THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION.

Among all the records of Holy Scripture none has been more variously estimated than that of the Creation, with which the Book of Genesis opens. Cuvier, the founder of the science of palaeontology, expresses himself as follows: " Brought up in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, but in advance of his age, Moses has left us a cosmogony, of which the accuracy verifies itself every day in a marvellous manner. Recent geological researches are in perfect agreement with the Book of Genesis as to the order in which organised beings were successively created¹." On the other hand, one hears men of science declaring it henceforth impossible to establish any agreement between the facts of geology, and the picture given us in the Bible. According to them, we must consider this narrative either as the product of an ancient tradition, or as the result of philosophical speculation; in either case, as a composition of purely human origin. And if we descend to more popular literature, we find such sentiments as these:" Accept the Bible as the rule of belief! Must we then believe with Genesis, that God, after having created the light on the first day, rested for three nights before He produced the stars which transmit it to us? that the herbs of the field and the trees of the forest, created on the third day, con have grown without the heat of the sun, moon and stars, which were not created till the fourth day²?" Had the narrative of Genesis its origin simply in human tradition? But men hand down to one another, by means of traditional records, the facts of which they have been witnesses. Now if it is true that man was present to the mind of God during the work of creation, as the end and object of all this great labour, it is equally true that no human eye contemplated this unique spectacle, and that no human tongue can have related its phases; "Where wast thou,'' says the Eternal One to Job, "when I laid the foundations of the earth P and when the sons of God shouted for joy³?" Was this picture, then, the offspring of philosophy? But the idea of a creation, animal or vegetable, anterior to man, and developed in regular course through its diverse phases, had never entered the mind of any ancient philosopher. The very notion of creation, properly so called, is foreign to all ancient thought.

These considerations bring us back to the idea which has pressed itself upon many scientific minds of the first rank:—it is, that as we contemplate this picture we may be really in the presence of a Divine revelation. "What then? has God really spoken to men? Did He bring it about that one of their race should be a spectator of some of those scenes which preceded the existence of man here below? If so, in what form can such a communication have been made to him? And in what relation do its contents stand to the actual results of science? These are the important but difficult questions which we now propose to examine.

I.

Revelation.

Does the Jewish monotheism rest upon a revelation? Is the history of Israel, as a whole, a Divine work, designed as a preparation for that moral creation which Jesus Christ came to effect, and in foresight of which the first creation had already been completed? And may we suppose the special revelations accorded to the patriarchs and to the Jewish prophets, to have been the commentary which accompanied this educational work, since all education should rest upon instruction? It is in this light that the Bible represents to us the Divine revelations of which it gives an account. "Shall I hide from Abraham," God says to Himself, "shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do⁴?" When it is God's purpose to accomplish here below a consecutive work, must He not of necessity, unless He is to work an infinite series of miracles, associate with Himself a certain number of free agents, who shall co-operate with Him? For that end He must first draw them to Himself; then, in order that they may work intelligently and freely, He must initiate them into His plan, so far at least as they are to participate in its fulfilment; which presupposes one or more acts of revelation.

One of the prophets expressed in the following words this fact, of which he felt himself the living proof: "Can two walk together except they be agreed? . . . surely the Lord God will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets⁵."

Some have tried to explain the Jewish monotheism, and all the train of convictions and hopes which accompany it, by an instinctive tendency in the Semitic family⁶, or by the natural development of the human conscience, which should have taken place more rapidly in that race than in any other. But the illustrious writer who, in our time, has scrutinised more deeply than all others the secrets of the intellect and the conscience of man, by the help of the indications offered by language, M. Max M tiller, has, in a masterly manner, refuted this naturalistic theory.

"Is it possible to hold," he says, "that a monotheistic instinct can have been bestowed upon all those nations who worshipped Elohim, Jehovah Sabaoth, Moloch, Nisroch, Rimmon, Nebo, Dagon, Ashtaroth, Baal, Baal-peor, Beelzebub, Chemosh, Milcom, Adrammelech, Anamelech, Nibhaz and Tartak, Ashima, Nergal, Succothbenoth, the sun, the moon, the planets, and all the stars of the firmament⁷?" All these names of divinities belong in fact to the pantheon of the Semitic tribes. The same author again reminds us that it is not allowable to argue from the example of an Abraham, a Moses, an Elias, a Jeremiah, that such was the general tendency of the Jewish people, since it is a fact "that this nation provoked many a time the anger of the Lord, by offering incense to other gods⁸." History attests that Israel was inclined to the same polytheism, whether of a refined or gross kind, into which all the other nations fell; and that it needed a continuous effort on God's part, carried on through the instrumentality of a small number of chosen men, and by a very severe discipline effecting itself often by the most rigorous dispensations, to compel this race to resist the downward current of idolatry, in which it was by nature being carried away like all others.

Doubtless we must admit a primordial and natural revelation to the human consciousness, of the existence and of the essence of the Godhead. But, as M. Müller observes, "this first intuition of God is neither monotheistic nor polytheistic. . . . It finds expression in this article of faith: God is God, or there is a God; which does not as yet imply that there is one only God⁹" This last formula, which contains in itself an express denial of polytheism, goes beyond the contents of natural revelation. How are we to explain the fact that the people of Israel alone were in possession of this knowledge, and made it the basis of their national existence? Was this people gifted with high philosophic genius? By no means. M. Max Müller here reminds M. Renan of his own statements, in which he denies to the Semitic nations "even that minimum of religious reflection which is necessary for the perception of the Divine unity¹⁰."

Inasmuch as it is historically certain that all nations have raised themselves, by virtue of the religious organ with which the human soul is endowed, to faith in Deity in general, so is it equally true that Israel alone has reached to the conception of the unity of that Deity which is so universally affirmed. So M. Müller concludes by saying plainly: "perhaps we shall be asked how it came to pass that Abraham had not only that primordial intuition of Divinity, which is common to the whole race, but had attained to the knowledge of the one only God,—denying the existence of all other gods; we are ready to reply that it was owing to a special Divine revelation¹¹. We are not here making use of the conventional language of theology; we wish to give the term we employ its full and complete meaning. The Father of all truth chooses His prophets, and speaks to them in a voice louder than thunder. . . . We cannot admit that the expression Divine instinct is the fittest to use in describing a grace or a gift granted only to a small number of mankind, nor that it is more scientific, that is, more intelligible, than that of special revelation¹²,'' See in the prairie that troop of wild horses disporting themselves at liberty. Not one of them has ever felt the painful pressure of the bit, nor the overmastering hand of a strong and skilful rider. Suddenly there appears in the midst of them another horse, with disciplined paces, well-knit limbs, and measured yet rapid gallop. On his hack is a rider, whose hand is armed with the terrible lasso. He pursues these young, untamed horses, throws the lasso, entangles them in the fatal noose, and carries them away captive to his stud, where they are in their turn put under training. Thus it was that Jehovah, even while leaving the nations to walk after their own ways, prepared, and, as it were, trained for Himself in Israel a people, by means of whom it was His purpose, when the fulness of time should come, to draw all others to Himself. Had He not said beforehand to Abraham, when He chose him to he His servant, and his posterity to be His people: "in thee shall all families of the earth he blessed?"

Among all those whom God called to work with Him in this* special training of the Jewish nation, Moses holds without doubt the first place. It was through him that the patriarchal revelation became a national religion, and received its historic character. It was through him that it disengaged itself completely from those elements of polytheism which still clung to it among the children and descendants of Abraham himself. It was through him that the name, already known but not generally used, Jehovah, was substituted for the ancient name El Shaddai, the Almighty, by which they had before addressed the God who revealed Himself to the father of the race,—the name by which God had most frequently designated Himself in addressing the patriarchs. This substitution was nothing less than the starting-point of a great religious revolution. The name El Shaddai, the Almighty, left room for the existence of other powers by the side of God, subject, indeed, to His supremacy, but still able in some sort to compete with Him. This name signifies nearly the same as that which a certain class of religious persons still like to use; the Being of beings, the Supreme Being, But Jehovah signifies He who is and shall he, Jehovah, therefore, does not only mean the most powerful of beings, but the one only self-existent Being; the absolute Being, absorbing in Himself the idea of existence; the Being existing by His own Power; the Being as subject, noun and attribute in one. By the side of El Shaddai there is room for others inferior to Him; outside of Jehovah there is but non-entity. If anything does exist outside of Him, it is only through His power, and in consequence of His creative will. The worship of El Shaddai did not then expressly exclude polytheism. But the adoration of Jehovah is, in its principle, what it has become more and more in fact, the absolute divorce of the conscience from all forms of paganism, actual or conceivable. We have in Exod. iii. and vi. the simple and solemn narrative of the vision granted to Moses, in which God for the first time revealed Himself in the character of Jehovah. At that moment was laid the foundation of the Jewish monotheism¹³, and of the definitive religion of mankind. But it was not only against polytheism but against its hidden principle, materialism, theoretical and practical, that the worship of Jehovah was to be thenceforth an insuperable barrier. In presence of the self-existent Being, the independent I AM, absolute, perfectly conscious of und master of Himself¹⁴—of Him Who is that which He wills to be, and because He so wills, just as truly as He wills to be that which He is, and because He is such,—how could Matter claim to possess any self-determining existence whatever? This obscure principle, akin to fate, un- self conscious,—this brute fact without will and impenetrable by intelligence, this amorphous essence which all nations, and indeed all the wise men of old, regarded as co-existing eternally with God and independent of Him, if not in form, at least in substance,—this uncreated matter is at once and for ever set aside by the revelation of God as Jehovah, I am¹⁵. Not only every individual being, but even the substance out of which every being is formed, has no existence but that which it pleases the free will of God to give it. And here we have the idea which was to serve as the foundation for the establishment of the Kingdom of God upon earth. With this sublime conception, the reign of real spiritualism, of holiness, was founded in the heart of humanity.

Does matter exist eternally and by itself? That, in the universe, which resists all the efforts of God to subdue it to Himself, how should it not defy all our endeavours to gain the mastery over it in ourselves P It hinders for ever the designs of the Creator, "Whose will it is to realise on this earth the perfect GGod,—the ideal of the True, the Just, the Beautiful,—and Who fails to reach His object because He meets in matter an insuperable limit to His beneficent action; and shall we, poor feeble human beings, claim the power to realise the ideal of morality, notwithstanding the resistance of flesh and blGod? God, according to this, has had to limit Himself to the arranging of matter as well as possibility allowed, and the world, notwithstanding the Divine breath which He infused into it, is for Him but a pis-aller; and can He require of me that, in my small sphere, I should do more and better than He? No, if the power of matter is insuperable in the great All, it must be so also in my individual life. Let us, then, break ourselves of the folly of wishing to subjugate our senses! Let us obey without scruple the blind power before which even the Divine Majesty itself must bow! And since it must be so, let brute nature reign in the lower regions of human life!

