not perfectly see the harmony Io harmony with sciame nother, the opeculations of Eciantietä. Power of the Book. 125 men styled "semi-barbarous" be adorned with the accuracy and genius of modern professors. The words written by one of these men have been studied in part, and will be further investigated. As yet, nothing has been found contrary to science; where science can effect research, there has been verification, and the recesses of nature have been found to contain counterparts of many spiritual truths. In further applying accurate modern tests to the Inspired Record, which most of us love and regard as true without and beyond confirmation, bear in mind that authoritative statements about facts or phenomena can only be found perfectly to agree with science in its final results, and this agreement must in no wise be hastened. We say authoritative, because due exception has to be made for accounts which are popular, or figurative, or poetical, and not meant to assert physical law. Not only so, we must allow that the word was spoken -not to anticipate discovery, not to render experimental and inductive processes of the human mind unnecessary to the attainment of knowledge, but to set up an authoritative teaching where experiment and induction are inadequate to explain and establish the relations between God and man, and between man and his neighbour; and to erect true foundations of the body politic on an immutable, because Divine, morality; and to train the individual for his probation in time, and for his future life in eternity. If, after most careful analysis, the record of physical facts be found sometimes scientifically inaccurate, not the less. will Holy Scripture contain the Word of God. A diamond is not the less a diamond because of the rudeness of its setting, and the truths of Holy Scripture are not less Divine, because the frame-work partakes of human imperfection. If every effort fail, even then, human fallibility cannot affirm, as infallible dogma, essential contrariety: the angle of parallax, by which to measure the lights of God, may have its base in an existence which is wider than human life. * probation here in = times of trial, an to him expeisen earth. In relations to the face of six, man in not 1 all have simmed": STUDY VII. INTERPRETATION OF THE DAYS. Cogitavi dies antiquos, et annos æternos in mente habui.”—Ps. lxxviii. 5. "Les jours de la création marquent la hiérarchie des êtres et des époques successives de leur apparition sur la face du monde ; mais l'action de Dieu ne se décompose pas en époques. Elle est une puisque elle est parfaite."-EMIle Saisset. We have considered the days of creation, well knowing that simple truths are often deep. What mean these days? Are they an enumeration and a separation of actual days and nights, before the earth and sun were so conditioned, each to each, that day was possible? Or do they mean that there were births, growths, and seeming pauses, in the progress of Divine work? The latter opinion prevails with many thoughtful men. They take the outward appearance as a garment for the spiritual reality. The letter is the body, the spirit is the soul. The letter and the spirit are held together by the real meaning. Endeavour to attain that meaning, as to days, by considering The facts on which most men are agreed. I. On scientific and scriptural warrant they believe that the origin of the world is very ancient; so ancient that the beginning, in which heaven and earth were created, is taken by St. John (i. 1) to prove the co-eternity of Christ with the Father. Placing, however, the beginning of things thus early (Gen. xlix. 26; Deut. xxxiii. 15; Job xv. 7, xxxviii. 4; Ps. xc. 2; Prov. viii. 22-31; Jno. i. 1-3, xvii. 24); neither lessens the marvel nor destroys the fact of creation. 2. There is no more matter now than was originally created, nature not possessing the power, in itself, of originating matter; but cosmic processes throughout the universe, and the "fact that God is daily and hourly creating those myriads of human souls which He infuses into the bodies prepared by His providence," 1 convince many that creation was not an instantaneous, but a continuous and progressive series of marvellous contrivances. It is true that of a creatio continua, in the special sense of creation, Scripture knows nothing; nevertheless, of creation as a continuous agency of God, and specially of the Divine maintenance of the world as a creatio continua, Scripture does knows (Is. xl. 28, xlii. 7) ; and if we regard the human spiritual nature as so planned that, associated with matter, it is able to propagate itself out of itself, this procreative process can only be explained by the co-operation of God's creative power, and the continuous process is not less divine than the growth of a world in an hour. 3. Man has existed on the earth more than six thousand years. His remains and implements are found in places, and side by side with such relics of plants and animals, as leave little or no doubt of a higher antiquity. The cave deposits, peat and shell mounds, lake dwellings, though not as yet giving any reliable data for estimating the precise age, may be fairly taken as proof that man contended with the mammoth. The genealogies of Christ, commonly and erroneously taken to show the age of man, are meant to indicate the line and families of Messianic descent; not always by actual procreation, but