selves must at some remote period have been the permanent bed of the ocean for, as physiologists are well aware, a temporary inundation is wholly insufficient to account for the phenomena which present themselves*.

It was on this ground, if I mistake not, that Cuvier and de Luc have been led to form a diluvian theory, in which it is contended that the flood was produced by means of a complete interchange of land and water; so that we are at present dwelling on the ancient bed of the antediluvian ocean, while the antediluvian continents are now submerged beneath the seas which roll between our post diluvian continents. Such a theory, however, is * The lowest and most level parts of the earth, when penetrated to a very great depth, says Mr. Cuvier, exhibit nothing but horizontal strata, composed of various substances, and containing almost all of them innumerable marine productions. Similar strata, with the same kind of productions, compose the hills even to a great height. Sometimes the shells are so numerous, as to constitute the entire body of the stratum. They are almost every where in such a perfect state of preservation, that even the smallest of them retain their most delicate parts, their sharpest ridges, and their finest and tenderest processes. They are found in elevations far above the level of every part of the ocean, and in places to which the sea could not be conveyed by any existing cause. They are not only inclosed in loose sand, but are often incrusted and penetrated on all sides by the hardest stones. Every part of the earth, each hemisphere, every continent, every island of any size, exhibits the same phenomenon. We are therefore forcibly led to believe, not only that the sea has at one period or another covered all our plains, but that it must have remained there for a long time and in a state of tranquillity; which circumstance was necessary for the formation of deposits so extensive, so thick, in part so solid, and containing exuviæ so perfectly preserved.-(Essay on the theory of the earth. § 4, pp. 7, 8.)

I am of opinion then, says Mr. Cuvier, with Mr. de Luc and Mr. Dolemieu, that, if there is any circumstance thoroughly established in geology, it is, that the crust of our globe has been subjected to a great

so wholly irreconcileable with the Mosaical history both of the antediluvian world and of the deluge itself and of the postdiluvian world, in which the four Asiatic antediluvian rivers are geographically marked out and determined and identified by postdiluvian characteristics, that it cannot for a moment be admitted by any consistent believer in the scriptural verity*. Nor is it more reconcileable with the actually existing phenomena of the bones of land animals, found under circumstances which prove them to have inhabited the precise regions where these their relics have been discovered: for, had the regions in question been the bed of the antediluvian ocean (as Cuvier and de Luc suppose), it is clear that no land-animals could have inhabited them t. Yet, on the other hand,

and sudden revolution, the epoch of which cannot be dated much farther back than five or six thousand years; that this revolution had buried all the countries, which were before inhabited by men and by the other animals that are now best known; that the same revolution had laid dry the bed of the last ocean, which now forms all the countries at present inhabited; that the small number of individuals of men and other animals, that escaped from the effects of that great revolution, have since propagated and spread over the lands then newly laid dry; and, consequently, that the human race has only resumed a progressive state of improvement since that epoch, by forming established societies, raising monuments, collecting natural facts, and constructing systems of science and of learning. (Essay on the theory of the earth, § 34, pp. 173, 174.)

* See this argument pursued at large in my Origin of Pagan Idolatry, book ii. chap. 1. § 1.

The phenomena to which I allude, seem to me quite decisive as to the fact, that we now inhabit the very same tracts of land that our antediluvian forefathers did, and consequently that we are not now living upon the bed of the antediluvian

ocean.

In various parts of the world, caves have been discovered containing numerous bones of land-animals, which certainly could not have been there deposited by the action of water. Hence the obvious

most plain and certain is it, that we are now inhabiting the bed of a inference is, an inference in truth drawn by Cuvier himself, that the animals, to which those bones belonged, must have lived and died peaceably on the spot where we now find them and the propriety of this inference is further established by the nature of the earthy matter in which the bones are enveloped; for, according to Laugier, it contains an intermixture of animal matter with phosphate of lime and probably also phosphate of iron. But, if this inference be well founded, then it is plainly impossible, that our present tracts of land can have constituted the bed of the antediluvian ocean: because, in that case, the animals could not, before the deluge, have inhabited the regions where their bones are now found; such regions, according to the theory of Cuvier, having constituted the bed of the ocean as it existed immediately before the deluge.

