created mass are set forth, is proved by the connexions of things in the whole of this chapter;" and he adduces in support of this opinion, the conclusions of Jewish Rabbis.

You may be perplexed by finding that so distinguished a writer as Max Müller refuses the conclusions of such scholars as Gesenius, at least on the grounds on which they rest them, and approvingly quotes those who regard bara as properly meaning to create out of pre-existing materials; but you must observe that he does not positively preclude its meaning in any circumstances to create out of nothing.1 As bara, in its most recondite application, can refer only once to creation as originating matter, and afterwards, of course, only to what is evolved as new from existing things, its special meaning must be determined by its connexions. The peculiar description, In the beginning, gives emphasis also to the created which follows, as separating what has begun to be from the Creator who is eternal; and it may be held as establishing historically the idea of an absolute beginning in time. Creation can only be understood aright as connected with the will of a personal God. Apart from God, creation by law is utterly unintelligible. Origination, or immediate creation and development, or forming as mediate creation, cannot be studied satisfactorily without reference to the will, the wisdom, and the power of the everlasting Ruler.

But it would be unwise to dogmatise regarding the absoluteness of this beginning, as the first of all beginnings. In the measureless past, in which millions on millions of ages sink

1" Chips from a German Workshop." Vol. I., p. 135. NOTE.-Interesting statistical details regarding the use and meaning of the terms which are translated,-create, form, and make,-are given by Archdeacon Pratt, in his most admirable work, Scripture and Science not at Variance," pp. 47,48. Sixth Edition.

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and are lost, as a pebble in the ocean, there may have been other universes before ours, which have historically run their course, fulfilled their ends, and perished. Brought out of nothing, they may have again been reduced to nothing. The fact is conceivable, though not the process, unless we assume the eternity of matter; or that when God has created a world out of nothing, He has done what He cannot undo. Universes may have come, run their history, and gone. Their histories may be Creation-seasons. Nor can we speak absolutely of ours being the beginning of all beginnings; because in other spheres of measureless SPACE, which no telescope can ever reach, there may be other universes with earlier beginnings than ours. It is enough for us to know that this, our universe, our heaven and earth, was created by God; and that the first statement in Genesis proclaims the beginning of all beginnings connected with the history of our globe. And we do no violence to reason when we assume that He who made our world in space, made all worlds in space; that He who made our world in time, made all worlds in time; and that He who gave matter its forms, gave it also its origination, or that which is the ground of all its forms.1

1 See "Lange's Commentary on Genesis,"

CHAPTER III.

The First Chapter of Genesis-The Origin of Light-Its existence before the Sun was made separately visible— The Origination of Life-The Creative Days.

It is not for the refutation of objectors merely, and for the conviction of doubters, that it is worth while to study the two volumes, that of nature and that of revelation,—which Providence has opened before us, but because it is both profitable and gratifying to a well-constituted mind, to trace in each of them the evident handwriting of Him, the Divine author of both.-Archbishop Whately.

I. THE ORIGINATION OF LIGHT.

THE

HE grandeur and impressiveness of the description of the origin of light and of the introduction of the sun and moon, it is almost impossible to over-estimate. In his treatise on the Sublime, the Roman poet, Longinus, has quoted, with the highest admiration, "Let there be light, and there was light." Familiar as you are with the description, it is necessary to repeat it. "And God saw the light that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. . . And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years; and let them be for lights in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon

the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness; and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day."

The sublimity of this brief discription has been often lost amid the sneers of the Infidel and the Atheist. "How could there be light before the sun?" was one of the triumphant questions which Voltaire and his followers rarely failed to press upon the Bible student. There was no escape from the difficulty; for nothing could be clearer than the fact, that the Bible did commit itself to the statement that ob

light did exist before the sun appeared. It does not say, serve, before the sun-mass existed; but it does assert that there was light before the sun stood forth in its visible and appointed relation to this world. The statement was too explicit and too direct to admit of any satisfactory explanation beyond what the fair reading of the description itself allowed: —namely, that there was light before the sun was visible; and this supposition,-for the state of science admitted of nothing more,—was invariably denounced as a weak, if not a mischievous, theological invention. Many scorned it as a superstitious belief, or the paltry resource of controversial despair.

But the mystery has receded as discovery has advanced. That there may be light without the visible sun, is now admitted; and it is not going farther than the facts warrant, to suppose that light of old did thus exist; not, perhaps, as absolutely separable from the sun, but as closely connected with its history. What was hidden is made manifest, as explanatory facts are being placed together. The sun-mass is itself dark, and around it is a wondrous sphere of light that is perpetually exhibiting phenomena which it does not lie within our plan to describe minutely. It is enough to

observe that there have been discovered circles or spheres of light widening as they recede from the central mass, which ages ago have apparently been so wide as to bring our globe and its atmosphere within their compass. When it was said, "Let there be light," there was not so much a new creation as the evolution of a new fact, or the presentation of a new condition of things, in the already created heaven and earth. Originally darkness reigned, and then light came into existence. "God commanded the light to shine out of darkness," "1 wrote St. Paul in obvious reference to this passage. The light appears to have been so diffused as to bring to our earth such supplies as were best adapted to whatever plant or animal life may have then existed. This view is sustained by the recent inferences to which observation of the sun has led; and it renders unnecessary the common supposition, that the sun existed in its present form, with all its present forces, but that its light was too much lost in the vapours which hovered over the earth to admit of its being visible, as it is now. That vapours obscured the light, may be probable; but the light was evidently spread forth under conditions different from those which now obtain, until the fourth day, when the sun was made separately visible.

2 Mr. Proctor, Honorary Secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society, in summing up the more striking results obtained by the observations of the late Solar Eclipse, has confirmed this inference: "The observation made by Liais would tend to show that, as had been long suspected, the Zodiacal light is sunlight reflected from cosmical matter travelling continually round the sun (for we could not expect the solar dark lines to appear in so faint a spectrum). If this is the case, the radiated corona cannot but be regarded as only the innermost part-the core, so to speak —of the Zodiacal region. Hence, we should be led to recognise the EXISTENCE OF ENVELOPE AFTER ENVELOPE around the Sun, until even the vast distance at which our earth travels is reached or overpast." "The Late Solar Eclipse," by Richard A. Proctor, B.A. Good Words, June, 1872, pp. 423.