Nowhere do we find the age of the globe revealed either to Moses or any other inspired writer; we believe that as science has nothing to fear from the Bible, so the Bible has nothing to fear from the widest intellectual range of study. We ponder in devout amazement over these unwritten records of the earth’s bygone history: we find ‘sermons in stones’ as we light on some delicate fern, or elegant vertebrate animal, preserved in the deposits of past ages, and the hieroglyphics of nature and the distincter utterances of the Bible prompt the same exclamation,—“How marvellous are thy works, O God, in wisdom hast thou made them all!” “Waste, and disorder, and confusion we nowhere find in our study of the crust of the earth; instead of this we find endless examples of economy, order, and design; and the result of all our researches carried back through the unwritten records of past time, has been to fix more steadily our assurance of the existence of one Supreme Creator of all things; to exalt more highly our conviction of the immensity of His perfections, of His might and majesty, His wisdom and His goodness, and all-sustaining providence; and to penetrate our understandings with a profound and sensible perception of the high veneration man’s intellect owes to God. The earth from her deep foundations unites with the celestial orbs that roll through boundless space, to declare the glory and show forth the praise of their common Author and Preserver; and the voice of natural religion accords harmoniously with the testimonies of revelation, in ascribing the origin of the universe to the will of one Eternal and Dominant Intelligence, the Almighty Lord and supreme First Cause of all things that subsist; the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever; before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made, God from everlasting and world without end.”—_Buckland’s Bridgewater Treatise._ “Come, frankly read the rocks, and see In them the Earth’s biography; Let mountain piled on mountain tell Its antique age; and every shell In fossil form its tale unfold, Of life’s bright day through time untold; And gathering use from great and small, See good in each, but God in all.” CHAPTER II. PRELIMINARIES. “Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth.” DAVID.