It needs no great effort of intelligence to understand the logic which, from the principle of the eternity of matter, deduces practical materialism, the excesses of sensuality, and the degradations of egoism. This is the fatal extreme to which man is driven, when not enlightened by the revelation of Jehovah. The picture which S. Paul has drawn of the life of the nations of antiquity¹⁶, is a frightful testimony to the irresistible force of this logical and moral chain of consequences.

Opposite to this incline, down which all the pagan nations, ancient and modern, are step by step descending, we see another, up which one nation, one alone, is gloriously ascending, which, in the Person of its last and supreme representative, succeeds at last in realising the purest spirituality, absolute holiness. By the fruit we can recognise the tree, or, if you will, the root. This name Jehovah, inscribed by Moses in letters of fire on the Jewish consciousness—it is this which has worked this prodigy. It dissipated for Israel the seductive charm of a sensual life, and secured the preponderance of spirit over matter. If God alone exists, and matter only through Him, it must be entirely subject to Him. Man is no more a slave to it than God Himself. While spelling out the name Jehovah man has recovered the knowledge of his own greatness. Made in the image of this absolute Being, of this pure Spirit, he can and he must become like Him; and henceforth the royal road is opened which leads from Moses up to Jesus Christ. Holiness is no longer an unattainable ideal; the Kingdom of God, instead of being an empty sound, becomes the one true word of history, God's plan is revealed together with His Name Jehovah. The end and aim of human life, both individual and collective, can only be the dominion of the Holy Spirit over those spirits who have freely accepted His dominion. A Jew of our own time has expressed the same thought in these words: "The eternity of matter is up to this day the foundation of the pagan idea. This principle is not only a metaphysical falsehGod; it is the denial of liberty to God and man, a denial which makes an end of all morality. If any matter whatever was necessary to the Creator, He could not have formed a world absolutely gGod, but only the best world possible; and man can be just as little master over his own body, as God over matter. . . . But this night of darkness and of gloom which overshadows the conception of God, of the world, and of man, is dispersed at the first word of Divine revelation: 'in the beginning God created.' Everything, substance and form, came into being at the fiat of the creative will, which is free and omnipotent. And as the Creator governs the world freely, He can, by communicating to man a spark of His own life, grant to him the dominion over his own body and its forces. The created world is no longer only the best that was possible, but the only gGod. . . . Its very capacity for deterioration belongs to its perfection, for without it there would have been no moral liberty. . . . And the same God who has assigned to the world its purpose, will know how to make it reach its end, by means of the same free will by which He created it¹⁷."

We see, then, how inevitably the preparation of the salvation of the world by Israel required as its starting-point the revelation of this fundamental verity, "I am that I am," to which the natural intelligence of mankind could not of itself attain. Accordingly God, after having revealed to Moses this sublime idea, inscribed it on Mount Sinai at the head of the national law: "I, Jehovah, am thy God¹⁸." The fulfilment of the ancient promises made to Abraham by El Shaddai, the present work entrusted to the ministry of Moses, the future salvation of mankind to be effected by Christ, all rested definitively upon this doctrine, as the entire building, from the lowest to the highest storey, rests upon the foundation laid once for all.

We have affirmed the reality of the Mosaic revelation, and we have seen the necessity there was for it. It remains for us to learn in what form it was to be clothed in order to attain its end, which was to make intelligible and living to the Isralite consciousness this idea of the absolute existence of God, mysteriously set forth under the Name Jehovah. Was God to make of this dogma of the Divine self-existence, and the creation of matter, an answer in a catechism which the Israelitish youth would have to learn from generation to generation?

But we know too well how feeble is the barrier which such a method of teaching can offer to the torrents of error and sin. Especially with the mass of mankind, if we wish to act upon their will, or even upon their mind, it is not to the intelligence only that we must address ourselves, but also to the imagination and the heart. "We must not confine ourselves to teaching truth, we must also picture it. Or instead of a dogmatic formula, was God to have recourse to scientific demonstration,—to give to Moses, and through Moses to Israel, a lesson on the origin of the universe, to construct a complete and consecutive system of astronomy and geology, of physics and chemistry, of botany and zoology? Such a method would have had the double disadvantage of at the same time making science useless and faith impossible. What would be the use of study, when the revelation of all things had been made once for all by God Himself? And suppose Moses had descended from Mount Sinai, not only with the tables of the Ten commandments, but with a thoroughly exact and complete knowledge of the causes, and of the laws, which governed the formation of the universe, as, for instance, the Copemican system in detail, who would have believed so incredible a revelation? The power of sensible phenomena, the authority of prevailing prejudices, for a moment, perhaps, overcome, would soon have regained the mastery, and this inopportune revelation would have gone down to the grave with him who announced it. Faith should be a moral act, and not only the submission of the intellect.

There remained one method, that of which God made u«e when He revealed the future to the prophets. What did He do, for instance, in order to give Daniel an idea of the four phases through which the history of mankind was to pass before tae coming of the Messiah? Did He give him an historical lecture upon the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Medes and Persians, the Greeks and Romans? Ko, He caused to pass before him five pictures, or images, of which the remembrance remained indelible: a winged lion, symbol of the Babylonish power; a bear, with slow and heavy tread, emblem of the Persian majesty; a leopard with four heads, traversing the earth as on the wing, the visible representation of the Alexandrian monarchy, so rapidly founded, so speedily divided into four distinct states; then lastly, a monster with nothing corresponding to him in the terrestrial creation, trampling and devouring everything that comes in its way, image of the Rom£tn empire, that state which has borne no resemblance to anything before known, and which absorbed everything into itself; and finally, as the last of these apparitions, the form of a Son of Man coining upon the clouds, emblem of the only really human power, of the love which comes down from heaven to found here below the kingdom of liberty and of truth. This is the manner in which God teaches history, when He thinks gGod to make it known beforehand to His servants the prophets. He does not discuss, He does not catechise, He pictures.

This method has the double advantage of making its appeal to man in his whole being, consequently not perverting the nature of faith, and of not rendering science superfluous by anticipating its future labours. All the researches of historians, all the discoveries of the investigators of ruins and of buried palaces, instead of being made useless by such a revelation, only serve to make more exact, and to enrich the pictures by means of which it was accomplished.

Why should not God, in making known past events which no eye had seen, have adopted the same method? Why should He not have brought before the eyes of Moses, a series of pictures summarising that work, into the principles of which He wished to initiate Him? By causing to pass before him the image of those different classes of beings, defiled by paganism, and which came each in succession out of nothing at the call of God, did He not give to His people a better commentary on the Name Jehovah, in the sense which we have given to it, than He could have done by any other means? When we wish to give a nation an idea of some great victory which her sons have gained, we are not contented with a mere bulletin, which sums it up in a few lines, nor do we have recourse to a learned account of the strategic reasons for it; but we employ the most eminent artist we can And, and ask him to paint two or three of the principal scenes, which may serve as samples of thousands of others.

Such, as it appears to us, was the nature of those representations of which the record of the Creation is composed. We are told¹⁹ that during the forty days and forty nights which Moses passed upon the mount, God shewed him the model of the tabernacle which he would soon have to construct. Perhaps at the same time it was granted to him to contemplate the construction of that grand edifice—the Universe, of which the tabernacle was the type²⁰.

The pictures which God caused to pass before him, and of which he has preserved to us in the Genesis record such admirable photographs, could not contradict the researches of science. Revelation and Science are two rays which proceed from different sources, the one from heaven, the other from earth, but which in combination produce perfect light. The one pictures to us the idea in the mind of the great Worker, the other brings to our sight the concrete image of the work. Just in the same way that all historical discoveries only serve to enrich and complete the prophetic pictures of Daniel, so the discoveries of geology find in the retrospective pictures of Moses a frame ready fitted to receive them, and give them their right place. The Bible does not relieve science of the necessity of bringing to light the immense wealth of the facts, the relations of cause and effect, the means employed and the ends aimed at which make up their unity, and of discovering the laws which govern them. Science, on the other hand, does not enable us to dispense with—on the contrary it demands as necessary,—that Word from on high, which shall convey to us the real meaning of this magnificent whole.

It is most important to seize the exact point of convergence of these two rays, so that the image may be formed clear and complete for the eye of human intelligence. This ideal can never be completely realised until geology on the one hand, and exegesis on the other, shall have finished their work. But it is allowable to ascertain the amount of reconciliation already reached, and to try to make one step further on the path which leads to this end.

II.

Science.

"We must confine ourselves to summing up briefly the results which seem most probable, or which are most commonly received, of modern investigations relating to the formation of the globe, and the appearance of organised beings. Science brings to light, as it seems to us, ten general phases of this development. "We will first briefly indicate these, and then endeavour to give some explanations on these points, while holding ourselves free to question the truth of some of them.

These principal phases appear to have been the following;—

1. The primitive gaseous state, and the formation of the solar system.

2. The condensation of the gaseous matter, and the constitution of the globe.

3. The disengagement of the primeval light.

4. The formation of the continents, and their separation from the waters.

5. The first great development of vegetable life on the continents.

6. The sun becoming visible to our earth.

7. The first great breaking forth of animal life.

8. The second great manifestation of that life.

9. The apparition of Man.

10. The cessation of the creative work.

"We will develope briefly each of these points.

Science commonly accepts the theory of La Place, according to which our solar system—and one may even say, the universe—originated in a gaseous matter of extreme rarity and tenuity. This substance must have been analogous to that of the nebulae which the telescope even to this day discovers in the profound depths of the firmament, and which are probably only new systems in process of formation. £y means of the rotatory movement with which this matter was endowed, or which had been impressed upon it, rings were successively detached from the equatorial surface of the primitive mass. By breaking up, and then folding back upon themselves, these rings would become so many distinct systems, like our own solar system. Within these again would have been produced, on a smaller scale, the same phenomenon. So that our planets would be only rings, successively disengaged from the central mass, and become so many distinct globes, arranged round the sun according to the dates at which they were severally detached. The satellites of the planets would themselves have been detached from them by the same process. And Saturn's ring would, according to this, still remain as a silent witness to this process in the formation of the worlds.

