THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES.

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from the darkness. And there was evening and there was morning the first day.

Astronomers next speak of different forms of nebulous expansion. And in the same nebulosity may be seen the division into separate parts of the luminous fluid, or the breaking up of the whole amorphous or shapeless mass. And there was an expansion, or firmament, in the midst of the heavens, and the waters were divided from the waters. And there was evening and there was morning the second day.

The gradual condensation of the nebulæ, as seen in every form, gives evidence of the recognised and universal law of gravitation; the centripetal (centre-seeking) force, as Sir Isaac Newton termed it. And the great modern master of the higher geometry, who has trod farthest in the path in which Newton first led, and who was so versant with the motions of the planets as to trace them by a profound sagacity to an origin befitting the majestic and divine simplicity of the laws which regulate them, has shown how, as affecting our globe and every other, the waters were gathered together into one place, and the earth was consolidated.

And as the dry land appeared, the task of geologists begins. To the oldest of formations they have given the title (not undisputed) of primitive rock; and with the magic wand of truth they have brought back again, after the lapse of thousands of years, the springtime of our earth, and showed how it was clothed with the luxuriance and decked with the beauty of paradise itself. They more than restore the grass, and the herb, and the fruit-tree, which the fancy of man never thought of, and the eye of man never looked on as they grew. And there was evening and there was morning the third day.

Geologists having shown us the beauty of the earth, while yet unblighted because of sin, astronomers invite us to look up again to the heavens and see how the nebulous fluid, gradually condensed to a far narrower space than the orbit of the earth, is consolidated into a sun, and, only slightly tinctured with nebulosity, shines a light in the firmament of heaven; while, in like manner, La Place illustrates how the formation of the moon also was necessarily posterior to that of the earth. And, together with our sun, the other stars of our firmament were, by the operation of the same word of God or law of nature, simultaneously formed. And there was evening and there was morning the fourth day.

Geologists again take up the task and tell of a time-the fifth day, defined like the rest by the succession of light and darkness, but also

of undefined duration, and succeeding that of the origin of vegetables, and preceding that of terrestrial animals, whether wild or domestic when the waters were filled with living creatures, and the air tenanted with birds: and they bring forth from the depositories which the God of nature has formed, those amphibious animals, or race of marine saurians, which they also designate by the name which the original Scriptures assign them in their precise character, magnitude, multiplicity, and place. And there was evening and there was morning the fifth day.

And, lastly, the tertiary or latest formations (except those of diluvial or more recent volcanic deposites), succeeding the age of reptiles, and preceding that of man, set forth finally to view the beasts of the earth, and the cattle, and every creeping thing after their genera or kinds, till the whole work of animal creation was finished. And by a separate and last act of creative power, magnified as such, the topstone, once pointing to heaven, was formed and put over the whole earthly fabric; and the work of creation here below was' crowned by that of man, when, though formed of the dust, the Lord' breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning the sixth day.

The following diagram from Phillips's Geology (p. 44) will convey an idea of the relative position and order of succession of unstratified rock g g, of the primary strata e d, of the secondary c b, and of the tertiary a (t trap).

Comparing these independent accounts, respectively written at the interval of three thousand years, and guarantied by observations of the heavens and demonstrations in the earth, may we not conjoin the last verse of the first chapter of Genesis with the first verse of the second, and emphatically say, THUS the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And whose word is this but that of their Creator.

• Without any special regard to the scriptural definition of the term day, Chris

The stars of our firmament are indeed a host, of which a small part only is seen by the unaided human eye. Astronomers, so far as they can, have shown its form, so as best to accord with and explain the appearance of the heavens. But he who from the beginning told man of their creation, can alone name them by their names, as he created them by his word, and brings them forth in their order. And from a diffused nebulosity, waters without form and void, spread throughout an inconceivable immensity of space, to a numberless cluster of stars, as we read the word of God and look on the operation of his hands, the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork. But the law, also, of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.

The heavens are our witnesses; earth is full of our depositories; truth must spring up where the Creator hath sown it; and philosophers at last must be its tributaries. The Christian may well rejoice in the progress of science, and gladly give it a free and unfettered. course. Knowledge shall be the stability of the times of the Messiah; and the mind of man, enlightened in the knowledge of the word and works of God, shall be freed from the nebulosity which enshrouds it, and the light shall be divided from the darkness. And then shall the greatness of his works be seen, and the truth of his word be made manifest.

