Light being well nigh proved to be soft undulations
ether, or at least a property which cannot possibly exist
at I'est; if not itself motion, with motion co-relative : Light
ordained to act upon Matter in vacuum, would
sarily affect, if not Matter, the Conditions previously belonging
tliereto. The earliest probable effects of Light
would be to penetrate, and finally dismember tlie pure
substance exposed to i t : that may liave been Couchant
Caloric, which, at the touch of light would explode in i
million fiery gases, and flee nebulous through space
However, that our planet was once actually fused, the
Primitive rocks, and the Caverns which riddle them,
refragably show. And the Laws of Refrigeration would
gradually produce the transitionary detritus which
composes the upper Crust of the World. Under circumstances
of an ardent Clime, and long continuous light, the
most vascular Order of Plants would commence the
Great Epocha of Life; and as the Ocean must
sarily retain a higher temperature than the land, which
would soon follow heat and refrigeration, irapatii
Nature would seize upon that first, and cover it wit!
forest of vegetative Giants. Tlie Geysers of Iceland
maintain certain plants, in a temperature fatal to any
animal wliatever, and so credential the claim of the t-
restrial Vegetable World to the most ancient Pedigi
known. And the enormous Equiseta, Lycopodlace®,
and other Cryptogamia, and the equally luxuriant Monocotyledons
of the Coal Measures, bespeak exactly that
System of things to which every fact and argument ir
Physics bear sucb happy witness. “ Dixit quoque Deus
Fiat firmamentum, in medio aquarura; et dividat aquas
ab aquis,—et factum est Vespere et mane, dies secundus.
—Dixit vero Deus, congregentur aqu®, qu® sub ccelo
sunt, in locum unum ; et apparent arida.—Et ait: ger-
minet terra berbam virentem, et facientera semen, et lignum
pomiferum faciens fructum juxta genus suum, cujns
semeu in semitipso sit super terram.—Et factum estvespere
et mane, dies tertius.”
Thus Religion and Philosophy her hand-maid evoking
from the dark shadows of Time the Colors in which he
first limned, present us with tbe Original Sketch of the
Infaut Earth. Here we behold a universal Law of Matter
first, then Light, and lastly Life. The Primitive and
Allied Rocks, which are the limbs of the great World,
witness in either Hemisphere to this universality; And
the Colossal Flora of the ensuing Land no less witness the
intense Vitality of that Light and Life, in which it so long
rejoiced. The progressive Cycles of Innumerable Times,
Horology has nothing whatever to do with them : by that
little Art we measure our own vain and fleeting moments,
which obtain scarcely a notation upon the sun-dial of
Jehovah.
S ect. II. Pursuing with Science, Matter subjected to
Supernal Light through its early mechanical and organised
Conditions, we arrive at precisely those results
which the Hebrew Sage enunciated in tlie Palace of
Pharaoh. In what manner that Cosmogony was obtained
let Sceptics ask, enough for us that it Squares with the
Annals of Time, in every page upon which Philosophy
has been privileged to ponder. A molecule of mere
earth, it were vain, perhaps, to search for amongst the
endless species to which it has sported, but the effects of
Liglit and Motion are portrayed throughout all the globe
in Characters wliich speak a Tongue of their own, and
Chronicle a Regime far different from ours. It were but
reasonable to assume, that, whereas things which now are,
differ in their intensities from tilings that have been,
a Revolution in Nature occurred by which that Change
was brought about. To scan that Change but by the
Analogies which everywhere present themselves to us,
for whom it was actually accomplislied, were to use foreign
instruments and a sorry Logic indeed. For nature
metamorplioses Effects into Causes from the very beginning
to tlie End. All the tlireads are disposed in warp
and in woof, crossed and knitted fast togetlier by one and
the same Contrivance, and the Laws first promulgated by
Queenly Nature are active or passive as may be, but
never cbanged, The Pandect® of Nature tlien which
do and do not tolerate the doctrine of Modern Analogies,
are not at variance; and with this fact we proceed to
the first Capitulum to which those Analogies are our only
key.
