or modern paganism, to know the importance of this doctrine. It is written with a sunbeam in the Old Testament; and it is well that we strive, for our profit, to realize that vivid impression concerning it, which has perhaps been too much deadened by our familiarity from childhood with the sacred record which sets it forth. We all know that the Hebrew polity and doctrine were full of shadows, which were fulfilled in Christ; and that the ultimate object of the separation of the seed of Abraham from among the nations, was to prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah. Yet we also know, that one immediate and manifest object of that polity was to uphold this great doctrine of the creation of the world by one independent and almighty Being; and that it might never pass out of mind, one day in seven was set apart for its commemoration. Hence Hebrew poetry and prophecy abound in allusions to this great truth, and the whole Scripture is replete with acknowledgments of this central fact; while remote allusions, even darkly hinting at it, though sought with care in the ancient pagan writers, have been found with difficulty.

Now, that to which God saw fit to give such prominence under the old law, must not be altogether forgotten by us; or, although acknowledged as a matter of course, be excluded practically from our meditations and our devotions. Yet how seldom do we adore God as the Creator, in which capacity He saw fit to present himself so conspicuously to his elder children! Nor is this the doctrine of the Old Testament only; it is also the doctrine of the New. Indeed, the New sets it before us in fresh and endearing relations. It shows to us that He by whom the world was made, was no other than He who, in a later age, came down in sorrow and suffering to redeem that world from its pollutions, and to repair the ruin which sin had caused in his own fair work. The creation belongs no less to the New Testament than to the Old. The gospel connects creation and redemption-the Creator and the Redeemer. They are one; and we shall do well to regard them, not separately, but together. In the beginning of the Old Testament, the Son of God is by us recognised in the Creator; in

the close of the same, his approach as a Redeemer is announced. In the beginning of the New Testament, the Son of God has come as the Saviour of the world; in the close of the same, another coming, for which creation groaneth, is announced; and happy are they who can from the heart hail that announcement in the words of the Evangelist: 'Even so, come, Lord Jesus; come quickly.'

The truth embodied in Gen. i. I is one of the most ennobling ever revealed to man; and the farther human research reaches, the more ennobling it becomes. It gives us views of divine wisdom, power, and love, which nothing else could give. We look up to the heavens; they are thickly studded with stars. Having reached the limits of vision, we take the telescope, and by its aid penetrate into space farther than figures can express or the mind conceive. The whole is filled with worlds. God created them every one. From the heavens we turn to the earth. We see air, and sea, and soil, teeming with life in endless variety. Reaching the limits of human vision here too, we take the microscope, and lo! countless as are the orbs of heaven, countless are the minute organizations revealed

to our wondering gaze. God created them every one. What a wondrous conception does this give of his power!

Then in the heavens we see unceasing motion, endless evolutions-all working in most perfect harmony. Here is wisdom with power. In the world of life, again, we see perfect harmony combined with the most delicate and beautiful adaptations-the eye to light, the ear to sound, the nerves to touch, external nature in its various and varying forms to the tastes and aspirations of the mind within. We see, moreover, providential arrangements for supplying the multitudinous wants of these multitudinous creatures. God is the author of all. And here infinite love is linked with wisdom infinite, and the two with power.

The power, wisdom, and love of the one only great First Causethe living God-is the grand lesson of this passage. How ennobling to contemplate such a Being, and especially fondly, lovingly to contemplate Him as our God, OUR FATHER!

'These are thy glorious works, Parent of Good-
Almighty! Thine this universal frame,

Thus wondrous fair! Thyself how wondrous, then!

Unspeakable! Who sit'st above these heavens,
To us invisible, or dimly seen

In these thy lowest works; yet these declare

Thy goodness beyond thought, and pow'r divine.'-MILTON.

First Week-Second Day.

THE CHAOS-GEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES.-GENESIS I. 2.

