Voices from the rocks Author:Hugh Miller Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: rative into harmony with the statements of modern geology, should suggest to every Christian mind the inquiry,—May not the assertions of geologists, after all, b... more »e unfounded in truth ? The facts of the science, of course, are altogether beyond dispute, but may not the theories founded upon those facts be fallacious ? We will honestly confess that for many years past this has been our conviction; and, with the reader's permission, we will now place before '. the grounds of our belief. chapter{Section 4CHAPTER VI. ON THE ABSENCE OF EROSPVE WATER AGENCY IN THE UNDER STRATA. Orrs. first argument is as follows:—The absence of the erosive agency of water, as manifested in cutting out valleys and gorges in the under strata of the earth, is fatal to the theory, that each formation has successively emerged from the sea, and become the surface of a habitable world. The globe which we inhabit—if we except certain very level tracts—exhibits a surface characterized by great irregularity, and everywhere diversified with hill and dale, mountain and valley. Some of these irregularities have evidently been produced by internal convulsions. Volcanoes and earthquakes have occasioned most extensive disturbances in the original position of the earth's strata, and some of the highest mountains of our globe have thus originated. But a very large proportion of the inequalities of the earth are clearly traceable to the operation of water. As nearly all geologists allow, the numerous valleys which furrow the earth's surface have been chiefly caused by the action of waters rapidly retiring from a country previously submerged. Speaking of the appearances exhibited by these valleys and gorges, Mr. Conybeare remarks:—"The first thing that will strike him (the geological observer) will be theregul...« less