be equi-distant from each other in point of time.

“If this train of reasoning be admitted, the occasional distinctness of the fossil remains, in formations immediately in contact, would be a necessary consequence of the existing laws of sedimentary deposition and subterranean movement, accompanied by a constant mortality and renovation or species.”[88]