mospheric on the luminous fluid; but we are to distinguish carefully between the announcement of a fact and the perception of its cause, for nothing short of the latter could suffice to develop in its full extent the effect of this action. Had the science of the Egyptians before his time attained even to the former of these, it seems scarcely credible that the acute genius of the astronomer of Alexandria should not have improved on the hint, more particularly as optical studies are said to have engaged a considerable degree of his attention (5). We argue therefore that it could not, as derived from those with whose highest accomplishments the mind of Moses was imbued, have served as the basis of the succession which we meet with in his record.

Proceeding therefore on the assumption that the order of those two events is not fortuitous, one assuredly of as easy conception as the contrary, and far more reconcileable with the views already advanced ;...recognising moreover in that order the adumbration of a philosophical principle, not announced through the ordinary medium of human intercourse, not enrolled until ages had elapsed amongst the achievements of science, what remains but to perceive in it an attestation of Divine superintendence in the composition of those primeval notices ?

We now proceed to a more particular consi

deration of the Terms employed in this part of the record, an inquiry which is calculated to throw much light on the preceding, as it seems hardly possible to conceive, that the language used in the detail of agencies, the order of which is accurately philosophical, should be found to fail when examined by the same standard.

The event of the Second day of the Hexaëmeron is thus announced by the Sacred historian :

And God said, Let there be a Firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the Firmament, and divided the waters which were under the Firmament from the waters which were above the Firmament; and it was so. And God called the Firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

We observe in the first place, that though the Record is silent as to the Final cause of this development so far as respects the agency of Light, yet is the absence of explicit statement on this point amply compensated by the order of succession.

We observe in the second place the Final cause, which is explicitly announced, to be the division of the waters above from those below the Firmament. It is obvious to perceive, that the action of the heat produced on the first day on the aqueous surface of the globe is indicated in

the first class; in the second, that state of primitive fluidity, of which we have been informed in the Second verse.

ous.

A third observation therefore results from hence, that the language employed is not less philosophical than the arrangement is continuThe vaporous masses of the atmosphere are denominated Waters (6), being insulated from the fluids of the surface, and reverting to them on changes of temperature. The Firmament" divides the waters from the waters :" this it could not effect but by suspension of the former, a notice in precise conformity with its law of varying density (7).

These remarks are offered, not as tending to prove that the physical properties of the atmosphere could be inferred from the biblical expression, but as illustrative in a high degree of a choice of language. It is one thing to trace an assemblage of physical truths in certain modes of announcement, and another to exhibit the congruity of the latter with the result of philosophical research amongst the former. Surrounded as we are by the light of science, this becomes a task, the principles of which are obvious, and their application defined; whilst that, on the contrary, were often to assume without judgement and to systematise without precision.

Our next observation respects the word "firmament" occurring in the sixth verse; this has

been translated in the margin of our Bible, Expansion : the former seems to have been adopted by our Translators from the version of the LXX, who, in their rendering regiwa, have expressed a different meaning of the root yp. We have been led however, by the comparison of many texts, to adopt the latter acceptation of the term, which appears to be the original and the genuine one; and in this we are sanctioned by Commentators of unquestioned authority, who have recognised the formation of the Atmosphere in this clause of the Mosaic History (8).

In truth, the version of the LXX in three different scriptures,...one occurring in the book of Psalms, and two others in the prophecies of Isaiah (9),...seems to be by no means conclusive on the subject. The ordinary rendering is, in each of these texts, at least as applicable as that of those ancient translators, and has been adopted in our English version. It may be that the LXX were guided by the Syriac usage. In this dialect of the Hebrew the root under consideration implies Compression: hence some have observed that its original sense in the parent language may have been the same, or analogous (°). Admitting the propriety of this observation, of which we may reasonably entertain a doubt, it may not be unuseful to the main purport of our inquiry to remark, that in either of the two al

leged senses, the Expanded or the Compressed, indication may be traced, not uninteresting to the philosophical student, of the fundamental properties of aeriform fluids.

We present therefore a Fourth observation founded on this propriety of conception. As we contrasted in a former lecture the pure ideality of the term, by which the Hebrew expressed the origin of finite existences, with the materialised views of the most enlightened heathens, so may we contrast his nomenclature in the present instance with that of classical science. We perceive no reference in the Mosaic philosophy to the Brazen heaven of the Homeric age, to the οὐρανὸς ἀδάμαστος of the Orphic Mythology, or the Solid orbs of a later era. As the Epicurean traces not in the sublime principle of the He

-his chimerical sys בראשית ברא אלהים,brew

tem of concurrent atoms, so neither does the philosopher of Ionia detect in this agency of the Second day his infinitely extended elementary air (").

Plato, it is true, improved in this instance the nomenclature of his countrymen. The term employed by him is perfectly congenial to the Hebraic usage; so congenial indeed, that it presents internal evidence of the strongest kind of a spirit transfused from the philosophy of Moses (1). If so, we possess in the latter, not merely its own purity of physical conception, but