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By
S. S.
No. 1.
Introductory Remarks
In
an age when practical infidelity marches hand in
hand with theoretical religion—when all that is
ancient and holy must submit to a synthetical or
analytical test—when faith is considered as the
dream of childhood, and religion a whim or a
prejudice—to enable us to controvert opinions
advanced with so much confidence and temerity, we
must go back to first principles, and examine our
religious edifice, and see whether, after enduring
unfalteringly for ages the attacks of bigotry and
oppression, its foundations have become as weak as
the doubtful and faint-hearted would seem to
imagine.
These doubts or fears would never exist, nor do they
exist, except in the minds of those who build up
their happiness upon the hopes and joys of a
temporal existence, who, whilst they devote at least
a third part of their earthly days to fit them for
(what they term) the duties of this life, seem to
forget that some little preparation is required to
qualify them for the <<243>> position in which they
may wish to be placed in the world to come.
But, notwithstanding the preponderance we give to
those pursuits that tend merely to an earthly
advancement, we cannot deny that, if there be a
future existence, in which we are to take part, the
contemplation of that future state must be of the
first importance to us; and if this future state is
an eternal, and not a temporary one, we should bring
to bear on it all the light that a calm judgment and
a cultivated understanding can produce.
‘Tis useless to repeat the various arguments adduced
from nature and experience to prove the necessity of
a self-existent Creator. The self-love of the most
reckless would rise up in indignation if he were
told that his actions proclaimed him a practical
infidel; but, as mankind are divided in their ideas
regarding the Supreme, and the duty we owe Him,
religion professes to teach these truths,—and the
truth of religion is the theme of our present
investigation. We may talk as long as we please
about a natural or innate religion—the arguments
upon which the assumption of a natural religion were
based received their quietus long since, by a writer
(whose name I do no recollect) who compared the
different unrevealed religions existing amongst
different races of mankind, and deduced from this
comparison that, if one tribe or sect bowed down in
adoration before senseless stone, and considered it
no evil to feast upon a brother man, whilst others
considered it sinful to eat of the flesh of the
beasts of the field, which they held as objects of
worship, if indeed there was a natural, innate
religion, climate and place must have a great
influence over it.
The religion, then, that existing records prove to
be the first revealed, demands our first
consideration; and, if the proofs of its
authenticity are unimpeachable, and it does not
recognise either time or change in its dogmas, our
investigation will end with its examination.
The doctrines of the first religion professing to be
revealed are contained in the book which we call the
Law, claiming to have been written by Moses, the son
of Amram, and gives us a history of the creation of
this planet, at a period dating back
<<244>> about
5,600 years, together with certain laws, proclaimed
at Sinai and other places, relating to our duties
towards God and each other. The argument that the
world existed eternally, and was only fitted for the
subsistence of man at the time named as the
commencement of its history, will not bear the test
of criticism, because time and eternity are so
distinct in their
natures that they can never be blended together.
Eternal is without commencement; and, were we to
commence walking upon a road which had no beginning,
how should we arrive at any fixed point upon it?
Existence, then, is this road; 5,611 is a point upon
it; and, consequently, no matter how far distant
this beginning was, it did begin, or we could never
have arrived at the place or point we now occupy.
As
this truth, then, is admitted, that the earth was
created, and not a self-existent body, and as
profane history alludes to a universal deluge, which
the Bible places in the year 1656, A. M., it is only
necessary here to examine the period preceding that
deluge, and see if it was of a sufficient duration
to allow the various natural phenomena to develope
themselves. It will appear to all reasoning minds
that the compiler of the Bible deemed the moral and
civil laws, and the duties of man, of the first
importance to us; for, whilst nearly five whole
books are devoted to the detail of these, six
chapters only contain the account of the creation
and the history of mankind to the deluge. These six
chapters convey to us little more than a statement
of facts in a chronological order. It is affirmed by
some that the six days of creation relate to six
periods, and not days in our sense of the word and
geologists go so far as to say that the earth itself
presents facts capable of a mathematical
demonstration, which prove that it must have
existed for indefinite periods of years—that prior
to the formation of man, it must have undergone
numerous and violent changes, each succeeded by a
long period of calm and repose.*
It
is not necessary here to enumerate the various
series of which each strata composing the crust of
the earth is composed; sufficient for our purpose to
state <<245>> that each series appears in regular
order, and so far, though part of the intervening
numbers of a series may be altogether wanting, a
higher number has never been found beneath a lower
number of the order, or, the reverse. That, from the
appearance which these rocky strata present, (with
the exception of the primary, composed of hard and
crystallized rocks, such as granite, &c.,) they must
have been at one time in a state of solution, and
deposited in a horizontal position, on a level
foundation, submerged beneath the sea, which, it is
supposed, at some period of time, to have changed
its bed. That the upper series of these strata
contain shells and other fossil remains, the species
to which they belong having become extinct,*
probably long before the creation of man; and it is
only in the uppermost series of all that there are
any remains of animals or plants identical with
those now in existence. That the rocks composing the
primary strata must have been forced upward by
volcanic or other violent action, in a soft or
melted state, after the formation of the secondary
and upper strata, as appears by their present
position, having in most cases thrown the
superincumbent strata upward, and shooting between
its various layers. That, as no similar strata have
been formed within the cognizance of history, nor
any commotions† capable of bringing to the
<<246>>
earth’s surface the primary rocks now existing have
occurred, it must be at once apparent that their
formation took place at a period prior to that at
which we date the creation.
