The Chalk or Cretaceous system succeeded that of the Oolite, and presents little, if any, evidence of advance in creation. There is, however, a manifest decrease of the Saurian reptiles, which reigned in such abundance in the preceding for mation, and some traces of the true mammal have, it is said, been found in this system. At all events, in the next formation, the Tertiary, we have dis tinct evidence of the existence of the mammal race of animals, including the quadruped mammifers, which are presented to view in the Mosaic record, as the cattle, beasts, and creeping things of the earth, the creation of the sixth day.
Last, and crowning work of all, Man, as the Mosaic record testifies, was introduced by his Creator, made in his own image, to have dominion over all the creatures that he had previously created and their descendants ; and no fact is more established by geology, than that all the races of animals on the earth, from the zoo phyte to the mammal, were in existence before the human race. No traces of human remains, or of any work of art, have been found below the superficial deposits, or outside coating of the globe ; and we may add, that there is no evidence of the introduction on the earth of any species of animal, whose progenitor was not in being before the human race became inhabitants of the earth. Man's pedigree is of less antiquity than that of any other known creature, though, geologically and physically, he is at the top of the ascending orders or scale of created beings ; for it is ad mitted by the most eminent and best it armed geologists, that the well-attested facts of their science demonstrate that the plan or law of the creation was progressive, beginning with the zoo phyte in the bottom rocks, and ascending through the succeeding formations in the advancing forms of the Mollusk, Crustacean, Fish, Reptile, and Mammal, culminating with Man—since which no new species has been introduced on the scene, and the Almighty Creator has been, in Scripture language, resting from his work on this the still current Sabbath of the creation.
The length of the time which has elapsed since our planet was a. ball of liquid fire, and during which our world of light and life was elaborated in its various stages by the hands of the Almighty, admits of no calculation. It is not to be reckoned by days or years, or any known measure of time. We can only look at the vast piles of the sedimen tary rocks which have been laid down at the bottom "of the waters in that period, to the depth of fifteen miles at the lowest calculation, and ask how long was the space of time occupied in the formation of those masses by the slow process of depositing grain after grain of the particles of the matter of which they have been formed, and yet that is but a brief portion of duration when com pared with that which must have been occupied by the cooling down of the globe, so as to admit of the existence of life upon its surface. It is suffi cient for us to know the order of the various physical aspects presented by our globe from the time that it was •' without form and void,' and of the organisms with which it has, from time to time, been furnished. Without seeking to fix the
exact length of the time which each day or period of the creation occupied, or at what particular points of the great geological eras were their re spective commencements and terminations, the scientific evidence is clear and conclusive, that each item of the Mosaic creation came into exist ence in the precise order in which it is recorded to have made its appearance in the first chapter of Genesis. Both Moses and the geologist testify that the first organisms in which the mystery of life was presented were submarine, and that life on the earth existed before light. Both, also, concur in attesting the fact of the existence of submarine life long before that of land vegetation ; and that land vegetation had sprung up before that the sun had become visible from the earth's surface. They also agree in their testimonies that the sun's un clouded ray had visited the face of our planet be fore the commencement of the age of reptiles '— that this strange era of the swarming out of the giant Saurians on earth, sea, and air, preceded the appearance of the mammal races—and that ail were denizens of the earth before the advent of Man to have the dominion over them.
This harmony of the two records supplies us with evidence of the authenticity and inspiration of the book of Genesis, the importance and value of which cannot be too highly estimated. By it, the first pages of the Bible are stamped with the sea] of truth, which gives us assurance that the whole canon of Scripture is of divine origin. Moses was necessarily ignorant of geology and its kindred sciences, and yet he was the author of a written record which describes with precision and accu racy, as far as it extends, the order in which our planet was furnished with light and life. He wrote, not for the purpose of instructing the Israelites jn the science of cosmogony, but to establish a testi mony that the universe was the work of the God who had led them forth from the land of Egypt, the house of their bondage ; • and thus to fortify them against the snares of idolatry in the land to which he was conducting them. But the omniscient spirit of the Almighty, who dictated and directed the pen of the scribe, did not permit it to record a fact that was inconsistent with those physical truths that have been developed by human re search for the first time after the lapse of more than three thousand years. The Mosaic record of the creation, in thus revealing the hidden events of the past, becomes, as it were, a prophecy, the fulfilment of which is before our eyes, satisfactory and conclusive, and the corner stone of that edifice of the inspired Scriptures, which contains the knowledge of God's will, and of his divine pur poses towards the children of men.