As the subject is of no small importance, the inference in question clearly confirming the Mosaical history which describes the present race of men as inhabiting the self-same tracts of land which were inhabited by their antediluvian forefathers, it may not be uninteresting to adduce some of the facts on which the inference is founded.

1. Remains of the skeletons of animals are found in great abundance in limestone caves in Germany and Hungary. The bones occur nearly in the same state in all these caves; detached, broken, but never rolled and, consequently, they have not been brought from a distance by the agency of water. They are somewhat lighter and less compact than recent bones, but slightly decomposed, contain much gelatine, and are never mineralized. They are generally enveloped in an indurated earth, which contains animal matter; sometimes in a kind of alabaster or calcareous sinter; and, by means of this mineral, they are sometimes attached to the walls of the cave. These bones are the same in all the caves hitherto examined; and it is worthy of remark, that they occur in an extent of upwards of 200 leagues. Cuvier estimates, that rather more than threefourths of these bones belong to species of bears now extinct; while one half or twothirds of the remaining fourth belong to a species of hyena. A very small number of these remains belong to a species of the genus lion or tiger; and another, to animals of the dog or wolf kinds. Lastly, the smallest portion belongs to different

primeval ocean; that is to say, a range of countries which were once

species of smaller carnivorous animals, as the fox and pole-cat. It is quite evident, that these bones could not have been introduced into these caves by the action of watet, because the smallest processes or inequalities on their surface are preserved. Cuvier is therefore inclined to conjecture, that the animals, to which they belonged, must have lived and died peaceably on the spot where we now find them.

2. The relics of several species of Mastodons have been found in various parts of America. The beds which contain them, are generally alluvial, either sandy or marly, and always near the earth's surface. In many places, they are accompanied with accumulations of marine animal remains: and, in other places, the sand and marl which cover them contain only fresh-water shells. The catastrophe, which has buried them, appears to have been a transient marine inundation. The bones are neither rolled nor in skeletons; but dis-persed, and in part broken or fractured. They have not therefore been brought there from a distance by an inundation: but have been found by it in the places where it has covered them; as might be expected, if the animals to which they belonged had dwelt in these places, and had there successively died. Hence it appears, that, before this catastrophe, these animals lived in the countries where we now find their bones.

3. Exactly the same inference is drawn by Mr. Buckland from the teeth and bones of various animals discovered in a cave at Kirkdale, near Kirby-Moorside, in Yorkshire. The den of Kirkdale is a natural fissure or cavern in the öolite limestone, extending 300 feet into the solid rock, and varying from two to five feet in height and breadth. The bottom of the cavern is nearly horizontal; and is entirely covered to the depth of about a foot with a sediment of mud, deposited by diluvian waters. At the bottom of the mud, the floor of the cave was covered from one end to the other with teeth and fragments of bones of the following animals: hyena, elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, horse, ox, two or three species of deer, bear, fox, water-rat, and birds. The bones are for the most part broken and gnawed to pieces: and the teeth lie loose among the fragments of the bones. The hyena bones are broken to pieces as much as those of the other animals. No bone or tooth has been rolled or the least acted on by water, nor is the

permanently occupied by the oceanic waters. Under these circumstances, therefore, the result is obvious. We now inhabit the bed, indeed, of a primeval ocean; but the ocean, whose bed we inhabit, was not the antediluvian ocean, or the ocean as it existed immediately before the deluge: because, according both to actually existing phenomena and to the inspired history in its plain and necessary construction, we now inhabit the very same tracts of land (allowing for those smaller alterations which a convulsion like the flood would of course produce), that our antediluvian predecessors for merly inhabited. Therefore the primeval ocean, whose bed we now inhabit, must have been an ocean, which, as thus situated, was in existence prior to the creation of man. On such necessary grounds, I conclude, that the sea and the land must, to a certain extent, have

any gravel mixed with them. The bones are not at all mineralized, and retain nearly the whole of their animal gelatine; owing their high state of preservation to the mud in which they have been imbedded. The teeth of the hyenas are most abundant: and, of these, the greater part are worn down almost to the stumps, as if by the operation of gnawing bones. Portions of the dung of the hyena are found also in this den, which on analysis, afforded the same constituent parts as that of canine animals. It is certain that all these animals lived and died in the district where their remains are now found, in the period immediately preceding the deluge. The bones were carried into the cave, as food, by the hyenas; the smaller animals perhaps entire, the larger ones piecemeal; for by no other means could the bones of such large animals as the elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, have arrived at the inmost recesses of so small a fissure, unless rolled thither by water; under which circumstance the angles would have been worn off by attrition, which is not the

changed places (and that too for a sufficient length of time to produce existing phenomena) in the course at least of the fifth day of the creation, to say nothing of those yet more ancient revolutions which have apparently occurred during the lapse of the third and fourth days*.