This would explain, at the same time, the distinctness of our solar system from the universe as a whole, and its internal organisation.

This gaseous matter was in an incandescent state, as is shewn by all the facts which prove that our earth must have been formed under the action of a slow and gradual cooling. Whence arose this cooling? From two causes; on the one hand, the separation of the earth from the central mass—the sun; on the other, the radiation of part of its own heat into the surrounding spaces.

No condensation of matter could have taken place at so high a temperature. The size of the gaseous globe must consequently have been infinitely greater than that of the present earth.

This theory of La Place on the formation of the earth, presents, on reflection, some difficulties, and some omissions. We will now ask the attention of the reader to these two points.

1. Whence arose this rotatory movement found in matter? Was it inherent in its essence? Why, in this case, were not its ejQfects displayed from all eternity? How does it come to pass that we are at this day witnessing the succession of phenomena which have resulted, and which still result, from it? If the cause was eternal, it would seem that the effect produced must he eternal also. The theory of the self-movement of matter leads logically to the system of absolute immutability. The end and the middle must be as ancient as the beginning. Or, shall we say this movement was impressed from without upon matter? Then we should have to point out the agent to which 80 decisive an intervention is due, and to indicate the Hand which set the universe in motion, or—to use a familiar expression—gave it a fillip.

2. As in each particular system, after the successive disengagements of the rings which formed the planets, there remained a central mass, which became the sun of that system, so it would seem, it must have been with the universe. We should have to find in the celestial spaces a great central sun, to which all the other suns would stand in the relation of planets. Science has not yet answered to this demand. The hypotheses hitherto proposed have not been confirmed. The simultaneous movement of the stars seems to be due less to the attraction of one central material point, than to the influence of the reciprocal attraction of these bodies, one upon the other.

May we not suppose that, like the organic cell which explains everything but which nothing can explain, and which possesses in itself all the elements of its life, so the nebula, or aggregation of cosmical matter, emanates immediately from the creative force, with its rotatory movement and its heat, containing in its gaseous mass all the materials of its future organisation? They are there—these simple elements, these gases and metals, just as the vital forces exist latent in the cell. But they are not yet there as such. They are the ultimate atoms. Condensation alone, resulting from the process of cooling, will make them emerge from this primitive confusion.

II. Now we are at home. Our earth, detached from the sun and distinct from the other planets, forms a globe by itself, which organises itself henceforth according to its own laws. The cooling process, of which we have pointed out the causes, begins, and with it the work of condensation. One part of the materials of which the primitive mass is composed, passes from the gaseous into the liquid state, but boiling. Then, the cooling process still continuing, a solid crust forms itself on the surface of the liqidd, which may be compared to the thin skin which appears on the surface of boiling milk when exposed to the contact of cold air. Here we have the beginning of that ground on which we live, and to which we give the name terra-firma.

Below this solid surface, the elements, still in a state of fusion, were stratifying themselves in the order of their density, the heaviest in the centre, the less dense in superposition above each other up to the surface.

An atmosphere of gaseous matter surrounded the globe thus constituted. But it was entirely different from our present atmosphere. For it contained, in a state of vapour, a number of elements now condensed; first, the metals which were to form the stratum nearest to the solid envelope; then bodies more easily vapourisable, such as silica, lime, sulphur; finally, those substances which are still more easily volatilised, such as the enormous mass of waters which, together with the gases that enter into their composition, form our seas.

The floor of the earth at this time had not become quite solid. Very closely submitted to the action of the internal furnace and of the gases which escaped there from, it must have been often agitated, lifted up, rent asunder, engulphed by that fiery sea, from the action of whose convulsions it is even now, in spite of its greater thickness, by no means altogether freed. Yet by the continual process of cooling, the solidification of matter was going on both within and without the envelope. Outside, the vapours, by condensing, formed a sea saturated with all kinds of materials, which covered this fragile floor; and on the inside, the crust gathered bulk by the condensation of those substances in a state of fusion which were the nearest to it. After each rending of the crust, it compacted itself together again with greater solidity, as the ranks of an army close up after a discharge of artillery.

What was the earth like at this period of its formation? It must have been an immense globe, of which the centre was occupied by a fiery furnace surrounded by three envelopes; the first solid,—a thin crust; the second liquid,—a sea of boiling water; the third gaseous,—an ocean of vapours. The earth would, at this time, have presented to the spectator the appearance of one of those powerful locomotives which traverse space, carrying within them a furnace, and provided with a reservoir for water, and iron walls, enveloped in an atmosphere charged with vapours.

3. All this violent working could not be carried on without evoking a great disengagement of electricity^ and, consequently, of light. As a scientific man of the first rank lately wrote to us,—one whose labours have placed him at the very head of this department of science: "There could not fail to be a light produced by the powerful and numerous chemical processes which must have been at that time in operation on the surface of the earth; processes which engender electricity, and call forth luminous vibrations in the ether.''

The aurora borealis is perhaps, in our day, the phenomenon best fitted to give us an idea of this electric light, independent of the action of the sun.

The admirable experiments by which M. de la Rive has succeeded in producing, on a small scale, in his laboratory, all the phenomena of the aurora borealis are well known. It seems to be demonstrated by these experiments, that these magnificent appearances are only the result of the neutralization, in the polar regions, of the two opposing currents of electricity. The principal source of all this mass of electricity is the contact which takes place, at the bottom of the ocean, between the water of the sea and the internal fire of the globe, and which occurs especially near the equator. Two currents are formed and directed towards the poles, one travelling underground, the other by the vapours which rise from the sea, and by way of the atmosphere. The aurora borealis is the method of their neutralization.

If, in the present state of the world, things of this kind take place, let us imagine the time when the Bea was only separated from the subterranean fire by a thin and fragile partition, and when, consequently, the communications between the two elements must have been much more frequent and more abundant than they are now. It is easy to form an idea of the incomparably greater and more powerful disengagement of electricity which must have taken place under those conditions, and consequently of the splendour and frequency of those luminous appearances, which, more or less periodically, dispersed the darkness which reigned on the earth; all the more so since, as the author I have just quoted adds, '' because of the elevation and uniformity of the temperature," these luminous appearances "would not have been confined to the neighbourhGod of the poles, but would have formed a kind of atmospheric aureole round the whole globe."

As the process of cooling continued, the volatilised substances which enveloped the globe were successively condensed; the densest first, and these must certainly have been the metallic vapours. Other lighter materials, such as aqueous vapours, which occupied the higher regions of space, were then condensed by contact with the colder regions, and formed a canopy of clouds, floating at a certain height above the globe. In the intervening space between this aerial ocean driven by the winds, and the liquid plain which formed nearly the whole of the terrestrial surface, and which was kept in a boiling state by the emanations from the internal furnace, was spread the atmosphere, such as we now have it, a stratum of respirable air, which had become more and more free from all the materials with which it had been until then saturated.

4. The floating masses, more or less solid, which had formed themselves on the surface of the fused coagulated sea of Are, had combined themselves into one continuous pavement. This first layer of the earth's crust had, by the increasing condensation of vapour, become entirely covered with water. The globe presented the appearance of an immense sea. Only a few solitary peaks and domes of granite raised their heads here and there above the surface of this boundless ocean. These were the first rudiments of our continents. But the rocks which emerged were soon no longer completely bare; their first clothing was a stratum of sedimentary deposits. Whence arose these deposits? From the débris of the first formed rocks, which had been rapidly dissolved or worn away by the hot waters of this primitive sea. These, the most ancient stratified rocks, are still to be seen in several places in Europe and America, wherever, not having been covered at a later age by the sea, they have not become the ground on which more recent strata have been deposited. They may be known by the absence of all remains of vegetable or animal life preserved within them. These are the monuments of the time when no organised being existed upon cur globe. And, indeed, how could the evolution of life under any form have borne the degree of heat which then prevailed, or the physical and chemical conditions of such a state of things?

But we are soon brought face to face with a new and most important phenomenon. The fossils enclosed in the later stratified rocks, reveal to us the first appearance of organic life on our globe. These were principally vegetables,—algae, and some other species of marine plants; then also some species belonging to the animal kingdom,—crustaceans and molluscs, some kinds of echinuses, corals or bivalves, humble pioneers of life upon this stage of the world. This fact puts to science the most formidable question which she can ever have to answer, that of the origin of organised life.

All life, vegetable or animal, has for its starting-point the organic cell; that is a fact which no man of science now disputes. But whence comes the cell itself? Is it the result of some happy combination of the elements of inorganic matter? or is it a sudden apparition in the midst of this,—a phenomenon entirely inexplicable without the act of a Creator?

The beautiful experiments of MM. Pasteur, Pouchet and Bastian, are well known. The result of their labours has been recently formulated by the President of the Naturalist Society in England, Sir William Thomson, in his opening address to the assembly at Edinburgh (1871). These are his words:—

"A very ancient way of thinking, to which many naturalists still hold fust, admits that by means of certain meteorological conditions, different from the present, inanimate matter may have crystallized or fermented in such a manner as to produce living germs, or organic cells, or protoplasms. But science affords us a number of inductive proofs against this hypothesis of spontaneous generation, as you have already heard from my predecessor in this chair (Mr. Huxley). A minute examination has not, up to this time, discovered any power capable of originating life, but life itself. Inanimate matter cannot become living except under the influence of matter already living. This is a fact in science which seems to me as well ascertained as the law of gravitation. . . . And I am ready to accept as an article of faith in science, valid for all time and in all space, THAT LIFE IS PRODUCED BY LIFE, AND ONLY BY LIFE."

If, as a consequence of this candid and weighty declaration, the author supposes that the first germs of organic life may have reached 6ur globe by means of aerolites which should have imported them from higher spheres, few readers would not smile at such a solution of the difficulty, Who would not say that such a solution, even supposing that the observed facts were in its favour, (which they are not,) is not really a solution at all; that the main difficulty is only removed a step further back, since we should still have to explain the first appearance of life in these globes, from which the aerolites are supposed to have come?

Might we not rather admit that, since the Creator has caused primitive matter to come into existence, not as one uniform substance, but composed of a certain number of irreducible elements, or "simple bodies," which, entering into the composition of the nebulae, at once develope there their various properties. He may also have endowed it from the beginning with a certain number of organic cells, containing within themselves the latent principles of the fundamental forms of life, and destined to develope themselves in many various directions, as circumstances favoured this evolution?