The Normal Earth, palled in an Atmosphere surcharged
with moisture to opacity, was specially adjusted to the
Vegetative Kingdom, the vasty wrecks of which remain
to us as Coal. It is also no less evident that the loss of
heat by radiation, and the impassibility of precipitated
solids would undermine a Population holding by a Tenure
like this. The Strata therefore, which follow tbe Coal-
Measures, demonstrate a re-action, slovrly but surely ac-
iplishing the Eden in wliich our wondrous Fortunes
e to begin. It is hardly to be expected that we shall
: discover the Primal Isle of Earth, and in the nascent
state of Geognosy can hope only to generalize, but one
terreous vegetative Remain resting upon an inorganic
rock substantiates our Text, and the Coal Measures of
Virginia, as heretofore stated, afford that important example.
We need not observe that the Floral Races lost their
torrid vigor consequent with that heat and humidity which
especially signalized tbe advent of Time; The towering
Palms and Cacti, which first lifted their glorious heads in
Land all their own, and the egregious Sigiiiaria, fringing
the otherwise lifeless marshes which environed them,
may and did survive through the Coming Ages of the
populous Deep, and sustained the Fauna of a ripening
World. We curiously explore tbe most ancient Golgotha
of the Primitive Flora, and find there not one relic of the
nimal Kingdom: but the ascending Archives declare
myriads of Cephalopods, Crinites, Trilobites, and Conclii-
fers, creatures with the least sensation, and which would
be the very first to start into existence when the Oceanic
temperament fell to their necessary point. And the petrified
Eyes of Crustaceans remaining to this day in a
perfect state, triumphantly show that the same structure
and disposition were common to themselves and their remotest
descendant, satisfying us that the identical light
if the Sun by which we have vision was also the medium
of sight to them, and inscribing the moment in which that
Sun was first manifest. Hence, coupling supernal Liglit,
excessive heat, and the atmospherical Consequences of
both together; it is not too much to say, nor for Philosophy
to concede that the Light of the Sun (if it existed
then at all, wliich is doubtful,) could not penetrate that
atmosphere, nor subdue that other Light, and that it had
no conceivable use upon our Planet before those Creatures
were brought forth to whom alone it could be of any the
least value, and without which indeed, they could not
live. “ Dixit autem Deus; fiant luminaria in firmamento
cmli.—Et sint in signa et tempora, et dies, et annos,—Et
factum est vespere et mane, dies quartus."
Having once recognised the Creature with life, we need
not pause upon the seeming exceptions of contemporaneous
Fiscal Vertebrate, sometimes found with these Primordial
Patterns of Marine Being. The System of adjustment
abides, although we are as yet unable to refer every Rock
to its true Chronological place, and the Marine Bloodhound
to his actual Age: And the absence of a True terrestrial
Creature from tbe Earlier Deposits, apart from
physiological induction, which gives the affirmative, decides
that the Ocean had the priority of a Sentient Race.
New Orders of Animals multiply with the Progressive
Seas, until Dragons come to Lord it over tlie teeming
Waters, and over also the Ltbellul® of the superincumbent
Skies. “ Dixit etiam Deus; producant aqu® reptile
anim® viventis, et volatile super terram sub firmamento
cmli.—Et factum estvespere et mane, dies quintus.”
II. The Quantity of Time, like the Quadrature of the
Circle, is unknown. It is either slow, or quick, or short,
or long, according to the ever oscillating mind of a man.
True, we take the ordinary measure of the Astral Bodies
by which to compute Time, but our notion of it is absolutely
indefinite and worthless. Dreaming we often crowd
the events of a Century and tbe immensity of a Universe
into the shortest space; and Ephemera bom that instant
to die, have most likely a sense of duration full
and complete as our own. To argue then about Time,
were absurd; but the acknowledgment of the Heavenly
“ light givers” constrains us to ask if thenceforth their appointed
mission, they were the only sources from which
Animal and Vegetable Life obtained sustentation. The
condition of these Kingdoms, long after the appeai-ance
of Organs which bespeak sunlight, negatives that hypothesis
; the fossil Skeletons of those Sentient and Floral
Families, which most demand an exonerated heat, are
alone found, long—long after the revelation of the Sun.
The finality of Physics was accomplished by degrees, and
the Earth Continued her Career in the Original Cycle of
Time, of which the fishes aud beasts knew tlieij- individual
portion by the light of that Sun, which awoke their
heart-tides and lulled them too. Tlie ordinary day then
of twenty-four hours existed for that New Edition of
Things to which it was indispensable, but it is no less
certain that the Primal Quantities of Time were meted
out, and that our Planet still coursed the veiled Camdeos’
of an immense Circle, irrespective of that borrowed lustre
of which we speak.
