14. And God said, Let there be luminaries in the expanse of the heaven, to divide between the day and between the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years: 15. And let them be for luminaries in the expanse of the heaven, to give light upon the earth: and it was so. 16. And God made the two great luminaries—the greater luminary to rule the day, and the lesser luminary to rule the night—and the 17. And God placed them in the expanse of the heaven to give light upon the earth, 18. And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide between the light and between the darkness: and God saw that it

stars.

upheaving of the land, but only a concentration of the floods to certain parts: not even the doctrines of the Neptunists are here expressed. Nor does the poetical and more copious paraphrase of our text in Ps. civ. 6-9, imply a greater harmony with the modern results; the retreat of the waters reveals the unevenness of the earth's surface; mountains and valleys appear; and the floods are enclosed within strict boundaries. This does not explain

the formation of the strata, nor of the fossil remains of vegetables and animals -which, according to the Bible, did not yet exist in the interior of the earth — nor any of the wonders which make geology one of the most interesting and absorbing sciences. But we have willingly renounced the attempt to discover that harmony; and both science and Biblical exposition will gain by this candid understanding.

FOURTH DAY. THE CELESTIAL ORBS. VER. 14—19.

The first part of the creation is finished; the framework of the universe is made, it only remains to be completed; the outlines are drawn, they need only to be filled up; the design is manifested, the execution follows of necessity. The works of the three first days point to those which await the creating power of God on the three following days; the labour of the fourth day has not so much reference to that of the third or fifth, but to that of the first day; the luminaries which are now called into existence, point to the light, which was the first of the Divine works; they are not considered as animated bodies, occupying an intermediate place between the vegetable and animal kingdoms; their motions involve no free activity; they follow the laws of a prescribed necessity; they are held in their unchangeable orbits. These laminaries are divided into three classes, the sun, the moon, and the stars; and

their service is threefold: to mark the difference between day and night, to note the various seasons of the year, and to illumine the earth. They were, therefore, necessary even after the creation of light; the latter could not indicate the various changes in the aspect and condition of the earth; it was unable to guide and to direct the labours of man. But the use of the luminaries is entirely limited to the planet which we inhabit; the earth is the centre of the universe, and the hosts of heaven are intended for its service; they are the only infallible measure of time, for which man can devise but imperfect substitutes; both the sun and the moon were necessary for the computation of time; the months were determined by the latter, but the seasons and years were regulated by the former. They are fixed in the expanse which was created on the second day; they are, originally, no part of it; they

was good. 19. And it was evening, and it was morning; a fourth day.

20. And God said, Let the waters teem with abundant creatures that have life; and fowl may fly above the earth towards the expanse of heaven. 21. And God created the great monsters, and every living creature that moveth, with which the waters teem, after their kind, and every winged fowl after its kind: and God saw that it was good.

are the visible wonders of the heaven: and, as the earth depends on them for light and warmth, for cheerfulness and the blessings of vegetation, they are described as having dominion over the earth; the sun during the day, and the moon during the night; but, since the moon is not always visible, since she is not, as she might have been expected to be, as constant a companion of the night as the sun is of the day, the starry

host has been added to cheer the unfriendly gloom. Thus, Biblical astronomy is derived from mere optical appearance; the eye alone is the judge; the moon is represented as the second of the great heavenly orbs, and as a luminous body; the stars are nothing else but her companions; and their only end is to shed their chaste lustre on our small planet.

FIFTH DAY. FISHES AND BIRDS. VER. 20-23. The earth had been adorned with the gay and variegated luxuriance of vegetation; but the water and the air were still empty and dreary; and breathing life was wanting throughout the globe. In the same order in which the different parts of the earth had been created or organized, they were now peopled with living creatures, not by spontaneous production, but by the behest of God; first the two moveable elements, water and air, and then the continents; and thus, the fifth day corresponds accurately with the second, and the sixth with the third. It is, therefore, of little importance to enquire whether, according to the Biblical account, the living beings were created in a steady gradation from the less to the more perfect; the great monsters of the sea are, perhaps, as fully organized as the birds of heaven; the works of the three last days do not succeed each other after an independent principle; they follow the arrangement of the three first days; they are their necessary complement. The fishes and the birds, therefore, are not coupled on the same day, because both are oviparous, or because both are furnished with peculiar

organs fitting them to move in their respective elements; these are accidental analogics, not determining the order of the created beings, but showing still more powerfully their harmony and symmetry. But it is to be admitted, that, on the whole, a gradual progress is observed: first were produced the cosmical elements; then the vegetable; then the animal kingdom; and, at last, man.-The water was filled with huge fishes, which are mentioned as the majestic representatives of all greater inhabitants of the sea; and with the living creatures which abound in that element, and which comprise all its other tenants. For, it seems to have been usual to divide the fishes into two chief classes according to their size. When the air, also, had been peopled with living beings, to which, however, the earth was not entirely denied (ver. 22); God blessed all these creatures; He granted them fruitfulness and increase; for they have not, like the plants, the innate power of spontaneous propagation. But they were incapable of receiving a higher blessing; this was reserved to those more exalted beings whose animal nature was ennobled and elevated by the spark of

22. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and the fowl may multiply on the earth. 23. And it was evening, and it was morning; a fifth day.

24. And God said, Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, cattle, and reptiles, and beasts of the earth, after their kind: and it was so. 25. And God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the

cattle after their kind, and all the reptiles of the earth after their kind: and God saw that it was good.

26. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of heaven, and over the

hands them over to reason to argue and to draw conclusions; he searches the mutual relation between cause and effect, till he ascends to the First Cause, the Creator and Governor of the world; he can trace back the past history of the planet which he inhabits through many successive revolutions, and he anticipates other stages of its existence, which silently prepare themselves in accordance with laws which his sagacity has discovered; he has been permitted to find, by mere computation, the existence and motion of distant planets; he is capable of communicating, by the medium of language, his deepest thoughts, and his innermost feelings; he may thus either instruct or delight, he may offer sympathy or implore it; the pliant voice assumes the tender tone of approbation, or the sterner accent of rebuke; a radiating smile playing on the lips betrays the emotions of the soul; and a sympathetic tear pearling from the eye bears testimony to the living fountain of love flowing within the heart; his actions are regulated after the prudent calculation of means and end, of direction and aim; he distinguishes between the eternal ideas and their transitory embodiment in the material world; he practises virtue without a selfish object; not from fear, but from love; not from motives of egotism or pleasure, but from a profound sense of his dignity; he forgets his own advantage, and strives nobly for the welfare of his fellow-men; his heart is kindled for the great objects of mankind; they are his own, his dearest interests; he considers it no sacrifice to seal a life of struggle and devotion with a death of martyrdom, if he but promotes the cause of humanity; he is determined to perish rather than to suffer ignominy, and he sacrifices his existence for glory and fame; his heart is open to the lessons of faith; he lives in his

religious convictions, and knows how to combat for them; he feels gratitude to his benefactors, and he forgives the injuries of his enemies; he delights in the sociable exchange of thoughts and sentiments; and feels himself a member of a political community formed to advance his highest aims and objects; he is privileged to admire the moral order of the world; he is the instrument of God Himself, of whose majesty he gives witness; his erect form looks up to heaven; and he feels, that there is the true home of his soul; he alone enjoys liberty and free will, whilst the vast sidereal bodies, and even all the other organic beings, are subject to an immutable necessity; he is not the slave of a blind instinct, he reflects on himself, and examines his resolutions and his deeds; he conquers, by the strength of his mind, temptation and baseness; his moral energy masters passion and seduction; conscience, his monitor and his guide, cheers him with its applause, and torments him with its sting; he considers himself responsible for his deeds before the higher tribunal of his soul and of his Creator: he might, at least, strive after all this excellence; but if he yet totters and falls, he feels, that contrition and repentance will restore him to mercy; and if he is oppressed by misery and sin, if he is seized by despondency and despair, he looks with joyous confidence to a redemption beyond the grave, and is uplifted by the glorious hope of immortality. All these priceless privileges have been allotted to man exclusively; they constitute his resemblance to God, and lead him from earth to heaven; no animal, however powerfully or perfectly organized, possesses any of them; it might surpass man in strength, in size, in endurance, or in courage: man is destined to rule over it by his reason, by the power of the mind; he has, therefore, to acquire

cattle, and over all the earth, and over all the reptiles which creep upon the earth. 27. And God created man in His image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them. 28. And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill

iii. 22); we are not seriously concerned if some natural philosophers make him the lineal descendant of the monkey or the Batrachian. It is true, man is physically weak, and frail, and transitory; he is, at his birth, and in his infancy, more helpless than any other creature; and the great number of his wants render him often the slave rather than the ruler of nature; he is beset with infirmity and disease; his life is frequently a series of sorrows and sufferings; his Divine nature is seldom developed, and passion or malice destroy his own happiness and that of others; the Scriptures allude to these infirmities and defects a thousand times in touching and pathetic terms; but they are never without hope and consolation; they do not abandon man to despair; they leave the solution of this superhuman mystery to God, and teach man how to bear for a while these miseries not only with fortitude, but with cheerfulness, and how to prepare the soul, by a life of love and usefulness, for a more perfect existence. If the scepticism of the Ecclesiastes, in some features, resembles the gloomy views of Pliny (vii. 1), or Lucretius (i.223), it is, in the final results, directly opposed to them; it points to the ever-watchful eye of God, and to His love, which will dissolve all that apparent discord into endless harmonies.

and to conquer that dominion which is not granted him without the exertion of his higher faculties. And this wonderful greatness and depth of human nature is our surest proof of an eternal and omnipotent Creator; it is a surer proof than even that derived from the contemplation of His marvellous works; for, it comes not from without; it is an intuitive conviction of the mind, that it is a part of a kindred, though infinitely more perfect Spirit. It is, at the same time, an irresistible argument for the doctrine, that man is different from the animals not simply in degree, but specifically; that he is not merely a more perfect animal, but forms another, a higher order of beings. We do not deny, that animals are gifted with an instinct often bordering upon mind; that their ingenuity and skill sometimes demand our highest admiration; that they are susceptible of feelings and impressions, capable of love and hatred, and, sometimes, of acting according to the principle of means and end; but all these facts imply only another proof of the truth, that there exists a continuous chain in the whole organic creation; they are the points of transition from the lower to the higher order: but man possesses, in a great degree of development, powers which are entirely denied to animals; and which just constitute his principal characteristics. His physical nature chiefly connects him with the animal creation; but that is not his dominant, it is not even his stronger part; it is subordinated to, and controlled by, his moral and intellectual powers; if man neglects his reason, he resembles the beast, he descends from the higher to the lower class of creatures; the spiritual part is his guiding principle. This is the Biblical conception with regard to the position of man; the Scriptures attribute to him a dignity "but little inferior to God Himself" (comp.