5. Earthquakes, and contortions of the earth's crust became more frequent. On the one hand, the interior mass, diminishing in bulk as it condensed, the solid envelope, being no longer sufficiently supported from below, either crumpled itself, or gave way and sank. On the other hand, the subterranean fire continued to act upon it, and to split it into fissures. The mass of condensed vapours became continually greater; the quantity of water was always on the increase. Substances held in suspension were deposited in abundance on the sea bottom; then they were brought up again, borne upon their granite pavement. It is in the midst of these new settlements that we come upon traces of the first great evolution of organic life,—the relics of the carboniferous flora. Every one knows that our industry is mainly sustained by the enormous deposits of coal contained in certain strata of the earth's crust. It was at the period of which we are now speaking that these masses were deposited. It was then that that flora of luxuriant abundance developed itself, of which we are even now reaping the fruits. It impresses us not so much by the varieties of species or the richness of its colouring, as by the grandeur of its proportions. The coal-beds do not contain more than 800 species of plants, instead of the 80,000 to 100,000 of which our present flora is composed. But of what enormous size! Grasses, of kinds which are now but small marsh plants, attained to the thickness of a man's body, and to a height of 60 or 70 feet; mosses and ferns in the same proportion relatively to the corresponding plants in the present state of things; but there was not one flower of brilliant colour, not one fruit-bearing tree. This carboniferous flora has no adornment but its verdure. What conclusion can we draw from this, but that the sun's light at that time only reached our globe through a thick veil, and that this vegetation owed its power less to this solar heat than to that which came forth from the earth itself? Accordingly, the carboniferous flora was spread uniformly over the whole globe. There was at that time neither torrid nor frigid zone. The difference of climates, which is caused by the different degrees of inclination of the sun's rays to the earth's surface, did not as yet exist.

But how, it will be asked, could such a vegetation thrive without the action of the sun's rays? Recent experiments have completely solved this difficulty. It has now been proved that electric light possesses all the qualities needed for the development of the green parts of plants. M. Faminzin, in all his experiments upon algae, has never made use of any light but that of a gas lamp²¹. The author whom we have already twice quoted, also declares that electric light possesses, equally with the light of the sun, ''all properties essential to vegetation."

The flora of the carboniferous strata must have displayed itself through long ages on the surface of the globe. It has been calculated that some coal-beds must have required from 700 to 800 years to form themselves, and as they often stratify themselves one over the other to a very great height, there are some carboniferous rocks, the formation of which, taken all together, must have required no less than nine millions of years.

We may picture to ourselves this long period as a series of hot damp days, like those in which agriculturists delight in the spring, at the time of the development of the young shoots. Imagine a greenhouse heated to a high degree, its glass walls blackened in such a manner as to intercept the sun's rays, and of which the principal light should he that of an electric flame; what would he the products of the vegetation under such conditions? Colossal plants, hut without brilliant colouring; gigantic forms of greenish hue. Such was the carboniferous vegetation.

6. At this period there was, as it were, a pause in the development of organic life. The strata immediately above the carboniferous deposits prove that the world was, to a singular degree, stripped of animal and vegetable life. " Compared to the wealth of the carboniferous period," says the botanist Karl Muller²², " this new creation is infinitely poor." The great evolution of vegetable life is on the decline, and animal life has not yet taken its mighty spring.

The ages following witnessed a slow but total transformation in the kingdom of plants. "Then," says the same author, "began the transition between the carboniferous vegetation and the new plant world." This new evolution of vegetable life extends throughout the triassic, Jurassic, and cretaceous eras, up to the tertiary period (molassic), when it reaches its completeness. It was brought about under the influence of different agents. But the principal one which we have to mention here was the direct influence of the sun's rays, which seem from this time to have acted powerfully upon the earth. In speaking of the tertiary flora and of the immense progress seen in it, M. Müller says: "I believe we must attribute this result to the solar light which, by the help of the transformation of an insular climate—misty, cloudy, and dark—into a continental climate, was enabled to penetrate more freely and to act with greater intensity. Beneath a tropical sun, vegetable life takes new developments with much greater power than under a northern and veiled sun. . . . It was, then, in the tertiary period alone that the more graceful flowers made their appearance, faithful reflections of the new era, of its azure sky, and its radiant sun²³."

As this transformation of vegetation was gradual, and, according to M. Müller himself, began in the ages which followed the carboniferous period, we have in this fact a most important revelation of the part which the sun began to play, at the end of the carboniferous era, in the development of life on our planet. The thick covering of clouds which had veiled the lamp of day during the preceding ages, had been torn. asunder; its rays had now free access to the earth; henceforward it shone regularly upon our globe. And it is this great painter of ligature who, from this time using his brushes freely here below, is to begin to clothe the plants, the children of the light, with those brilliant colours which had hitherto been wanting to them.

7. The carboniferous vegetation had done a great service to the earth. It had absorbed an enormous quantity of carbonic acid, which it had converted into fuel, while, at the same time, purifying the atmosphere from that ingredient so injurious to animal life. It had thus prepared the way for the first great outbreak of this latter form of life. The masses of rock which formed the mighty layers of the Jurassic and cretaceous strata, are the sepulchres of an innumerable animal population. They are not only the work of myriads of these living creatures, but these colossal stratifications, lifted later on in time into the light, are entirely composed of their remains. Ehreuberg has counted up as many as ten million minute shells in one single pound of chalk; and, as Mr. Alfred Maury says, the soldier, when he cleans his helmet with a cubic inch of tripoli, has in his hands no less than forty-one millions of animalcules; at every rub he pulverises from ten to twelve millions of fossil animals.

But in these masses of rock lie buried also the remains of other animal populations, both marine and amphibious.

By the side of the corals and the infusoria, those innumerable prolific creatures who filled the ocean and laboured unceasingly to form this ground upon which we are now ourselves working, there lived already, in the Jurassic and cretaceous eras, some species of a higher order, the "petite bourgeoisie" of the time, more particularly represented by those wonderful molluscs which bear the name of ammonites, belemnites, &c. Higher still in the scale of animals, there crawled by the banks of the oceans and rivers, multitudes of tortoises and lizards, the "higher gentry" of the time. At last came the "aristocracy" of this middle age of K'ature, who preyed upon these "lower orders," and made war amongst them. These were gigantic reptiles, armed with terrible weapons for attack. Such was the plesiosaurus, a lizard 40 feet long, with a head like a serpent, and a jaw 6 feet long, a swan's neck from 15 to 20 feet long, a body provided with four paws in the shape of paddles, like those of the wheels in our steam-vessels, which it used as oars, and with a thick tail, shorter than that of a crocodile, for a rudder. Then the ichthyosaurus, 30 feet long, with a slender snout like a dolphin, its jaws armed with 180 teeth, preying, as is proved by the remains found inside its body, not only upon tortoises and molluscs, but upon creatures of its own kind. Then a still stranger creature, the pterodactyl, a real flying dragon, like those of the dreams of our superstitious forefathers, which to an elongated beak -like snout, crocodile teeth, and tiger -like claws, added wings like those of a bat. There were some of all sizes, from that of a canary bird to an eagle. One has been found in England, whose extended wings measured no less than 20 feet across, while those of the great Alpine eagle do not exceed 11 feet. Later on we come to the megalosaurus, whose gigantic body, 50 feet long, lifted itself to a greater height above the sea than the elephant does above the ground. "Its teeth," says Figuier, " combine the characteristics of a sword, a knife, and a saw." Notice again the iguanodon, the most colossal of the saurians, remarkable for its nasal horn; this was an herbivorons animal.

It is also to the beginning of this saurian era that we trace the first appearance of birds. It is believed that in the same strata, footprints of gigantic wading birds, and fossils of great birds of the ostrich kind are to be found. But up to this time, with the exception of a tiny insectivorous rodent, and later on (in the chalk) a kind of opossum, no mammal nor any terrestrial animal, properly so called, makes its appearance.

8. The race of amphibious monsters dies out by degrees at the close of the Jurassic and cretaceous formations. Deposits of an entirely new sort soon covered all that part of those strata, which lay at the bottom of the sea. These are the molassic beds which form so large a part of our present soil, and in which are preserved the remains of a whole new creation of animal life. Terrestrial animals, quadrupeds small and great, and domestic animals, at last make their appearance. This is the era when the dinotherium, a species of seal or elephant, armed with two hooked tusks under the lower jaw, grubs in the earth to dig up the roots and bulbs on which he feeds; when the aquatic salamander, six feet long, (whose remains were for a long time mistaken for a human skeleton,) peoples the bays of the continents; when the massive megatherium, and the mylodon, slightly smaller—both species of the ai or sloth—with snout-like muzzles and enormous claws, grub in the earth, or crawl upon the trees; when finally, as the king of that age, the gigantic elephant of America, the mastodon, with a body longer than that of the present elephant, and thicker limbs, feeding upon roots and other vegetables, prowls by the side of the rivers in the marshy lands. At this time also the first species of monkeys came into being.

A little later, at the period of transition between the tertiary and the modern age, animal life, although still different from that of our own time, continues to assume more and more of its characteristics. This is the age of the mammoth, another elephant, with long spiral tusks bent backwards, pendent ears tufted with hair, and a long black mane. The specimen of this creature found at the mouth of one of the rivers of Siberia, in a mass of ice in which it had been imprisoned, exhibited its flesh and hair in perfect preservation, and the contents of its stomach bore evidence to its favourite food, the leaves of the Siberian mélèze. The primeval massive-headed ox then inhabited the prairies, The hippopotamus and two-homed rhinoceros, the great elk, with his magnificently spreading antlers of which the two extremities were some ten feet apart, the cave-bear, troops of lions, tigers, hyenas, tapirs, peopled the forests and the plains.

9. Man did not yet exist; but all these forms, becoming more and more like those known to us, announce that his arrival upon the scene is not far off. In fact, the era of those great mammals, of whom we have just given an idea, leads us up to that solemn moment when this visible king of Nature made his appearance upon his domain. The first traces of his presence which hare been discovered, place his arrival at the end of the period when the gigantic quadrupeds buried themselves in those beds of mud or of ice in which they have been preserved for us.

With man appear the first traces of intelligent activity—of industry. Tools of different kinds, made evidently for a purpose, announce the presence of Intelligence and of Liberty on this earthly stage. A new world opens itself, as that of Nature closes. The being whose creation was the goal and aim of all the work that had preceded—whose bodily organisation had been the standard and rule for all those anterior to him, the model to which they had gradually approached²⁴—has now appeared; History—the development of a free being—begins.

