stand therefore upon safe ground, and are fully warranted by divine authority to translate the language of the Old Testament upon physical subjects, into such modern expressions, as shall be agreeable to the reality of the things spoken of.

PART II.

UPON the principle which has been explained, I now propose to the impartial judgment of Bible-scholars, that method of understanding the Mosaic account of the Creation and the Flood, which appears to me just and safe. The way is sufficiently cleared, and the principles explained and confirmed; so that little will be necessary in showing the application to the cases before us.

I. With respect to the account of the CREATION.*

Gen. i. 1. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."

The phrase "the heavens and the earth," though not always used by the sacred writers in the full sense, is the most comprehensive that the Hebrew language affords, to designate the universe of dependent being; and, on account of the connexion, it requires to be so taken in this place. It thus corresponds to the expressions in the New Testa

expressed by the sacred writers, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, in order to accommodate divine truths to the capacity of the uncultivated and ignorant mass of mankind. It is therefore the duty of competent and diligent expositors to bring forth, in every instance, the true meaning; and to explain the ground and reason of their having been expressed in the words which are presented to us." "Novantiqua; alla Serenissima Madama la Gran Duchessa di Toscania, Madre;" p. 10, 11; printed in 1636, at A igusta Trebocca, perhaps Trevi in the duchy of Spoleto. * Supplementary Note, Q.

ment; "All things that are in the heavens and that are on the earth, the visible and the invisible;—the all things."* This sublime sentence therefore stands, as an independent axiom,† at the head of the sacred volume, announcing that there was an epoch, a point in the flow of infinite duration, when the whole of the dependent world, or whatever portion of it first had existence, was brought into being; and that this commencement of being was not from pre-existent materials, nor by fortune, chance, or accident, nor through the skill of any finite agent, but absolutely and solely by the will, wisdom, and power of the ONE and ONLY GOD. It was a creation, in the proper sense; not a modelling or new-forming. The phrase, "In the beginning," is used several times in Scripture, to denote the commencement of whatever flow of time, or series of things, the subject spoken of requires. One of the primary doctrines of the New Testament is, "In the beginning was the WORD;" showing that the Word was already in existence, at the point of time spoken of, did not then begin to be, and consequently must have existed in all prior time. But here the expression specifies an action as taking place at this point of time; an act of the Infinite Being. But WHEN that beginning was, when that act was put forth, it was not the design of revelation to inform us. Carry it back as far as we may, there is ETERNITY beyond it: and compared with that eternity, all finite duration sinks into a moment.

In the same manner we understand the recapitulation in chap. ii. 1-3; the commencement of the briefer narrative, in chap. ii. 4; and the reason of the sabbath given in the fourth commandment, Exodus xx. 11. All that the Israelites

* Τὰ πάντα, τὰ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς καὶ τὰ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς- τὰ πάντα. Sec. ed. The equivalent phrases in common authors are rà öλa, and rò

πᾶν.

† See pp. 159-165.

could understand by "the heavens and the earth," all that they knew, and all that it concerned them to know,* was "made," (adjusted, arranged, appropriated to new purposes, for so the word often signifies,)" in six days." There is just as much reason to interpret that commandment, as representing the Deity to "faint and be weary," in direct contradiction to other parts of the Bible,† as to maintain that it teaches the proper creation of the universe to have taken place immediately before the institution of the sabbath.

Here I trust that, without assumption or captiousness, I may express regret that Dr. Buckland, in his Bridgewater Treatise, instead of relying on his own sound and clear judgment, obtained a note from one of his learned fellow Professors, which appears very obscure and quite nugatory. If it had any application to the matter at all, it would rather go to darken the evidence of a proper creation being

* Fourth ed. "Whatever worthy and exalted apprehensions of the Author of nature, the infinite perfection of his attributes, or the extent and magnificence of his works, reason and philosophy may dictate and discover to us; to whatever important uses, God, in his infinite wisdom and power, may have destined the planets and the fixed stars (in the discovery of which we have no other light to direct us but bare conjectures, and arguments drawn from congruities), Moses, by divine direction, has withdrawn our thoughts and speculations from all such far distant objects; not only because we have no visible relation to, nor perceptible connexion with them, but rather (as we may with certainty and confidence affirm) because they do not measure our time, by either their real or apparent revolutions. God has created and ordained two great luminaries, the sun and moon, to be unto us for signs and for seasons, for days and years;' and to this motion only Moses, with great judgment and accuracy, confines his astronomy." "Scripture Chronology," by John Kennedy, Rector of Bradley, Derb. 1751: p. 7.