This revolution of the fifth day would place fossil fishes and fossil birds above fossil wood and fossil vegetables.

(6.) The work of the sixth day was the formation, first of beasts and reptiles, and lastly of man.

Now, in the arrangement of the sixth period, it is obvious that man was made at its very close: consequently, on the scale of proportion which has been adopted from the measure of the seventh day or the divine sabbath, more than six thousand years of it must have elapsed ere the human pair began to exist. In the course then of these six thousand years, I suppose another great mundane revolution to have occurred, either gradual or convulsive; which led to the production of fossil animals and fossil reptiles, which extinguished whole genera now no longer existing save in a fossil form, and which caused another interchange of land and ocean.

This final revolution made the

face of the globe, in regard to the two great divisions of land and

* The various catastrophes of our planet, says Mr. Cuvier, have not only caused the different parts of our continent to rise by degrees from the basin of the sea; but it has also frequently happened, that lands which had been laid dry, have been again covered by the water, in consequence, either of these lands sinking down below the level of the sea, or of the sea being raised above the level of the lands. The particular portions of the earth also, which the sea has abandoned by its last retreat, had been laid dry once before, and had at that time produced quadrupeds, birds, plants, and all kinds of terrestrial productions; it had then been inundated by the sea, which has since retired from it, and left it to be occupied by its own proper inhabitants. (Essay on the theory of the earth. § 5, p.14.)

there is nothing to check the growth of our population; yet the most populous parts of our country do not greatly increase, because there are a thousand nameless outlets which convey the stream into a distant land. The settlers of these new regions begin to talk of Old and New America, as our forefathers talked of Old and New England. But what is the condition of these new colonists with regard to the enjoyment of the means of religion? It has been shewn, by published documents, that on the general estimate of one pastor to a thousand souls, there are not enough, at this present moment, to supply three millions of our population; and, consequently, that there are now seven millions, in the United States, who are either wholly or partially deprived of the means of religion.

"But, gloomy as this picture is, the statements to which I refer do not exhibit the subject in its darkest aspect. They have overlooked, or at least have not delineated, a very important feature.

I have already adverted to the names of Old and New America, as somewhat analogous to those of Old and New England, at the first settlement of this country. But since that period the face of society is greatly altered; and in no respect so much altered as with regard to religion.

"The religion of England was an establishment supported by the government. Our ancestors being opposed to the form of that establishment, came to New England to erect an establishment of their own. It was a minority withdrawing from the majority, to set up a government more agreeable to their own wishes. They consequently formed their religious polity at the same time in which they formed their civil. When they migrated, it was a church with their pastors at their head. If then the whole of these United States had been peopled from the same source, an

established religion would, in all probability, have still been retained; in which case, either provision would have been made from time to time for the settlement of our new states, as formerly in New England for the settlement of new towns, or, if there had been any dissentions, the discontented would have retired as a religious body, carrying with them their own institutions, and forming elsewhere a new establishment according to their own model.

"But the other parts of America were peopled by adventurers of different nations and opposite sentiments. Some, indeed, as Lord Baltimore, and William Penn, with their followers, came out on account of their religion; but most of the settlers came from widely different motives, impelled by discontent at home, or allured by the thirst of gain. At the very commencement, therefore, of the political existence of the colonies, they were made up of the most discordant materials, as it regarded religion; and when our independence was achieved, and our union formed, it became necessary, as a measure of sound policy, for the constitution of our national government only to tolerate, and not to support Christianity. It became necessary, in order to blend together the heterogeneous mass, to prevent the collisions of religious parties from having any sway over the public counsels, by excluding religion itself. It became necessary to banish that subject, which, of all others, ought to be most interesting to men in every relation of life, because the corruptions of the human heart and the errors of the human understanding have rent asunder the body of Christ.

"This single measure has altered the whole aspect of affairs. The constitution of the general government immediately became a model for the constitutions of the several states. Thus a force was created which sapped the foundations of all establishments; and though the re