This premise understood, the Volume of Nature, by
which we piously hope the better to understand the
Oracles ofGod, increases in interest and intelligibility the
farther we examine its contents. It may be conjectured
that tbe pregnant Seas would embrace an equally prolific
Earth as soon as ever that came in its turn to an equilibrium,
and this we find to be the fact: and the graminivorous
and herbivorous birds and boasts of the Earlier Tertiary
Period indicate by their size a most propitious Clime,
and boundless profusion of food. The pretence upon
which all Marine Classes of Animals are referred to a cotemporaneous
origin, because a bone of a sharp-toothed
monster has been detected in a suspicious place, is as little
wortli as the apocryphal exceptions which here also present
tliemselve.s, the remains of an Owl, and of one or two
other Accipitres: In the former case tlie overwhelming
myriads of lowermost Creatures, and in the latter the
countless lierbivora, and the Gallinace® disown these unnatural
exceptions. The Stonesfield, so-called, opossum.
upon whose tiny skeleton swings wiiii anticipative groans
so many ponderous lies, of all animals affords the very
best reasons for resigning it to the Deep ; the extrinsic
argument is no less decisive, its bed is Marine, and its
bony Companions all in a common grave are marine also.
Moreover, with respect to the Omithicknites, and other
marks in the New Red Sandstone of America, to refer
them to red-blooded Cotemporaneous birds, in the face of
protesting nature were vain indeed. In the almost Egyptian
darkness which envelopes tlie nebulous history of a
Planet, how can we expect to construe every mutilated
Hieroglyph? Refer these specious shadows to the “ weoph”
— of Genesis, which Implies amarine-aerial Creature
—traces of an engrafted-by-Evil stock of which are now
known as Ptérodactyles, and the difficulty vanishes.
Even were these “ Footmarks ” substantiated as those of
actual birds, the Rock which preserves them may have
been disintegrated and subject to such slight impressions
ages beyond the Epoch to wliich it really belongs.
Thus by self-demonstrated analogies, and the identical
exuvi® of the first Terrestrial Orders, we ponder upon the
very date in which our Mother Earth gave birth to a
Mammiferous population, and indignantly reject the intrusive
bones of those Satanic Races, which came howling
at a later Period, and of a waning Fortune. TLe march
of Things from Chaos through Light, and Life, proceeds
from the threshold of Sense to its soul, from the Crawling
worm on the Ocean-floor to the Parent of our God-like
Race. To strain after arguments in behalf of God’s unsullied
Creation, were to varnish the Empyrean, and
burnish the Sun : Every Condition of right reason, every
process of Science, every thing above, below, and in the
Depths proclaim the goodness of Jehovah, by whom the
Heavens, and the Earth, and all their Host were finished.
“ Dixit quoque Deus ; producat terra animam viveniem
in genere suo, jumenta, et reptilia, et bestias terr® secundum
species suas.—E ta it; faciamus Hominem ad imaginera,
et simiiitudinera nostram ; et præsit piscibus maris,
et volatilibus coeli, et bestiis, universoeque terr®, oranique
reptili, quod movetur in terra. Viditque Deus cuncta
qu® fecerat ; et erant valde bona. Et factum est vespere
et mane, dies sextus.”
Sect. III. Adorable Elohim—blessed be His Holy
Name, made the World, built it for a Throne, and enriched
the Sceptre thereof for the Son of Elohim. The King of the
World came, with Dominion, and the Roll of his Gloiy
is long. There is, alas ! another Register of succeeding
Times, penned by terrific Fiends. Clotty horrible, it
opens the History of fiendish Brutes, which came by permission,
but surely not the Hand of Jehovah. I'heir unclean
carcasses in every quarter of the Globe, suggest a
Curse universal, and their ugly bones offer us a Scale by
which to calculate tlie stately Titans upon whom they
warred. Here then wc fall upon Evil ; like Time it is a
Property of which we know barely the Effects, and perhaps
the most deplorable Consequence of Evil is that
very fact. It coverts in fire, air, earth, and in water,
pouncing upon us at pleasure, foi- ever spoiling and laying
us waste. We may call it the antithesis of every good,
but the definition of Evil was known to man only at the
moment of his fall.
“ Fcrtur Prometheus addere, principi
Limo coactus, parliculam undique
Desectam.”
It is enough that Evil reaches above the Clouds, and