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herein stated of the celestial luminaries seems to be spoken solely with reference to our planet, and more especially to the human race, then about to be placed upon it. We are not told that the substance of the sun and moon were first called into existence upon 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 stars also are mentioned (Gen. i. 16) in three words only, almost parenthetically; as if for the sole purpose of announcing, that they also were made by the same Power, as those luminaries which are more important to us, the sun and moon. This very slight notice of the countless host of celestial bodies, all of which are probably suns, the centres of other planetary systems, whilst our little satellite, the moon, is mentioned as next in importance to the sun, shows clearly that astronomical phenomena are here spoken of only according to their relative importance to our earth, and to mankind, and without any regard

See notes, p. 22 and p. 26.

+ The literal translation of the words veeth haccocabim, is, "And the stars."-E. B. Pusey.

to their real importance in the boundless universe. It seems impossible to include the fixed stars among those bodies which are said (Gen. i. v. 17.) to have been set in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth; since without the aid of telescopes, by far the greater number of them are invisible. The same principle seems to pervade the description of creation which concerns our planet: the creation of its component matter having been announced in the first verse, the phenomena of Geology, like those of astronomy, are passed over in silence, and the narrative proceeds at once to details of the actual creation which have more immediate reference to man.*

The following observations by Bishop Gleig (though, at the time of writing them, he was not entirely convinced of the reality of facts announced by geological discoveries) show his opinion of the facility of so interpreting the Mosaic account of creation, as to admit of an indefinite lapse of time prior to the existence of the human race.

"I am indeed strongly inclined to believe that the matter of the corporeal universe was all created at once, though different portions of it may have been reduced to form at very different periods; when the universe was created, or how long the solar system remained in a chaotic state are vain enquiries, to which no answer can be given. Moses records the history of the earth only in its present state; he affirms, indeed, that it was created, and that it was without form and void, when the spirit of God began to move on the surface of the fluid mass; but, he does not say how long that mass had been in the state of chaos, or whether it was, or was not the wreck of some former system, which had been inhabited by living creatures of different kinds from those which occupy the present. I say this, not to meet

The interpretation here proposed seems moreover to solve the difficulty, which would otherwise attend the statement of the appearance of light upon the first day, whilst the sun and moon and stars are not made to appear until the fourth. If we suppose all the heavenly bodies, and the earth, to have been created at the indefinitely distant time, designated by the word beginning, and that the darkness described on the evening of the first day, was a temporary darkness, produced by an accumulation of dense va

the objection which has sometimes been urged against the Mosaic cosmogony, from its representing the works of creation as being no more than six or seven thousand years old, for Moses gives no such representation of the age of those works. However distant the period may be, and it is probably very distant, when God created the heavens and the earth; there has been a time when it was not distant one year, one day, or one hour. Those, therefore, who contend that the glory of the Almighty God manifested in his works, cannot be limited to the short period of six or seven thousand years, are not aware that the same objection may be made to the longest period which can possibly be conceived by the mind of man. No assignable quantity of successive duration bears any proportion to eternity, and though we should suppose the corporeal universe to have been created six millions or six hundred millions of years ago, a caviller might still say, and with equal reason, that the glory of Almighty God manifested in his works cannot be so limited. is not to silence such objections as this, that I have admitted the existence of a former earth and visible heavens to be not inconsistent with the cosmogony of Moses, or indeed with any other part of scripture, but only to prevent the faith of the pious reader from being unsettled by the discoveries, whether real or pretended, of our modern geologists. If these philosophers have

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pours "upon the face of the deep;" an incipient dispersion of these vapours may have readmitted light to the earth, upon the first day, whilst the exciting cause of light was still obscured; and the further purification of the atmosphere, upon the fourth day, may have caused the sun and moon and stars to reappear in the firmament of heaven, to assume their new relations to the newly modified earth, and to the human race.*

We have evidence of the presence of light during long and distant periods of time, in which

really discovered fossil bones that must have belonged to species and genera of animals, which now no where exist, either on the earth or in the ocean, and if the destruction of these genera or species cannot be accounted for by the general deluge, or any other catastrophe to which we know, from authentic history, that our globe has been actually subjected, or if it be a fact, that towards the surface of the earth are found strata, which could not have been so disposed as they are, but by the sea, or at least some watery mass remaining over them in a state of tranquillity, for a much longer period than the duration of Noah's flood; if these things be indeed well ascertained, of which I am however by no means convinced, there is nothing in the sacred writings forbidding us to suppose that they are the ruins of a former earth, deposited in the chaotic mass of which Moses informed us that God formed the present system. His history, as far as it comes down, is the history of the present earth, and of the primeval ancestors of its present inhabitants; and one of the most scientific and ingenious of geologists has clearly proved,† that the human race cannot be much more ancient than it appears to be in the writings of the Hebrew lawgiver."-Stackhouse's Bible, by Bishop Gleig, p. 6, 7, 1816.

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+ See Cuvier's Essay on the Theory of the Earth.

the many extinct fossil forms of animal life succeeded one another upon the early surface of the globe this evidence consists in the petrified remains of eyes of animals, found in geological formations of various ages. In a future chapter I shall show, that the eyes of Trilobites, which are preserved in strata of the transition formation, (Pl. 45, Figs. 9, 10, 11), were constructed in a manner so closely resembling those of existing crustacea; and that the eyes of Ichthyosauri, in the lias, (Pl. 10, Figs. 1, 2), contained an apparatus, so like one in the eyes of many birds, as to leave no doubt that these fossil eyes were optical instruments, calculated to receive, in the same manner, impressions of the same light, which conveys the perception of sight to living animals. This conclusion is further confirmed by the general fact, that the heads of all fossil fishes and fossil reptiles, in every geological formation, are furnished with cavities for the reception of eyes, and with perforations for the passage of optic nerves, although the cases are rare, in which any part of the eye itself has been preserved. The influence of light is also so necessary to the growth of existing vegetables, that we cannot but infer, that it was equally essential to the development of the numerous fossil species of the vegetable kingdom, which are coextensive and coeval with the remains of fossil animals.

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