BIBLE HISTORY.

FIRST AGE OF THE WORLD.

THE CREATION OF THE WORLD: FROM THE CREATION OF MAN

TO THE DELUGE, COMPRISING THE SPACE OF 1656 YEARS. The World is Created.-Gen. i.

OD having decreed to make the world, as he has, out of nothing, created in the beginning a vast and unformed mass, devoid of all that order and beautiful variety of parts which afterwards appeared. The holy Scriptures say that Almighty God perfected this great

work in six days.* On the first, after having created the heavens and earth, He made the light. On the second day, He

*Modern infidels have endeavoured to throw discredit on this portion of the sacred narrative by appealing to the discoveries of geology, as proving that the earth must have existed for many millions of years before the date assigned in the book of Genesis.

It is important, then, to observe, that in reality there is nothing in the Mosaic 2

made the firmament, to which He gave the name of Heaven. On the third, He separated the dry land from the waters, that were mingled with it; the waters He collected together, and called them the Sea. He then commanded the earth to produce the different sorts of plants and fruit-trees, with their respective seeds in them, for the reproduction and increase of each in its own kind. On the fourth day, He made those great luminaries that shine in the firmament of heaven, the sun, the moon, and the stars; ordaining that the sun should preside over the day, and the moon over the night; and that by their stated revolutions they should also regulate the days, the months, and the seasons of the year. On the fifth day, God extended his creative power from the inanimate to the animated part of the universe. From the waters He produced an innumerable variety of creatures, containing within themselves the principles of life and motion; fishes of various size, and birds of every kind, which He blessed, and bade to increase and multiply, commanding them to people the air and the watery deep. On the sixth day, He commanded the earth to produce, not plants and trees, as it had already done, but animals and living creatures of every kind. He chose likewise on the same day to create Man, the last and most perfect of all his works: for of so many excellent things

narrative at variance with any conclusions to which scientific discoveries may lead, in reference to the antiquity of the earth. For there is nothing to exclude the supposition of a long interval-an interval, if necessary, of many millions of years-between the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the creation of man.

Some writers consider that this interval occurred between the beginning of all time, when God created the heavens and the earth (Gen. i. 1), and the beginning of the first day, when he set about preparing the world as a dwellingplace for man (Gen. i. 2, 3).

Others prefer to suppose that each one of the six days (Gen. i. 2-31) was itself a period of almost inconceivable duration. "As to these days," says St. Augustine, in his great work on the City of God" (book xi., chap. 6), "what kind they were, it is very difficult, nay, it is impossible, to imagine, much more to explain."

"To us," says an eminent writer of our own time, whose work has been most favourably received by the Holy See, "it seems that either of those systems, or both together, may be fairly admitted without any undue violence to the text of the inspired narrative; and this is the opinion to which Cardinal Wiseman appears to have inclined in his Lectures on the Connection between Science and Revealed Religion" (Geology and Revelation, by the Rev. Gerald Molloy, D.D., chap. xix. M'Glashan & Gill, Dublin, 1870.)

which he had formed, man was the only one capable of knowing and of loving his Creator; and therefore for man were they all created. The creation being thus perfected, God, on the seventh day, ceased from doing anything more; for which reason that day was then consecrated to the Divine service, and appointed to be kept holy in future times.

Such is the account Moses has given us of the Creation, in which we find no mention made of the angels: it is the more common opinion of the holy Fathers that those pure spirits were created among the first of God's works: in the beginning when He created the heavens and the earth. St. Augustine understands the separation which God made of the light from the darkness on the first day, to express also a division, which He made at the same time, of the good angels from the bad. Thus from the first existence of the world, and in the most excellent of his creatures, it pleased the Divine wisdom to let us see that none can be happy who separate themselves from God; that to whatever degree of greatness or of glory they may be raised, they must still remain subject to their Creator, since nothing can screen them, if they transgress, from the justice of an offended Deity: therefore, as by the example of the good angels, we are encouraged in that duty of fidelity, which we owe to our Creator, so at the remembrance of those fiery torments into which the rebel angels have been thrown, we must undoubtedly conclude that God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble.

A.M. 1.] Adam placed in the Earthly Paradise: [A.c. 4004. Formation of Eve.-Gen. ii.

The Heavens and the Earth being now complete with all their ornaments, and Man who had been formed out of the earth, being moreover dignified with a spiritual and immortal soul according to the image and likeness of his Maker, God constituted him the master of the universe, and placed him in the terrestrial Paradise. Paradise was the seat of all earthly happiness, a garden teeming with delights, planted by the hand of God himself, and adorned with every produce