324 OBSERVATIONS ON SHARON TURNER S SACRED HISTORY. 



pists now agree to refer the deposition of the secondary and tertiary 

 strata. These strata exhibit a repeated destruction of existing 

 species, followed by a creation of new ones, and the New Red Sand- 

 stone supplies an instance of a large superficial area, if not the 

 whole earth, after teeming with animal and vegetable products, 

 becoming " void" during a considerable period. There is nothing 

 therefore contrary to analogy in supposing the Mosaic Creation, — 

 the only one in which man existed, and the only one therefore 

 which Moses has described, — to have been one of these successive 

 creations, and the last which has hitherto taken place. On this 

 supposition, the period when Moses states the earth to have been 

 " without form and void" would be that in which the creatures of 

 the previous formation had been wholly or in great measure 

 destroyed, and before the reissuing of the creative mandate. 



There is an objection which may be urged against this theory, 

 that the sun, which Moses relates to have been created on the 

 fourth day, was necessary to the production of those animals and 

 vegetables whose remains are found in our strata. But as in 

 several passages of Scripture the apparent motion of the sun 

 is described as the real one, so in this place we are inclined 

 to think that what Moses relates as the actual creation of the 

 heavenly bodies was in fact only their apparent creation, that 

 is, their being made visible to this earth by the gradual clearing of 

 the atmosphere. Mr. Turner himself is of opinion that it was but 

 the solar system which was created on the fourth day, and that the 

 fixed stars were pre-existing. But still there seems a great want 

 of analogy in supposing that the sun, the moon, the planets, and 

 their satellites, all which, except the two former, appear to exist 

 for their own sakes alone, and not for ours, were all created in one 

 day as adjuncts to our earth, while the latter existed in dark and 

 useless solitude for ages before. It would seem far more probable 

 that the whole of the solar system, each part of which stands in 

 certain and definite relations to the rest, was of contemporaneous 

 creation. And it is very conceivable that such a destruction 

 of created nature as we suppose to have rendered the earth without 

 form and void immediately before the Mosaic creation, was attend- 

 ed by a turbid atmosphere of sufficient density to produce total 

 darkness. The first step towards a renewal of creation was 

 to dispel this darkness by causing the mist gradually to clear 

 away. The alternations of day and night would thus be rendered 

 perceptible, though the mist was as yet far too dense to expose to 

 view the sun which caused those alternations. On the second day 

 we may suppose that the misty clouds rose from the earth and 

 reached that elevation which they commonly occupy in the atmos- 

 phere, or, as the translators of Genesis call it, the firmament. By 

 the fourth day the clouds were so far broken and dispersed as to 

 render visible the heavenly bodies, both those of the solar system 

 and the fixed stars, which are hence said to have been created on 

 that day. We thus have an explanation of the difficulty noticed by 

 Mr. Turner, p. 81, of light having existed per se three days before 



