Part 17

Coming near to this column, our steps are arrested on the margin of a vast gulf, fifteen hundred feet deep, and from eight to ten miles in circumference, whose bottom is the seat of the most remarkable volcano on the globe;--I mean Kilauea. Wait here till night closes around us, and we shall witness a scene of awful sublimity. Over the immense area of that gulf will the volcanic agency beneath be exerted. Ever and anon, and mingling in strange discord, will hissings and groanings, mutterings and thunderings, be heard rolling from side to side, and making the earth tremble around. Then from one and another volcanic cone--perhaps from fifty--will the glowing lava burst forth; red-hot stones will be driven furiously upward; vapor, and smoke, and flames will be poured out, and the dark and jagged sides of that vast furnace will glow with unearthly splendor; and here and there will lakes of liquid lava appear, one or two miles in extent, heaving up their billows, and dashing their fiery spray high into the air. O, there is not on earth a livelier emblem of the world of despair; and yet we know it is not the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, nor the abode of lost spirits. We know it to be only one of the safety-valves of our globe, and an exhibition of that mighty agency within the globe which has heaved and dislocated its crust; and, therefore, as we gaze upon the scene, and forget our fatigue and sleep, we experience only the emotions of awful sublimity, which can hardly fail to rise into adoration of that infinite Being who can say, even to this agency, Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther.

These are samples only of those delightful emotions which he experiences, who possesses a taste for natural scenery. And kindred emotions will be awakened within him, wherever he wanders among the works of God. They form some of the purest and most satisfying pleasures which this world affords. They constitute pleasant oases along the dreary journey of life; and so deeply does memory engrave them on her tablet, that no change of time or circumstances can hide them from our view. Now, it is obvious that if the Author of nature and of the human soul had been malevolent, instead of making every thing which man meets in creation "beauty to his eye, and music to his ear," he would have made all offensive and painful. Instead of the delightful emotions of beauty and sublimity which now rise within us as we open our eyes upon nature, feelings of aversion and fear would haunt us. Every sound would have been discordant, and every sight terrific. He could not have been even indifferent to our happiness, when he commissioned those desolating agencies of nature, fire and water, to ridge up and furrow out the earth's surface as the groundwork of the future landscape. For he has taken care that the result should be a scene productive of pleasure only to the soul that is in a healthy state. Benevolence only, infinite benevolence, could have done this.

_My third argument in favor of the divine benevolence is founded on the arrangements for the distribution of water on the globe._

We should expect on so uneven a surface as the earth presents, that this element, which forms the liquid nourishment of all organic life, and which in many other ways seems indispensable, must be very unequally distributed, and fail entirely in many places; and yet we find it in almost every spot where man erects his habitation. And those places where there is a deficiency are usually extended plains; not, as we should expect, the mountainous regions. The latter are usually well watered; and this is accomplished in three ways. In the first place, in most mountainous countries, the strata are so much tilted up, as to prevent the water from running off. In the second place, the pervious strata are frequently interrupted by faults sometimes filled by impervious matter. In the third place, the comminuted materials that cover the rocks as soils, are often so fine, or of such a nature, as to prevent the passage of water; and thus much of the water that falls upon elevated land remains there, while enough percolates through the pervious materials to water the valleys and supply the streams. These carry it to the lakes and the ocean, where it is returned by evaporation in the form of clouds, and thus an admirable system of circulation is kept up, whereby this essential element is purified, and conveyed to every part of the surface where man or beast require it.

There is one recent discovery, which deserves notice here, because it depends upon the geological structure of the earth. When pervious and impervious strata alternate, and are considerably inclined, water may be brought from great depths by hydrostatic pressure, if the impervious stratum be bored through and the water-bearing deposit be reached. A perpetual fountain may thus be produced, and water be obtained in a region naturally deficient in it. An Artesian fountain of this description, in the suburbs of Paris, has been brought from the enormous depth of eighteen hundred feet![16]

Now, just consider that to deprive the earth of water is to deprive it of inhabitants, and you cannot but see in the means by which it is so widely, nay, almost universally, diffused, and made to circulate for purification,--the most decided marks of divine benevolence. Why is it not as striking as the curious means by which the blood and the sap of animals and plants are sent to every part of the system to supply its waste, and give it greater development?

