Now, it is reserved to the geologist,--(Nature's High-priest!)--to guess at the condition of this Earth of ours throughout all the long period of unchronicled ages which immediately succeeded the birthday of Time. It is for _him_ to guess at the successive changes which this globe of ours underwent; and the progressive cycles of Creation of which it was the theatre; and the many strange races of creatures which, one after another, moved upon its surface,--walking the dry, or inhabiting the moist. _He_ shall guess; and _I_ will sit at his feet and listen, with unfeigned gratitude, wonder, and delight, while he reports to me his guesses: (for the really great man is eager to assure me that they are no more.)--But when his tale of perplexity is ended, and the last 6,000 years of this world's History have to be discussed, the geologist's function is at an end. I bid him, in GOD'S Name, be silent; for now it is GOD that speaketh. If any question be moved as to how _that actual system of things to which Man belongs_, began,--I bid him come down, and take the learner's place; for now _I_ mean to assume his vacant chair. _This_ time, there shall at least be no guess-work. GOD is now the Speaker: and what GOD revealeth unto _me_, _that_ I promise faithfully to report to _him_. There was a time, then,--and it was certainly less than 6,000 years ago,--when "the Earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep." What catastrophe it was which had caused that the fountains of the abyss should be broken up, and the solid Earth submerged, I am not concerned to explain:--nor how it had come to pass that from a world of seas and continents, it had become a watery ball, wrapped about with superincumbent vapour:--nor how the blessed sunlight had suffered dire eclipse;--so that the Earth revolved in a horror of great darkness. _My faith_ however is not troubled,--nor even perplexed,--by the strangeness of these things. Shall I think it a mere matter of course that one little flaw in a pipe shall, in a second of time, transform the orderly well-compacted seats of a goodly Church to one unsightly mass of shapeless and disordered ruin[278]; and shall I pretend to stand aghast at the strangeness of a similar overthrow of this Earth's furniture at the mere fiat of the Most High?... Behold, "He measureth the waters in the hollow of His Hand, and weigheth the mountains in scales[279]." What if the Creator of the earth and the sea shall bid them of a sudden change places? Think you that they would hesitate to obey Him? Or what if He "calleth for the waters of the Sea, and _poureth them out upon the face of the Earth_[280]?"--Then further, if I believe, (as I do believe,) that when the Jews crucified the LORD of Glory "there was darkness over all the land" from the sixth hour unto the ninth[281];--nay, that when "Moses stretched forth his hand toward Heaven, there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt," even