ing, but concealing thought, no such charge can fairly be laid against the Hebrew writer.

"It should be borne in mind," says Dr. Buckland, "that the object of the account was, not to state in what manner, but by whom, the world was made." Every one must see that this is an unfounded assertion, inasmuch as the greater part of the narrative consists in a minute and orderly description of the manner in which things were made. We can know nothing as to the object of the account, except from the account itself. What the writer meant to state is just that which he has stated, for all that we can know to the contrary. Or can we seriously believe, that, if appealed to by one of his Hebrew hearers or readers as to his intention, he would have replied, My only object in what I have written is to inform you that God made the world: as to the manner of his doing it, of which I have given so exact an account, I have no intention that my words should be taken in their literal meaning"?

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We come then to this, that, if we sift the Mosaic narrative of all definite meaning, and only allow it to be the expression of the most vague generalities; if we avow that it admits of no certain interpretation, of none that may not be shifted and altered as often as we see fit, and as the exigencies of geology may require, then may we reconcile it with what science teaches. This mode of dealing with the subject has been broadly advocated by a recent writer of mathematical eminence, who adopts the Bucklandian hypothesis; a passage from whose work we shall quote: *

*Scripture and Science not at Variance. By J. H. Pratt, M. A., Archdeacon of Calcutta, 1859. Third edition, p. 34.

"The Mosaic account of the six days' work is thus harmonized by some: On the first day, while the earth was without form, and void,' the result of a previous convulsion in nature, and darkness was upon the face of the deep,' God commanded light to shine upon the earth. This may have been effected by such a clearing of the thick and loaded atmosphere, as to allow the light of the sun to penetrate its mass with a suffused illumination, sufficient to dispel the total darkness which had prevailed, but proceeding from a source not yet apparent on the earth. On the second day, a separation took place in the thick vapory mass which lay upon the earth; dense clouds were gathered up aloft, and separated by an expanse from the waters and vapors below. On the third day, these lower vapors, or fogs and mists, which hitherto concealed the earth, were condensed and gathered with the other waters of the earth into seas; and the dry land appeared. Then grass and herbs began to grow. On the fourth day, the clouds and vapors so rolled into separate masses, or were so entirely absorbed into the air itself, that the sun shone forth in all its brilliancy, the visible source of light and heat to the renovated earth, while the moon and stars gave light by night; and God appointed them henceforth for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years, to his creatures whom he was about to call into existence, as he afterwards set or appointed his bow in the clouds, which had appeared ages before, to be a sign to Noah and his descendants. The fifth and sixth days' work needs no comment.

"According to this explanation, the first chapter of Genesis does not pretend (as has been generally assumed) to be a cosmogony, or an account of the original creation of the material universe. The only cosmogony which it contains, in that sense at least, is confined to the sublime declaration of the first verse, In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.' The inspired record, thus stepping over an interval of indefinite ages with which man has no direct concern, proceeds at once to narrate the events preparatory to the introduction of man on the scene; employing phraseology strictly faithful to the appearances which would have met the eye of man, could he have been a spectator on the earth of what passed during those six days. All this has been commonly supposed to be a more detailed account of the general truth announced in the first verse, in short, a cosmogony. Such was the idea of Josephus: such probably was the idea of our translators; for their version, without form, and void,' points to the primeval chaos, out of which all things were then supposed to emerge; and these words, standing in limine, have tended, perhaps more than anything else, to foster the idea of a cosmogony in the minds of general readers to this very day.

"The foregoing explanation many have now adopted. It is sufficient for my purpose, if it be a possible explanation, and if it meet the difficulties of the case. That it is possible in itself is plain from the fact above established, that the Scriptures wisely speak on natural things according to their appearances rather than their

physical realities. It meets the difficulties of the case, because all the difficulties hitherto started against this chapter on scientific grounds proceeded on the principle that it is a cosmogony; which this explanation repudiates, and thus disposes of the difficulties. It is, therefore, an explanation satisfactory to my own mind. I may be tempted to regret that I can gain no certain scientific information from Genesis regarding the process of the original creation; but I resist the temptation, remembering the great object for which the Scripture was given, to tell man of his origin and fall, and to draw his mind to his Creator and Redeemer. Scripture was not designed to teach us natural philosophy, and it is vain to attempt to make a cosmogony out of its statements. The Almighty declares himself the originator of all things; but he condescends not to describe the process or the laws by which he worked. All this he leaves for reason to decipher from the phenomena which his world displays.

"This explanation, however, I do not wish to impose on Scripture; and ain fully prepared to surrender it should further scientific discovery suggest another better fitted to meet all the requirements of the case.'

