Pictorial Illustrations of the Old and New Testaments

THE CREATION.

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."* In illustrating this sublime subject, the artist has endeavoured to realize the divine agency in producing the world. Already are the luminous portions of the chaotic mass separated from the darkness, and brought into beautiful combination. The passive elements are stirred into activity by the impulse of an Almighty will, and the process of creation is rapidly proceeding. Disorder is visibly giving place to proportion, confusion to symmetry. The fluid particles of the chaos are seen above the more solid, which, put into motion by that mysterious Power by whose omnipotent influence they were no longer to remain without form, and obeying the primitive law of gravitation, have sunk beneath the more buoyant element and become compacted into earth. The spirit of God is represented, under the shadowy resemblance of a human form, floating or brooding, as the original term expresses it, upon the face of the deep. The great principle of light is exhibited in the different vehicles by which it is conveyed to us. The moon, a comet, and the stars, appear behind the divine Energy, or Spirit, as just completed, and at the command of Omnipotence "Let there be light," the sun bursts, in the fulness of his glory, from that portion of inert matter which had not yet subsided into form, while a vivid flash of lightning at the same instant flickers over the still, dark waters; thus displaying at one view the principal modifications under which the God of nature exhibits an element at once the source of light and of fecundity.

CREATION.

THOMPSON, SC.