10. One fact, remarkable above the rest in the history of Nature, clearly signalised this appearance of man as the intended end of all the development of which we have just sketched a picture; that is, the cessation of all production of new species in the field of vegetable or animal life, from the moment of the creation of man. The efforts of Nature seem to cease, and her productiveness to be exhausted. Thence forward there is no further development of vegetable life except by cultivation and grafting; nor of animal life but by training and education. Nature seems to have yielded her sceptre to man, who not only sees no new creature arrive upon the scene superior to himself or who could be his rival, but who gradually extends his power over all those whom Nature had produced before him. The world may be compared to a country-house which a mother's loving hand had built, ornamented, and furnished, in prospect of the expected arrival of her beloved son. Man, the being thus expected, has no sooner appeared than all creatures throughout Nature hasten to pay him their tribute, and render homage to him as their lord.

III.

The Two Compared.

Having now set forth the general results of the study of geology with regard to the general question before us, let us look at the picture drawn by Moses, and note the points upon which it seems to diverge from, and those upon which there is no difficulty in harmonising it with, these scientific deductions.

Every one knows the story of the Creation in the first chapter of Genesis, Nevertheless, it may be well to summarise it here, in order to indicate its gradual progress, and to observe carefully its tendency.

Moses begins by a word of a general character, and which comprehends in itself all that follows: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." This verse, however, is not a mere heading of a chapter; it indicates also an actual fact. The proper meaning of the word 'to create' (barah) is to cause that which existed only in the inner, to pass into the outer, world,—to give objective existence to that which had before been only present to the mind²⁵. This word created marks, then, in all cases, the fundamental act, the preliminary condition of all that follows; the production of primeval and universal matter, out of which have been formed, by means of successive steps of organisation, both the heavens and the earth.

Immediately after this general statement, the narrative takes leave of the subject of the heavens, the creation of which must certainly, in the mind of the author, have taken place simultaneously with the work to be accomplished on the earth. If he speaks again, later on, of the heavens, it is not till the fourth day, when their organisation has been completed, and they have entered into their normal relations with the earth and the living creatures upon it. It is from this point of view only that such a narrative could be concerned with them; for it does not include any system of cosmogony; it is always man whom it keeps in view.

Here, then, we have, in the first place, a denial of the independent existence of Matter, which all the systems of antiquity made to co-exist eternally with the Deity, and which, as an obstacle not to be overcome, hindered all the efforts both of God and man for realising the perfect gGod.

After the second verse, it is of the earth, and of the earth only, that the narrative speaks. The earth did exist, but in the form of chaos (tohou vabahou). This expression does not mean a state of disorder and confusion, but that state of primitive matter in which no creature had as yet a distinctive existence, and no one element stGod out in contradistinction with others, but all the forces and properties of matter existed, as it were, undivided. The materials were indeed all there, but not as such,—they were only latent. However, the Creative spirit, the principle of order and life, brGoded over this matter, which, like a rich organic cell, comprehended in itself the conditions, and up to a certain point the elementary principles, of all future forms of existence. This Spirit was the efficient cause, not of matter itself, but of its organisation, which was then to begin. He was the executant of each of those Divine commands, which from this time were to succeed each other, stroke after stroke, till this chaos should be transformed into a world of wonders. By the "waters" upon which this Divine virtue is said to have moved, must be meant either cosmical matter in its primitive and gaseous state (the Hebrew has no special word by which to express a gas), or else the sea, properly 80 called, which already, like a vast sheet, enveloped the whole globe.

The work of the three first days consists only in preparing the stage upon which Life was to appear and to exhibit itself. That of the three last will be the appearance and development of life itself—that is, of life properly so called, animal and human life. On the first day, Darkness gives way to Light; on the second, the waters to respirable air; on the third, the universal sea to dry land. These are the three necessary preliminary conditions for the appearance of vegetation, which crowns the work of the third day, and opens the way for animal life.

The first "God said" produces Light. The mention of this Divine command is sufficient to make the reader understand that this element, which was an object of worship to so many oriental nations, is neither an eternal principle nor the product of blind force, but the work of a free and intelligent will. It is this same thought which is expressed in the division of the work of creation into six days and six nights. The Creation is thus represented under the image of a week of work, during which an active and intelligent workman pursues his task, through a series of phases, graduated with skill and calculated with certainty, in view of an end definitely conceived from the first.

When it is stated expressly, (ver. 4 and 5,) that God divided the light, which He called day, from the darkness, which He called night, the author intends us to understand by that, that God, immediately after creating the light, established a periodicity in its appearance and disappearance. The day is not the light; it is a space of time illuminated, and intended for active work. The night differs in the same way from darkness; it is an interval of time darkened, and intended for repose, that is to say, for a new concentration of the forces of life. Prom the first appearance of light, God ordained this alternation, of which the consequences are seen to be so infinitely beneficial to all creatures, as long as they are in the condition of gradual development.

The belief has been imputed to Moses (because of the "word firmament, which is used in some translations in ver. 6, 8), that the heavens formed a solid vault above the earth. But the Hebrew word rakijah (from rakah, 'to extend') indicates, on the contrary, an element capable of expansion; the word extension, therefore, is a much more accurate rendering of the Hebrew term. "We may apply the word extension, in our narrative to the Infinity of Space, and understand by "the waters above," the gaseous matter out of which the stars were formed, and by "the waters below," that out of which the terrestrial globe is formed. But it is more natural to give here to the word heavens the more restricted meaning of the terrestrial atmosphere, and to apply the expression, "the waters above" to that mass, of vapour which floats in the air in the form of clouds; and the expression, "the waters below," to those masses of liquid which cover a large portion of the globe. This meaning appears to be that most naturally indicated by the opposition between the waters and the land in the following verses.

The apparition of the land, and its separation from the water, is the work of the third day, (ver. 9 and 10). No sooner are these three conditions—flight, air, and sunshine—given, than the first form of organised existence makes its appearance, (ver. 11 and 12); the land is covered with a carpet of grass, and richly adorned with shrubs and seed-bearing trees. On the one hand, it is to the command of God that this new form of existence is due,— "And God said;" and on the other, it is from the earth itself that it proceeds,—''Let the earth bring forth"

The production of plants forms the transition from the work of the three first days to that of those which follow.

At the head of the work of the three last days is placed (ver. 14—18) the appearance of the sun, moon, and stars. The mention of this fact explains to us why, in the first words of the narrative, the author had spoken of the creation of the heavens as well as of that of the earth. Is this the moment when, to his mind, the organisation of the stars, or at least that of our solar system, was completed? Or does he only mean that this was the time when these stars first exerted their illuminating and life-giving power upon onp earth, when they began to enter into relations with her as centres of light? This second sense appears to be more consistent with the general tendency of the narrative, and particularly with these words: "Let there he lights in the firmament of heaven" Everything is connected with the development of animal life, and chiefly with the appearance and future activity of man: "lights which shall he for signs and for seasons, and for days and years," If light in general is the condition of the work of the three first days, the relation of the earth to the stars, and particularly to the sun and moon, is the condition, not less indispensable, of the work of the three last days.

The description of the fifth day (ver. 20—22) brings before us the first appearance of animal life. This takes place under two principal forms,—that of the marine animals which the waters bring forth at the command of God, and that of birds. By the first must be intended, principally, fish and amphibious creatures: "God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth," (roméseth, from ramas, literally 'to advance by crawling').

Thus the two first elements, air and water, are opened to life. The third, the earth, is put in possession of this gift on the sixth day (ver. 24, 25), by the production of domestic animals (behémah, 'cattle'), reptiles (rémes, 'that which creeps upon the earth'), and the beasts of the field (chajath haérets, 'the wild beasts of the earth').

Finally, on the same day, in the second part of this day, God created man, Adam, His representative here below²⁶. His body is no doubt taken out of the ground, like those of; the animals; but God forms it with His own hand, and inspires it with a life which emanates from His own breath. Here is the master-work of that Spirit Who, in the beginning, moved upon the face of the waters. He worked upon and elaborated matter, only to make it serve, Tinder the form of a human body, as an organ for a spirit which proceeds from Himself; for in man the Spirit reproduces Himself in the form of a creature.

This last-mentioned being is the aim and end in particular of the work of the three last days, and, at the same time, that of the whole work taken together. Under the former head, the appearance of man in the second part of the sixth day, corresponds to the creation of plants in the second part of the third day. As plants are the ornaments of the newly-formed dry land, so man is the crown of that animal life which had gradually developed itself.

After that, the work is complete, and the rest of the seventh day puts an end, not to the Divine activity in general, but to the creative activity, properly so called. The Sabbath, the great "thus far, and no further," which puts an end to the Divine work in Nature, gives a solemn confirmation to the truth already set forth in the repeated words, "And God said"—the truth namely, that the earth is not the result of blind and ungovemed powers—no Sabbath was to put an end to the ferment and activity of forces like these—but it is the work of an intelligent and self-governing Being, "Who does all things by measure, "Who sets before Himself, while working, a definite object to be attained, and Who, as soon as that object is attained, sets at rest again those productive forces which He had put in motion.

Such is the record of Genesis in its majestic simplicity. If this record is true, which admits of no douht in the mind of any Israelite, it follows that neither Ormusd (light), nor Vulcan (fire), nor Zeus (the air), nor Cybele (the earth), nor Apollo (the sun), nor Diana (the moon), nor the ox Apis, nor any animal, reptile, hird, or quadruped, nor any man, (pretended representative of Ormuzd, or Brahma, or Osiris,) has any right to Divine honours. The supreme attribute, self- existence. Deity, belongs to Jehovah alone.

What relation, then, does the Mosaic picture, thus understGod, bear to the results hitherto reached by science?

To begin by the points of difference; there are two which strike us at the first glance.

1. Genesis speaks of days; but the periods implied by the stratifications and the fossils they contain, must each have consisted of millions of centuries.

2. According to Genesis, animal life did not begin upon the earth till after the appearance of plants, whereas the oldest strata that contain vegetable remains exhibit already some débris of crustaceans and of corals—monuments of an animal life which must have existed contemporaneously with that primitive vegetation. At the same time that the rich carboniferous flora developed itself, there existed also different species of fish, and one breathing vertebrate (the labyrinthodon).

These are differences of which we are not to deny the importance; and if we are to consider the record of Genesis as the result of Divine dictation, we must own that we should be not a little embarrassed to account for these two points, on which there seems to be a clear disagreement between the Bible narrative and the facts of science.

On the other hand, the points of resemblance are still more striking,—all the more so, because on many of these points, what is told us in the Bible being, as if designedly, in contradiction to that which we see, there would seem to be no other reasonable mode of explaining their origin.