We venture to think that the world at large will continue to consider the account in the first chapter of Genesis to be a cosmogony; but as it is here admitted that it does not describe physical realities, but only outward appearances (that is, gives a description false in fact, and one which can teach us no scientific truth whatever), it seems to matter little what we call it. If its description of the events of the six days which it comprises be merely one of appearances, and not of realities, it can teach us nothing regarding them.

Dissatisfied with the scheme of conciliation which has been discussed, other geologists have proposed to give an entirely mythical or enigmatical sense to the Mosaic narrative, and to consider the creative days described as vast periods of time. This plan was long ago suggested; but is has of late enjoyed a high degree of popularity through the advocacy of the Scotch geologist Hugh Miller, an extract from whose work has been already quoted. Dr. Buckland gives

the following account of the first form in which this theory was propounded, and of the grounds upon which he rejected it in favor of that of Chalmers:

*

"A third opinion has been suggested both by learned theologians and by geologists, and on grounds independent of one another, viz. that the days of the Mosaic creation need not be understood to imply the same length of time which is now occupied by a single revolution of the globe, but successive periods each of great extent; and it has been asserted that the order of succession of the organic remains of a former world accords with the order of creation recorded in Genesis. This assertion, though to a certain degree apparently correct, is is not entirely supported by geological facts, since it appears that the most ancient marine animals occur in the same division of the lowest transition strata with the earliest remains of vegetables; so that the evidence of organic remains, as far as it goes, shows the origin of plants and animals to have been contemporaneous. If any creation of vegetables preceded that of animals, no evidence of such an event has yet been discovered by the researches of geology. Still there is, I believe, no sound critical or theological objection to the interpretation of the word 'day' as meaning a long period."

Archdeacon Pratt also summarily rejects this view as untenable: †

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"There is one other class of interpreters, however, with whom I find it impossible to agree: I mean those who take the six days to be six periods of unknown indefinite length. This is the principle of interpretation in a work on the Creation and the Fall,' by the Rev. D. Macdonald; also in Mr. Hugh Miller's posthumous work, the Testimony of the Rocks;' and also in an admirable treatise on the Pre-Adamite Earth'in Dr. Lardner's Museum of Science.' In this last it is the more surprising, because the successive chapters are in fact an accumulation of evidence which points the other way, as a writer in the Christian Observer,' January 1858, has conclusively shown. The late M. D'Orbigny has demonstrated in his 'Prodrome de Palæontologie,' after an elaborate examination of vast multitudes of fossils, that there have been at least twenty-nine distinct periods of animal and vegetable existence; that is, twenty-nine creations separated one from another by catastrophes which have swept away the species existing at the time, with a very few solitary exceptions, never exceeding one and a half per cent of the whole number discovered, which have either survived the catastrophe, or have been erroneously designated. But not a single species of the preceding period survived the last of these catastrophes; and this closed the Tertiary

*Bridgewater Treatise, p. 17.

† Science and Scripture not at Variance, p. 40, note.

period and ushered in the Human period. The evidence adduced by M. D'Orbigny shows that both plants and animals appeared in every one of those twenty-nine periods. The notion, therefore, that the days' of Genesis represent periods of creation from the beginning of things is at once refuted. The parallel is destroyed both in the number of the periods (thirty, including the Azoic, instead of six), and also in the character of the things created. No argument could be more complete; and yet the writer of the Præ-Adamite Earth,' in the last two pages, sums up his lucid sketch of M. D'Orbigny's researches by referring the account in the first chapter of Genesis to the whole creation from the beginning of all things, - a selection of epochs being made, as he imagines, for the six days or periods.”

In this trenchant manner do theological geologists overthrow one another's theories. However, Hugh Miller was perfectly aware of the difficulty involved in his view of the question; and we shall endeavor to show the reader the manner in which he deals with it.

He begins by pointing out, that the families of vegetables and animals were introduced upon earth as nearly as possible according to the great classes in which naturalists have arranged the modern flora and fauna. According to the arrangement of Lindley, he observes,—

"Commencing at the bottom of the scale, we find the thallogens, or flowerless plants, which lack proper stems and leaves, a class which includes all the algæ. Next succeed the acrogens, or flowerless plants, that possess both stems and leaves, - such as the ferns and their allies. Next, omitting an inconspicuous class, represented by but a few parasitical plants incapable of preservation as fossils, come the endogens,—monocotyledonous flowering plants, that include the palms, the Liliaceæ, and several other families, all characterized by the parallel venation of their leaves. Next, omitting another inconspicuous tribe, there follows a very important class, the gymnogens, — polycotyledonous trees, represented by the coniferæ and cycadaceæ. And last of all come the dicotyledonous exogens, -a class to which all our fruit and what are known as our forest trees belong, with a vastly preponderating majority of the herbs and flowers that impart fertility and beauty to our gardens and meadows."

The order in which fossils of these several classes