_I derive a fourth geological argument for the benevolence of the Deity, from the manner in which the metallic ores are distributed through the earth's crust._

It can hardly be doubted, by the geologist, that nearly every part of the earth's crust, and its interior too, have been some time or other in a melted state. Now, as the metals and their ores are usually heavier than other rocks, we should expect that they would have accumulated at the centre of the globe, and have been enveloped by the rocks so as to have been forever inaccessible to man. And the very great weight of the central parts of the earth--almost twice that of granite--leads naturally to the conclusion that the heavier metals may be accumulated there, though this is by no means a certain conclusion; since at the depth of thirty-four miles air would be so condensed by the pressure of the superincumbent mass as to be as heavy as water; water at the depth of three hundred and sixty-two miles would become as heavy as quick-silver; and at the centre steel would be compressed into one fourth, and stone into one eighth, of its bulk at the surface. Still it is most probable that the materials naturally the heaviest would first seek the centre. And yet, by means of sublimation, and expansion by internal heat, or the segregating power of galvanic action, or of some other agents, enough of the metals is protruded towards the surface, and diffused through the rocks in beds, or veins, so as to be accessible to human industry. Here, then, we find divine benevolence, apparently in opposition to gravity, providing for human comfort.

I have said that these metals were accessible to human industry. And it does require a great deal of labor, and calls into exercise man's highest ingenuity to obtain them. They might have been spread in immense masses over the surface; they might all have been reduced to a metallic state in the great furnace, which we have reason to suppose is always in blast, within the earth. But then there would have been no requisition upon the exertion and energy of man. And to have these called into exercise is an object of greater importance to society than to supply it with the metals. God, therefore, has so distributed the ores as to stimulate man to explore and reduce them, while he has placed so many difficulties in the way as to demand much mental and physical effort for their removal. Man now, therefore, receives a double benefit. While the metals themselves are of immense service, the discipline of body and mind requisite for obtaining them is of still greater value. This is the combined result of infinite wisdom and benevolence.

If I mistake not, there is such a relation between the amount of useful metals and the wants of society as could have resulted only from divine benevolence. The metal most widely diffused, and the only one occurring in all the rock formations, from the oldest to the newest, is iron;--the metal by far the most important to civilized society. This is also by far the most abundant, and easily obtained. It often forms extensive beds, or even mountain masses upon the surface. All the other metals are confined almost exclusively to the older rocks. Among them, lead, copper, and zinc are probably most needed, and accordingly they are next in quantity and in the facility with which they may be explored. Manganese, mercury, chrome, antimony, cobalt, arsenic, and bismuth are more difficult to obtain; but the supply is always equal to the demand. In the case of tin, silver, platinum, and gold, we find some interesting properties to compensate in a great measure for their scarcity. Gold and platinum possess a remarkable power of resisting those powerful agents of chemical change which destroy every thing else. They are never oxidized in the earth, and with a very few exceptions, the most powerful reagents leave them untouched, while platinum will not yield in the most powerful heat of the furnace. Gold, silver, and tin are capable of an astonishing extension, whereby they may be spread over the surface of the more abundant metals to protect and adorn them; and since the discovery of the galvanic mode of accomplishing this, so easily is it done, that I know not but a gold or silver surface is to become as common as metallic articles.

_My fifth geological argument for the divine benevolence is derived from the joint and desolating effects of ice and water upon the earth's surface, both before and after man's creation._

In northern countries, and perhaps in high southern latitudes, it seems that after the deposition of the tertiary rocks, and after the surface had assumed essentially its present shape, it was subjected for a long time to a powerful agency, whereby the rough and salient parts were worn down and rounded, the rocks in place smoothed and furrowed, valleys scooped out, huge blocks of stone transported far from the parent bed, piled up, and thick accumulations of bowlders, sand, and gravel, strewn promiscuously over the surface. At the commencement of this process, the ocean, probably loaded with ice, stood above a large part of the present continents. It soon began to subside, or the land to rise, and a more quiet action succeeded. The joint action of the ocean and the glaciers on the land ground down into sand, clay, and loam, the coarser drift, and sorted it in the form of beaches, terraces, and alluvial deposits. All this while, both the land and the water seem to have been, for the most part, destitute of inhabitants. But these were the very processes needed for man and his contemporary races, who were to appear during the latter part of the pleistocene period. In other words, the soils were thus got ready for nourishing the vegetation necessary to sustain the new creation, which would convert these desolate and deserted sea-beds into regions of fertility and happiness to teeming millions.

