latter, and to think that we see its intended meaning, but to doubt the former, believing that it makes the word and the works of God contradict each other-is necessarily a "rash and hazardous overstate. ment," a feeble "and hypothetical theory;" then the question is settled at once; for so many bad names must ruin whatever they attach to-if only the connexion be clearly proved. But the Bishop of Calcutta has not proved, or attempted to prove, it; he has merely asserted; and his assertion comes to no more than the assertion in ancient days, that it was "the received exposition" of certain passages of Scripture that the sun revolves round the earth, and, therefore, that whatever contradicted it was rash, hazardous, feeble, and hypothetical. So again, till the discoveries of modern chemistry, it was the received exposition" that God created four “elements,” namely, atmospheric air (the firmament), earth, water, and fire (in its combination with light), from which he formed others; and yet every person now knows that not any one of these is an "element" but that all are compounded. The Christian student still reads in Brown of Haddington's excellent Dictionary of the Bible, that "Elements are the principal kinds of matter whereof compounded bodies are formed, as air, fire, earth, and water;" but is he, on account of this once generally received exposition, to disbelieve the undeniable evidence of his senses, and the clearest dictates of irrefragable inference, when he sees air decomposed into oxygen and nitrogen; water into oxygen and hydrogen; fire into light and heat, the actual separation of the ray of heat from the ray of light being proved in the solar prismatic spectrum to the eye and the thermometer; and the various species of earth into numerous bodies not hitherto decomposed, and therefore, at present, regarded as elementary? Moses describes the materials of which creation is composed, in the usual form in which they are known; but it is not necessary to adopt the generally received opinion, formed long before the non-elemental nature of water was discovered, that it was created as it were a one-thing, instead of being formed mediately from its elements. If we said that a man made a watch, the statement would not be false because he made the parts separately. Whether oxygen was formed by itself, and some of it relegated to air and some to water; or whether it was formed at once in all its compound states, does not affect the truth of the sacred narrative.

The Bishop of Calcutta does not mention which of the many "generally received" expositions of the inspired account of the creation he himself adopts; but certain it is, that the interpretation given to the opening chapter of Genesis by Christian geologists, involves no difficulties greater than those which attach to many parts of every popular notion on the subject. The much-loved and honoured prelate will find nothing so forced in the expositions of Buckland, or Pusey, or Chalmers, as in the theory (whichever of the generallyreceived theories he may select) by which he himself must account for its being said that there was day and night before the sun was created. And if he will consider the wonders of the microscope, and see how impossible it is to inhale a breath, or to drink a drop of water, or to eat a particle of food, or to stand or move, without danger of destroying animacules innumerable; and will also consider how from the smallest monad, invisible to the naked eye, and probably to the most powerful lenses, all animated creation is destructive or

subject to be destroyed, and in many cases both in turn; all the habits and structure of the carnivorous, down to the microscopic atom in air or water, being arranged for that purpose, and useless without it; while even the non-carnivorous destroy myriads of living things with every leaf or blade of grass-which is to those animalcules a continent-so that they must either be starved themselves, or depopulate unseen worlds; and if he will further consider the astounding results of the supposition that all living things were formed to live and multiply to all eternity, long after they should have formed a mass of solid animated creation, extending, immeasurably closer than bees in a hive, through a sphere inconceivably larger than is comprised in the limits which include the whole of the starry regions; and that this inconceivable mass of being would be so radically changed in its whole structure and habits, that a lion would require neither claws, nor canine teeth, nor flesh-dissolving juices, nor its present muscles, or bones, or internal structurein fact, would not be a lion, nor anything in the slightest degree resembling one; and that this miraculously preserved mass must be miraculously supplied with food, and all other things necessary to life and convenience in every the minutest point of remote space; that water, for instance, must be successively created for the aquatile tribes after they shall have exceeded a billion fold in bulk all the water now in the universe; and that food, air, and water, shall be partaken of, digested, and enter the composition of new bodies, without the slightest injury to the myriads which dwell in them :-if, I say, the Bishop of Calcutta will only follow out such considerations as these, he will perceive that the "generally received exposition involves difficulties quite as great as the geologist's conclusion that animals may have lived and died in a former condition of this our globe, before it was "prepared to be the habitation for man."

