CHAPTER VII.

In the Fifth Day of Creation, the second period of organic existence, a wave of life rolls through the breadth and depth of the Seas; its billows break along the shores, and dash their spray over the land. This figure truthfully pictures that which the description of this Day definitely reveals.

The divine command to the ocean, literally rendered, is: “Let the sea swarm with swarming creatures." The language, evidently very general, seems indefinite; but, on examination, it is found that its meaning can be determined in a satisfactory manner, as this language enters into the requirements of the ceremonial law, and so may be said to be defined by statute. Its meaning, as thus determined, points chiefly to Fishes, including, also, all creatures that in any way belong to the seas; including also some of the lizards, of the insect tribes, and what in a philological point of view is remarkable a few humble mammals. The general idea which binds together so many, and such diverse forms of life, is the idea of prolific generation. Besides these, in the Fifth Day Reptiles and Birds were created. This Day is said to have had its evening and its morning, — language here indicating a lower form of life, followed by a higher.

As before there was pointed out in the Record itself a seeming argument against it in connection with the third and fourth ages, so now there may be pointed out another, which also seems to have been heretofore unnoticed. With the exception before referred to, the ideas in creation as revealed, authenticate themselves to the soul till the fifth age is revealed. This Age seems superfluous. Strike it out, merge its ideas in those of the sixth period, conceive of life as simultaneously

appearing over the land and through the sea, and the Record seems to be more simple and grand. The soul does not feel the loss of the fifth Day, and finds the scheme as thus altered more harmonious and admirable. It might, however, be said that, in the nascent world, the waters may have been fitted for life earlier than the land; that oceanic life seems not to be of so high and complicate an order as terrestrial, which harmonizes with this idea; and that, as the earth gives birth to its inhabitants, it is in harmony with this that the ocean peoples its own world. It may further be said, the idea that the birds are ocean-born, harmonizes with certain impressions of the soul, which will be considered hereafter. But, after all, it seems necessary to admit that these ideas but give an air of possibility to the statement, and that it would still have to be said, were it not that the divine wisdom of the Record overrules and silences all such speculations, that this scheme of creation were better if this fifth Day were not in it. Adopting then, for the moment, and for reasons which will instantly appear, a style towards this Record which has become too common, it is said that here its conception of creation seems at fault. All its other ideas, with the exception of the one before referred to, commend themselves to the soul; but here its self-authenticating power, for the second time, fails. But, before, what seemed a defect was upheld by powerful considerations, and the Mosaic conception of the second age of organic existence is not merely countenanced by facts, but is demonstrated by them to be absolutely right; and yet it is not credible that Moses could have had any knowledge whatever of the facts in nature which prove the truth of that which he recorded.

A great period of marine life, when there was no life beside, an age of oceanic existence, constituting one of the stages of the growth of the world in duration, harmonizing with the five other periods of the Creation, — has been revealed in the volume of the Church for thousands of years. To the existence of such a period, that volume is as decisively committed as to any fact it reveals. And to this statement, which - if a

statement in the Bible can be thought to need confirmation especially seems to require it, Geology, which so many hoped and believed had destroyed the credibility of creation as revealed, brings confirmation precise and full. In nature's great book there is a chapter which corresponds, page by page, and line by line, with the verses in God's great book, which describe the second age of organic existence. In the annals of nature there is written out in full the history of an almost interminable age, unlike any other, yet like the fifth age in the vision of the Seer. And in view of the general wisdom pervading his description of creation, its accord at this point, with facts which Moses could not know, should be, with candid minds, strong presumptive evidence that his wisdom was superhuman and divine.

