6. The intkoduction oi thf, highest class of vep.
other vertebrates for a qual- ity prophetic of a high moral purpose, that of suckling their voung.
T. The introduction of MAN — the first being of moral and intellectual qualities, and one in whom the unity. of na- ture has its full expression.
beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after, their kind, and everything that ereepeth upon the earth after his kind ; and God saw that it
was good \'er. ?4-'25.
And God said. Let us make man in our image, after our likeness ; and let them have dominion over the fisli of tlie sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over ev- ery creeping thing that ereep- eth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, ill the image of God created he him ; male and female created he them. . . . And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the eveninri and the morn- inq nere the sixth dav. — Ver. 26-31.
Now, however probable these stages of creative prog- ress may be as an exposition of science^ yet we find the following (among other) discrepancies in them when compared with the Biblical text, which to our mind show their utter incompatibility, if ixtknded a.s an
ACCOUNT OF THE SAME SERIES OF EVENTS, and which
would hopelesslj^ entangle the philologist and exposi- tor in an)' careful and judicious comparison of the geo- logical details with the language of the sacred writer.
(1.) It is not clear how light would necessarily be the first result of molecular activity in a gaseous fluid ; the mass, we should suppose, would have already been in an incandescent state. Nor would such "cosmical light" (whatever that phrase may mean) have been suliject to tlie elib and flow constituting the alternations of " day and night," or " evening and morning." In- deed, the phraseology of Moses reveals to us at the outset a turbulent surface rather than a homogeneous but quiescent mass of igneous vapor as the primeval chaos.
(•2.) "Waters" is certainly a very inappropriate temi for a fieiy nebular substance in whatever stage of flu- idity ; and the division of the supra from the infra- firmamental liciuid is a strange description of the dis- integration of melted spheres from each other, wheth- er still vaporized or cooled to semi-solidity.
(3.) The picture of the chaotic floods retiring to their proper beds bears very little resemblance to the crys- tallization of the azoic rocks, or the hardening of the metamorphic basis of the cartii's cust, and but slight- Iv more to the conden.'^ation of steam and other vola- tilized matter by a radiation of heat. Besides, as ge- ologj' itself shows, the present configin-ation of land and water, plain and mountain chain, river and desert, has been the eftect of innumerable changes, elevations, and subsidences at vastly different periods scattered throughout the pre-Adamic history of the globe.
(4.) On the third day life was not merely "intro- duced under its simplest forms," but there were cre- ated, besides "grass" and "herb j'ielding seed," also the fully developed "fruit-tree, whose seed is in it- self;" whereas geology, instead of exhibiting in the lowest stratified rocks any of these higher forms of vegetation, leaves but the bare presumption (for the author is only able to state, page 129, that "sea-weeds or f/tyrt' are the earliest of the glolie, prolahh/ preceding animal life") of the existence of any plants whatever in that age. The fourth day, which was devoted to the production or manifestation of the heavenly lumi- naricB, has, it will be observed, nothing corresponding to it in the geological cycles. A notable chasm !
(5.) The "four grand types of the animal kingdom (radiate, mollusk, articulate, and vertebrate)," how- ever, are not to be found in the Mosaic statement, which refers only to marine creatures and (aquatic) birds as belonging to the fifth "phase of progress" (day), for the reason obviously that the soil was still too humid for land animals, such as geology, never-
GEOLOGY
806:
GEOLOGY
theless, exhibits in company with the finnj' and feath- ered tribes indiscriniinateiy.
(6.) If the rendering "whales" be allowable in ver. 21, Moses has already anticipated the lactiferous ani- mals on the preceding " day ;" and, at any rate, some of the lower orders of vertebrates, if not actual reptiles (for the author's gloss of "prowling" for "creeping" things is an unheard-of interpretation), are here first introduced in connection with their terrene associates.
(7.) In the Mosaic account man is not assigned to a separate sera from the quadrupeds, although he is mentioned last. The planting of Eden and the forma- tion of Eve likewise must have taken place on the same sixth day.
In short, striking as are the general features of re- semblance between the above geological and Mosaic schemes of creation, especially in the idea of syste- matic progression manifest in both, yet, when closely examined, in no instance are the epochs found to tally in particulars. It is only by a most violent distortion of facts on the one side, or of language on the other, that tlie two can be assimilated in detail. We prefer, therefore, to adhere to the older explanation, wliich finds a silent place for the records of geolog}' in the first and second verses of Genesis, and refers the narra- tive of Moses to a subsequent creation of the present order of terrestrial things in six literal days. Nor are we deterred by the supposed " belittling conception of a Deity working like a day-laborer by earth-days of twenty-four hours," since the Almighty has grounded upon ^J^ecisely this fact the institution of the Sabl)ath for man during all the weeks of time. See Cosjiog-