I am aware that this is one of the phrases which is accused of contradicting the plain letter of the sacred text; but I have copied it from Matthew Henry's Exposition of Genesis i. 9-13. The idea that the first verse, or first two verses, speak of the creation of the world, and the subsequent ones of the preparation of this our planet to be "the habitation of man," is no new speculation invented by modern geologists. Even Luther divides the creating announcement from the subsequent "preparation; " and one cannot refer to the pages of the soundest expositors, without finding much that is more rash, and far more hypothetical, than the expositions of Christian geologists. Upon opening Poole's Synopsis, for example, I observe scattered such remarks as the following: "In the beginning the sacred writer lays down at the opening the whole matter; in order that the Author of the world might be acknowledged, and that it was not from eternity, as the philosophers fancied; and, moreover, that nothing was created but by God," Why this,

:

"*

say Christian geologists, is precisely our view of the passage.

66

Again Poole goes on to ask the question, How could this be the beginning of creation, if angels were created before?-to which he replies, "Moses proposed to consider only the visible fabric.' Now this generally received answer is "rash" and "hypothetical theory;" it is not upheld by the sacred text. Upon the theory, (for the non-theorisers have a theory which they account just because generally received) which blends the first verse as synchronous with the commencement of the six days, no place is assigned for the creation of angels; whereas upon the exposition of scriptural geologists, that a lengthened period elapsed between the creation mentioned in the first verse and the six days' work, there is ample space as well for the phenomena disclosed by geology in the history of our planet, as for the creation of angels (if not included in the first verse), and, it may be, innumerable other celestial occurrences with which we are not

Mr. Melville remarks as follows:

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"We would adopt the statement, which has been increasingly adopted and supported by our divines, that the two first verses of the book of Genesis have no immediate connexion with those that follow. They describe the first creation of matter; but, so far as anything to the contrary is stated, a million of ages may have elapsed between this first creation, and God's saying, 'Let there be light,' and proceeding to mould matter into a dwelling-place for man. not shew that the third verse is necessarily consecutive on the two first, so that what is recorded in the one may not be separated by a long interval from what is recorded in the others. On the contrary, it is clear that the interval may be wholly indefinite, quite as long as geology can possibly ask for all those mighty transformations, those ponderous successions, of which it affirms that it can produce indubitable evidence. And we cannot but observe the extreme accuracy of the Scriptural language. It seems to be no-where said that in six days God created the heavens and the earth; but, as in the fourth commandment, that, in six days the Lord made heaven and earth.' Creation was the act of bringing out of nothing the matter of which all things were constructed; and this was done before the six days; afterwards, and during the six days, God made the heaven and the earth; He moulded, that is, and formed into different bodies, the matter which He had long ago created. And it is no objection to this, that God is said to have created man on the sixth day; for you afterwards read that God formed man of the dust of the ground;' so that it was of pre-existent matter that Adam was composed. We seem, therefore, warranted in saying, that with the third verse of the first chapter of Genesis commences the account of the production of the present order and system of things; and that to this Moses confines himself, describing the earth as made ready for man, without stopping to speak of its previous conditions. But since he does not associate the first creation of matter with this preparation of the globe for its rational inhabitants, he in no degree opposes the supposition, that the globe existed immeasurably before man, that it underwent a long series of revolutions, was tenanted by animals, and clothed with vegetation.

And though you may think it strange that there should have been death before there had been sin, you are to remember that there is nothing in the Bible to inform us that animals die because man was disobedient. We may have been accustomed to think so; but we do not see how it can be proved. And when you observe that whole tribes of animals are made to prey upon others, this

acquainted. The fall of angels is disclosed only in its connexion with the fall of man.