If it be asked why this was not recognized from the first period of geological discovery, the answer but confirms the idea just advanced. The interpretation of the Record in harmony with the idea of instantaneous creation, and the excluding of natural agencies from its idea of Creation, of course prevented that recognition of its thought as to the fifth Age, which at once would have elucidated the discoveries of Geology. But Geology itself may be paradoxically said to have discovered and not to have discovered this Age. The records were discovered of a period so unlike every other, so varied and diverse in its forms of existence, so interrupted by terrible lifedestroying catastrophes, that it bewildered the mind. It was broken up into many epochs. It was felt, in view of it, as if the idea of any sixfold arrangement in creation must be abandoned; for here were more than six periods, each of a duration such as the mind could not adequately conceive of, and all after the third Age of the Seer. Phenomena so strange seemed almost to shake the idea of any order at all in creation. Still, Geology could discern progress; and, sweeping her eye along the whole period, it seemed to her that the wave of existence, rolling on through it all, widened and deepened as it rolled. Alike for the proper combination and generalization of all

these phenomena, and for the harmonizing of them with Scripture, there were required the ideas heretofore laid down in these pages, of a general power given to the ocean to produce life, not once only, but from time to time, through all the life-cycles of the forming world;1 and also the idea of the element of fire left free through all creative time to break in upon, and to break up, the developments of life; to do its own work, as it were, unheeding that of the higher principle, though undoubtedly working in wise accordance with it. Each of these ideas coming from Revelation, are in most striking accord with what science reveals; nor does it seem that without them the harmony of Revelation and Nature can be made to appear. Each of these ideas are required here. The necessity of the latter need not be pointed out. It was our design to have enlarged upon this idea; but no one, at all acquainted with the facts as to the geological periods, can read the third chapter of this Essay and not see how closely it bears upon them. As to the former, its bearing seems almost equally evident. The idea of a life-producing power in the Earth, which has here been claimed to be an idea of revelation, seems at last to have forced itself upon the scientific mind, and is fully put forth on the basis of facts, in an Essay on "The Laws of Development in the Organic World," by Dr. Bronn, which received the

1 In dwelling upon the life-producing power of the Earth, in the first and second chapters, Part Second, of this Essay, one argument against it was not touched upon. It is written, that God made the living creatures, as well as that the Earth brought them forth. But the one revelation cannot be meant to do away with the other. Both are true, but can only be so when God is conceived of as doing what he does by delegating power to the earth. It should also have there been most explicitly stated that Lewis holds that plants and living creatures were produced by the earth; but that in each of the creations subsequent to the first, it was, as in that, by the going forth of the Word. And to the idea that the general outline in the Record, as more fully developed in the volume of nature, is to be explained by many divine works, immediately such, we rather incline; but the idea seems to come rather from the Record scripturally illustrated, than from its own words. Its general outline may conform to the facts as they appear to the common mind; and yet there may be more recondite ideas in the Scripture, revealed to the eye of Faith. But either view seems equally consistent with the Divine glory. Whatever is done by Him, or by his agents acting from Him and in obedience to Him, is the work of the same Creator and Lord.

prize of the French Academy in 1856. Commencing with the first appearing of Life known to Geology, and thence tracing its development onwards, he enunciates these conclusions:

"The regular process in carrying out the same plan, through the whole series of development of organic forms, from the beginning to the end of a period of millions of years, can only be accounted for in one of two ways.

"Either this course of successive development during millions of years has been the regular immediate result of the systematic action of a conscious Creator, who, on every occasion, settled and carried out not only the order of appearance, formation, organization, and terrestrial object of each of the countless numbers of species of plants and animals, but also the number of the first individuals, the place of their settlement in every instance, although it was in his power to create everything at once, or there existed some natural power hitherto entirely unknown to us, which, by means of its own laws, formed the species of plants and animals, and arranged and regulated all those countless individual conditions; which power, however, must, in this case, have stood in the most immediate connection with, and in perfect subordination to, those powers which caused the gradually progressing perfection of the crust of the earth, and the gradual development of the outward conditions of life for the constantly increasing numbers and higher classes of organic forms in consequence of this perfection. Only in this way can we explain how the development of the organic world could have regularly kept. pace with that of the inorganic. Such a power, although we know it not, would not only be in perfect accordance with all the other functions of nature, but the Creator, who regulated the development of organic nature by means of such a force, so implanted in it, as he guides that of the inorganic world by the mere coöperation of attraction and affinity, must appear to us more exalted and imposing than if we assumed that he must always be giving the same care to the introduction and change of the vegetable and animal world on the surface of the