much instability is now known to exist as to constitute presumptive evidence on behalf of St. Peter's declaration. The eternal conservation of the universe, in its present connections, can no longer be held as a fundamental verity in science. It is a fundamental error. The possibility of the earth being consumed by fire is not disputed. The conflagration of distant worlds is an unquestioned fact. It needs but a slight alteration in the position of the earth, or in its shape, or in the direction of its axis, or in the velocity of its motion, to give an entirely new character to the globe. A delicate alteration in the atmosphere alone, might instantly render the earth uninhabitable. "Under a thinner air, the torrid zone might be wrapt in eternal snow; under a denser air, and with different refracting powers, the earth and all that is therein might be burnt up." "And so it is through the whole of nature; laws are everywhere,-laws in themselves invariable, but so worked as to produce effects of inexhaustible variety by being pitched against each other, and made to hold each other in restraint." 1

In a vast economy regulated by law, there may be, as astronomical science teaches, a tendency to dissolution, slow but sure, which will produce, through the confusion and overthrow of existing adjustments, such amazing results literally as the Bible has foretold.

Within itself, the globe is carrying volcanic forces sufficient to dislocate and overwhelm its inhabited crust, if only the balance of pressure and upheaval be in the least destroyed; and chemistry has long attested the facility of an universal overthrow. Combinations the subtlest and most delicate are invested with such tremendous power, that they require but slight modification to ensure a literal fulfilment of the

1 "Reign of Law," by the Duke of Argyll, p. 53.

apostolic prophecy as to the heavens passing away "with a great noise," and the earth and its works being "burnt up.” There is to be "dissolution," not annihilation; there is to be a new economy, a new heaven and a new earth. The sublime announcements of St. Peter and of the Apocalyptic Seer, so long accepted by many apologists as invested with merely poetic drapery, and so long sneered at as sensational by rigorous physicists, have been rescued from misinterpretation. The statement that there "shall be no more sea," can only be ridiculed by those who are ignorant of the truths which the natural sciences have already evolved and vindicated.

These possibilities might, of course, be accepted without a very strong probability of any actual changes beyond what are now transpiring, and they constitute only presumptive evidence on the side of Scripture; but, in Sir William Thomson's demonstration of an inevitable change which will render this earth unfit for man's existence, unless there be new operations, which are impossible without the interposition of a power not now manifested, we have an unimpeachable warrant for the literal interpretation of St. Peter's delineation of the close of the history of our world as now constituted. It has a weight and emphasis which no theological or critical disquisition could ever possess; and is it not most encouraging to find the deductions of natural philosophy thus becoming the expositors and vindicators of revealed truth, as they fully aver all that the Bible has announced regarding not only the past but the future history of the globe? To those who have passed through the jungle-like speculations and propositions of the olden atheists, as to an "infinite series," and the more recent metaphysical reasonings prosecuted to prove the eternity of the present system of organic and inorganic beings, it must be an unspeakable relief on

marching forth beneath the clear sky to find the Bible and natural philosophy blending their lights "as suns upon each other shining." That the universe is not eternal, may be held now to be incontrovertible. Creation has been; and all questions as to the date of the beginning are of comparatively subordinate interest. There is, however, one other question so closely connected with this part of our subject, that it must be examined. It is―

IV.—The import of " IN THE BEginning."

Is this the beginning of all beginnings? or is it the beginning of the formation of the heaven and the earth out of materials which had already been in existence? Some eminent Jewish commentators deny that this is the beginning of all beginnings; they exclude from this place the idea of origination, and they limit the statement to the forming or shaping of materials. 1 They found their conclusion on the assumption that the "in the beginning" is, as grammarians express it, in the construct state, and that thus it is limited by some thing of which it is the beginning. They do not admit that the Hebrew word Bara expresses the originating of all creation. The question, with us, ultimately turns on the greater or less comparative importance which we attach to the first creation of matter, and to the first adjustment of its forms or the first impulse of its laws. The relative value of creating matter and of ordering its structure and functions, is an interesting, yet not a very profitable, subject of discussion. Professor Tayler Lewis makes creation of matter the lesser work. "Taken as a fact," he says, "it is the lowest in the scale of the Divine works, if we may be allowed to make any comparisons among them. It is simply an exercise of the

1 See Professor Tayler Lewis on the Essential Ideas of Creation, in "Lange's Commentary on Genesis," pp. 126-130.

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Divine strength. On the other hand, the giving form to matter, which is so clearly revealed as the true creative stage, is the work of the Divine Wisdom, and might be supposed worthy of God, as an exercise of his infinite intelligence, even if it had no other than an artistic end. The carrying these forms into the region of the moral, or the impressing moral designs upon them,-in other words, building the world as the abode of life, and the residence of moral and spiritual beings capable of witnessing and declaring the glory of the creator,-is the work of Divine Love. In revising this scale of dignities, the actually lower comes to be regarded as the higher and the greater, merely because it is the more remote from us."1 There is considerable force in this reasoning, as against those who seek to displace God from the creative formation or evolution of the heaven and the earth, but it has little interest for the sincere Bible student; because, between the creation of matter and its harmonious and productive evolutions, he finds it hard to establish values. Attributes that are infinite power, wisdom, love-have to be associated with both, and in their light all distinctions are lost. To describe the building of the world as merely preparatory to its being made the abode of moral and spiritual existences, does not elucidate the subject nor lessen difficulties, because the very presence of these moral beings betokens of itself prior creative action. While conflicting criticisms may have been pressed on you as to the special import of the term bara, create, the greater weight of scholarship is, I think, on the side of its expressing the origination of this universe-the beginning of all beginnings, the creation out of nothing. "To the idea of a creation out of nothing," says Hävernick, "no ancient cosmog

1 "Lange's Commentary on Genesis,” p. 129.

ony has ever risen, neither in the myths, nor the philosophemes of the ancient world. By the peculiarity that the biblical cosmogony has, for its fundamental idea, a creation from nothing, it is placed in a category distinct from all other myths. Hence, recently, there appears above all things a disposition to deny that this is contained in the history of creation, but certainly without success." In the commencement of the Gospel by St. John, we have proof that this is the beginning of all beginnings, when it is said, "In the beginning was the Word: the same was in the beginning with God: all things were made by Him."

A subsidiary yet substantial argument for the beginning in Genesis, being the commencement of beginnings, lies in the specialuse of the termbara as expressive of a creative act. It is remarkable that this term is in Scripture invariably applied to God, and never to any created being. God was known by the Israelites as Boré, Creator. Creation is a divine act,—something performed indisputably by God alone; and the question has lately been limited to creation out of nothing, or a creation of something new, out of what before existed. It is adadmitted that Yatzár, he formed, and Asáh, he made, may be used as applicable to men; and that Bara, he created, is alone applicable to God, but it is said that it does not necessarily express creation out of nothing. Scholars do not now insist on this exclusive meaning. They do not assert that it never has such a meaning, yet it is the only Hebrew term which expresses this idea, and we have to look to the context and connexions of the term rather than to the term itself, to determine conclusively which view should be taken. "But that in the first verse," says Gesenius in his Thesaurus, "the first creation of the world out of nothing, and in a rude and unformed state, and in the remainder of the first chapter, the elarboation and disposition of the recently