Dr. Chalmers, Evidences of the Christian Revelation.

1817.

"Does Moses ever say, that when God created the heavens and the earth He did more, at the time alluded to, than transform them out of previously existing materials? or does he ever say that there was not an interval of many ages between the first act of creation, described in the first verse of the book of Genesis, and said to have been performed in the beginning,' and those more detailed operations, the account of which commences at the second verse, and which are described to us as having been performed in so many days ? or finally, does he ever make us to understand that the genealogies of man ever went any further than to fix the antiquity of the species; and, of consequence, that they left the antiquity of the globe a free subject for the speculation of philosophers?"

Dr. Chalmers, Natural Theology.

"The strength of the argument on the side of religion, is often weakened by a jealousy, or studied disunion of the truth of 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 infliction of any violence on any of the literalities of the Record.

"We have already endeavoured to shew how, without any invasion even on the literalities of the Mosaic Record, the indefinite antiquity of the globe

might safely be given up to naturalists, as an arena, whether for their sportive fancy, or their interminable gladiatorship. On this supposition, the details of that operation narrated by Moses, which lasted for six days on the earth's surface, will be regarded as the steps by which the present economy of terrestrial things was raised about 6000 years ago, on the basis of an earth then without form, and void: while for aught of information we have in the Bible, the earth itself may before this time have been the theatre of many lengthened processes, the dwelling-place of older economies that have now gone by, but whereof the vestiges subsist even to the present day, both to the needless alarm of those who befriend Christianity, and to the unwarrantable triumph of those who have assailed it." Rev. H. Melvill, Sermon on Gen. i. 2.

"We would adopt the statement, which has been increasingly adopted and supported by our divines, that the first two 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. You cannot 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 nowhere 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 are 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 created 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 itself existed immeasurably before man; that it underwent a long series of revolutions; was tenanted by animals, and clothed with vegetation."

"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 summoned, 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."

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E. A.

162

CHAPTER IV.

MORAL USES TO BE DERIVED FROM THE FACT OF THE EARTH'S ANTIQUITY.

"If led from earthly things to things divine,
His creatures thwart not His august design,
Then praise is heard instead of reasoning pride,
And captious cavil and complaint subside.
Nature employed in her allotted place

Is handmaid to the purposes of grace:

By good vouchsafed makes known superior good,
And bliss not seen, by blessings understood."

HE "Temple of Nature" is a term expressing no

THE

mere fabulous figure. Nature's wide domain is, in very deed, an ample noble Shrine, where in many a sacred place the Deity is specially manifested, and there many a grateful altar may be set up for a worship, pure and exalting; and the more widely her gates may be thrown open, and we freely may enter there, and become familiarized with the revelations her Oracles may unfold, the better shall we know, and shall adore HIM, who, All-pervading and Supreme, dwelleth in this his own-assigned place, "not made with hands." Vain must be the fear, indeed, that religion will ever really suffer from the advancing discoveries of Natural Science! Vain to suppose that the more ardent lovers and students of