Now, just consider what must have been the effect of these mighty aqueous and glacial agencies upon the earth's surface. Over the level regions they strewed the finer materials; and where the rocks had been thrown up into ridges and displaced by numerous fissures, or subsequently worn into bluffs and precipices by the ocean, it needed just such an agency to smooth down those irregularities, to fill up those gulfs, to give to the hills and valleys a graceful outline, and to cover all the surface with those comminuted materials that would need only cultivation to make them a fertile soil. Some rocks do, indeed, decompose and form soils; but this process would be too slow, unless in moist and warm regions, where it is easier to find a footing for plants than in climes more uncongenial to their growth. We cannot then hesitate to regard this tremendous agency of ice and water in northern and high southern regions as decidedly beneficial in its influence. It must, indeed, have spread terrible destruction over those regions. But it seems that a time was chosen for its operation when the globe was almost destitute of organic life, and not long before the time when a new and nobler creation than those previously occupying the earth was to be placed upon it. Desolating as this agency must have appeared, and actually was, at the time, yet who can doubt, when we see the ultimate fruits of it, that its origin was divine benevolence?

In the ultimate results of aqueous inundations at the present day, we can trace the same benevolent design. Those floods do, indeed, produce partial evils; nay, life, as well as property, often falls a prey to them. But they produce those alluvial soils which are more prolific of vegetation than any other on the globe. Who has not heard of the fertility of the banks of the Nile, the Niger, the Ganges, the Amazon, and the Mississippi? all of them the fruit of inundations. Truly, such floods as these may be said _to clap their hands_ in praise of the divine goodness.

_My sixth geological argument for the divine benevolence is derived from the existence of volcanoes._

The first impression made on the mind by the history of volcanic action is, that its effects are examples rather of vindictive justice than of benevolence. And such is the light in which they are regarded by Mr. Gisborne, an able English divine, in his "Testimony of Natural to Revealed Religion." He looks, indeed, upon all the disturbances that have taken place in the earth's crust as evidence of a fallen condition of the world, as mementoes of a former penal infliction upon a guilty race. And aside from the light which geology casts upon the subject, this would be a not improbable conclusion. Take for an example the case of volcanoes and earthquakes.

A volcano is an opening made in the earth's crust by internal heat, which has forced melted or heated matter through the vent. An earthquake is the effect of the confined gases and vapors, produced by the heat upon the crust. When the volcano, therefore, gets vent, the earthquake always ceases. But the latter has generally been more destructive of life and property than the former. Where one city has been destroyed by lava, like Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabiae, twenty have been shaken down by the rocking and heaving of earthquakes. The records of ancient as well as modern times abound with examples of these tremendous catastrophes. Preeminent on the list is the city of Antioch. Imagine the inhabitants of that great city, crowded with strangers on a festival occasion, suddenly arrested on a calm day, by the earth heaving and rocking beneath their feet; and in a few moments two hundred and fifty thousand of them are buried by falling houses, or the earth opening and swallowing them up. Such was the scene which that city presented in the year 526; and several times before and since that period has the like calamity fallen upon it; and twenty, forty, and sixty thousand of its inhabitants have been destroyed at each time. In the year 17 after Christ, no less than thirteen cities of Asia Minor were in like manner overwhelmed in a single night. Think of the terrible destruction that came upon Lisbon in 1755. The sun had just dissipated the fog in a warm, calm morning, when suddenly the subterranean thundering and heaving began; and in six minutes the city was a heap of ruins, and sixty thousand of the inhabitants were numbered among the dead. Hundreds had crowded upon a new quay surrounded by vessels. In a moment the earth opened beneath them, and the wharf, the vessels, and the crowd went down into its bosom; the gulf closed, the sea rolled over the spot, and no vestige of wharf, vessels, or man ever floated to the surface. How thrilling is the account left us by Kircher, who was near, of the destruction of Euphemia, in Calabria, a city of about five thousand inhabitants, in the year 1638! "After some time," says he, "the violent paroxysm of the earthquake ceasing, I stood up, and, turning my eyes to look for Euphemia, saw only a frightful black cloud. We waited till it had passed away, when nothing but a dismal and putrid lake was to be seen where the city once stood." In like manner did Port Royal, in the West Indies, sink beneath the waters, with nearly all its inhabitants, in less than one minute, in the year 1692.