But although, compared to that full flood of light, only the first flush of dawn may seem to be arising now over all the subjects before us, whence, we ask, came this light, were it far fainter than it is? Is it not enough to scare away the children of darkness from the field

tian writers, since the days of Athanasius, have repeatedly interpreted the days of creation as periods of undefined duration. The modern hypothesis is supported by great names, “which supposes the word, 'beginning,' as applied by Moses in the first verse of the Book of Genesis, to express an undefined period of time which was antecedent to the last great change that affected the surface of the earth." But the record itself does not seem to be limited to this last great change, nor even to the creation of the earth alone, exclusive of the heavens. The earth is described as without form and void, which is apparently, if not obviously, fatal to the idea of anterior formations. On the second day the firmament was made, which God called heaven. On the fourth day (and not before the first) God made the sun, the moon, and the stars, and set them in the firmament of heaven. And after the record of the work of the sixth and all the preceding days, it is said, Thus the hear ens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made, &c. And it is added, These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth, when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. So manifestly does the creation of the heavens and of the earth, from waters without form and void, to the hosts of heaven in their order, seem to be included, according to express declaration, in the Mosaic Record.

which they have assumed as their own? What invention of man ever bore a similitude to truths ever previously unknown and only newly discovered, like that very record which sceptics have assailed? And how are all imaginative cosmogonies of former ages swallowed up by that of Moses, as were the rods of the Egyptian magicians by that of Aaron? Can our great calculators tell what is the sum of the improbabilities that such an analogy, if not founded on fact, would have subsisted or could be traced from first to last between the observations of Sir W. Herschel, the opinions of La Place, the accumulated and classified discoveries of geologists, and the short and simple record of Moses? Before Herschel handled a telescope, or La Place had studied the laws of planetary motion, or Cuvier had touched a fossil bone, what Vulcanist, or Neptunist (combating whether the crust of the earth was of aqueous or igneous origin), or other uninspired mortal, could have described the order of succession, in the creation of the heavens and of the earth, and marked in six successive periods the rank of each, in so close conformity with the recent discoveries both of astronomy and geology, when the name of science can be attached to these words, like the man who, three thousand years ago, could humanly know nothing of either from the mud of the Nile or from the sands of the desert? What man on earth, from the beginning of the creation, ever recorded its history with such conformity to existing observations and discoveries, as did he of whom the Scripture saith, God made known his ways unto Moses? And has not this word its visible illustration in the first page of the Pentateuch, as well as in every prophecy which he uttered?

And may we not finally ask whether the testimony, borne by the fate of the Jews and by the desolation of Judea, that Moses was a . prophet of the Highest, be not repeated by the record of the creation, and also, most slightly as we have glanced at either, by the whole Mosaic history and dispensation? In contending for the faith on any ground to which our adversaries bring us, it is not enough that our cause pass scathless. When Nebuchadnezzar cast the faithful servants of the Lord into the seven-times heated fiery furnace because they would not worship a golden image, and when they came out uninjured by the fire that slew those who touched them, the king's word was indeed changed; and he blessed the God of Israel, and issued a decree that none should speak anything against their God, "because there is no other God that could deliver after this sort." And when the Scriptures come forth uninjured from the fire which slays those

speak against the Bible? may it not be received where before it was ridiculed, and be studied where formerly it was slighted? And may not every golden idol be abandoned for the worship and service of the Creator of heaven and of earth, as whose word the Bible is approved; not only because it has passed unhurt through the fiery ordeal to which the idolaters of blinded reason subjected it, but because it is thus manifest that no uninspired man could have written after this sort, as Moses wrote; and that no other God but the Lord by whom he spake created the heavens and the earth, as it hath THUS been told from the beginning?” *

SECTION I.

It is evident that the mode of the origination of this world could be known to man, only by revelation from God; and traditionary revelation, which has already been referred to, comes to our aid in proving the truth of the Mosaic account of the creation of the world, for traditions of this event would, if any revelation concerning it were originally made, be handed down from one generation to another, among all nations, gradually however becoming more and more mixed with fable; and it is worthy of remark, that all those traditions that have reached us, in certain leading features, agree with the account of Moses, while the absurd fable with which they are distorted, contrasted with the grandeur, unadorned simplicity, and coincidence with science and natural philosphy, of the Mosaic account, will enable us easily to detect them as the corrupted traditions. These traditions are to be found among the Chaldeans, the Egyptians, the Phenicians, the Hindoos, the Chinese, Etrurians, the Goths, the Greeks, the Romans, and even the aboriginal Americans.

The book of Menu which, with the Hindoos, is of equal authority with the Veda, contains the following account of the creation.

"Menu† sat reclined, with his attention fixed on one object, the supreme God; when the divine Sages approached him, and, after mutual salutations in due form, delivered the following address : Deign, sovereign ruler, to apprise us of the sacred laws in their order, as they must be followed by all the four classes, and by each of them, in their several degrees, together with the duties of every mixed class;

• Keith's Demonstration of the Truth of the Christian Religion, pp. 144—148. † As already stated, Sir W. Jones identifies Menu with Noah.