The Cast Iron Park Bench

In the massive volumes of the later editions of the Principles of Geology all these points are discussed and illustrated with such a wealth of facts and such cogent yet cautious reasoning as have carried conviction to all modern students. It affords us perhaps the very best proof yet given of evolution in one department of the universe–that of the surface and the crust of the earth. Not only have all the chief modifications throughout our geological history been clearly depicted, but they have in almost every case been shown to be the inevitable results of real and comparatively well-known causes, such as we now see at work around us. We understand these principles today as being natural forces of evolution.

The generalization observations of Lyell have been strengthened since his death by more complete investigations of certain phenomena and their causes than were possible when he was alive. The only objections to Lyell’s ideas seem to be founded upon a misconception. He has been termed a “Uniformitarian,” and it is believed that it is not appropriate to take the limited range of causes we now see in action, as a measure of those which have acted during our geological history.

But neither Lyell nor his followers make this assumption. They merely say that they do not find any proof of greater or more violent causes in action in past times, and we do find many indications that the great natural forces then in action–seas and rivers, sun and cloud, rain and hail, frost and snow, as well as the very texture and constituents of the older rocks, and the way in which the organisms of each age are preserved in them, must have been in their general constituency and magnitude very much as they are now.

Other objections, such as that the internal forces were greater when the earth was hotter, and that tidal effects must have been more powerful when the moon was nearer the earth, are altogether beside the question until we can obtain more definite measures of past time than we now possess in reference to both geological and cosmic phenomena. All of this is confronted in the evolution creationism controversy debate being waged between science and the churches.