The resemblances are these:—.

1. According to ver. 2, the earth, from the moment when it may be said to have had an existence of its own, was surrounded by water. Now science affirms that the strata of which the crust of the earth is composed, were deposited in water, and that consequently, in the first ages of its organisation, the globe must have presented the appearance of a surface entirely liquid..

2. In ver. 3, Genesis assigns the creation of light to the first day, while the appearance of the sun did not take place till the fourth. It thereby defies the visible appearances which seem to make of Light an emanation from the sun. But Genesis goes still farther; it assigns to the same date the commencement of the regular succession of days and nights, a succession which, nevertheless, according to the observation of all men depends upon the daily appearance and disappearance of the sun. Accordingly, all superficial minds, from Voltaire, the genius of sarcasm, to the pygmies of the Progrès of Délemont, can never sufficiently ridicule the follies of the Mosaic record. If they were more dispassionate, they would perhaps say that however ignorant Moses may have been of their heights of science, he had two eyes as well as they; and they would ask how came he to compose a story so contrary to the most obvious probabilities. The fact is, that the results of modem science, still ignored by the savants of Délemont, render a striking testimony to the truth of the Mosaic record, and to the astonishing wisdom which characterises it.

It is now, in fact, an established truth, that Light is in its nature entirely independent of the sun. It is a vibration of the ether, in which the sun is, in our time, no doubt, the chief agent, but which may be produced by the action of many causes. Just as a tightly-stretched wire or string does not vibrate only under the action of the bow specially adapted for that purpose, but may be made to do so also without a bow, and before any bow had been invented—by the action of a simple current of air, for instance—so the ether which now vibrates regularly under the periodic action of the sun, may have formed and propagated its waves of light without the sun and before the sun. The sound of the Eolian harp bears the same relation to that of the string touched by the bow, that primitive light does to the sun. How could Moses have known what Science has only quite recently discovered| and have perceived that the sun, instead of being the source of light, is only the present and temporary instrument for its diffusion? But the other fact we have mentioned ought perhaps to astonish us still more. How can Genesis speak of an alternation of days and nights as a phenomenon anterior to the appearance of the sun? There is nothing to object to, as we have seen, in this precedence in itself. Modem science explains the fact. If ante-solar, primitive light was, like our present aurora borealis, the effect of the neutralisation, throughout the whole atmosphere, of the two opposing kinds of electricity, this light must have had its hours of dawn, of mid-day splendour, of decline, and of complete cessation. Consequently, according to the expression in the Bible narrative, there may have been, and must hate been, days and nights, evenings and mornings, before ever the sun rose and set on our horizon. But at the time when Moses wrote, how was it possible for him to affirm anything of the sort? That is a question for an answer to which we may wait, and shall wait a long time. Yet the fact of the Bible narrative is here before our eyes in all its undeniable and paradoxical clearness.

3. Genesis tells us (ver. 9) that the dry land appeared in the midst of the waters, and that thus the separation was made between the land and the sea. If there is one fact more certainly proved by modem science than another, it is that the continents were gradually lifted up from the bottom of the sea.

4. Genesis speaks of a great vegetable creation, which covered the lands then just emerged. Science has ascertained, by the discovery of the carboniferous strata, that a period of colossal vegetation followed the upheaval of those primitive rocks of which the terrestrial envelope is composed. Of this the coal-beds which we work are the monuments. And if the gentlemen of the Progrès amuse themselves at the expense of Moses, for being such a simpleton as to place the growth of plants before the creation of the sun, science proves that Moses, who lived fifteen centuries before Christ, knew more about the subject than they do, living in the nineteenth century of our era. For it proves that there is a light, other than that of the sun, which possesses all the properties required by vegetation, and that this light existed at the beginning of the world.

5. Genesis makes the appearance of the sun, moon, and stars on our horizon to take place after this great evolution of vegetation. Now what has Science demonstrated? It acknowledges, in the person of M. Karl Müller, who cannot be suspected of partiality in favour of the Scriptures, that during the periods which followed that of the carboniferous vegetation, there was effected, by degrees, a transformation more and more complete, in the vegetation; which could only have been produced under the immediate action of the solar rays, hindered during the carboniferous era. A very strange hypothesis has been lately put forward, namely, that the moon may be simply that fraction of the earth's crust, "which originally filled up the immense basin of the Pacific ocean. If it should ever be proved that there is any truth in this bold conjecture, we might allow, not only that the solar system became visible to the earth at the time of which we are now speaking, but that it then only really reached its present organisation, and had its relations with our globe definitively settled.

6. To the rich development of vegetable life on the third day, Genesis makes to succeed a no less mighty bursting forth of animal life, in the waters and in the air, on the fifth day. Now Science has proved, by the remains of organised beings found in the strata of the triassic, Jurassic, and cretaceous periods, which followed at some distance upon that of the carboniferous strata, that a development of animal life, of marvellous richness, had taken place in the oceans at that epoch. And, more astonishing still, it is also to this age that geology assigns the date of the appearance of birds. How was Moses able thus to affirm the priority of marine and amphibious to terrestrial animals? And how can he have known the contemporaneousness of the appearance of birds, and of the inhabitants of the sea?

7. Next after the appearance of life in the waters and in the air, Genesis places the creation of terrestrial animals, of cattle, wild beasts, and reptiles. Now Science has proved that it was at the time of the molassic or tertiary formations, which were deposited immediately after the Jurassic and cretaceous strata, that precisely these three classes of animals did make their appearance. According to the very exact data of M. Heer²⁷, the Swiss molasse has comprehended three sorts of serpents, eighteen kinds of beasts of prey and of rodents, and forty-eight species of pachyderms (herbivorous animals), and ruminants. This, then, was indeed the first great introduction into the world of terrestrial animals and mammals. It seems as if a whole multitude of his future subjects, whether independent or prepared beforehand to submit to him, hastened to appear upon the globe to meet the sovereign who was approaching.

8. The appearance of all these forms, so infinitely various, of organic life, animal and vegetable, is attributed in Genesis to a series of Divine commands: "And God said"—without, however, thereby either denying or even omitting expressly to notice the instrumentality of natural agents, as witness the expression: "let the waters bring forth, . . . let the land bring forth," What says Science upon this point? We make no attempt here to treat the question of the permanence of species. Certainly, Moses seems to affirm this great principle, which Darwin is far from having succeeded in overturning. But from a still more general point of view, "what is it that Science has in our day to do P Is it not to establish the harmony of those two equally received principles,—one, that Life can only be proceed by Life, (p. 92,) the other, that this engendering of life by life is governed by second causes, and requires the co-operation of the natural elements? Moses has not, it is true, given us the exact formula for this harmonisation. To work at discovering it is one of the highest tasks of Science. But has he not erected, with a bold and firm hand, the two pillars of the arch which is to form that bridge so difficult of constraction? "And God said,"—there we see the principle that life alone is capable of begetting life. "Let the earth, . . . let the waters bring forth,"—there we see the co-operation of Nature freely granted. The defenders of the creative principle must not allow themselves to be drawn into denying the truth contained in these last words; on the other hand, no possible discovery in the direction of Darwinism can go beyond it.

9. According to Genesis, the creation of man was the close of the work of creation; and this supreme act was accomplished on the same day as that of the creation of the terrestrial animals. Now modem science shews that the first vestiges of the existence of man do not make their appearance till the most recent stratifications, at the end of the tertiary period; but nevertheless they do appear in the course of that period. The sixth day did then really witness, as the Scripture tells us, the contemporaneous existence of man and of the representatives of that great animal creation which immediately preceded his arrival. There was not here the closing of one epoch and the beginning of another; it was the continuation of the same period.

10. And now let ns bring out, with regard to man, one special point. Genesis affirms the creation of a single pair, from whom all mankind descended. It is not long since Science protested with all its strength against this dogma of the unity of the human race. It urged the anatomical and physiological differences of races; and affirmed in its most trenchant tones the absolute impossibility of deriving them from a single pair. And now we have this same Science not shrinking from the far more hazardous attempt of deriving from one and the same organic cell. . . . is it all mankind? No, that is not enough. Or is it all mankind and all animals together? That is still too little. It is all organised beings, even plants,—all from one single source of organised life!

Oh, Science!

The object at that time was to play tricks with Scripture upon one particular point—the unity of the human race. It is now to clear away the Divine element out of our theory of Nature. They are as ready now to swallow a camel, as they were then to strain at a goat! And Science lends herself easily to all these contradictory services demanded of her. Docile servant, preached up in public as the queen of the world, and made in private the slave of all our caprices!

However it may he, we are now assuredly allowed by Mr. Darwin and his disciples, to maintain that the unity of the human race, proclaimed by Genesis^ is no longer open to any insuperable scientific objection. The theory of the transmutation of species has indeed many another mountain to get over!

11. Genesis speaks of a Divine sabbath, a full stop placed by God Himself to His creative work; a day assigned to God's well-beloved child, just created, for rejoicing in God and becoming one with Him. And Science proves that, as a fact, with the appearance of man, the creation of all new species ceased, and that in the midst of this repose of Nature, bought at the price of such prolonged labours, that purely moral work at once began, of man seeking his Creator, and transferring to God, by worship, this world which God had set up for him by the creative act. All this present age is the sabbath, in which, the work being now completed, the master- work and the worker meet and greet one another in love.

What are we to think of such a series of points of agreement? Are they the result of accident? As well might we say that the fitting together of two cog-wheels is a mere chance. Are they the result of observation of Nature, or of philosophical speculation well directed? But what philosophical labour could have led us to the idea of light appearing and disappearing periodically, independently of the sun? And even if it had been possible to argue conclusively from simple observation that the appearance of the vegetable kingdom must have preceded that of animals, what experience could have led to the idea that the marine animals and birds appeared simultaneously, and that they preceded the terrestrial animals and reptiles; and that finally, the appearance of these last had bordered immediately upon that of man?

