same philosophical principle will dispel the illusive error in this case, as in the former; and the Mosaical record expressly assures us, in the article we have been now considering, that the Creator, on this fourth day, disposed His celestial calendar in its first sensible and complete order of indications relative to this earth, and appointed it “to BE for SIGNS, and for SEASONS, and for DAYS " and YEARS;" preparatory to the proximate creation of MAN, to whom it was to be imparted by Him, and for whom alone He designed it to be conducive to those relative ends.

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Thus, then, it is sufficiently manifest, from the concurring authorities of learning and philosophy; that the solar light, which, upon the fourth day of creation, was transmitted immediately and optically from the solar orb, was the same light that, during the three preceding days, had been transmitted through a nebulous medium interposed between it

(p. 23, 24.) In this fulsome manner, did the French philosophy of the eighteenth century bandy its mutual compliments of insincerity. It may be useful to cite, from the same work, the more instructive words of its estimable but misguided author; written in 1778, and addressed to the same Coryphæus of Infidelity. "Ne souhaitons jamais de révolution, plaignons "nos pères de celles qu'ils ont éprouvées. Le bien dans la nature phy"sique et morale ne descend du ciel sur nous que lentement, peu-à-peu, "j'ai presque dit goutte à goutte; mais ce qui est subit, instantané, "tout ce qui est révolution, est une source de maux." (p. 21.) Little did he suspect, when he recorded this wise sentence, that a revolution such as he deprecated was in actual but secret preparation around him; fomented principally by that infidelity, pure or modified, which arrogated to itself the title of philosophy, and whose cause he was unconsciously serving; and which would hurry him to the scaffold, amongst its earliest victims.

and the earth : μητε ήλιου, μητε αστρων επιφαινοντων neither sun nor stars having been apparent," during that covered and clouded period1. And thus, "the evening and the morning," with the luminaries for dividing day and night manifested in the heaven and giving their light upon the earth, accomplished the Fourth Day.

' Involvere diem nimbi, et nox humida cœlum
Abstulit.

Tres adeo incertos cæca caligine soles

Erramus pelago, totidem sine sidere noctes.

En. iii. 203.

CHAPTER VII.

THE sacred historian goes on to his Fifth Article, and relates:

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"And GOD said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open fir"mament of heaven.

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"And GOD created GREAT WHALES, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind; and every winged fowl after its kind. And GOD saw that it was good.

"And GOD blessed them, saying: Be fruitful "and multiply, and FILL THE WATERS IN THE SEAS; and let fowl multiply in the earth.

"And the evening and the morning were the 66 FIFTH DAY."

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The word, which our version renders bring forth abundantly," is rendered by the Greek interpreters, ayayero, which simply expresses "bring forth," without the qualification of abundantly." The same qualification is absent also in the Latin version of the Chaldee paraphrase. Yet, the Hebrew verb implies abundance; its proper sense being that of scaturivit,

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1

།

i. e. progenuit abundè, as it is rendered by Castell i. e. to breed, or produce abundantly.

1;

In this article is related, the first formation of animal matter by the immediate act of Almighty Power, i. e. by Creation: a mode of formation, which appears to constitute the great tormentum of the mineral geology; from the constraint of which, it is ever labouring to extricate its science; but from which, nevertheless, it can never emancipate it. This amazing operation, it sometimes states thus: 66 au bout d'un certain tems, ce liquide fut peuplé d'animaux1—at the end of a "certain time, this (chemical) liquid was peopled "with animals;" it does not tell us how, but observes, "c'est un trop grand sujet-this is too

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great a subject to treat summarily," in order to maintain its spurious distinction between the MODES of mineral and of animal first formations. Yet, the subject is no greater in the one case than in the other, being exactly commensurate in both. Sometimes it shelters itself, from the assertion of creation, in the allegation of development; and propounds, with anodyne obscurity," the develop"ment of organic life on the globe." Nor does it seem to be so much amazed that the globe was peopled at all, as that it was not peopled sooner:

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What is astonishing, it says, and not less certain, is, that life has not always existed on the

1 DE LUC, Lett. Géol. p. 77.

3 HUMBOLDT, Superp. of Rocks, p. 28, 30, 46.

2 Ibid. p. 220.

"globe." It is difficult, to understand the ground of its astonishment; for, if it supposes the earth to have had a beginning, the production of animals on the fifth day of its formation, was early enough to have satisfied it.

The same immediate operation of God, which, on the first day, gave perfect existence to His mineral system, and, on the third day, to His vegetable system; gave perfect existence, on this fifth day, to that first created part of His animal system, which comprehended every kind of marine and winged animal, in all the individuals pertaining to its first formation. These were formed in full maturity of structure, in all their component parts, by a mode disclaiming all secondary operation. And, though the bones of the first "whales" unquestionably bore the appearance of an ossifying process, as the textures of the first rock and of the first tree severally bore the appearances of a crystallising and of a lignifying process, yet, that appearance was no indication to reason that they were produced by such a process; because, reason perceives, that they acquired their ossified substance and phenomena before any process of ossification had begun to take place.

Thus, marine animals of every kind, from the largest to the minutest, were produced “in abun"dance" in the sea-bed into which the general

1 CUVIER, Disc. Prél. p. 9.-Th. § 6. " Ce qui étonne, et ce qui n'est

pas moins certain, c'est que la vie n'a pas toujours existé sur le globe."