"The most common term for death, amongst all nations, is, mor, mort, or mut. It is mut in Hebrew and Phoenician; it is mor, or mort, in Sanscrit, Persian, Greek, and Latin; it is the same in almost all the European languages; and it was with no small astonishment, the learned lately discovered that it is the same in Otaheite, and some other of the Polynesian Islands, in which mor-ai is well known to signify a sepulchre, or, literally, the place or region of the dead; ai meaning a place or region in the Otaheitan, precisely as it does in Greek; an elegant and expressive compound, which is, perhaps, only to be equalled by the Hebrew zalmut, literally death shade, but, in our Bibles, rendered shadow of death.*

"Sir, in our own language, is the common title of respect; and the same term is employed, in the same sense, throughout every quarter of the globe. In Hebrew, sir, or sher, imports a ruler, or governors in Sanscrit and Persian, it means the organ of the head itself; in Greek, it is synonymous with Lord; in Arabia, Turkey, and amongst the Peruvians in South America, it is employed as in the Greek; and is not essentially different in Spain, Portugal, Italy, and France. In Germany, Holland, and the contiguous countries, the s of the Hebrew sher, is dropped, and it is converted into her.

"Man, in Hebrew, occurs under the form of maneh, a verb signifying to discern or discriminate, and, as a noun, signifying a discriminating being. In Sanscrit, we have both these senses. Hence, menu, in both Sanscrit and ancient Egyptian, means Adam, or the first man, emphatically THE man. Menes was the first king of Egypt, and Minos the chief judge amongst the Greeks. Hence, also, in Greek, men and menos, signifying mind, and the Latin mens, the mind, is the same. In the Gothic, and in all the northern dialects of Europe, man imports the same idea as in our own tongue. In Bengal and Hindostan, it is manshee; in the Malayan, manizu; in Japanese, manio; in Atooi, and in the Sandwich islands generally, tane, tanato, or tangi, while manawe imports the mind or spirit; and in New Guinea, or Papuan, it is sonaman. In this utmost extremity of the southern world, we also meet with the term Sytan, for Satan, or the source of evil; and Wath (German Goth,) for God. But it may perhaps be observed, that,

* In Otaheite, the natives direct their voyages by the sun, moon, and stars; and they have names for many of the constellations, resembling, in several instances, those of the Greeks.

in all the southern dialects of Europe, we meet with no such term as man, nor even in the Latin, from which so many European languages are derived, and which has homo for man. Yet, it is clear, that homo itself is derived from the common root. Its adjective is hu-man-us, human, while man, or min, is found in every inflection below the nominative case, as homin-is, &c.: the former nominative itself was ho-men, from whence it is clear that ho is redundant, and did not originally belong to the word. The negative of homo is ne-homo, now pronounced nemo in the Latin; in which latter the ho has been dropped. The ho is also omitted in the feminine of homo, which is fe-min-a, and was, at first, FEO min-a, from feo, to produce; literally, the producer of man or min. From feomin-a, we have also our own, and the common Saxon term wo-man, the f, and v, or w, being convertible letters in all languages, of which we have a familiar instance in the words vater and father, in German, and English.”

All the above cases, and many more that might be produced, are confederating proofs, that the various languages and dialects that are now, or ever have been spoken, have originated from one common source; and that the various nations that now exist, or ever have existed since the deluge, have originated from one common cradle or quarter of the world; and that that quarter was an eastern region, as we might, a priori, have supposed, from Asia having been the first land peopled after the flood.

"But besides this singular coincidence in language, over the whole inhabited earth, there is, also, a most remarkable confirmation of the same unity of origin, in the correspondence between all nations whatever, where any traces of the art of arithmetic exist, in the employment of a DECIMAL gradation.

"Whence comes it to pass, that blacks and whites, in every quarter, the savage and the civilized, wherever a human community has been found, have neither stopped short of, nor exceeded a series of ten in their calculations; and that as soon as they have reached this number, they have, uniformly, begun a second series with the first unit in the scale, as one ten, two ten, &c.? Why have not some nations broke off at five, or others proceeded to fifteen before they began a second series? Or why have the generality of them had any thing more than one single and infinitesimal series, and consequently, a new name for every unit? Such an universality cannot possibly have existed, except from a like universality

of cause; and we have, in this single instance alone, a proof equal to mathematical demonstration, that the different languages into which it enters, and of which it forms so prominent a feature, must, assuredly, have originated not from accident, at different times, and in different places, but from direct determination and design, at the same time, and in the same place; that it must be the result of one grand, comprehensive, and original system. Such system could not have been of human invention: what then remains for us, but to confess that it must have been of Divine and Supernatural communication?