It has been thought by some that there is a logical symmetry in the account of the work of the six days, sufficient to account for it. On the first day, light; on the fourth, the luminaries: on the second, the waters and the atmosphere; on the fifth, marine animals and birds: on the third, the land and plants; on the sixth, land animals and man. But whatever may be thought of this parallelism, which, in order to make it more complete, would require that birds only should have appeared on the fifth day (corresponding with the creation of the atmosphere on the second day), and that the marine animals should not have come in till the sixth day, together with the land animals, (corresponding with the separation of the land and waters on the third day), the coincidence of these arrangements with the actual order of creation demands, none the less, as we have seen, some explanation other than that which any of the rationalistic hypotheses are able to give. This desired explanation we believe we have sketched out at the beginning of this essay. We must acknowledge in the Mosaic record a revelation, but not in the form of a dictation. It is, as we expected beforehand, knowledge given under the form of pictures, analogous t» those of the prophetic visions. And from this point of view, the two difficulties which we mentioned at the beginning are easily explained. Moses speaks of days, and it was really periods of millions of years which were required. "We will not urge here the very indefinite sense often given to the word day in Scripture, but we will say: If it was the purpose of God to cause Moses to contemplate in an abridged form the principal phases through which the work of creation passed in its gradual development, would not the best way of giving him an idea of it have been to paint each period in a single picture, which should represent in one grand scene the stage which the work had then reached? Each of these pictures was to the eye of Moses one day; but in this one day were represented all the analogous days of that same period. The interval which separated this picture from that which followed it was a night; and in this night were figured all other nights of the same period, during which the period which was to follow was being slowly prepared for. Thus there passed before his eyes these six pictures, representing the most characteristic phases of the entire work. He has preserved for us a memorial of these phases, but without having himself penetrated into their meanings in detail, any more than the prophets were able clearly to understand the intuitions excited in them by the Divine Spirit²⁸. He only comprehended in each picture the central idea, the only one practically wanted,—that of Jehovah as the One Being, the Author of each separate part of the work, as well as of the work as a whole.

"We can see also from the nature of this mode of instruction, that it would he only the salient features of each period which could be admitted into these pictures and strike the eye of the seer. The vegetable and animal life, for instance, which developed itself from the first at the bottom of the sea, remained concealed from him. It was only when the vegetable life made that mighty and colossal outburst of which the carboniferous strata bear evidence, that he discerned it; for then it became the essential feature of the picture. Just so with regard to the appearance of the great marine animals and of birds, in the following ages; and so again with reference to the appearance of the terrestrial animals and of man in the last period. We are looking upon a pictorial work, and not at the work of a naturalist or man of science. Placing ourselves at this point of view, we see those difficulties vanish which hindered us from finding in this record that which so many reasons make us wish to recognise in it—the result of a revelation.

To put the seal to the agreement which we have just established between the contents of the pictures in Genesis, and the results of scientific investigation, it only remains to set these latter in the frame given us by the former, and so to combine these two kinds of results into one and the same intuition, similar to that which was produced at the moment of the vision in the mind of the seer²⁹.

We must imagine ourselves seated with the man of God upon the mountain. Darkness surrounds us. About us and within us reigns the silence which is the precursor of Divine revelations. The prophetic sense with which all men are endued by Nature, awakes in us, and just as S. John contemplates, in his trance on the rock in Patmos, the last ages of the world, and in some sort the passage of time into eternity, 80 we contemplate the first days of the universe, the river of time springing forth out of eternity. In the midst of the solemn darkness, our ear perceives a muffled sound, like that of the sea agitated by a mighty wind, of which the surface rises and falls in vast undulations, and the waves at times meet and break, one against the other. This is the ocean in which our earth is still enveloped as in a winding-sheet. The breath which moves it is that of the Spirit of the Creator, which brGods over this mysterious egg in order to bring out of it a world of wonders, a Humanity, a Christ! "We feel that this darkness is not the darkness of the grave, but that of the fertile Night, which serves as a cradle for all life. And in this darkness of a moment are concentrated centuries without number, all the ages which elapsed from the creation of matter up to the formation of the solid crust of the globe, and the condensation of the waters upon its surface.

Suddenly, a voice breaks the silence of this long night:—

"LET THERE BE LIGHT."

At once a luminous jet, followed by dazzling rays which radiate towards all the points of the horizon, illumines the scene. It is a radiant light, like that which from time to time illumines the inhabitants of the polar regions during their long nights of many months. By its light we discern, through the thick vapours which cover the earth, the liquid shoreless plain which surrounds us. From time to time gases, disengaging themselves from the interior furnace of the globe, make the waters surge and boil, and lift up to their surface a plain, which soon sinks down again, and is once more swallowed up. The jets of light lose by degrees their brilliancy, and, paling more and more, end in being altogether extinguished. "We now hear nothing but the roar of the mighty waters on every side of us. Darkness surrounds us. And in this single day we have contemplated the representative of millions of days, which lit up our earth before any eye of man was there to discern them.

The voice sounds once more:—

"LET THERE BE A FIRMAMENT IN THE MIDST OF THE WATERS, AND LET IT DIVIDE THE WATERS FROM THE WATERS."

Once more it is day; our eyes wander still over a liquid plain which mingles on all sides with the horizon. Perhaps there may he life in the midst of this sea, life both animal and vegetable, but we do not perceive it. That which now absorbs our attention is the gradual transformation taking place in the space above the ocean. Before, the vapours rose from the sea as out of a cauldron of boiling water, and the glittering light furrowed these dark water-spouts. Now the sea appears more calm; a thicker partition separates it, no doubt, from the subterranean fire. Its tepid waters, moved by a gentle breeze, rise and fall in regular undulations. The less dense vapours rise more lightly into the higher regions, and when they there encounter a colder temperature they form themselves into thick clouds, which remain suspended all round the globe. Below this dark covering, between it and the sea, appears for the first time the transparent atmosphere, the azure firmament which divides the aerial sea from the liquid plain. Such was the second day, in the picture of which is concentrated the image of millions of days.

We are once more plunged into darkness, but not without a presentiment of the approach of a greater work still. The voice says:—

"LET THE WATERS UNDER THE HEAVEN BE GATHERED TOGETHER INTO ONE PLACE, AND LET THE DRY LAND APPEAR! "

For the third time the scene is lighted up. The canopy of thick clouds suspended around the globe is not yet dissipated. But upon the stage below, what changes have taken place! The ocean is no longer one uniform sheet in which our eyes sought in vain for a point to rest upon. The waves dash themselves against rocks, some pointed, some dome-like. Long lines of white foam indicate the presence of coral islands, on a level with the surface of the water, against which the waves are breaking. We even perceive in the distance vast marshy lowlands. This is because, at the command of the Creator, the bottom of the sea has lifted itself up, and continents have appeared. And these new-born lands array themselves, as we look at them, with a covering of green and fresh verdure. Mosses, marsh-plants, reeds, ferns, forests of pines, and palm-trees make their appearance. These reeds, as tall as our oaks, these ferns, as large as our horse-chestnuts, wave upon the banks of rivers of dark waters, and of lakes still and shallow. Here, then, we have before our eyes, in all its luxuriant wealth, that mighty tropical vegetation, which God has preserved to our times under the form of coal.

At the bottom of these waters, life begins to stir; coral insects are building; innumerable molluscs crawl in the mud upon these low shores. But the prominent feature in the picture is that wonderful vegetation which we have just described; all the rest is as nothing compared to that unparalleled apparition. But in the forests there still reigns the silence of death; no living creature animates them by his presence. No movement is to be seen but that of the long branches swaying in the wind, and of the thick mists creeping along the marshy lands. Such was the third day, the sample of millions of other days.

And while darkness again descends upon us, something extraordinary in the state of the atmosphere announces some new and decisive step about to be made in the divine work.

The voice of the Lord proclaims:—

''LET THERE BE LIGHTS IN THE FIRMAMENT OF THE HEAVEN."

It is night; our attention is directed towards the heavens. The canopy of clouds breaks, and in the intervals made by these rents, our sight reaches for the first time into impenetrable depths. New and unparalleled spectacle! The stars shine out in the firmament. As the sky disengages itself from the vapours which concealed it, these stars multiply. Soon their light gleams on all sides. The vault of heaven is unveiled in its completeness, shining without cloud over our heads. The morning-star beams, radiant as a queen in the midst of her court, and casts her pure image for the first time upon our globe. But soon she begins to pale. The vapours, scattered in light masses over the horizon, begin to glow; they pass from grey to bronze, from bronze to gold; the gold changes into fire;. . . . one brilliant point appears above the waters; the Sun is come, and has celebrated his first rising. Darting into the azure sky, he enters boldly upon his course. The waters, ruffled by the morning breeze, glitter beneath his splendours. Under the influence of his brilliant rays, a new kind of vegetation makes its appearance, adorned with a thousand colours unknown to the preceding flora. A carpet of verdure, thicker and more varied, covers the dark soil of the continents. Soon we perceive the heavenly luminary descend towards the western horizon in a glory even more magnificent than that which surrounded his rising; and for the first time, at the opposite point of the horizon, appears the second luminary of the terrestrial creation. Rising silently into the azure vault, the moon sheds her gentle light over land and sea. Such was the fourth day, an image of millions of other days. Why were the angels alone to witness it?— But through the eyes of the Seer, we, too, have been just contemplating something of its sublime beauties.

For the fifth time, night covers the picture. But the voice has again proclaimed:—

"LET THE WATERS BEING FORTH ABUNDANTLY THE MOVING CREATURE THAT HATH LIFE, AND FOWL THAT MAY FLY ABOVE THE EARTH IN THE OPEN FIRMAMENT OF HEAVEN."

Daylight appears. Like a bride prepared for her bridegroom, the earth is adorned with flowers of varied colours. But what do I hear? For the first time a voice other than that of the Lord God, and than the sound of the mighty waters strikes upon my ear. It is as the cry of discordant voices. Birds in close ranks, like insects on a summer evening, fly above the lakes, or traverse the forests, while others of their kind, of gigantic size, as if mounted on stilts, wade through the reedy ponds, pursuing the fish.

But they themselves soon become the prey of formidable enemies. For this is also the age of the amphibious reptiles, whether swimming or flying; monsters covered with thick scales, armed with murderous teeth, haunt the long-winding rivers, or crawl upon the wet meadows, or hang suspended on the trees and rocks ready to pounce upon their prey. The ocean also is full of life. There disport themselves the giants of the age; they stir its depths with the strokes of their mighty fins, and lift above its surface their enormous forms and terrible heads. The water, the air, the land (still marshy), all are crowded with animal life. For has not the Eternal One said: " Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven?" At this word of command all these new and unknown creatures have come into being!—And now upon this scene, full of light and movement, the sun sets, and night veils from sight the mystery of these innumerable lives. The fifth day is over, and in this single picture we have before our eyes the spectacle of millions of days, whose light did actually shine upon our globe.

Again we are plunged into Night. For the sixth time the voice proclaims:—

"LET THE EARTH BEING FORTH THE LIVING CREATURE AFTER HIS KIND.''

