those revealed in the second verse, may have been, for aught the Record indicates to the contrary, immeasurable; for there is nothing that necessarily connects the subject of the two verses together in immediate approximation of time. It has been said, indeed, that being connected with its antecedent by the conjunction "and," precludes the intercalation of any long period of time between them; but and is not a determinate meaning of the Hebrew word (VAU), so translated in our version; it may have many other renderings; and in the first two chapters of this very book of Genesis, this same copula is, in fact, rendered in our Authorized Version, by the several words "but," "thus," "now," and "also." We are at liberty, therefore, to adopt that rendering most conformable to the matter recorded, and selecting the conjunction but or now, the second verse then stands as introducing a subject separate as to time from the first. Dathe, who is high authority in such a matter, says the correct rendering should be, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, but afterwards the earth became waste and desolate."

Nor is there any ground, in the terms used, for considering the subject-matter of which this second verse treats to be a Chaos. This chaotic condition of the Earth at this period is altogether a gratuitous assumption, unsupported by the literal text. Indeed, like as many of our conceptions of the Spiritual

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world are erroneously derived from Milton, rather than from the Bible; so many of our common notions of the primitive Natural World are derived from the Heathen Poets, rather than from the Revelations of and this notion of a Chaos

God's Word and Works;

Some of the learned, read

evidently among the rest. ing in the pages of Hesiod or Ovid of this poetic fiction, have transfused the idea into the general mind; but what is there in the terms used in this verse, beyond what might be justly applied to, and describe a condition of the surface of the earth lately broken up and laid waste, after one of those natural convulsions, of which we have the indications of so many, within the range of the Earth's archaic history; and of one of which, to a slighter extent, we subsequently have had the experience, within the range of our own more recent history, in the recorded catastrophe of the Deluge?

The revealed condition then of "the Earth," after the last pre-Adamite catastrophe,-"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." The first point that may strike us in this delineation of the then state of things is, that there was at that period, according to the express Mosaic record, anterior to the six days' reduction into order,existing earth, and existing water,—since both are here spoken of distinctively. The idea appears at once,

therefore, excluded of a purely chaotic mass, its materials commingled, and its primal substances as yet unreduced to an organized condition of individuality. Nor do the Hebrew terms (TOHU-VAVOHU), rendered in our Version "without form, and void," in any proper sense sustain the notion of a chaos. The force of the original word (TOHU), significantly expresses dreariness, or a waste- that of (VAVOHU) expresses desolation, or without inhabitant. Bishop Patrick says, "these words are synonymous with confusion and emptiness;" and the Septuagint renders them by invisible and unfurnished. And this idea of desolateness is fully carried out in all the twentyone different passages in which the same terms are used in the Old Testament, as, for instance, may be seen Deut. xxxii. 10, Isai. xLi. 29, Jer. xLvi. 18, 19, Jer. xLix. 2, Jer. iv. 23. In that beautiful Song of Moses, recorded in Deut. xxxii. 10, in which he describes the miseries of the barren wilderness, the word (TOHU) is used to express its desolateness, "He found them in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness." And there is another striking passage in Jer. iv. from the 23d verse, in which these same terms (TOHU VAVOHU) are used; and so singularly descriptive is it of what we should conceive would be the wrecked condition of the Earth's surface, after some violent disruption, that the whole prophetic vision may be quoted, as well illustrating the

proposed view of the subject. "I beheld the earth,” says the Prophet, "and lo! it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light. I beheld the mountains, and lo! they trembled; and all the hills moved lightly. I beheld, and there was no man, and all the birds of the heaven were fled. I beheld, and lo! the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down; at the presence of the Lord, and by his fierce anger. For thus hath the Lord said, The whole land shall be desolate; for this shall the earth mourn, and the heavens above be black." Here in this beautiful strain of imagery, by which the Prophet shadows forth the political ruin of Judah and Israel, we have a vivid picture drawn of the Earth's confusion and dreariness: here we have light forsaking the heavens; the extinction of animal and vegetable life; a series of catastrophes indicated in the trembling mountains, and the moving hills, the mourning of the Earth, and the blackness of the heavens ;-deformity has usurped the place of beauty, desolation of order. And what are the special terms used to indicate this disorganized scene, but (TOHU VOHU,) “without form, and void," as expressed in this second verse of Genesis?descriptive there also, we may hence believe, not of an unreduced chaos, but of a disrupted, desolated, previously-existing Earth.

And not less is the same idea indicated in the

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next terms used in this verse, "And darkness was upon the face of the deep." The commonly-entertained notion is, that this is an extension of the description of the Chaos in which the elements of darkness and light, and all other things, being as yet undeveloped, are commingled in an abyss called "the deep." But the term darkness here used means merely a temporary obscuration. The root given of the original word translated darkness" is stagnation (of atmosphere), a sense, as we shall presently see, very significant of its real meaning. Indeed, darkness can in no case express an absolute thing, but implies only an absence of light; and we may clearly infer what is meant by the "darkness," in this passage, by noticing its nature, and the means of its effectuation, as recorded in some other passages of Scripture. In the description given in the fifth Chapter of Deuteronomy, ver. 23, of the promulgation of the Decalogue from Mount Horeb, it is said to have been delivered "out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud," and "out of the darkness;" for it is added, "the Mountain did burn with fire." Hence, the change of expression we find in the twenty-fourth verse, "We have heard his voice out of the midst of the fire." Add to this solemn account, the description given of this same awful scene in the twentieth chapter of Exodus, “And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings,