Whatever views may be adopted on this momentous question, I shall conclude by observing that it is not necessary, in support of the one here advocated, to assume that the secondary causes which have produced the geological phenomena referred to, were different in kind from those in operation at the present day. But it is asserted that such physical causes must have been immensely increased, in the degree and intensity of their action, by the very different condition of the planet, and the circumstances under which, in consequence, they began to operate. As to the _millionade doctrine_, if I may so term it, there are in every view the greatest difficulties in the way of its adoption,—errors of calculation somewhere to be corrected, inconsistencies to be reconciled, conditions of organic life gratuitously assumed and to be rectified. It matters not, indeed, whether we take the organic or the inorganic structures of the several periods as the gauge of their probable duration—the living tribes that existed throughout such periods, and whose relative ages we can approximate to—or the dead rock in which the remains are interred, and in the accumulation and arrangement of which so many extraordinary agencies have been demonstratively concerned. The laws of nature, in the one case, are nearly uniform; species as well as individuals have their limited terms of existence; and experience establishes the fact, that the living tribes of the modern epoch have, in several instances, become extinct within a comparatively short period of time. The operations of nature, in the other case, are subject to vast diversity, great and sudden changes, and apparently limited by no ascertained maximum of development. And thus combined, so far as our present state of knowledge extends, the inference is warrantable, that in the geological register the error may be one—of MILLIONS of years’ reckoning! CHAPTER VI. THE MOSAIC RECORD—ACCOUNT OF CREATION.