judge, whether our concluding observations allow them room enough for bringing about a consistency between the first chapter of Genesis and their theories. In the mean time, we assert that the history in this chapter maintains throughout an entire consistency with itself; a consistency which would be utterly violated, if we offered to allegorize the days, or to take them up in any other sense than that in which they obviously and literally present themselves. What shall we make of the institution of the Sabbath, if we surrender the Mosaic history of the creation? Is it to be conceived that the Jews would understand the description of Moses in any other sense than in the plain and obvious one? Is it to be admitted, that God would incorporate a falsehood in one of his commandments, or at least prefer a reason for the observance of it which was calculated to deceive, and had all the effect of a falsehood? We cannot but resist this laxity of interpretation, which, if suffered in one chapter of the Bible, may be carried to all of them, may unsettle the dearest articles of our faith, and throw a baleful uncertainty over the condition and the prospects of the species.

"We have heard it preferred as an impeachment against the consistency of the Mosaic account, that the day and night were made to succeed each other antecedently to the formation of the sun. This is very true; but it was not antecedent to the formation of light; it was not antecedent to the division of the light from the darkness; it may not have been antecedent to the formation of luminous matter; and though all this matter was not assembled into one body till the fourth day, it may have been separated and made to reside in so much greater abundance in one quarter of the heavens than in the other, as to have given rise to a region of light and a region of darkness. Such an arrangement would, with the revolution of the earth's axis, give rise to a day and a night. Enough for the purpose of making out this succession, if the light formed on the first day was

unequally dispersed over the surrounding expanse, though it was not till this light was fixed and concentrated in one mass, that the sun could be said to rule the day.

"And here let it be observed, that it does not fall upon the defenders of Moses to bring forward positive or specific proofs for the truth of any system reconcileable with his history, beyond the historical evidence of the history itself. A thousand systems may be devised, one of which only can be true, but each of which may be consistent with all the details of the book of Genesis. We cannot, and we do not offer any one of these systems as that which is to be positively received, but we offer them all as so many ways of disposing of the objections; and while upon us lies the bare task of proposing them, upon our antagonists lies the heavy work of overthrowing them all before they can set aside the direct testimony of the sacred historian, or assert that his account of the creation is contradicted by known appearances.

"We crave the attention of our readers to the above remark; and, satisfied that the more they think of it, the more will they be impressed with its justness, we spare ourselves the task of bestowing upon it any farther elucidation."

NOTE X. p. 77.

The conclusion of the same paper by Dr Chalmers, in the last note, we here insert, containing his suggestions of a pre-adamite world-suggestions, be it remembered, published twenty-three years ago.

"We conclude with adverting to the unanimity of geologists in one point, the far superior antiquity of this globe to the commonly received date of it, as taken from the writings of Moses. What shall we make of this? We may feel a security as to those points in which they differ, and, confronting them with one

another, may remain safe and untouched between them. But when they agree, this security fails. There is no neutralization of authority among them as to the age of the world; and Cuvier, with his catastrophes and his epochs, leaves the popular opinion nearly as far behind him, as they who trace our present continent upward through an indefinite series of ancestors, and assign many millions of years to the existence of each generation.

"Should the phenomena compel us to assign a greater antiquity to the globe than to that work of days detailed in the book of Genesis, there is still one way of saving the credit of the literal history: The first creation of the earth and the heavens may have formed no part of that work. This took place at the beginning, and is described in the first verse of Genesis. It is not said

when this beginning was. We know the general impression to be, that it was on the earlier part of the first day, and that the first act of creation formed part of the same day's work with the formation of light. We ask our readers to turn to that chapter, and to read the first five verses of it. Is there any forcing in the supposition that the first verse describes the primary act of creation, and leaves us at liberty to place it as far back as we may; that the first half of the second verse describes the state of the earth (which may already have existed for ages, and been the theatre of geological revolutions,) at the point of time anterior to the detailed operations of this chapter; and that the motion of the Spirit of God, described in the second clause of the second verse, was the commencement of these operations? In this case the creation of the light may have been the great and leading event of the first day; and Moses may be supposed to give us, not a history of the first formation of things, but of the formation of the present system; and as we have already proved the necessity of direct exercises of creative power to keep up the generations of living creatures, so Moses may, for any thing we

know, be giving us the full history of the last great interposition, and be describing the successive steps by which the mischiefs of the last catastrophe were repaired.

"I take a friend to see a field which belongs to me, and I give him a history of the way in which I managed it. In the beginning I enclosed that field. It was then in a completely wild and unbroken state. I pared it. This took up one week. I removed the great stones out of it. This took up another week. On the third week, I entered the plough into it: and thus, by describing the operations of each week, I may lay before him the successive steps by which I brought my field into cultivation. It does not strike me that there is any violence done to the above narrative, by the supposition that the enclosure of the field was a distinct and anterior thing to the first week's operation. The very description of its state after it was enclosed, is an interruption to the narrative of the operations, and leaves me at liberty to consider the work done after this description of the state of the field as the whole work of the first week. The enclosure of the field may have taken place one year, or even twenty years before the more detailed improvements were entered upon.

The first clause of the second verse is just such another interruption; and it is remarkable, that there is no similar example of it in describing the work of any of the following days, so as to divide one part of the day's work from the other. It is true, that, in some cases, it is said that God saw it to be good; but there is no imperfection ascribed to any thing, as it resulted immediately from the creating power. It is always said to be good in that state in which it came directly out of his hand; and if, in the second verse, it is said of the earth, not that it was good, but that it was without form and void; this may look not like a description of its state immediately after it came out of the hand of God, but of its state after one of those catastrophes which

geologists assign to it. It is farther remarkable, that there is a unity in the work of each of the five days. The work of the second day relates only to the firmament; of the third day, to the separation of sea and land; of the fourth day, to the formation of the celestial bodies; of the fifth, to the creation of the sea; and of the sixth, to that of land animals. This unity of work would be violated on the first day, if the primary act of creation were to form part of it; and the uniformity is better kept up by separating the primary act from all the succeeding operations, and making the formation and division of light, the great and only work of the first day.

“The same observation may apply to all the celestial bodies that are visible to this world. The creation of the heavens may have taken place as far antecedently to the details of the first chapter of Genesis, as the creation of the earth. It is evident, however, that if the earth had been at some former period the fair residence of life, she had now become void and formless; and if the sun, and moon, and stars, at some former period had given light, that light had been extinguished. It is not our part to assign the cause of a catastrophe which carried so extensive a destruction along with it; but he were a bold theorist indeed, who could assert, that, in the wide chambers of immensity, no such cause is to be found. A thousand possibilities may be devised, each of which is consistent with the literal history of Moses; and though it is not incumbent on the one party to bring forward any one of these possibilities in the shape of a positive announcement, each of them must be overthrown by the other, before that history can be abandoned; and it will be found, that while the friends of the Bible are under no necessity to depart from the sober humility of the inductive spirit, the charge of unphilosophical temerity lies upon its opponents."

"Any curious information as to the structure of the earth ought not," says Bishop Sumner, "to be expected