# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1861_S68
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

68

The Biblical History of Creation and the Geological Theories of the Earth's Formation.

(Continued.)

The various kinds of rock and strata of which the earth's crust is composed are divided by geologists into five main formations, or major systems. By a formation, or system, is understood a portion of the earth's crust that arose under the same temporal conditions. The major systems are the primary rock, the transitional rock, the secondary or stratified rock, the tertiary rock, and the quaternary rock, or diluvial and alluvial formations. Each of these major systems in turn consists of several formations of differing mineral character. "On these various rock formations and strata, with their inclusions of fossil plant and animal remains, is founded the geological theory of periods of creation, inasmuch as one concludes, partly from the manner in which these strata are laid down — that is, from the fact that the various strata, where they occur next to one another, are layered one above another in the given sequence, counted from bottom to top — and partly from their fossil inclusions, insofar as the lower or older layers (with the exception of the lowest, or primary rock, which contains no trace of plant or animal remains) generally show only animal and plant remains of the lower orders, and only in the higher or younger layers do the higher orders of the animal and plant kingdoms appear — that one formation arose after another, indeed over long periods of time, as a result of repeated revolutions, or, as A. Wagner holds, evolutions of the body of the earth, in which the plant and animal life then existing met its end and was buried in masses of rock and earth, whereupon a new creation of plants and animals then came into being, of a higher and more perfect formation, until at last, after the final revolution, to which the Diluvium bears witness, our earth received its present form, and the flora and fauna still existing today were created at the same time as the human race."

"If one now wishes to fit these periods of creation assumed by geology, with their organic beings, into the biblical history of creation, then verse 2 of the first chapter of Genesis does indeed seem to offer the most suitable place for them — there would then have elapsed, between the beginning of creation (v. 1) and the creation of light on the first day (v. 3), a very long period of time with many changes in the created world." Apart, however, from the fact that "the first verses of Genesis do not give the reader unacquainted with the geological creations the impression that, before the six days' work, there were already supposed to have arisen and again perished repeated creations," the comparison of the content of the six days' work with the character of the geological periods of creation is decisive in this matter. "Are we to believe that the plants of the