Again, Poole says, "Created is taken in two senses; first, to create from nothing; secondly, to produce something fron pre-existing matter; as when it is said, He created whales, man, &c." Yet when the modern geological expositor thus argues, he is accused of lowering creation to modification.

Again, by the words "the heavens and the earth," Poole says that some expositors understand " the materials of the heavens and the earth." Why then are modern scriptural geologists to be rebuked for adopting the same solution ?

On the word "earth" in the second verse, Poole says: "It is thus called by anticipation, because it is so called afterwards when uncovered from the waters." The commonly-received exposition is obliged to be fertile in theoretical reasons while accusing the scriptural geologist of them.

I will cite only one passage more, and that shall be a striking one. It is objected to scriptural geologists that, by separating the first verse from the sub

sequent ones, they reduce the six days' work to a mere formation or modification; for even the animal tribes, and the corporeal part of man himself, are composed of substances, the elements of which exist, or may exist, elsewhere. Is, then, the generally received exposition free from the same objection, if it be one?-though it is not one, as Dr. Pusey has clearly proved by his learned criticism on the words translated "created" and "made." Poole asks, "wherefore is God said, in the seventh verse, to have made what was made before; for the elements and principles (principia however translated) were created on the first day? Answer: He made secundum quid (!!), that is, He fitted. He made it by giving to it accidental quality, not substantial form." What would have been said, if a modern scriptural geologist had asserted that "made " meant made secundum quid? The non-theorisers will here see, that precisely the same difficulty, if difficulty it be, presses upon them, in making the first verse part of the first day's work, as in making it altogether a previous general trans

action.

species being manifestly designed for the food of that, you will perhaps find it hard to believe that every living thing was originally meant to live for ever; you will ask something better than a popular persuasion, ere you conclude that the insect of a day was intended to be immortal; or that what is the appointed sustenance of a stronger race, was also apointed to be actually indestructible.

These then are the general views which we think furnished by, or, at least, consistent with our text (Gen. i. 2.) and the preceding verse. We take these verses as the only record which God hath been pleased to give of a mysterious, and probably immense, period, whose archives are found, by the scientific eye, sculptured on the rocks, or buried in the caves, of the earth. They refer to ages, in comparison perhaps of which the human chronology is but a span, and of which, though we have received no written history, we can read the transactions in the fuel which we heap on our fires, and in the bones which we dig from our hills. And there appears to us something surpassingly sublime in the thought, that our text may be thus the general description of an indefinite interval, from the creation of matter to the production of man. We do not know a grander contemplation than that to which the mind is sommoned, when required to consider this globe as of an antiquity which almost baffles calculation, and as having been prepared by changes which may have each occupied a series of ages, for the residence of beings created in the image of God."

The time perhaps is not distant, when the above will be the " gene.. rally received exposition;" but I am not desirous of pressing any particular interpretation, but only of following up Bishop Butler's doctrine of analogy: by shewing the anti-geologists, that, even setting aside geological facts, their expositions are beset with quite as many difficulties as those of their neighbours; besides which, they involve the difficulty of setting the word and the works of God in opposition, while the others reconcile them.

But Bishop Wilson may reply, Why speculate at all upon what we cannot understand? The common exposition gives a plain and good sense, why interfere with it? The reply is, that the question is forced upon every man of science who is not satisfied wilfully to shut his eyes. Certain facts are pressed upon us by modern research. Certain phenomena of terrene structure and fossilisation are undenied and undeniable: our cabinets are filled with animal and vegetable remains of the most extraordinary kind; tens of thousands of men, women, and children, gaze in wonder, at the British Museum, at extinct genera and species of birds, beasts, fishes, and insects, and ask where they lived and when they died. The popular answer is, that they perished at the deluge. Now if any man, after careful examination of the known facts of geology, can really satisfy himself that this answer is truthful, I have no wish to overturn his conclusion, though I must wonder how he arrived at it. But the infidel, who

knows, or chooses to know, nothing of the inspired account but in its popular exposition, or rather non-exposition-says plainly that the facts and the Mosaic narrative are irreconcileable; whereupon the Christian geologist replies, that the facts are not irreconcileable with the inspired text, but only with the uninspired comment. Surely he ought to be thanked for this; and not to be accused of rashness, neology, and sceptical addictions.