occasionally by adoption, or other succession. Hilary says, "There are four genealogies of Christ in the four gospels: 1st, in St. Matthew, from Abraham; 2d, in St. Mark, from God the Holy Ghost; 3d, in St. Luke, from Adam; 4th, in St. John, from Eternity." These show, not the age of the world, but that Jesus is the seed of the woman, the second Adam, the father of a new and spiritual race. 4. The world is continually though slowly changing; new animals and plants arising with varied modifications, or becoming extinct, by the slow successive determinate action of local causes; of which the chief is the gradual lowering or raising of temperature. Iceland, a thousand years ago, according to Icelandic histories, was covered with forests of birch and fir; and at that time Greenland was fertile in the 1 "Daniel the Prophet," Intr., p. xxii.: Dr Pusey. South. Our own country has sunk many times beneath the sea, and again been raised. 1 Men generally agreeing as to the four classes of facts which we have enumerated; 1st, the antiquity of the earth; 2d, its progressive formation; 3d, earlier occupation by mankind than is given by the common date; 4th, the orderly continuous and progressive operation of nature; are met by assertions of this kind. "It is not likely that God should have inspired Moses to write a history of creation to be believed by all people, in language the meaning of which it were hard to find, and yet harder to believe." Timid souls, rendered more timid by the reckless unbelief of godless men, cling almost superstitiously to the old ways of explanation, and say,-"There is indeed a measure of difficulty, and a kind of unnaturalness, in giving a different sense to the words than that which has been generally accepted; and which, unless required by science, no one would think of giving." Students of science, provoked by this obstructiveness of ignorance and of fear, reply with some scorn,-"We know, even as a matter of common sense, that God did not make the world in six days, and no man of science believes that He did. Cannot you, Divines, while contenting our emotions, satisfy also our intelligence?" They have been answered by an explanation of the manner in which it is conceived the world was created in six days. That heaven and earth were created in the beginning; and that the six days' work was the restoration rather than the creation of the earth. In that beginning, angels were made, in some way or other connected with the earth; animals and plants, in great variety and beauty, lived, passed away, and were succeeded by others. It was a golden age: no sin, no sorrow, everything good and very beautiful. In process of time, some of the angels sinned, and cast the earth into chaotic confusion. Then, Divine power reformed the world, as we now see it, with man as chief; who, after due probation, was to occupy those places in heaven from which the evil angels had fallen. In commemoration of the work, and as a measure of the days, Holy Sabbath was instituted. In that primitive period are to be found all those crises and 1 Suarez: "Tractatus De Opere Sex Dierum," Lib. I., Cap. xi. 42. Remonstrance of the Thoughtful. 129 periods required by geologists; and to those ancient ages must be attributed those spectres—the fossils and animals of astonishing form, which are unfolded in the rocky pages of the earth as a revelation of the mysteries of former existence. This statement about angels, happy eras, and chaotic relapse, does not content thoughtful men, who require a substratum of fact on which their intelligence may faithfully erect a house of piety. They reply "There is no great break of continuity, or universal chasm, separating the former good time from the later evil time; go back far as we may, dig deep as we can, death reigned in the world even as now. The stony leaves of ancient history bear no record of angelic life, the legend is alway of the destroyer and of the destroyed. On these leaves are impressed and printed likenesses and relics of vegetable, fish, reptile, bird, mammal, and human organisms. Life following life, with hundreds and thousands of feet of slowly deposited rock intervening; but no record of peace, no footprints of angel. There are different ages of life, and various stages of growth; some are young, others old. Their history states that they devoured their fellows, and propagated their kind. Worn teeth and aged structure prove a long duration of individual existence, and many relics are token of continuance as to species. Would you have us believe that within six days the firmament was spread out, land raised from the sea, and dried; that trees grew up bearing on their bark, and in the rings of their structure, record of centuries; that river channels were worn and excavated through thousands of feet of solid rock, leaving in the different stages of depth countless generations of creatures which grew, performed all the natural functions, and at length died of full age? Are all these marks of progress, and tokens of age, mere freaks of construction? did vegetables grow up instantaneously for full grown animals to feed on; and fruit, already ripe on the trees, delight the sight and taste of man; and, at the latter end of the sixth day, was Eden planted, were beasts named, did Adam sleep, and was Eve formed? Are we as geologists, naturalists, farmers, or men of general observation, to credit all this? That old I |