Abrupt, arbitrary, disconnected creative acts may serve to illustrate the Divine power; but that continuous unbroken chain of organisms which extends from palaeozoic formations to the formations of recent times, a chain in which each link hangs on a preceding and sustains a succeeding one, demonstrates to us not only that the production of animated beings is governed by law, but that it is by law that has undergone no change.  In its operation, through myriads of ages, there has been no variation, no suspension.

The foregoing paragraphs may serve to indicate the character of a portion of the evidence with which we must deal in considering the problem of the age of the earth.  Through the unintermitting labors of geologists, so immense a mass has been accumulated, that many volumes would be required to contain the details.  It is drawn from the phenomena presented by all kinds of rocks, aqueous, igneous, metamorphic.  Of aqueous rocks it investigates the thickness, the inclined positions, and how they rest unconformably on one another; how those that are of fresh-water origin are intercalated with those that are marine; how vast masses of material have been removed by slow-acting causes of denudation, and extensive geographical surfaces have been remodeled; how continents have undergone movements of elevation and depression, their shores sunk under the ocean, or sea-beaches and sea-cliffs carried far into the interior.  It considers the zoological and botanical facts, the fauna and flora of the successive ages, and how in an orderly manner the chain of organic forms, plants, and animals, has been extended, from its dim and doubtful beginnings to our own times.  From facts presented by the deposits of coal-coal which, in all its varieties, has originated from the decay of plants—­it not only demon strates the changes that have taken place in the earth’s atmosphere, but also universal changes of climate.  From other facts it proves that there have been oscillations of temperature,. periods in which the mean heat has risen, and periods in which the polar ices and snows have covered large portions of the existing continents —­glacial periods, as they are termed.

One school of geologists, resting its argument on very imposing evidence, teaches that the whole mass of the earth, from being in a molten, or perhaps a vaporous condition, has cooled by radiation in the lapse of millions of ages, until it has reached its present equilibrium of temperature.  Astronomical observations give great weight to this interpretation, especially so far as the planetary bodies of the solar system are concerned.  It is also supported by such facts as the small mean density of the earth, the increasing temperature at increasing depths, the phenomena of volcanoes and injected veins, and those of igneous and metamorphic rocks.  To satisfy the physical changes which this school of geologists contemplates, myriads of centuries are required.