period, when God began to adapt earth for the habitation of man. But we learn from the Mosaic record that the earth did not exist in its present condition until the third of these Yoмs,— "God called the dry land Earth, and there was evening and there was morning, a third Yom." Supposing, then, seven thousand years to be the duration of each of these Yoms, including that wherein God is now said to be resting, this would give, after deducting two of these Yoms, or 14,000 years before the earth appeared in its present condition, from the forty-nine thousand years, the sum total of the whole, a period of thirty-five thousand years as the duration of the period, reckoning from the third Yom until the present time.

97. Many tests have been suggested by geologists in order to measure the age of the post-tertiary period, the favourite one being dependent on the time required to fill up the deltas of the largest rivers known on earth; but for various reasons such data are too uncertain to allow any dependence to be placed upon them, through the impossibility of making a correct estimate of the annual rate of these subaqueous deposits. There is one test, however, which seems to afford some grounds for arriving at something like a sounder conclusion, and that is the computed age of the falls of Niagara. Sir Charles Lyell,* after the most careful inquiries which he was enabled to make on the spot in 1841, came to the conclusion that the average of one foot per year was the rate at which the waterfall has been cutting through its stony bed; and he considers that it would have required 35,000 years for the retreat of the Falls, from the escarpment at Queenstown (a distance of seven miles) to their present site. If this be a correct estimate, we may fairly infer that we have some clue to the approximate duration of the Yoms or "days" mentioned in the Mosaic cosmogony.

98. With regard to the formation of man, and the teaching of the human race having sprung from one pair, as stated in the Mosaic record, my space prevents me from entering upon

and therefore, in his opinion, a break must have occurred previously to the human period, since it is through species alone that an hereditary succession is kept up. This conclusion has, however, been denied by other geologists.

Lyell's Principles of Geology, vol. i. ch. x. In reference to the Falls of Niagara, which are situated between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, the level of the former being 330 feet above the latter, Sir Charles Lyell utters a very solemn prediction concerning a future catastrophe which he considers will inevitably happen in that region of the earth. He says, "The existence of enormous seas of fresh-water, such as the North American lakes, is alone sufficient to assure us that the time will come, however distant, when a. deluge will lay waste a considerable part of the American Continent!" ch. v.)

that question now, so I must content myself with adducing the testimony of an acknowledged authority, the celebrated Dr. Pritchard, who had investigated the subject as deeply, perhaps, as any man who ever lived, and whose conclusions are set forth in the following words: "On the whole, it appears that the information deduced from this method of inquiry is as satisfactory as we could expect, and is sufficient to confirm, and, indeed, by itself to establish, the inference that the human kind contains but one species, and, therefore, by a second inference, but one race. It will, I apprehend, be allowed by those who have attentively followed the investigation of par ticulars, that the diversities in physical character belonging to different races present no material obstacle to the opinion that all nations sprang from one original, a result which plainly follows from the foregoing consideration."* To which I would add, that "one original" must have been a separate act of crea tion on the part of the Divine Creator, and not the outcome, in the process of development, of an ascidian tadpole, according to the favourite hypothesis of certain savans in the present day.†

99. In summing up a review of those heathen cosmogonies at which we have slightly glanced, rather than considered at any length, and comparing them with the Hebrew, we cannot help noticing the vast gulf between the two. The only

* Researches into the Physical History of Mankind, by James C. Pritchard, M.D., vol. ii. p. 589. The great question between Mr. Darwin and those who oppose his views may be said to consist in this :-"Is man a sepa rate act of Creative Power?" The Bible teaches that he is-Mr. Darwin, the contrary. It is satisfactory to know that the results of a large number of experiments made by Dr. Parker, President of the Microscopical Society, and Professor Huxley, tend to prove that man must have been a separate creation. (See Transactions of Victoria Institute, vol. vii. p. 282.) On the question, however, of mankind being descended "from one original," as Scripture teaches, and Dr. Pritchard considers that he has proved, Professor Huxley observes, in an article in the Fortnightly Review, "On the Methods and Results of Ethnology," that the idea of our descent from Adam and Eve is quite a mistake. "Five-sixths of the public," he says, "are taught this Adamitic monogenism, as if it were an established truth, and believe it. I do not; and I am not acquainted with any man of science or duly instructed person who does."

It was a profound saying of William Humboldt that man is man only by means of speech, but that in order to invent speech he must be man already. -Lyell's Antiquity of Man, p. 468.

Even Mr. Goodwin, with all his apparent prejudice against the Mosaic cosmogony, is obliged to admit that in the Biblical record "things are called by their right names with a certain scientific exactness widely different from the imaginative cosmogonies of the Greeks" (Essays and Reviews, p. 223). Justin Martyr was justified in asking, "Who can believe in the drivelling theogony of Hesiod?" (Discourse to the Greeks, ch. ii.). And a member of

important resemblance of any ancient cosmogony to the Mosaic record is to be found in the Persian, which may be accounted for by the probability of Zoroaster, its founder, having been brought into contact with the Jews at the court of "Darius the Mede," at the close of the Babylonish captivity; though, as we have seen, some parts of it are of such a fabulous nature as to forbid the thought of their being taken from the cosmogony revealed to Moses, who could not have written as he did, in such accordance with the discoveries of true science, without the direct inspiration of God.

