they supersede the Bible; it is from these, and not from the Bible, that the rising generation are taught how and when God made the world. Yet, what is more fluctuating than such instructions? With all its noble advances, natural science is confessedly progressive, and therefore comparatively crude. Geology is in its infancy. How much does it know of the rapidity with which second causes accomplish their work? how much of the mechanical action of water and fire, and of their chemical effects? how much of galvanism and electricity, directed by omnipotence? how much of the general deluge? What does it know of the internal structure and organization of the earth? Not a thousandth, not a millionth part of our globe has yet been submitted to its inspection. The diameter of the earth is nearly eight thousand miles. If we are rightly informed, the deepest mine is a mine in Bohemia, of the depth of three thousand feet; and this, which is little more than half a mile, is scarcely penetrating the earth's crust. A late distinguished European geologist, remarks, "We have attempted to penetrate as far as possible beneath the surface, into the interior of the earth. But if we compare the depth to which we have actually penetrated, with the real diameter of the earth, it will be seen, that we have scarcely broken the surface, and that the scratch of a needle on the varnish of one of our terrestrial globes is

proportionally much deeper than the deepest perforations with which we have ever penetrated into the interior of the earth." And may we not ask, if a science which is thus in its infancy, shall be allowed to rob us of our confidence in the verity of the scriptural account of the creation? It has been well remarked, that "the collision is not between the Bible and nature, but between the Bible and natural philosophers."

When science is better informed, it will have fewer scruples in endorsing the Mosaic narrative. As the most learned are often said to be more deeply sensible of what is not known, than what it knows, so one of the high attainments of science is, that it is a standing comment, not only upon what it knows, but what it does not know. It is not many years ago that a distinguished astronomer affirmed that the last discovery had been made in the planetary system; and the reason he assigned for the assertion was that the relative motions of the system could be accounted for by the existence of those already discovered, and that the addition of another planet would disturb this harmony. Yet, since that period, other planets have been discovered; and what is remarkable, the last discovery was made by observing the aberration of a planet which human science had thus predicted could never occur. Human science is a changing, restless thing. It is well that it is

so; the world is the gainer by all her advances. It is one of her excellencies that she gives rise to more inquiries than she sets at rest. "In not a few of her efforts to explain inexplicable phenomena, she does, in that very explication, add to the mass of inexplicable facts." What science was even twenty years ago is not science now, but is exploded by other and later discoveries.

We demand then, is human science a safe expositor of the word of God, and may it hold a place above the settled principles of biblical exegesis? It is not denied that the physical state of our globe has undergone great changes since its creation. What those changes are, is the province of science to search out and disclose, as well as to inquire into their causes, and thus ascertain, as we before intimated, the laws by which the Creator still governs the material creation. But when it would instruct us on the great subject of creation, it is out of its province. God himself is the great teacher here. We are firm believers in the doctrine of CREATION; and we hold that doctrine to be "God's making all things out of nothing, by the word of his power, in the space of six days, and all very good." So God himself instructs us, not only in the revelation to Moses as the selected narrator, but with memorable solemnity, when he said to the nation of Israel 2500 years after the creation itself, "Six days shall thou labor and do all thy

work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shall not do any work; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is." We may not give up the Sabbath from our regard to human science. It will be time enough for science to plead the inconsistency of its discoveries with the literal truth of the Mosaic narrative, when God shall commit to it the work of creation. Creation is his work. Human science might as well teach us that God did not in a single day create the oak of the forest, because facts show that it never comes to its maturity except by the growth of years; or that he did not in a single day create the first man, because facts show that the human frame reaches its maturity only by the slow and gradual growth of thirty years; as that the successive formations of aqueous and igneous rock which existed within the earth, required greater time for their formation than the six days spoken of by Moses. It was indeed a wondrous exhibition of his power which thus called all things into being. It was the great miracle. "Power belongeth unto God." From the deep abyss he bid this wonderful creation rise, and poised it by its own weight without any other support than his own almighty and invisible hand. "He spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast."

A fourth fact connected with the subject of

which we are speaking, is, that this great work was prosecuted under the most perfect arrangement. There is no confusion in the works of God. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." What the narrator here affirms is, that the first act of creation was the formation of the primordial elements, from which the organized heavens and earth were formed. They constituted a commingled substance, made up of earth and water, light, heat, and electricity, blended in disorder, a rude and shapeless mass, an undigested, dense, and floating chaos. Darkness covered it; and "the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." This life-giving agent brooded there, and made this chaos, this vast valley, this dark ocean of floating death, the first scene of his vivifying power.

It became fitted to be the dwelling-place of man and beast, and to all the purposes of this fair creation, by being reduced to form, order, and beauty. This was effected by the creation of light, the most subtle and the most important of all material substances. It was first created after the chaos, because by his own laws of gravity and crystallization, the Creator selected it in his organization of a material world. The sun had been dark