Still more awful, though usually less destructive, is often the scene presented by a volcanic eruption. Imagine yourselves, for instance, upon one of the wide, elevated plains of Mexico, far from the fear of volcanoes. The earth begins to quake under your feet, and the most alarming subterranean noises admonish you of a mighty power within the earth that must soon have vent. You flee to the surrounding mountains in time to look back and see ten square miles of the plain swell up, like a bladder, to the height of five hundred feet, while numerous smaller cones rise from the surface still higher, and emit smoke; and in their midst, six mountains are thrown up to the height, some of them at least, of sixteen hundred feet, and pour forth melted lava, turning rivers out of their course, and spreading terrific desolation over a late fertile plain, and forever excluding its former inhabitants. Such was the eruption, by which Jorullo, in Mexico, was suddenly thrown up, in 1759.

Still more terrific have been some of the eruptions in Iceland. In 1783, earthquakes of tremendous power shook the whole island, and flames burst forth from the ocean. In June these ceased, and Skaptar Jokul opened its mouth; nor did it close till it had poured forth two streams of lava, one sixty miles long, twelve miles broad, and the other forty miles long, and seven broad, and both with an average thickness of one hundred feet. During that summer the inhabitants saw the sun no more, and all Europe was covered with a haze.

Around the Papandayang, one of the loftiest mountains in Java, no less than forty villages were reposing in peace. But in August, 1772, a remarkable luminous cloud enveloping its top aroused them from their security. But it was too late. For at once the mountain began to sink into the earth, and soon it had disappeared with the forty villages, and most of the inhabitants, over a space fifteen miles long and six broad.

Still more extraordinary--the most remarkable on record--was an eruption in Sumbawa, one of the Molucca Islands, in 1815. It began on the fifth day of April, and did not cease till July. The explosions were heard in one direction nine hundred and seventy miles, and in another seven hundred and twenty miles. So heavy was the fall of ashes at the distance of forty miles that houses were crushed and destroyed. The floating cinders in the ocean, hundreds of miles distant, were two feet thick, and vessels were forced through them with difficulty. The darkness in Java, three hundred miles distant, was deeper than the blackest night; and finally, out of the twelve thousand inhabitants of the island, only twenty-six survived the catastrophe.

Now, if we confine our views to such facts as these, we can hardly avoid the conclusion that earthquakes and volcanoes are terrific exhibitions of God's displeasure towards a fallen and guilty world. But if it can be shown that the volcanic agency exerts a salutary influence in preserving the globe from ruin, nay, is essential to such preservation, we must regard its incidental destruction of property and life as no evidence of a vindictive infliction, nor of the want of benevolence in its operation. And the remarkable proofs which modern geology has presented of vast accumulations of heated and melted matter beneath the earth's crust, do make such an agent as volcanoes essential to the preservation of the globe. In order to make out this position, I shall not contend that all the earth's interior, beneath fifty or one hundred miles, is in a state of fusion. For even the most able and decided of those geologists who object to such an inference, admit that oceans of melted matter do exist beneath the surface. And if so, how liable would vast accumulations of heat be, if there were no safety-valves through the crust, to rend asunder even a whole continent? Volcanoes are those safety-valves, and more than two hundred of them are scattered over the earth's surface, forming vent-holes into the heated interior. Most of them, indeed, have the valves loaded, and the effort of the confined gases and vapors to lift the load produces the terrific phenomena of earthquakes and volcanoes. But if no such passages into the interior existed, what could prevent the pent-up gases from accumulating till they had gained strength enough to rend a whole continent, and perhaps the whole globe, into fragments? Is it not, then, benevolence by which this agency prevents so dreadful a catastrophe, even by means that bring some incidental evils along with them?

Some able writers do, indeed, object to the idea that volcanoes are safety-valves to the globe, deriving their objections from certain facts respecting the position of volcanic craters in the Sandwich Islands, if I do not misrecollect. Without going into the details of that case, for want of time and space, it seems to me that the facts respecting the connection between earthquakes and volcanoes, admitted by all, will justify such a view of the latter as is expressed by the term "safety-valves." For earthquakes are but the incipient effects of the volcanic force within the globe; and if these effects have been so terrible at the beginning, what must be the full exhibition of that force, if not able to find a passage for the struggling gases and lava through the strata above them? Who can say that it might not rend a continent asunder, and, if deep enough seated, even the whole globe?