THE
COURSE OF CREATION:
BY
JOHN ANDERSON, D.D.
WITH A GLOSSARY OF SCIENTIFIC TERMS.
“In these morning-days of existence, Nature at once stamped, with her plastichand, her lineaments of beauty and adaptation on everything she made. There isnothing omitted to be afterward supplied—nothing formed defective in a single partor organ that required to be corrected. The first discoveries in Geology at once speakconclusively of a plan or Course of Creation devised from the beginning—a power,not delegated, but linked forever with the first intelligent Cause—a world, throughall its changes, continually presided over and ruled by Him who made it.”
CINCINNATI:
WM. H. MOORE & CO., PUBLISHERS,
118 MAIN STREET.
1851.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1851, by
WM. H. MOORE & CO.,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court for the District of Ohio.
E. MORGAN & CO.,
STEREOTYPERS, PRINTERS AND BINDERS,
111 Main Street.
It is no mitigation of an author’s temerity in publishing,that he can say for himself he had no intention,when collecting and arranging his materials, ofever submitting them to the eye of the public, or ofprovoking criticism by his speculations. Certain itis, however, I have often, and with severity at times,questioned myself as to the propriety of my geologicalpursuits, my ardent love of them, and their compatibilitywith the strict discharge of professional duty.My answer generally was, I sought not these thingsof themselves; they were hung up and displayed beforeme, wherever I went on pleasure, on business,or on duty. I simply inquired after their names;and of all the geological phenomena that have passedunder my review, I can safely affirm of them, in theirdarkest, deepest places, they have uniformly led me“from nature up to nature’s God,” and have inscribedupon them in brightest characters—Benedictum sitnomen Dei.
How often, I have argued, in the leisure hours oflife do we find men idling away their time, wasting itin vain talk, or consuming it in the most triflingpursuits, when a most interesting branch of sciencecan be learned by wandering over the green fields,the rocky dell, the mountain side, or by the walkat even-tide, and there to hold converse with the Creator’sworks and the records of his will? I have recalledthe list of great and good men, whose namesare imperishably connected with the science of geology,who have given much of their time to these researches,and who have reaped laurels from their discoveries.Can Buckland, Conybeare, Sedgwick, Sumner,Smith, Fleming, and Chalmers—all either explorersor expositors—and other eminent divines,have been engaged in improper pursuits, or havegiven the sanction of their authority to tenets andviews connected with the scheme of nature that donot accord with the religious principle? Often on suchoccasions have I dwelt upon, and compared with myown humble pursuits, the lofty and impassioned descriptionsof the Psalmist, where, sometimes in a singlepiece, he takes a magnificent sweep of the greatmaste