ord, like the rest, in the first chapter of the Bible. For, as a distinct, and separate, and last act of creation, diverse from all that preceded it, we read :

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image; in the image of God created he him, &c. Ver. 26, 27.

It may be remarked that the fish of the sea, here enumerated as the first in order, are specifically mentioned by name for the first time after their creation. And the only geological doubt or difficulty (perhaps only yet unresolved) respecting the order of successive creations, compared with the scriptural record, arises from the fact that some marine fossils of the earliest origin are to be found in the strata in which the vegetable world was entombed. But it is worthy of notice, that "not a single species of fossil fishes has yet been found that is common to any two great geological formations, or living in our present seas;" and that the formations of magnesian limestone, shell limestone, and variegated marl, in which the seas were filled with marine animals, are conjoined, in the secondary series, with the lias and oolite formations which mark the era of amphibious animals or reptiles, were undoubtedly subsequent to the carboniferous or coaly strata, in which vegetables were as closely imbedded. A new and great creation, characteristic of the period, and including the tenants of the land as of the deep, might well have been recorded, though some species of fishes which had tenanted the seas, but were then extinct, found not a place in the record of creation. The question is not whether that record might not have been more full and complete if its purpose had been to teach geology to man, but whether, as scoffingly termed, "the few touches" which have been given do not show that Moses moved the pencil by a higher knowledge than his own. And appealing to the most recent discoveries, both in astronomical and geological science, we may ask whether there be not a visible resemblance in the great lineaments of each, as presented and literally painted to our hand, with the Mosaic portraiture of the creation of the heavens and of the earth.

The scriptures speak of the waters which are above the heavens* as subsisting still; and Christians, in their sacred psalmody, call on them to praise the Lord, who commanded and they were created. The first chapter of the Bible narrates how, from waters without form and void, the heavens and the earth were formed, till all were finished. And need

* Ps. cxlviii., 4.

we now to ask if there be not some analogy between what scripture told from the beginning and what science has at last discovered?

Astronomers have written on "the Construction of the Heavens," ," "the Mechanism of the Heavens," "the Architecture of the Heavens,"* while geologists have described the successive formations in the crust of the earth. Moses records the creation of the heavens and of the earth. Their conjoint subjects are the same as his.

Astronomers have designated the first and rudest form in which matter is visible, as nebulosities and nebula, i. e., cloudiness and cloud, and have termed their component substance the nebulous (or cloudy) fluid. And how else could waters without form and void, or vapoury and uncondensed, be more appropriately designated? The nebulosities are without form and diffuse, or void. And so also were the heavens and the earth, after their light rendered them visible. As exhibited by the great brightness in some parts, and extreme faintness in others, of the same nebulosity, the light may be seen divided 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

*The reader is specially referred to the very interesting and able work of Dr. Nichol, Professor of Practical Astronomy, Glasgow University, in which the subject is elucidated both in a philosophical and popular

manner.

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 else 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 gg, of the primary strata e d, of the secondary c b, and of the tertiary a (t trap).

N

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 chap.ter 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?

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, as faintly represented in Plate VI.f 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

Without any special regard to the scriptural definition of the term day, Christian 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 heavens 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.

† Brewster's Encyclopædia, art. Astronomy, pl. 41.