Surely, if the theory admits of a mathematical
demonstration, there must be some vast field where
these missing parts of the various strata have been
collected together, yet unexplored, and well worthy
of the researches of modern geologists—not that we
intend to throw doubt upon the useful truths that
geology presents; for, if the whole theory was
proved, it would not invalidate the truth of
biblical history (as I will show hereafter), but
merely to suggest that those who labour in the
investigation of this science may sometimes arrive
at false conclusions. It is not long since it was “a
received opinion among certain geologists that the
first animals which were created were of an
exceeding simple structure, that they gradually
became more complex in their frame, and at last the
highly complicated mechanism of the human body was
the completion of those repeated efforts of nature
towards perfection.” It was farther “maintained that
there had been an uninterrupted succession in the
animal kingdom, effected by means of generation,
from the earliest ages of the world to the present
day; that new species and transformations have been
gradually produced by the growth of new parts,
originating from certain efforts of the animal to
fulfill particular instincts (such as the foot of a
bird becoming webbed, from repeated efforts to
swim); and that the ancient animals, which we find
in a fossil state, however different in structure
they may be, were fact the ancestors of those now
living.” Did we carry this argument back, we might
say that <<247>> these first simple creations were
produced by matter striving to become something that
it was not before; or still farther, that matter
itself was produced by something which had a desire
to be something else. But the fallacy of such
reasoning fortunately was proved by the microscope,
and those forms whose supposed simple structure was
said to have belonged to an earlier creation, have
been proved to possess as complex a mechanism as
those of a later day; and from the infusoria, only
apparent to our sight through the aid of a powerful
magnifier, up to man himself, are forms to be found
of such a complicated nature that they could not
have existed except through the power of an
Omnipotent Creator.
Although, from the laconic account of the creation
contained in the first chapter of Genesis, it is
impossible to decide whether those five periods,
called days, preceding the creation of animals or
man, were of the length of twenty-four of our hours,
or not it must be presumed that, from the moment the
earth commenced her diurnal course, they were of
that length, and either that she did not revolve on
her axis until the creation was completely finished,
or that she commenced to do so as soon as the sun
was placed in the firmament of heaven, prior to the
creation of animal life. The periods before the
existence of the sun being measured by a different
method (for the earth could not be governed by the
sun prior to its existence, unless it had a rotary
motion given to it at the time of its creation),
might have been of a very long duration; but, as no
animal life existed then, this view would give no
support to the geological theory.
It
seems to me, however, that too little importance has
been given by geologists to the immense change that
must have been effected in the crust of the earth by
so powerful an instrument as was the deluge, “when
all the fountains of the great deep were broken up,
and the windows of heaven were opened,” and the
waters extended upwards fifteen cubits above the
highest mountains. We see in our day the whole
outward face of nature changed by a flood or an
earthquake,—but what a pigmy power are these, when
compared to the mighty deluge! When the fountains of
the deep were broken up, its crustaceous inhabitants
that found no safety in flight might well have left
their shells, <<248>> to gratify the curiosity of
modern science and, though the sea might have
returned no more to its ancient beds, the fragments
of mountains, torn from their place of rest, and
beaten small by the tremendous currents, together
with the vast body of matter held in solution by the
accumulated waters, might, upon settling as the
waters were dried up, have formed upon the ancient
burial grounds of the ocean (for I suppose the
inhabitants of the sea are no less mortal than those
of the land) the upper strata (the ancient bottom of
the ocean forming the secondary), as it now exists.
If the primary strata did not exist previously,
there were sufficient agencies at work to have
produced it then; for is it to be supposed that,
whilst the face of outward nature was undergoing so
complete a destruction, no internal throes agitated
its bosom?
But to go back to our argument—if we say it was
necessary that the world should undergo certain
changes and progressions to fit it for the abode of
man,* we at once circumscribe the power of his Maker
for, if we base our reasoning upon the rules of
analysis, that certain results are produced by
certain and strictly defined causes, how are we to
reconcile man’s being and creation? Instead of
having been created in the full vigour of manhood,
he should have first undergone the successive stages
of infancy, childhood, and youth and, as experience
teaches us that the vegetable kingdom is governed by
the same progressive laws, therefore the acorn must
have preceded the mighty oak of the forest. But as
we have shown that the fallacy of the first ideas
deduced from the earlier investigations in geology
have been proven, may we not suppose that later
examinations and a higher <<249>> degree of science
may place its truths side by side with those of the
Bible, without giving a forced construction to the
details of the latter, which, by ascribing all
things to an Omnipotent and Omniscient Creator, at
once solves all apparent enigmas in the creation?
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