are given to man for food in addition to the green herb, it is difficult not to come to the conclusion, that, in the earliest view taken of creation, men and animals were supposed to have been, in their original condition, not carnivorous. It is needless to say that this has been for the most part the construction put upon the words of the Mosaic writer, until a clear perception of the creative design which destined the tiger and lion for flesh-eaters, and latterly the geological proof of flesh-eating monsters having existed among the pre-Adamite inhabitants of the globe, rendered it necessary to ignore this meaning.

The first, second, and third verses of the second chapter of Genesis, which have been most absurdly divided from their context, conclude the narrative.* On the seventh day, God rests from his work, and blesses the day of rest, a fact which is referred to in the commandment given from Sinai, as the ground of the observance of sabbatic rest imposed upon the Hebrews.

Remarkable as this narrative is for simple grandeur, it has nothing in it which can be properly called poetical. It bears on its face no trace of mystical or symbolical meaning. Things are called by their right names with a certain scientific exactness widely different from the imaginative cosmogonies of the Greeks, in which the powers and phenomena of nature are invested with personality, and the passions and qualities of men are represented as individual existences.

The circumstances related in the second narrative of creation are, indeed, such as to give at least some

*The common arrangement of the Bible in chapters is of comparatively modern origin, and is admitted, on all hands, to have no authority or philological worth whatever. In many cases the division is most preposterous, and interferes greatly with an intelligent perusal of the text.

ground for the supposition that a mystical interpretation was intended to be given to it. But this is far from being the case with the first narrative, in which none but a professed mystifier of the school of Philo could see anything but a plain statement of facts. There can be little reasonable dispute, then, as to the sense in which the Mosaic narrative was taken by those who first heard it; nor is it indeed disputed, that for centuries, putting apart the Philonic mysticism (which, after all, did not exclude a primary sense), its words have been received in their genuine and natural meaning. That this meaning is, prima facie, one wholly adverse to the present astronomical and geological views of the universe is evident enough. There is not a mere difference through deficiency. It cannot be correctly said that the Mosaic writer simply leaves out details which modern science supplies, and that, therefore, the inconsistency is not a real, but only an apparent one. It is manifest that the whole account is given from a different point of view from that which we now unavoidably take; that the order of things, as we now know them to be, is to a great extent reversed, although here and there we may pick out some general analogies, and points of resemblance. Can we say that the Ptolemaic system of astronomy is not at variance with modern science, because it represents with a certain degree of correctness some of the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies?

The task which sundry modern writers have imposed upon themselves is to prove that the Mosaic narrative, however apparently at variance with our knowledge, is essentially and in fact true, although never understood properly until modern science supplied the necessary commentary and explanation.

Two modes of conciliation have been propounded which have enjoyed considerable popularity, and to these two we shall confine our attention.

The first is that originally brought into vogue by Chalmers, and adopted by the late Dr. Buckland in his Bridgewater Treatise, and which is probably still received by many as a sufficient solution of all difficulties. Dr. Buckland's treatment of the case may be taken as a fair specimen of the line of argument adopted; and it shall be given in his own words:

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"The word beginning," he says, as applied by Moses in the first verse of the book of Genesis, expresses an undefined period of time, which was antecedent to the last great change that affected the surface of the earth, and to the creation of its present animal and vegetable inhabitants, during which period a long series of operations may have been going on; which, as they are wholly unconnected with the history of the human race, are passed over in silence by the sacred historian, whose only concern was barely to state, that the matter of the universe is not eternal and selfexistent, but was originally created by the power of the Almighty."

"The Mosaic narrative commences with a declaration, that 'in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.' These few first words of Genesis may be fairly appealed to by the geologist as containing a brief statement of the creation of the material elements, at a time distinctly preceding the operations of the first day. It is nowhere affirmed that God created the heaven and the earth in the first day, but in the beginning: this beginning may have been an epoch at an unmeasured distance, followed by periods of undefined duration, during which all the physical operations disclosed by geology were going on.

"The first verse of Genesis, therefore, seems explicitly to assert the creation of the universe; the heaven, including the sidereal systems; and the earth, more especially specifying our own planet, as the subsequent scene of the operations of the six days about to be described. No information is given as to events which may have occurred upon this earth, unconnected with the history of man between the creation of its component matter recorded in the first verse, and the era at which its history is resumed in the second verse; nor is any limit fixed to the time during which these intermediate events may have been going on: millions of millions of years may have occupied the indefinite interval, between the beginning in which God created the heaven and the earth, and the evening or commencement of the first day of the Mosaic narrative.

"The second verse may describe the condition of the earth on the evening of this first day; for, in the Jewish mode of computa

tion used by Moses, each day is reckoned from the beginning of one evening to the beginning of another evening. This first evening may be considered as the termination of the indefinite time which followed the primeval creation announced in the first verse, and as the commencement of the first of the six succeeding days in which the earth was to be filled up, and peopled in a manner fit for the reception of mankind. We have, in this second verse, a distinct mention of earth and waters, as already existing, and involved in darkness: their condition also is described as a state of confusion and emptiness (tohu bohu); words which are usually interpreted by the vague and indefinite Greek term "chaos," and which may be geologically considered as designating the wreck and ruins of a former world. At this intermediate point of time, the preceding undefined geological periods had terminated, a new series of events commenced, and the work of the first morning of this new creation was the calling forth of light from a temporary darkness which had overspread the ruins of the ancient earth."

With regard to the formation of the sun and moon, Dr. Buckland observes, p. 27,

"We are not told that the substance of the sun and moon was first called into existence on the fourth day. The text may equally imply that these bodies were then prepared and appointed to certain offices, of high importance to mankind, to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night; to be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years.' The fact of their creation had been stated before in the first verse."

The question of the meaning of the word bara, "create," has been previously touched upon it has been acknowledged by good critics that it does not of itself necessarily imply "to make out of nothing," upon the simple ground that it is found used in cases where such a meaning would be inapplicable. But the difficulty of giving to it the interpretation contended for by Dr. Buckland, and of uniting with this the assumption of a six days' creation, such as that described in Genesis, at a comparatively recent period, lies in this, that the heaven itself is distinctly said to have been formed by the division of the waters on the second day. Consequently, during the indefinite ages which elapsed from the primal creation of matter

until the first Mosaic day of creation, there was no sky, no local habitation for the sun, moon, and stars, even supposing those bodies to have been included in the original material. Dr. Buckland does not touch this obvious difficulty, without which his argument, that the sun and moon might have been contemplated as pre-existing, although they are not stated to have been set in the heaven until the fourth day, is of no value at all.

Dr. Buckland appears to assume, that, when it is said that the heaven and the earth were created in the beginning, it is to be understood that they were created in their present form, and state of completeness; the heaven raised above the earth as we see it, or seem to see it, now. This is the fallacy of his argument. The circumstantial description of the framing of the heaven out of the waters proves that the words "heaven and earth," in the first verse, must be taken either proleptically, as a general expression for the universe, the matter of the universe in its crude and unformed shape; or else the word bara must mean "formed," not "created;" the writer intending to say, "God formed the heaven and earth in manner following;" in which case, "heaven" is used in its distinct and proper sense. But these two senses cannot be united in the manner covertly assumed in Dr. Buckland's argument.

Having, however, thus endeavored to make out that the Mosaic account does not negative the idea that the sun, moon, and stars had "been created at the indefinitely distant time designated by the word beginning," he is reduced to describe the primeval darkness of the first day as "a temporary darkness, produced by an accumulation of dense vapors upon the face of