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ANTE-DILUVIAN PERIOD.

the globe-discoveries indeed indisputable as far as they go, that is, as far as comparative anatomy can enable us, from a few bones, and due attention to the characters and habits of different species, to infer, the complete existence of animals extinct; but may there not be, I ask it with due submission, an error in the computation of time? The existence of our race can be traced back, at the lowest calculation, nearly 6,000 years, and it may be more than 7,000; of which last number, according to Theophilus Antiochenus, cited in the second part of this work, 2,242 years must have elapsed before the Deluge, in which time surely the sea must have been receiving large deposits, and "furnishing receptacles for the remains of marine animals and plants inhabiting the ocean above them, as well as for similar spoils of the land washed down into its bosom"-Herschel. Two thousand two hundred and forty years are certainly nothing to compare with countless ages; but if we are inhabiting the bed of the ante-diluvian sea, many things that have been brought to light, one would think, might have been deposited there, in the short course comparatively, of but two and twenty centuries. We have abundant proofs that many unaccountable things have taken place, as well upon the surface of the earth, as below the waters of the sea; and the principal question is, must it have required countless ages to accomplish the changes and revolutions supposed to be indicated by the fossils alluded to? must we be compelled to concede to the force of such suppositions, all that we may have previously learned from other sources, of the history of the earth and of man? for it must be recollected, that if a succession of countless ages be wanted, to explain the phenomena in question, no discovery the geologists have yet made can be more wonderful than the fact

CREATION OF MAN.

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itself, namely, that such a time should have been suffered to pass, without any display or manifestation of the moral attributes of the Deity. That he should have infused the "breath of life into such a multi

tude of inferior animals, and during such a lapse of time, not created so much as one "living soul," in his own image, as a delegated ruler over the inferior creation '.

How very much more sublime, how very much more consistent with the brightest attributes of God, is the account in Genesis, " And God said, Let us make MAN in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth on the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed: to you it shall be for meat. And to every

1 The Edinburgh Reviewer of Whewell's Bridgewater Treatise observes, "What a conceit of naturalism is it to suppose, that it was into a mite or moving jelly, that God first breathed the breath of life;" but this has reference to Meckel's remarks on the Infusoria, which he judged to be the first-born of animals, Protozoa, as he therefore called them; but the "breath of life," and a "living soul" are very different things, and though there is much in the sentiment of the reviewer to approve and admire, we are willing to believe that life commenced in the lowest order

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beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat : and it was so. And God saw every thing that he had made, and behold it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day."

Now there is in the above account a certain congruity and fitness, which must I think naturally incline us to acquiesce in the truth of it. The dominion of man "over every living thing that moveth upon the earth," whenever the opportunity for exercising such dominion exists, is so constantly exhibited before our eyes, that it is impossible to doubt, that it is among the laws of the Creator that it should be so; and the existence of such living things moving upon the earth for a succession of ages, in no instance subject to such dominion, presents to the mind, so strange a condition of this terraqueous globe, as almost to exceed credibility. It was one of the points Buffon could not give up to Leibnitz. He objected strongly to the notion in the Protogea, that marine animals, notwithstanding the shells found in our strata, were created long prior to man, and terrestrial animals; "independent of Scripture," he says, "is it not reasonable to think that the origin of all kinds of animals and vegetables is equally ancient?" He attributes the magnitude of fossil plants and animals, the existence of giants, and of many species of animals, in northern climates, and finally the extinction of many species, to the greater heat of the planet originally. The prayer at the beginning of the ninth chapter of the Book of Wisdom, expresses a belief in the fact that man was placed in the world at the very beginning of the present order of things, as a moral ruler over the

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subordinate parts of the creation. "O God of my fathers, and Lord of mercy, who hast made all things with thy wORD', and ordained man through thy wisdom, that he should have dominion over the creatures which thou hast made, and order the world according to equity, and righteousness, and execute judgment with an upright heart."

It is certainly true that the inferior races of animals might exist and occupy the earth, independent of man ; but considering the present visible connection between them, and the marked utility of almost all that come in the way of man, it is not easy to suppose that whole races of the former should have been created, and actually become extinct, before man appeared amongst them. "The wild goats of the rock," "the wild ass," and the wild "unicorn;" "the eagle that makes her nest on high;" "Behemoth," and "Leviathan," might long escape subjection, though man were on the earth; but even the Almighty himself, as represented in the passages of Scripture alluded to, contemplates the co-existence of man, in the midst of such descriptions of the freedom, power and magnitude of certain of the inferior animals, as never can be surpassed in grandeur and sublimity. Thus the "wild ass" is wild, because he "scorneth the multitude of the city;" the "unicorn," is represented as difficult to tame and render useful, but his adaptation to agricultural services, if once tamed, and brought "to abide the crib," is sufficient proof, that though since judged to be an extinct animal, he was contemplated as existing with man. The "ostrich," almost deprived of the instinctive wisdom common to other animals, is described as lifting herself up, not only against the

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horse but his "rider ;" and as to the horse himself, man is mixed up with all his glory. The following is too remarkable to be passed over. ،، Behold now Behemoth which I made with thee." It may express no more than that he was to be found in the parts where Job dwelt; but it is scarcely possible that any of the extinct tribes should have exceeded in bulk or strength, or even ugliness, Behemoth and Leviathan'. If indeed the latter was the crocodile and not the whale, it may be the megalosaur of geologists, which Cuvier says, speaking of Dr. Buckland's discovery, "was a lizard of the size of a whale." I know not indeed whether it may not have been the iguanodon itself, which is judged also to have been of the crocodile or lizard tribe, nine feet high and seventy feet long; and of no very agreeable form, bating its magnitude, as the sketch below may prove.

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However, according to the Book of Job, even the Leviathan, was evidently a contemporary of man 2; but of what use lizards as big as whales, or such creatures as Iguanodons, could be, I am not prepared to state.

In what I am saying, I am not pretending to ascertain the age of the globe itself, as a part of the

1 See before from the Book of Enoch, part iv.

2 The Book of Enoch, as I have shown, makes it a contemporary of "the giants" that "were in the earth," in the days of Enoch himself; suitable companions.

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