306 PROCEEDINGS OP PROVINCIAL SOCIETIES. 



to appear till the fourth day if the earth had been for ages covered 

 with vegetation, which, according to this theory, it must have been, 

 the plants having been made on the third day. In the opinion of 

 the lecturer, geological evidence drives us to the conclusion that 

 former systems did exist prior to the biblical chronology, and that 

 this view is in accordance with, rather than repugnant to, the Mo- 

 saic narrative. Moses only records the present condition of the earth, 

 and whether it was formed from the wreck of former systems in- 

 habited by animals is left entirely an open question. About six 

 thousand years have elapsed since light was commanded to descend, 

 at which period the Mosaic chronology, and consequently our world, 

 commenced ; but is there no intimation given that a material sub- 

 stance was formed at a far prior date. The lecturer remarks, " The 

 book of Genesis opens thus : " In the beginning God created the 

 heaven and the earth." It is worthy of remark that the Gospel of St. 

 John opens in language strikingly similar, *' In the beginning was 

 the word." If we place, in any degree, a similar interpretation 

 upon similar words, we are here afforded some clue — a clue, indeed, 

 which, while it may direct, at the same time must overwhelm the 

 mind with its immensity ; for it places the first creation of the hea- 

 vens and the earth in the deepest recess of time, subsequent only to 

 the one Eternal, * by whom all things were made.' " The lecturer 

 then proceeds to examine closely the two first verses of Genesis, ac- 

 knowledging that a part of the following argument is taken from 

 a note in Dr. Buckland's Bridgewater treatise. "The point upon 

 which the interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis appears, in 

 the opinion of many persons, to turn, is this, whether the two first 

 verses are merely a summary statement of what is related afterwards 

 in detail, in the creation which took place in the six days ; or whe- 

 ther they contain in themselves an act of creation prior to, and dis- 

 tinct from, what follows. The latter seems to be decidedly the cor- 

 rect opinion, and for these reasons: There is, in the first place, no 

 other account of the creation of the earth, except in the first verse ; 

 in the next place, the second verse describes the state of the earth 

 at some period after it was created, and before light was commanded 

 to descend upon it. Some persons hold that the act of creation re- 

 corded in the first verse constitutes a portion of the work of the first 

 day, but reflection leads to a different conclusion ; for you will ob- 

 serve that each separate day's creation commences with the words 

 ' And God said ;' and therefore the very form of the narrative seems 

 to imply that when the creation of the first day began these words 

 were first used — i. e., with the creation of light in verse the third. 

 Accordingly, in some old editions of The Bible, where there is no 

 division into verses, you actually find a break at the end of what is 

 now the second verse ; and in Luther's Bible you have, in addition, 

 the figure 1 placed immediately before what is, at present, the third 

 verse, as being the beginning of the account of the creation of the 

 first day. Of the fathers, Augustine, Theodocet, and others, have 

 confirmed this view by their testimony ; indeed, I could produce the 