100. In the brief and rapid outline sketched in Scripture relating to astronomy and geology, we are enabled to see the all-perfect harmony which must ever exist between the word and the works of God. To mention only a few instances. 1st. We have the simultaneous creation of the heavens and earth at so remote a period that it requires the known rate of the speed of light to enable us to grasp either its magnitude or its age. 2nd. The earth is represented as being balanced in the air, poised by its own weight-a somewhat different conception from that of the Hindoos, who declared it to be resting on a big snake, which is itself upheld by a gigantic tortoise; but who supports the tortoise they cannot tell. 3rd. Moses teaches that the luminary which God appointed to rule the day is only a light-holder, the truth of which astronomy confirms by showing the sun to be an opaque body, dependent for its light on a luminous atmosphere. 4th. Light is said in the Mosaic record to have existed independent of the sun, which science has proved to be the case, in place of its being, as was very naturally supposed by all nations, the sole source of light and heat. 5th. Moses teaches that there is an expanse extending from earth to the ends of the Universe in which all the heavenly bodies are placed; and recent discoveries lead to the supposition of some subtle fluid in which they all move. 6th. Man is represented as having been created after the fowls, the fishes, and beasts of the field, which the modern science of geology has at length discovered to be the case.

101. With reference to the origin of the human race, the subject of so much discussion in the present day, the more we reflect on the strange nature of man, the anomalies he presents,

this Institute very properly argued that ". one proof of the inspiration of the Bible is seen in the fact that in all other cosmogonies the greatest folly and nonsense is talked; while in the Bible it is sublimely stated that in the beginning God created all things" (Transactions, vol. vi. 161).

the knowledge of his power to do so, and his unwillingness to attempt it, according to the fine saying of the poet,—

Video meliora proboque

Deteriora sequor—

we ask, What philosophy, ancient or modern, has ever been able to account for all these things? But the whole subject is revealed to us in the majestic narrative of Scripture-how man was originally created in the image of God, and how he lost it through the fall. Place side by side these two statements-the theory that man is no better than a well-developed ape, and the Biblical statement that he was created after the image and likeness of his Maker; the one based on the testimony of Revelation, and the other on the mere conjecture of a speculative human being; and it will surely approve itself to the intelligent mind that on such a subject science has no evidence to offer which can be compared to the proof afforded by the Bible. It is true that the fall has darkened our reason, but it has not destroyed it. There is light enough, as Pascal has pointed out, for those whose sincere wish is to see, and darkness to confound those of an opposite aim. We encounter objections to our faith, some of which it may be difficult to answer in consequence of our ignorance, and proofs drawn from our knowledge in the opposite scale. Concerning the evidence in the Biblical record, it has been well said, "If it were greater the Gospel would cease to be a faith, if it were less the Gospel would become a superstition. If it were more there would be no probation for the heart, and if less no grappling point for the reason." But, alas! how often is the voice of reason drowned in the cry of imaginative folly! To what absurdities will not the understanding often assent when the will has determined upon their advocacy! How little way can truth make with the intellect when there is something in its character which opposes the inclination; as it has been remarked, that Athens was but the rudiments of Paradise, and an Aristotle or a Socrates only the rubbish of Adam. Dryden, in his Religio Laici has forcibly expressed this idea in the following nervous lines :—

Dim as the borrow'd beams of Moon and Stars
To lonely, weary, wandering travellers,

Is reason to the soul: and as on high
Those rolling fires discover but the sky,
Not light us here; so reason's glimmering ray

But guide* us upward to a better day.

* In the edition of Dryden's Works, 1808, now before me, it is printed guide, not guides-the former being allowable.

And as those nightly tapers disappear
When day's bright lord ascends the hemisphere,
So pale grows reason at religion's sight,

So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural night.
Some few, whose lamp shone brighter, have been led
From cause to cause to Nature's sacred head,
And found that one First Principle must be,
But what, or who, that universal He;
Whether some soul encompassing this ball,
Unmade, unmoved; yet making, moving all,
Of various atoms' interfering dance,

Leap'd into form, the noble work of chance;
Or this great All was from Eternity,
Not even the Stagyrite himself could see;
And Epicurus guess'd as well as he.

As blindly groped they for a future state,
As rashly judged of Providence and Fate;
But least of all could their endeavours find,
What most concerned the good of human kind.

The CHAIRMAN (Rev. Preb. Currey, D.D.).—I am sure we all thank Mr. Savile for his able paper; and it will be open for those present to offer remarks thereon, after two communications have been read.

The HONORARY SECRETARY.-The following remarks upon the paper have been sent in by Professor Birks, M.A., of Cambridge:—

"I have read Mr. Savile's paper with much interest. The first twentytwo pages, which give a summary of heathen cosmogonies, do not call for any observation. In the other thirty pages there is much with which I agree, and a good deal from which I differ. My remarks will naturally turn chiefly on the points of difference. I agree with Mr. Savile (1) that Gen. i. 1, refers to the original act of creation, distinct from the six days' work, which was the preparation of our planet for the abode of man; (2) that a long, undefined period separates the beginning from the first of the six days; (3) that Gen. i. 2, describes not the first state of the earth, but a later state, just before the six days began, and probably implies a previous convulsion, involving general, if not complete, destruction of any precedent forms of life; (4) that this probably answers to the post-tertiary or close of the tertiary period; (5) that each of the six days must be a period of equal or nearly equal length; (6) that man was created last in order, and at a date, geologically, very modern and recent. The points on which I differ are these: (1) that Mr. Croll's hypothesis is either proved or provable, or probable, which explains the glaciation of the earth by a greater excentricity