With most heartfelt grief it is acknowledged that infidels have perverted the facts of geology, as they have done astronomy, physiology, and even algebraical calculation, to repudiate the oracles of God; but it does not follow that the facts are not true, because these men foist false conclusions upon them. So also it is admitted on all sides, that geology is in an infant state; that a sufficient induction of phenomena has not yet been made, and that a Newton has not risen to elicit from them a harmonious theory; but Bishop Wilson entirely mistakes the actual circumstances of the case, when he argues

from the imperfection of geological knowledge to its fallacy. There is enough known, enough visible and incontrovertible, not indeed to build a general theory upon, but to overturn some "generally received" opinions, and to shew that the popular exposition of the first chapter of Genesis cannot be reconciled with undeniable facts. It is fallacious to argue from the general imperfection of our knowledge on a subject, to the incorrectness of what is clearly established. If the Great Western steam-ship had left in the Atlantic waters permanent indubitable marks of her voyage to America. it would not be sound reasoning to say that she never could have been across the waters: for that navigation is in its infancy; that Dr. Lardner has proved that such a voyage is impracticable, and that it is rash to build up hasty hypotheses. I feel perfectly convinced that Bishop Wilson is not sufficiently acquainted with the facts of the case, to be competent to give an opinion on the evidence. Sir Isaac Newton told Halley that he was always glad to listen to him upon astronomical subjects, for those he had studied, and understood; but he could not listen to his remarks on theology, for that was a matter to which he had not devoted his attention. The anecdote may be applied, mutatis mutandis, to the justly respected and beloved Bishop of Calcutta. In matters relating to the theory and practice of religion he is pre-eminently well versed; his writings are only second to his living voice as a preacher, and his preaching to his practice. But it would be difficult to find a writer who exhibits less predilection for science; it may be questioned whether he would have the patience deliberately to study even so popular and entertaining a geological work as Dr. Buckland's Bridgewater Treatise; and if he had, his heart, and mind, and strength are devoted to objects of infinitely greater importance. But, then, is it right that because those of his fellow Christians who have really applied their understandings to the known facts and strongly supported conclusions of geology, are satisfied that "the generally received exposition" cannot be sustained, and are anxious to prove that there are other expositions which can be sustained; and which shew how to reconcile the word and the works of God (for they cannot really disagree); they should be reprehended for their well-meant zeal in upholding the revealed word against objectors, precisely as Bishop Wilson would uphold it against a learned Hindoo who should cavil at it as making the sun and not the earth the revolving body? I respectfully submit to the consideration of that eminent prelate the following remarks of one whom he holds in high honour, that sound Christian philosopher Dr. Chalmers.

"The strength of the argument on the side of religion, is often weakened by a jealous or studied disunion of the truth in one department from the truth in another; but, believing as we do, that, instead of a conflict, there is a corroborative harmony between them, we shall advert once more to the Mosaic account of the Creation; and more especially as the reconciliation of this history with the indefinite antiquity of the globe seems not impossible; and that without the infiction of any violence on any of the literalities of the record.

"We regret that Penn, or Gisborne, or any other of our Scriptural geologists, should have entered upon this controversy without a sufficient preparation of natural science; and laid as much stress, too, on the argument which they employed, as if the whole truth and authority of Revelation depended on it. It is thus that the cause of truth has often suffered from the misguided zeal of its advocates anxiously struggling for every one position about which a question may have been raised; and so landing themselves, at times, in a situation of most humiliating exposure to the argument or ridicule of their adversaries. They weaken the line of defence, by extending it; they multiply their vulnerable points, by spreading their detachments and their outworks over too great a surface;