"Such examples, though few, are abundantly sufficient to establish the point; and they even lead us to a second and catenating fact, namely, that the primary and original language of man, that language divinely and supernaturally communicated to him, in the early ages of the world, has been broken up, confounded, and scattered, in various fragments, over every part of the habitable globe; that the same sort of disruption that has confounded former continents and oceans, and intermingled the productions natural to different hemispheres and latitudes, this same Power has assaulted the world's primeval tongue, has overwhelmed a great part of it, wrecked the remainder on distant and opposite shores, and turned up new materials out of the general convulsion: and if it were possible for us to meet with an ancient historical record, which professed to contain a plain and simple statement of such supernatural communication, and such subsequent confusion · of tongues, it would be a book, which, independently of any other information, would be amply entitled to our attention, for it would thus bear an index of commanding authority on its own forehead.

"Such a book is now in our hands. Let us prize it, for it must be the WORD OF GOD, as it bears the direct stamp and testimony of His works."*

* The Book of Nature, by Dr. Mason Good.

CONCLUSIONS

To which we are naturally led by the general tenor of the foregoing inquiry.

Having completed the proposed general survey of the system of geological phenomena, on every part of the earth's surface, let us now take a retrospective view of the various conclusions to which we have been led, in regarding the Creation, and the laws to which all created beings have been submitted by the Almighty. And, first, we have found it unreasonable, and unphilosophical, to subscribe to the doctrines, too commonly taught, wherein the first production of all things is supposed to have arisen by the mere laws of nature, or from secondary causes, within a chaotic or imperfect mass; because, in adopting this opinion, we find ourselves as far removed as ever from the ORIGIN of things of which we were in search: for even were we to admit, with the Wernerian school of philosophy, the primary existence of an aqueous chaos, and that the laws of nature have, in an indefinitely long period of time, gradually produced the beautiful order and arrangement we now admire in the universe; we should still have to account for the component parts of that chaotic mass, which could not have come into being by any of the known laws of nature: and being thus driven to acknowledge a Creative Power, capable of producing even a chaos out of nothing, and of establishing those wonderful laws which now govern the world, we should find ourselves, without any available object, derogating from the Wisdom and Power of a Creator, by denying a PERFECT creation of all things in the beginning. If we are forced to this conclusion, with regard to the actual structure of the mineral body of the earth, we are even more forcibly convinced of this great truth, by a

survey of the animal and vegetable world with which it is furnished. For when we consider the evident design, which is so remarkably displayed in the structure of these bodies, we must feel satisfied, that though the laws of nature may, and do, now regulate them, they never could have, at first, produced them. We have found, that as it is unreasonable to suppose the first man to have ever been an infant, or the first oak tree to have sprung from an acorn, we are forced to the adoption of the only other alternative left for our choice; and we must, therefore, conclude, that both animal and vegetable productions were, at first, CREATED in their mature and perfect forms, and were then submitted to those laws which have ever since been in action in the world. And when we are unavoidably led thus far by our reason alone, and when we then consult the only History of the early events of the world that is within our reach, we find this Record announcing, in the most unequivocal terms, that "in the begining, God created the heaven and the earth;" and that, "in six days He made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, resting on the seventh day, and hallowing it," as a day of rest and of worship for all the generations of men.

And with respect to the nature and duration of those six days, so particularly defined in the Record, which it pleased the Creator, for an obviously wise and beneficent end, to occupy in this incomprehensible work of creation, we can have no reasonable doubt that they were such days as are now, and ever have been, occasioned by one revolution of the earth on its axis; first, because a perfect creation may be as easily the work of one day, or of one moment, as of thousands of years; secondly, because the supposed longer periods of philosophy, were only called for in the erroneous idea of gradual perfection, from an imperfect creation, which idea we have found such reason altogether to condemn; and thirdly, because that Record, on the evidence of which our confidence has been confirmed, on the subject of perfect creation, has distinctly defined each of these days by its evening and its morning, which terms, so often repeated, can be, in no way, applicable to the supposed indefinite periods above alluded to.

Secondly,-We have found reason to conclude, that the first great geological change which took place after the creation of the solid mass of the globe, was occasioned by that fiat of the Almighty, on the third day, by which the waters, equally covering the whole mineral surface during