ago; and that Egypt was a flourishing nation two thousand years before Christ.

Indeed, the evidence of all these assertions is precisely of the same nature,-historical testimony confirmed by existing facts, and not to be denied without absurdities; showing in him who persists in a denial a weakness of reason and incompetency of judgment, which must be pronounced either stupidity or insanity.*

There is no authentic history of man, extending more than about three thousand years before Christ, except what is found in the Bible; and the scanty records of that early age show that then the human family was young and few, all of which confirms the Scriptural account of the creation. Indeed, that the human family had a beginning, and that, too, when and where the Bible places it, we believe confirmed by as satisfactory historical evidence as any reasonable person could demand. This point will recur in an examination of the doctrine of the Deluge.

• We would here remark, that in these pages the chronology of the Septuagint is received as the most reasonable and correct. Satisfactory reasons for this may be found in Smith's Patriarchal Age, and in the works of all historians who have accurately investigated the early history of Assyria, India, Egypt, and China. This system of chronology alone introduces harmony, where, according to Usher's computations, all is confusion, and discord, and even absurdity.

But while it may be considered a moral demonstration that the race of man began its existence at the date designated by the Bible, yet no Scriptural subject has been more severely criticised and warmly opposed than the order of creation, as described in the first chapter of Genesis. - Volumes have been written upon it; philology, natural science, metaphysics, and the imagination have been tasked to their utmost capability to solve the riddle, and to show just how the world was created, and just how the order, as described in Genesis, can be made to correspond with the traces of its own creation, supposed to exist in the earth itself and its inhabitants.

Now, manifestly, it would not accord with the plan of this book to adopt any one of the numerous recondite theories which Biblical geologists have invented to solve this mystery. We do not propose to write a commentary on the whole Bible, but only to select those grand incidents recorded in the sacred Scriptures which are strikingly confirmed by parallel history and by philosophy, and to present those confirmations. If there be mysteries yet unsolved, or facts related which never can be verified except by the general truthfulness of

the whole, we ought to be willing to acknowledge it. We therefore boldly assume this position in the outset, -that if the first chapter of Genesis is an insoluble enigma, if indeed the ap. pearances of the earth's texture cannot be made by human ingenuity to harmonize with it, or that to harmonize with the appearances; still, so strikingly is the Bible in general confirmed by history, by testimony, by its adaptation to man, and by its effects, that it demands the assent of every rational man, and must and will have it in spite of that and even other enigmas.

Men seem to forget that the creation of the world has occurred but once; that it cannot be tested by human observation; that we have but one account of it purporting to be revealed from heaven, and that exceedingly brief, written in a language long since given up as a spoken language; and that all men ought to be willing to acknowledge their great liability to error, when they attempt to fill out from human fancy the brief outline thus presented. That outline is, however, amply sufficient to accomplish the purpose for which it was given,—to show that the LORD God created the universe, and is the SuPREME ONE worthy of the homage of all man

Indeed, we would not write a line upon this subject, did we not fear that some might suppose that we deemed the Scriptural account utterly indefensible if we passed it by in silence; since it is not our object to theorize, but to present acknowledged facts.

It is asserted by geologists that the earth bears in itself indisputable evidence of an antiquity utterly incalculable, and far more than ten thousand or than ten million of years. This

. many profound believers in the inspiration of Moses also believe; and, moreover, assert that there is no want of harmony between that view and the historical account given in the first chapter of Genesis. These commentators may be divided into three classes.

The first class affirm that between the time specified in the first verse, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” and the time specified in the second verse, subsequently termed the first day, an indefinite period elapsed, during which the earth underwent all those changes traced out by geologists. This class believe that the first chapter of Genesis, subsequent to the first verse, describes not a primitive creation, but only a new creation, or a special arrangement of the long previously

created earth, for the especial accommodation of man.

The second class of commentators, allowing the indefinite antiquity of the earth, maintain that the term translated “ day,” throughout this chapter, means an undetermined period of time; and that “evening and morning" simply denote the beginning and close of this long period. Profound philological arguments have been adduced, and numerous parallel instances of such a use of language, to confirm this hypothesis. And it has been shown that some Jewish and Christian commentators entertained this view before any geological theories were invented.

The third class of these commentators adopt both of the above views, and thus arrive at the same practical result.

It is not becoming in any man, at least without equal scientific attainments and research, to pronounce those views altogether fanciful or absurd, entertained as they have been by some of the ripest scholars, and most intelligent men, and most faithful Christians, in this or any other age. And it is worthy of notice that these geologists claim to have ascertained, according to their own theories, that man cannot have been on the earth longer than the Bible allows,