IN the first verse of Genesis we are assured of this grand truth, unknown to ages and to generations, that the visible heavens and the earth did not exist from all eternity, nor arise from accidental combinations of pre-existing matter; they had their beginning from God. Wherever that beginning was in time, or whatever it was in form, that beginning was God's creative act. This is the great truth concerning the creation which the Scriptures design to teach; and no other information is afforded, no details are given, but such as tend to establish and bear upon this doctrine. Yet these details constitute the information which God has given us concerning the origin of ourselves, and of the world which we inhabit. These are questions of great interest to us. There are indeed questions of higher interest-those which concern our future destinies; yet these questions belong to subjects respecting which the mind craves for knowledge; and all the information here afforded has therefore, in its every word, been explored, examined, and discussed with the most sedulous anxiety, and the most minute and critical attention.

In past days, men, receiving the record as from God, knowing that only He who made the world could have supplied the information given concerning its origin, and having no idea that any other sources of knowledge could exist on matters belonging to the time before men lived, were content simply to explore the meaning of the sacred record; and when they found a conclusion in which they could rest, they were satisfied. The conclusion in which men did generally rest was this: that

the creation of the world, in its crude state, immediately preceded the work of the six days; and that the earth was, in the first instance, brought into that state of watery unorganized chaos which was immediately afterwards reduced into order.

But, in these latter days, men have found in the bowels of the earth, and in the sides of its mountains and its riven cliffs, new facts, new circumstances, which, as they conceived, went to' show that the world had, under various modifications, existed thousands of ages before the creation of man, or at least before the comparatively recent date to which the record ascribes man's origin.

The pious man was alarmed at this, as adverse to those impressions respecting the creation in which he had grown up; and in his earnest but short-sighted zeal, he repelled the new science with abhorrence, as an unholy thing, and shut his eyes to the solid facts which it produced. And, on the other side, the scoffer laughed, and exulted in a new weapon against the truth and authority of the divine word. These things have passed away. A new generation has grown up. And now certain facts in the science of the earth are seen to be indisputable, whatever doubt lies upon the various theories, successively pushing out each other, which have been founded on them. And yet God reigns; and yet the Bible is true; and yet the sacred record is not only unshaken in the war of theories, but stands firm-firmer than ever-strengthened by the very facts which once seemed to threaten its overthrow,—a pillar of central truth, to which all those facts gravitate, and by the measure of their adhesion to which, their worth is tested.

Men began to separate the theories from the facts. The facts poured in from all parts of the world. The disclosures were not reasonings, nor conjectures, nor hypotheses; they were facts of the least mistakeable kind-disentrenched remains of ancient generations of the earth-remains tangible, visible, certain, and reconcilable with no hypothesis which allows no more ancient date to the earth than the commencement of the week which closed in the creation of man.

Then the wise, the men well instructed in the things of

God, began to consider. They began to see in these things a new law of God, a new disclosure of God's work and will, written in the stony tablets of the earth. They saw that truth is one; and that if these things were truths respecting God's work, they could not be at variance with the truths disclosed to Moses in times of old. The record was then more carefully examined, and enough was found to dispose the most careful men to hail the new science as, in its facts, not an opponent, but an auxiliary, of inspired truth; as a new commentary, left entombed for ages, but now at last brought to light, to show forth the hitherto hidden meaning of one portion of the sacred word.

At first there was an inclination to suppose that the days of creation were not natural days, but long intervals of time, answering to the successive developments which had been found in the strata of the earth. But this was not quite satisfactory to any. On the one side the theologian felt that some force was put upon the plain construction of the Mosaic narrative; while, on the other, the geologist was not content with the most liberal concession which could under this interpretation be afforded to him, nor could he make the order of the divine operations during the six days coincide with the succession of phenomena which the bowels of the earth disclosed.

The inspired record was then again examined with still. closer attention; and it then appeared to many that that sacred source of authentic information does afford an interval which may have been of any duration that the researches of the earth-explorers may exact. It is said, that 'in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth;' that is, that the material of the world was not eternal, as some had dreamed, but was in its beginning, however remote, the work of God. The object of this revelation, then, being simply to record for man's instruction how the earth assumed its present goodly frame, and acquired its present inhabitants, nothing is said of its intermediate condition, in which it may have lain during long ages; but the inspired writer goes on to state that, previous to its existing organization, it lay, and had probably for