for food (Gen. i. 29), and no other creation of objects belonging to the vegetable kingdom is mentioned. It is, therefore, with some degree of surprise (as Mr. Goodwin has intimated) that we learn that the Third Day's work relates to the vegetation which lies embedded in the coal measures.

4. Again, a protest must be raised against that view of the Fourth Day's work which would make it mean nothing more than that the heavenly bodies were then made visible, through the dispersion (we are told) of the thick clouds of steam and vapour consequent upon the cooling of the earth's crust. And, indeed, it is a strange way of describing a change of this kind, to say that then God made the sun, moon, and stars, and set them in the firmament, whereas, in fact, nothing at all was done in respect to the heavenly bodies themselves (for such is the interpretation we are now considering); only the clouds were dispersed which before had prevented their being seen. Dispose the notion that "the description would be optical" ("Testimony" p. 155) as we will, yet it requires a wide stretch of fancy to suppose that a witness viewing (we will say) the change from the earth's surface would have been beguiled into the apprehension that the objects, gradually discovered to his view by the evident removal of an interposing curtain, were then first created.

5. The Fifth Day we have seen assigned to the formation of the saurians of the Oolitic period. At first sight there is a certain plausibility lent to this view by the specification of the tanninim, for since tannin sometimes means dragon or serpent, and occasionally perhaps crocodile, it may very well designate a creature of the saurian class in general; though the passage before cited from the Psalms (Ps. cxlviii. 7), as well as some

others, shows that we need not go back to the Oolitic period to find these tanninim. But there are fatal objections. On this day were made (so the Record tells us) all the inhabitants of the waters, as well as all the birds. Now fishes had been in being in geological periods anterior to the Oolitic, traces of heterocercal fishes abounding in the Devonian strata. Moreover, as has been already seen, the sheretz of the waters (Gen. i. 20) is the whole class of animals swarming in that element; it would include, therefore, not only fishes properly so called, but the mollusks and crustaceans ; and these appear very early, being found profusely in the Silurian rocks and onwards. Even if sheretz be taken to mean creeping things, as the Septuagint renders it, yet it might still describe mollusks and crustaceans as suitably as saurians. Neither can we fail to observe that, according to the exposition now under view, fishes disappear out of the sacred narrative altogether; their place being taken by saurians, we have no account left of the formation of fishes at all. In like manner birds disappear to make room for the monstrous pterodactyls. Is this a likely exposition of the text? On the Sixth Day these creatures are specified as subjected to the dominion of man; while in fact almost all the races of animals which existed in those periods have disappeared from the earth altogether.

6. A similar objection lies against the exposition which this scheme gives of the Sixth Day's work. The earlier part of the day is thought to be recognised in "those Tertiary ages during which the gigantic mammals possessed the earth and occupied the largest space in creation." ("Testimony," p. 167.) In the Sacred Record, man has assigned to him the dominion over these as well as over the other classes of animals; for

compare the language of the 26th and 28th verses with the 24th, as well as with the 20th and 21st. Yet these "gigantic mammals" have never been subject to his dominion, having likewise disappeared before he came upon the scene.

In fact the gist of the most important objection all lies here; the whole of the chapter, as naturally construed, appears to portray the production of all these various objects in nature by which man was to find himself surrounded when he should at the last appear on the earth; whereas, according to this scheme of interpretation, the greater part of the chapter relates to classes of objects with which man has no connection whatever; the works of the First Day (for that light is not our light), of the Third, of the Fifth, and of the former part of the Sixth, are works which have ceased to be countless ages ago, leaving nothing but mere traces of their existence, requiring to be toilsomely disinterred out of the bowels of the earth by scientific investigation.

Neither can this exposition be regarded as discovering in the words one class of objects symbolised by another class of objects, which, however, likewise retain their place; like, for example, the interpretation of words relating to David or to Cyrus as prophetical of Christ. This is something altogether different. It is the setting aside wholly of the obvious and primary sense of the words, to substitute for it another with which the original one cannot at all co-exist. We read the chapter and fancy we see one thing, when our geologist comes in and tells us that it is nothing whatever of the kind, but something quite diverse to, and even irreconcilable with, that which we before found there. It is not easy to believe that a sense wrapped up in words

which are so very apt to lead the reader away from apprehending it, can have been the sense which the Spirit of God intended us to find there.

In short, while it is impossible to deny to Hugh Miller's scheme the praise of great ingenuity, and though, as already confessed, we plain unscientific readers may in parts of it almost feel inclined to fancy it true, yet it is impossible to admit it. It is irreconcilable with many of the details of the chapter; it is, in especial, out of keeping with what, according to natural exposition, must be regarded as the general import of the whole.

IV.

THE SECTION NOT HISTORY, STRICTLY SO CALLED, BUT

PARABLE.

THE most important part of our problem is yet to be solved. It has been shown (as I believe) that this first section of the Bible is not a human but a divine utterance; for we have for this the guarantee, not only of Moses and the prophets, but of the Lord Jesus Christ himself. On the other hand, viewed in the light of fair and honest exposition, the section seems to contain notions which are not merely not comprehended in the lessons of modern science, but are felt to be incompatible with them. It would not be, perhaps, accurate to affirm so much respecting the existence of light apart from the sun, though, in fact, even here we find ourselves before a statement which we do not easily square with our notions of physical facts;-but when we take account of the conception of a firmament vaulting the skies, of waters above that firmament, and of the sun and stars, as well as the moon, being made after the earth, and as accessory and ancillary to the earth, however congenial such views may have been, and we know in fact were, to the persuasions of mankind in general, down to very modern times, yet now we must confess that they can no longer be admitted among just views of physical facts.

We have seen the attempts which Geology, meaning