In the first place, geology teaches that the time has been when the earth existed as a molten mass of matter, and, therefore, all the animals and plants now existing upon its surface, and all those buried in its rocky strata, must have had a beginning, or have been created. I should be sustained by many probabilities, were I to go farther, and maintain that the time was when the globe existed in a gaseous state--an opinion very widely adopted by able philosophers of the present day. But as this view is more hypothetical than my first position, which makes the earth a liquid mass, and as nothing would be gained to the argument by supposing it in a gaseous state, I shall not press that point. That it was once in a state of fusion is probable from the very great heat still remaining in its interior. But more direct proof of this results from the facts, now admitted by almost all geologists, that the unstratified rocks have all been melted, and that the stratified class have all, or nearly all, been the result of disintegration and abrasion of the unstratified masses. A striking confirmation of this opinion is the spheroidal figure of the earth,--a figure precisely such as the globe would have assumed in consequence of rotation, had it been in a fluid state. In fine, so many and so decisive are the facts which point to the original igneous fluidity of the globe, that no competent judge thinks of doubting that all the matter of which it is composed, certainly its crust, has some time or other been in that state. It is, however, the opinion of some geologists of distinction, that the whole of it was not in fusion at the same time, and that its different portions have passed successively through the furnace. But this view of the subject scarcely affects my argument, since at whatever period the fusion of any part took place, the destruction of organic life, if it existed, must have been the consequence. The essential thing is, to show that such was once the state of the earth that animals and plants could not have existed on it. For if such was the case, their creation must have been a subsequent operation; and if this did not require an infinite Being to accomplish it, no result in nature would demand his agency.