The disagreement here is so complete that it is quite unnecessary to say anything in the way of pointing it out. I may just, however, advert to the circumstance that, as regards the strata, the sixth geological period has run only a small part of its course;

whereas, the sixth day of the Record ended a few hours after the creation of man. Of this disagreement in point of number more will be said afterwards.

But, whoever was the first to suggest the supposed harmony between the creations of the Mosaic Record, and the creations indicated by the strata, geologists have ever since been under the illusion, that Moses, in one form or another, makes direct reference to the states and periods of the earth which preceded the human era. What a fine thing to find the age of the earth as discovered by geology registered in the book of Genesis, with the seal and sanction of the God of truth affixed to it! That Moses directly affirms and teaches the high antiquity of the earth appears to have become a settled point with most divines and geologists. The only matter about which with them dubiety lingers, is the part of the Record in which the age of the earth is affirmed: Some maintain it is in the first verse; others find reference to it in the second; others, in the body of the chapter; others, again, would be quite content could they lay their finger upon it in any one of these places. Meanwhile, they allow the philology of the question to give them no disturbance; and one at least of them has had the boldness to declare in public his readiness to cut the philological knot.

I have already shown, that Moses begins his history where the last of the great geological periods ends; that so far is he from making allusion to any one of these periods, he nowhere directly and absolutely asserts the existence of the earth; but he directly affirms the state or the how of the earth's existence immediately before the work of creation begins: "The earth was without form and void." From that and other indirect statements we gather the fact of the earth's existence long before the creative week; but, as Moses

never makes a single direct statement about the earth, that goes farther back than the one now quoted, it is equally useless and unwise, to look for by-gone geological cycles, in what he has written about creation. Creation is made up of overt acts of the Deity; geology, of the results of physical occurrences; and, in the inspired Record of the former, the line of demarcation which separates them, is never once passed.

The tertiary period had come to a close about a year before the human era began; and the Mosaic narrative opens with a description of the condition in which the world was, immediately before the works of creation commenced. This delineation, not only lets us know the state of the earth at the time, but enables us to understand much better than we could otherwise have done, the creative acts of at least the first four days of the week; and though it is connected with the miraculous means employed to put an end to the tertiary, it makes not the slightest allusion to either the tertiary, or any of the previous geological epochs. The histories of Moses all relate to the events of the human period; he was not commissioned to say a word with reference to things that happened in the preAdamite states of the earth. Had Moses been, not an historian, but an epic poet, and had been acquainted with the early history of the globe, and the many changes and states it had passed through, it would have been in full accordance with the nature of his work, not simply to have made mention of the by-gone periods of the earth, but, had he thought proper, to have indulged in long descriptions of them in any part of his poem; but such episodes would have been glaring improprieties in a history written in prose.

Dr Buckland, and other eminent geologists, show, that plants and marine animals had a simultaneous origin. Mr Miller, however, says: "It is surely

view of things, not upon the true or real. The apparent view of external things is, not only the most convenient, but what deserves particular attention— the only practical view, and is every whit as true to nature as the other. Such sensible representations of things were not limited to the early and simple ages of the world, but have prevailed universally ever since man was created, and will continue to influence his thoughts, words, and actions, so long as he retains his present two-fold constitution of mind and body. In every age of the world, men of all nations, and of all languages, have spoken of " the rising and the setting of the sun"-of "the rising and the setting of the stars"—of "the crescent moon"-" the half moon”— “the full moon”—" the waning moon”—of "the blue sky"—of "the vault of heaven studded with stars,” &c. It betrays inattention to the compound constitution of man to represent such views as peculiar to the first rude generations of mankind, seeing they have their foundation in the nature of man, and are common, alike to the barbarian and the savage, and the most learned and accomplished of men. Now, Moses, in the verses quoted above, adopts the sensible or apparent view of the heavens, not because it was peculiarly suitable to the primitive peoples of his own time (he wrote for all times); but, because it was admirably adapted to the sensuous nature of mankind in general. It is a view which all mankind take every day and every night of their lives, and, till within a very recent period, those among us who are esteemed learned and wise, knew of no other. Even now, when the true theory of the heavens is known, philosophers cannot dispense with the apparent. We have still the solstices, the ecliptic, the zodiac, the precession of the equinoxes, and other remains of the sensible astronomy. Poets too-those great refiners of language-show, even

in their most sublime and impassioned delineations, that they are as great slaves to their external senses as the rudest of mankind. It is in full harmony with the perspective of our nature, to describe the sun, moon, and stars, as in the firmament of the heaven. To persons standing on the surface of the globe, and looking upwards, these heavenly bodies seem to be only in the upper part of the atmosphere, or in what we call the vault of heaven, and at no very great distance from the earth. Birds also that soar high in air, appear to our vision to be nearly in the same region with the two great lights. Clouds float on the atmosphere, at various heights; and, we speak of the sun and the moon as wading through clouds, and of the eagle, and the condor, as soaring above the clouds.-So much in explanation of" lights in the firmament of the heaven." Now for the work of exposition.

There are no such things as anachronisms in the inspired narrative of creation-nothing out of chronological order-every one of the creative events of the week, is set down in the Record in the day in which it was performed; and, the miraculous events of one day follow the miraculous events of another, in the simplest and most natural order. As soon, on the third day, as the flood retires, the Creator covers and adorns the dry land with grass, and herbs, and flowers, and fruit-trees, in profuse abundance and variety. Now, we cannot suppose God would so enrich and embellish the fields, before the existence of the sun. Without both the light and the heat of the sun they could not exhibit the appearances of living plants, far less grow and thrive. In a world where the solar influences had never been felt, the plants, like Jonah's gourd, would droop and wither in a night. In truth, without the sun, not one single green herb, not one single flower, could have their proper being, far less