HIGGINS • S GEOLOGY.

THIS is an able and well-written treatise ; the object of which is to show that the phenomena of geology, as they have been hitherto observed, are not inconsistent with the Mosaical history of the Creation. This agreement is not brought forward as any confirma- tion of the Bible, which, being admitted of Divine origin, needs none : "For God," says this writer, "being the author of both the Bible and the world, the testimony of both, when accurately read, must correspond." In this volume the attempt is made to read both accurately. The views do not materially differ from those of Mr. PENN or Mr. LvELL ; but they are neatly drawn up, and ap- pear in a condensed and elegant form, a eulogy which cannot be passed upon Mr. PENN'S work at least. The author differs from Mr. PENN and his followers in this,—that he does not make the creation of man coeval with the creation of the earth.

Every step, therefore, that we take in the investigation, impresses us the more deeply with the conviction, that time must have long shaken its hasty wing over this terrestrial globe, and that the earth often completed its accustomed Journey round the great orb of day after its creation, before the Eternal God of all placed man upon it, as the perfection of his work, and the object of his love.

The vulgar notion of a Chaos, which is maintained by those who consider they have the warrant of Scripture for the idea, is ingeni- ously refuted.

Another fact, derived from the first two verses of the book of Genesis, is, that the earth was made without the intervention of any secondary causes. What definite idea can be formed of a substance that is without form and void, we are at a loss to imagine. If we examine the cosmogony of the ancients, and even of the moderns, we find they have equal difficulty with ourselves. They have, consequently, invented chaos and all its concomitant absurdities to give an idea to an otherwise inconceivable statement, but at last darken the imagination by words without meaning. Yet philosophers have been highly delighted with Bus shape, of their own imagination, "If shape it may be called, that shape has none

Distinguishable."

Indistinctness, according to the metaphysicians, is one of the sources of the sublime. If this be true, it is not singular that poets should have delighted to dwell upon the grandeur of chaos; and they have all been successful, as might Why you are near the reflecting age of thirty already ; and before your present be expected, in discovering the beauties of this fertile field of imagination. monopoly expires, you will be on the verge of fifty. Now, I'll tell you what, What idea can possibly be collected from the following description by Ovid ?

And heaven's bight canopy, that covers all, One was the face of nature; if a face, Rather a rude and undigested mass: A lifeless lump, unfashioned and unframed,

Of jarring seeds; and, jastly, Chaos named." DRYDEN'.

Our immortal Milton, the finest poet and the worst divine, has no clearer conception of chaos than the heathen bard—.

" Before their eyes in sudden view appear The secrets of the hoary deep; a dark Illimitable ocean ! wit limn bound.

Without dimension ; ivisere letmth, htem!th, and height, And time, and place, are lost ; where eldest night And chaos. ancestors of nature, hold Eternal anarchy amidst the noise Of endless wars, and by confusion stand : For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four champions fierce

Strive here for mastery." • Paradise Last, b. ii. 1. 890.

It is strange that a doctrine so adverse to all Scriptural statements on the sub- ject could ever find advocates among Christians. The doctrine of chaos ac- knowledges a creation of uncontrolled matter. If we suppose matter to have existed without taking determinate forms, it must have been created without laws. It is not sufficient to say that seine of those causes which now influence it were not created, for even then matter must have been lawless. But matter without laws is a palpable absurdity. It must, therefore, at the moment of its creation, have been invested with all those principles which it evinces at the present moment ; for the destruction of one necessarily includes the other. And, if we acknowledge the eternity of matter, we make it co-existent with the Eternal; and instead of making all things of nothing, all things were pro- vided for him. And we must, ultimately, with this supposition, acknowledge its existence without laws till the formation of the world. But there are few who maintain the doctrine of chaos that give themselves the trouble to examine into the meaning of the word, numb less to determine the doctrine it includes. To the misconception of the second verse in Genesis all the absurdities of Heathen chaos may ha attributed. The Chaldeans believed that darkness and water had been eternal ; and that Belus, dividing the two, formed the world. This doctrine is evidently derived from the Mosaical description of the state of the earth previous to the days of the creation, and does not greatly differ from common opinion in the present dav. The Egyptians held that chaos and an in- telligent principle were co-existed, and the Persians only differed from them in imagining two active principles ; one always attempting good, the other evil. "Epicurus," says St. Pierre, " exhausted by voluptuousness, formed his world nod his atoms, with which God has nothing to do, out of his own apathy; the geometrician furms it with his compasses ; the chemist compounds it of salts ; the mineralogist extracts it from fire ; and they who apply themselves to nothing—and these are not few in number—suppose it, like themselves, in a state of chaos, and moving at random. Thus they fail not to interpret the ,sublime operations of nature by the mechanism of the arts most familiar to them.

But the doctrine of chaos is discarded by the sacred Scriptures. God created the heavens and the earth ; or, as the Rabbins understood the passage, created the substance of them, as well as formed the things themselves.

We then understand Moses to assert that at a certain time, called the be- ginning God created the heavens and the earth ; and that they as really appearek and were as really in existence, as they are at the present moment. And that after they had existed an undetermined time, God came forth to create man, and previous to that act, fitted the world for his habitation; but, when he commenced this work, the earth was unfurnished and invisible.

Besides the portion of the work dedicated -to the theological view, this treatise contains an able outline of the science of geo- logy, as it stands at the present day. In so brief a space, the reader will nowhere find a completer or more intelligible view of the discoveries of the geologist.