"Hast thou not known, hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God Jehovah, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary?" Is. xl. 28.

here asserted, or declared in any other part of the Bible. Such aid was not needed.

Whether the original writer of this sacred archive was Moses, or whether he was placing at the head of his work, a composition of an earlier patriarch, the calm majesty and simplicity of the declaration give, as a matter of internal evidence, the strong presumption that he spoke with authority: that he only repeated what the Omniscient Spirit had commanded him to say and write. The declaration is, in the New Testament, adduced as faith; which implies a divine testimony.*

an object of

What was the condition or constitution of the first created matter?-Certainly it falls within the province of General Physics to examine this question: and if the investigation be conducted in the true spirit of philosophy, which is modest, reverential, and cautious,-in a word, the spirit of genuine religion,-though it may not be demonstratively answered in the present life, yet valuable approximations may be made to it. The nebular hypothesis, ridiculed as it has been by persons whose ignorance cannot excuse their presumption, is regarded as in a very high degree probable by some of the finest and most Christian. minds.† If I may venture to utter my own impressions, I

* Heb. xi. 3.

+ If the reader be not already acquainted with the nature and the reasons of this doctrine, he owes himself a great duty. Let him consult Whewell's "Bridgewater Treatise," book ii. chap. vii.: Mantell's "Wonders of Geology," Lect. i. § 17, 18; and Nichol's "Architecture of the Heavens," Letters vii. and viii. "The Nebular Hypothesis, in its relations to the Planetary System, may be termed complete; it comprehends its beginnings, establishes those elements on which its duration depends, and exhibits the causes and mode of its ultimate transition into a novel form.-Surely the vision of these unfathomable changes, of the solemn march of these majestic heavens from phase to phase, obediently fulfilling their awful destiny, will be lost on the heart of the adorer, unless-it swells with that humility which

must profess it as the most reasonable supposition, and the correlate of the nebular theory, that God originally gave being to the primordial elements of things, the very small number of simple bodies, endowing each with its own wondrous properties. Then, that the action of those properties, in the ways which his wisdom ordained, and which we call laws, produced, and is still producing, all the forms and changes of organic and inorganic natures; and that the series is by HIM destined to proceed, in combinations and is the best homage to the SUPREME!-Between us and the HIGHEST there is still vastness and mystery.-To take wing beyond terrestrial precincts, perhaps, is not wholly forbidden, provided we go with unsandaled feet, as if on holy ground.—An order hanging tremblingly over nothingness, and of which every constituent-fails not to beseech incessantly for a substance and substratum, in the idea of ONE WHO LIVETH FOR EVER!" Nichol.

Fourth ed. These objects wear the appearance of luminous masses, in various degrees of brilliance and obscurity, of different and what might be called capricious shapes, but which, however irregular in our view, undergo no perceptible change of figure. They are very numerous. Of most of them, the magnitude far exceeds that of our whole solar system. See Sir John Herschel's Astronomy; p. 401-7. Many of them he had scarcely ever a doubt, would be resolved into constellations, clusters, or groups of stars, if a sufficient telescopic power could be obtained. This anticipation has been realized by the Earl of Rosse, in the use of his matchless telescope. He has resolved several of these objects, upon which he has given a short paper, with exact figures, in the "Philosophical Transactions" for 1844. A sufficiently favourable state of the atmosphere is so rare in our climate, as to forbid our hoping for a rapid progress of those observations. Some persons have hastened to the conclusion that all the so-called nebulosities are of the same character, groups of stars: and that, of course, the nebular theory is exploded. But this is a premature judgment: we cannot say that the induction has been carried out far enough. Lord Rosse observes that, though, as has always been the case, an increase of instrumental power has added to the number of the clusters, at the expense of the nebula properly so called; still it would be very unsafe to conclude that such will always be the case, and thence to draw the obvious inference that all nebulosity is but the glare of stars too remote to be separated by the utmost power of our instruments."

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