orests of the primeval world, have found there trees so gigantic, along with their seeds, that they have all admitted that these trees, pines, palms, and immense ferns, are too large, too beautiful, too developed, for it to have been possible for them to grow under the light of our present sun, even in the warmest countries. And those trees which are now coals, wrecks of the old world, they have found even in the coldest lands, not in England only, but in Canada, in Baffin's Bay, and even under the ices of Melville Island, the coldest country in the world. Now, you know that the largest trees need a great deal of heat, and, above all, a great deal of light. Well, all these learned men, even those who do not like the Bible, have said there has certainly been on the primitive earth, in the time of these ancient forests, another light than that of our present sun. Glory, glory, then, to the word of God in this respect !

But there remains only one question on the subject of verse 3, it is the fourth ; "And the evening and the morning were the first day."

How

What are we to think of this evening and morning? long did they continue ? Did they form a day of twenty-four hours? No, without doubt, since there was not yet any luminary. No one can say how long it continued. Perhaps long years and long ages. All that we can affirm is, that it was an interval of time which began with the night of chaos (darkness covering the face of the deep) but which ended with the light. Next Lord's day you will repeat verses 6, 7, and 8.

LESSON V.

"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."-GENESIS i. 6-8.

WE considered in our last lesson the work of the first day. It began with the sublime creation of light under the operation of the Holy Spirit brooding with divine power on the waters of the deep. God said, "Let there be light, and there was light." There was a night-the darkness which covered at first the face of the deep; next, there was a morning, the light which was then created: it was the first day.

Now, dear children, our lesson will turn on the work of the second day. It is also a magnificent creation, that of the atmosphere; a creation more astonishing and wonderful, as we shall soon see, than you have ever thought. God said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters," and God made the firmament.

To enter properly into an explanation of this second day, we must first speak of how it began; it was with a night, for it is written in the eighth verse- "And the evening and the morning were the second day."

What then is this second evening which began the second day, and how long did this day continue? These are two questions which we must exhaust before going farther.

Let us speak first of this second night. It does not seem

difficult to imagine its cause. But before telling you about it— about that cause, I must make you notice a peculiar usage of the Jews in the way they reckoned their days. Instead of making them begin with the morning, they were accustomed to make them date from the night preceding, because they saw that in Genesis each of the seven days of creation began with a night. Thus, for example, to-morrow, Monday, will not commence with them as with us at sun-rise, but this evening at sun-set, while this Lord's day began with them yesterday evening at six o'clock, and will finish this evening at the same hour.

There was then on the earth, between the first day and the second, as you see here by the eighth verse, a return of darkness. That is not astonishing. The abyss of waters spread boiling over the fire of our globe (which appears to be only an ardent mass of fused metals, as we shall see next Lord's day), must have brought back at intervals, thick and dark vapours on the surface; and you understand well enough how that immense and terrible struggle of effervescing seas and inflamed metals springing through them, made night come again over our globe and enveloped it on all sides, until after a long combat and new combinations of metals and gases, the light reappeared.

It was then at the issue of such a combat that, at the light of the second day, and under the divine operation of the Holy Spirit, our atmosphere was created.

God said, Let there be something expanded, and let this expanse separate the waters from the waters. There was, then, something expanded, a sphere of air all round the sphere of the earth. And as the air is called in Greek atmos, this sphere of air which came then to envelop all our earth has been called atmosphere." And the evening and the morning were the second day."

But here is now the second question: How long did this second day continue? And also the first and third? We must simply answer that we know nothing about them. There was

as yet no luminary to measure time. They were then epochs, and these epochs must have continued very long, as I shall show you next Lord's day, when I shall explain to you what immense layers of different rocks, all composed of the varied rusts of those metals which burn in the bosom of the earth, have been necessarily deposited under the depths of the waters.

You must not be astonished with these long epochs of creation. God had time to prolong them; for time costs Him nothing. He had behind him the infinitude of past ages-eternity; and He had before him the infinitude of future ages -eternity still.

Without doubt, my dear children, if God had wished, he would have created all at once, the light and the air, the sea and the dry land, plants and trees, insects and birds, fishes and whales, animals and men. But it was not thus that it pleased him to proceed. He wished, as in all his other works, to act with order and in succession, that he might teach us how to await with patience the development of his will, and the effect of his promises. See how, in our days, he makes a tree grow up, an oak of Carmel for example, a cedar of Lebanon, a pine of the Alps. He does not create it, on a sudden, 80 feet high. No; it is first of all a weak plant, which can be put in a child's porringer or in a nutshell. Twenty years afterwards, this tree having grown each day in an insensible manner, is already higher than this church, and a hundred years later it will cover with its shadow a vast space and be the wonder of men.

Well, dear children, thus it is that He wished to do when he created the world, and also when he saved it. When he created the world, he first of all unravelled chaos and chased away darkness; then he formed the air above the abyss of waters; then, after having caused the crust of the earth to rest at the foot of this abyss and above the fire, he lifted it up above the waters; then he produced the immense variety of

plants, vegetables, herbs, grasses, and trees; then he made the greater and lesser luminaries appear; then fish, reptiles, and monsters of the sea; then the beasts of the earth; and then at last man, in whom the glory of his mercy was, at a later period, to appear to the eyes of the whole creation and through all eternity.

God, as I said to you, has time before him. God is the master of time, because he is the master of eternity; his years are from age to age, and will never end. Heaven and earth

He is patient,

shall pass away, but he is always the same. because he is eternal. And if the heaven of heavens cannot contain him, neither can ages, nor ages of ages.

Well, my friends, He has also acted in saving the world as he did in creating it. All is accomplished with order and in a long succession of time. He first of all promised the Saviour to Adam; our first father thought then that the Saviour would come in his time, and yet, 2300 years after, when the deluge came, the Saviour had not appeared. He was afterwards promised to Noah, who also believed that he should see him in his day, and who died without having seen him. He was afterwards promised to Abraham; but Abraham died also without having beheld him. In short, it was not till the end of 4000 years that Jesus Christ came. And even yet the gospel is spreading; but how slowly! If the whole earth is one day to be covered with its knowledge, how remote are we from that hour!

You must then, my dear children, remember this truth in the whole course of your lives. If he tarries, wait for him. We must wait for God; we must confide in his promises; we must recollect that when he wishes to save a man or a child, he calls him, then he tries him, then he conducts him to life, and then, last of all, he gathers him to his rest, when he is perhaps an old man with hoary hairs. But even then all is not finished; all will not be accomplished till the return of Jesus