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laws deduced by science after experiencing the vanity of man's imaginings and turning to God's works as a sure fountain of knowledge, is certainly remarkable as a specimen of learning; and it abounds on other pages. We hardly know to what to refer the blindness that cannot see the wide gulf between "vortices" and "gravities."

On p. 170, again, he remarks on the "ever-increasing darkness of science," "unaided by any higher beams," not aware that science is itself an emanation from the Source of light. On page 110, he says well of the Book of God, though in the same perverse tone about science: "This grand Old Book of God still stands, and will continue to stand, though science and philosophy are ever changing their countenances and passing away."

Once more, we quote a forcible illustration, which presents his views in few words: "We may smile," he says, "at the old quackish story of the earth's standing on the back of the elephant, and the elephant standing on the head of a tortoise, etc.; but in our gravities, our magnetisms, our series of fluids, ever requiring other fluids to explain their motions, we have only introduced a new set of modern equivalents."

There is much more of the same sort. At first, this slashing away at science excited amusement, reminding us of the contest between Sancho and the windmill: but then, pain, that an infidel philosophy should have emanated from such a source. This placing in antagonism God's word and his works, or the results of the study of his works, is only fitted to make the young scout the former; for they know the latter has its great truths, having the best of all evidence.

Had the author simply condemned the false that is mixed with science, or the atheism that substitutes force or nature for God, it would have been well. But notwithstanding an occasional admission of good accomplished, he reprobates science in its foundation and essence, and also all who dare to believe, very much, indeed, in the spirit of the Cardinals who judged Galileo.

But science is still alive; her progress is sure; and in her

readings of God's works, His word is daily finding support, fuller elucidation, and increasing sublimity.

In this attack upon science, which is a sort of by-play quite unessential to the object of the work, geology of course gets double share. And, strange to say, the author is at the same time sustaining essentially the conclusions of geologists. He adopts and proves, on exegetical grounds, that the days of Genesis were long periods of time, and speaks quite freely of the æons and æons, saying that the "feeling of the vast, the indefinite, the unmeasured, once received into the soul [in the opening period], is carried naturally through all the other periods" (p. 96); and, at first, we gathered that he and geologists were agreed. But when all seemed to be flowing on smoothly, suddenly the geologist gets an unmannerly rap for taking too much time. It would seem to be a trivial fault in a case where all is acknowledged to be so "indefinite," and where the periods are periods in the work of a Being who has existed from eternity; and especially since, if we go back even "billions of years" for each day, we get no nearer to the beginning of that eternity. But still it is not pardoned. The author thinks it gives too much time to the age of "Fungi and sea-weeds;" indeed, he says "it is very strange that fungi, at least some fungi, should exist at all" (p. 172). He is not aware that geology accords somewhat with his notion; for it finds no Fungi whatever until the later periods of the globe. He does not anywhere mention the exact length of time which, consistently with divine wisdom, the periods could have occupied. But, although objecting so decidedly to a long age of Fungi, he thinks that a state of "huge nebulosity," "with an absence of solidity and cohesion," might have been continued "for millions and millions of years" (p. 60). Again (p. 398), he remarks, with some temper (alluding to geologists and the Bible), as follows: "Neither does the Bible mean what you, in your little science and still less Biblical learning, would ascribe to it. Your stale caricatures belong neither to its prose nor its poetry: they are alike alien to its letter and its spirit."

The author exhibits a constant fear lest geology should

teach something, and that thereby a belief, based on truth from such a source (he has it—"on Buckland, Lyell, or Hugh Miller"), should be substituted for a belief grounded on the Scriptures, which would be, he says, "a wretched self-deception; "— lamentable, indeed, if we should admit of help from God's works in understanding His writings!

In another place, he says of geology (p. 98): "Infidel as her spirit often is," she is "driven, more and more, to acknowledge the mixture of the natural and supernatural in the production of the earth:" very much, we think, as a current is driven by the boat it carries; for geology first proved that "the natural" was involved in creation, and, with a rare exception, has always admitted the supernatural; and she has finally drawn off exegesis so completely into the same course that some, like Prof. Lewis, as they are hurried on by the current, exclaim in great glee over their wonderful progress, and, in remarkable self-complacency, look down frowning upon the current that they imagine is trying to keep up with them.