And when the light again illumines this stage upon which the work of God was by degrees accomplishing itself, what a scene meets our eyes! The marine monsters have disappeared. Of all these horrible amphibious creatures there remains only a small number of species, less colossal, and less formidable. In their place, over the verdant plains, cattle and beasts of the field are grazing; great herds of mastodons and mammoths seek their pasture in the fresh herbage of the forest. Banging the woods are troops of stags and elks; the bear watches over her young in the cave; the hippopotamus crouches among the reeds, or plunges majestically into the river; the rhinoceros sports in the marshes, while the lion, the leopard, and other wild animals, lie in wait amongst the dark thickets, ready to spring upon the herds of antelopes hurrying to the water. At last, at the hour when the sun sinks, and the day declines, a supreme last word is heard:—

''LET US MAKE MAN IN OUR IMAGE."

And the responsible lord of this creation, Man, formed in the actual image of God, comes forth at the command of his Creator upon this scene which has been arranged, adorned, and peopled to receive him.

At this moment the work of Creation ceases. The rest of God begins; but in this rest is included a new kind of work—that of the moral education of man, of his redemption and final glorification. The work of this seventh day still continues; a day sanctified by God above all the rest, but profaned by man, as none of those that preceded it was, or could be, by the creatures whose existence they illumined. A day of which we have now perhaps reached the eleventh hour, and which will be followed for some by a day without an evening, for others by a night which shall have no morning. In this Divine Sabbath which we are contemplating in the company of the man of God upon the mount, we see also the sample of millions of other days—of all those in which we ourselves are living, of all the millions of Sabbaths of which God makes use in our time for the sanctification of the human race, and which the human race so often misuses to the dishonour of the Creator,

IV.

Conclusion.

Let us now sum up and conclude.

Moses had said, contrary to all probability, that light had existed long before the appearance of the sun; Science has proved that the world may, and must, have been illumined, long before the appearance of the sun.

Moses had said, no less paradoxically, that the world of vegetation had appeared before the sun had shone; Science has proved that a rich life of vegetation spread over the earth before the direct intervention of the sun's rays.

Moses had spoken of three principal appearances of organic life, one vegetable, two animal; the Science of our day discerns three great epochs of organic life—that of the carboniferous age, and those of the great amphibious creatures and mammals.

Moses had represented man as the latest-born of the creation; Science declares that man is the one, of all the inhabitants of the earth, who closed the series of new creations upon our globe.

But let us admit that all these coincidences of detail are only accidental, or that they are about to be overturned by some new step in advance, either in exegesis or in geology; there still remain three principal features in the Mosaic picture which will ever claim attention from all thoughtful men:—

1. The cause of all things: God.

2. The order of things: a continual progress.

3. The final object of things: man.

1. "And God said" This is the word which gives the key-note to the narrative, the burden ten times repeated, of this magnificent poem. To say is both to think and to will. In this speaking of God, there is both the legislative power of His intelligence, and the executive power of His will; this one word dispels all notion of blind matter, and of brute fatalism; it reveals an enlightened Power, an intelligent and benevolent Thought, underlying all that is.

And at the same time that this word, "And God said" appears to us as the veritable truth of things, it also reveals to us their true value and legitimate use. Beautiful and beneficent as the work may be, its real worth is not in itself; it is in the thought and in the heart of the Author to whom it owes its existence. Whenever we stop short in the work itself^ our enjoyment of it can only he superficial, and we are, through our ingratitude, on the road to an idolatry more or less gross. Our enjoyment is only pure and perfect when it results from the contact of our soul with the Author Himself. To form this bond is the true aim of Nature, as well as the proper destination of the life of man.

Behind this veil of the visible universe which dazzles me, behind these blind forces of which the play at times terror-strikes me, behind this regularity of seasons and this fixedness of laws, which almost compel me to recognise in all things only the march of a fixed Fate, this word, "And God said," unveils to me an Arm of might, an Eye which sees, a Heart full of benevolence which is seeking me, a Person Who loves me. This ray of light which, as it strikes upon my retina, paints there with a perfect accuracy, upon a surface of the size of a centime, a landscape of many miles in extent—He it is Who commanded it to shine. This atmosphere which my lungs breathe, and which is formed of two gases, either of which, by itself, would be a deadly poison to me—He it is Who commanded it to give me life. This ground upon which I walk, labour, build, plant, and under which, at a very small depth, the terrible central furnace is boiling—He it is Who makes it firm beneath my feet. These flowers and fruits which I gather in succession during the greatest part of the year, which delight me with their perfume, charm me with their taste, or heal me with their juices—He it is Who sowed their seeds for me in this fair garden of the earth. This sun which measures out for me my years, my days, and my hours; this moon which divides my years into months, and my months into weeks—His finger it is which causes them to move through the vault of the sky like the two hands on the dial of a watch. These various creatures which fill with life the waters, the air, and the land, and these domestic animals which make company for me even in my home—He it is Who has surrounded me with them, whether to stimulate my activity by their resistance and manifold antagonisms, or to redouble it by their docile and powerful co-operation. And if, finally, I myself am here as the masterwork of this creation, able to stand apart from it in thought, to rend asunder, by adoration, this chequered veil which surrounds me on all sides, and to penetrate to the heart which beats for me in a sphere at once inexpressibly exalted above me, and inexpressibly near to me; if I can greet with the title of Father, Him Who counts the 140,000 hairs of my head as well as the myriads of stars which run their course in the firmament—it is because He has designed to make me in His own image, and to set within me a ray of His own Spirit.

God has said! In these words is, for my heart as well as for my intellect, the true worth of everything, —of my own existence.

2. The second principal feature in the Mosaic record is the homage rendered to the great law of progress. It was towards the end of the middle ages that men first began to enquire into the meaning of those marine shells which they discovered upon the high grounds of the earth. Men of science started many different hypotheses on that subject. Some said they were freaks of Nature (lusûs naturæ); some saw in them reflections of the stars; some, vestiges of the deluge; others, imperfect efforts of the creative power. The idea of a creation which, having preceded man, had advanced by degrees from stage to stage, up to the crown of the whole work, did not occur to any one. And yet, there it was, laid up three thousand years back, in the Mosaic record!

And if this law of progress, already revealed by Moses, reigned with sovereign power over all the developments of that unconscious existence which we call Nature, how should it not continue to control the progress, moral and spiritual, of history? "Why should not a new series of "And God said" succeed the series to which Moses listened in his vision, and which was the spring and source of the work of the Creation? And if man does not actually perceive this by his senses, do not facts bear clear testimony to this succession of Divine commands? It is true that the creative Will has to deal in history with a new and often invincible power, that of free-will—that precious spring which it will not break, but win over and make use of. None the less surely is the end attained through long circuitous ways; and in this so different medium, progress manifests itself as well as in the midst of Nature.

3. The final term of this progress in Nature, according to Moses, is man. Man, in fact, is not an individual one amongst the terrestrial creatures; he is the very object and aim of creation itself. Now how should not a being so magnificently privileged continue to be the object of the solicitude and active care of the Creator? How should not this new series of " God said," which originates the ever- ascending movement of history, refer itself also to him?

And here a grand prospect opens before us. According to the subsequent revelations recorded in Scripture, the creative "Word of which Moses speaks is not only a spoken word but a speaking Word, Who was pleased to create for Himself an organ of speech, just such as He Himself was to God. The universe is His drama, performed for the glory of the Father; and in this drama man is the chief actor. He Himself has intervened to unite Himself with man, to gain him over to His cause, and make him a fellow-labourer in His Divine work. Man, by uniting his will with that of this Word, and by making his powers agents of the creative Will, becomes, instead of a creature, himself a creator. He shews himself already such, even here below, through the magic of the arts, but that is but the prelude to the new labours to which the Future will call him. And as the prophecy of Caiaphas realised itself in the Son of man³⁰, so will the word of the tempter, with regard to mankind; become a reality: ''Ye shall be as gods."

God said: "Let there be light," And there was light.

God said: "Let us make man in our image." And man was created.

God said: "Let eternal truth shine out in the person of man³¹." And Jesus appeared.

God will say: "Behold, I make all things new^32." And God shall be ALL IN ALL³³.

Such an end is the only one which could correspond to such a beginning, as this beginning is alone worthy of such an end.

1) Discours sur les révolutions du globe.

2) Le Progrès organe des liberaux du Jura, 15 Mars, 1872.

3) Job xxxviii. 4, 7.

4) Gen. xviii. 17.

5) Amos iii. 3, 7.

6) M. Benan.

7) Essais sur l'histoire des religions, par Max Müller, traduit par Georges Harris, 1872, p. 469.

8) Müller, p. 472, 473.

9) pp. 479, 481.

10) p. 475.

11) p. 505, (the italics are our own).

12) pp. 505, 506.

13) Exod. vi. 2, 3: "And God spake nnto Moses, and said unto him, I am the Lord. And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty (El Shaddai), but by My name JEHOVAH was I not known to them." 

14) Exod. iii. 14: "I am that I am" This is the grammatical paraphrase of the name Jehovah; this name is in the future. [See French Bible: "je serai celui que je serai."—Tr.]

15) "I am" (as a proper name) "has sent me unto you."

16) Rom. i.

17) Der Pentateuch übersetzt und erklärt, von Raphael Hirsch.

18) Exod. xx. 2.

19) Heb. viii. 5.

20) The outer court, the holy place, and the holy of holies, correspond to the earth, the heavens, and that supreme abode where God more immediately manifests His Presence.

21) Kerasin-lampe,—Der Naturforscher, 1871, No. 4.

22) Lea merveilles du monde végetal, (translation,) vol. i. p. 183.

23) pp. 163, 164.

24) K. Müller: "The creation of the first vegetable cell is the first step towards the future creation of man."

25) See Raphael Hirsch, Der Pentateuch, vol. i. p. 4.

26) Hirsch, in the work before quoted, instead of seeing in the word Adam a derivative from Adamah, 'the earth,' inverts the relation of the two words, and that for very gGod philological and logical reasons. He derives it from the word adam,—'red-coloured.'

27) Die Urwelt der Schweis.

28) 1 Pet. i. 10-12.

29) The following passage is borrowed in great measure from the admirable work of an English working-man, Hugh Miller, who became both one of the best geologists and one of the most brilliant writers of his country: The Testimony of the Rocks, pp. 187—191.

30) S. John xi. 50.

31) 2 Cor. iv. 6.

32) Rev. xxi. 5.

33) 1 Cor. xv. 28,