As to infidel geology-the science which, almost alone, put down the pantheistic "Vestiges of Creation" and its "development theory," was geology. Not a geologist, in his writings, has supported the work; and the facts proving successive creations, in past time, instead of evolutions of species from species, have been uniformly regarded as conclusive against that theory. Yet our author admits that "a development theory, in the sense of species from species, may be as pious as any other," and may, possibly, have been true. He needs the bit of science to curb his fancy.

The work is remarkable for the confident air with which it brings forward principles that cautious science is slow to utter, thus dictating to nature in the true style of the old philosophy, while, at the same time, not adopting, or "caring" to recognize, any results established by geology or the other sciences. But it is useless to enter into further details.

We come now to the special subject of the work, "the six days of creation, or a Scriptural cosmology." We will first give briefly the general course of doctrine in the volume.

The six days are six periods, "indefinite, vast;" still, he says, not so long as "very flippantly and very ignorantly" asserted by geologists.

Creation, in the very beginning of beginnings, was a creation out of nothing. But Moses probably did not mean a real bona fide beginning either in the first or second verse of Genesis. The words of our author are (p. 45): "whatever may be believed, in respect to this first origination of matter, whether of the earth or of all worlds, there is good reason for doubting whether it is actually meant to be set forth either in the beginning or in any other part of this account." He says of the primal or originating force, in, or constituting, nature, that it is not "the divine power continually energizing in space;" but that "it is a real entity distinct from God, which God has originated, and to which he has given an immanent existence of its own in space and time." This is "the great ultimate fact of facts in the physical world." (p. 47).

The formless and void earth was probably a "huge nebulosity," as just now cited. But "how it came in such a condition, no one can say; whether it was the result of a progress or a deterioration, we have no means of knowing, either from reason or revelation." The creation of Genesis, was no creation, even ab initio, but rather a fashioning in or upon matter previously existing, "a separating, a dividing, a clearing up, a bringing into order, an arranging of outward relations." The original matter may have had only "the dead force of cohesion;" but at "the beginning" to which Moses refers, there was added "an inward power, a separating, arranging, selecting, organic power," and this was "the beginning of life, although, as yet, exhibited only in the chemical aspect, rather than the higher modes in which it afterwards energized” (p. 65).

The first effect of the new life was the elimination of light" (p. 65). And as light succeeded to darkness, a finished work to time when the work was not begun, so by a natural figure, morning succeeded to evening, or light to night, "boker" to "ereb." Thus the first day passed.

Creation thus begun, was throughout, a growth, a generation, as Genesis, in Greek signifies. Accordingly (p. 114), "there are the days or periods of quickening, and then, supervening on them, a season or seasons of repose, in which physical law, the physical law both of the material and the sentient nature, carries on the processes thus begun, or thus renewed. As the fœtus grows in this hidden world, which the Psalmist compares to the lowest parts of the earth, there is doubtless a most important part performed by nature." The author, seeing himself on the verge of an abyss then adds: "yet if we would avoid the grossest materialism, we must conclude that there are some things, even in this seemingly natural process, which nature never could have done, -something to which all her chemistry and all her laws of physical life, could never have given the beginning of exist ence."

The second day was the "evolving from the yet semichaotic world, that we now call the atmosphere" (p. 104); "the origination and completion of that apparatus of physical law, or that physical state of things, be it scientifically whatever it may- for we do not yet know in all respects what it is by which were produced the combined appearances of the clouds, the blue heavens, together with other outward revealing phenomena connected with, and representative of, such interior causality." The author in this connection afterwards apologizes for his indefiniteness by a fling at unfortunate science, observing (p. 105), that "the more scientific our statements, the more abstract and conceptionless are they, etc."

On the third day, dry land appears coming up out of the waters through natural causes. The consideration of the creation of vegetation is passed over to the fifth day.

On the fourth day, the sun, moon and stars, long before created, became visible to the earth, or "made their APPEARANCE in the firmament." The sun was perhaps now first brought into the same planetary system with the earth; or else a veil was removed; or it then first became luminous; or the matter of the sun did not before exist; or in some way, the sun became visible.

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