Mineral and Mosaical Geologies. 117 



the solid parts, which were to be deepened, in order to form 

 the bed of the sea, into which the waters were now to be col- 

 iected. " The soUd ' framework or skeleton of the globe' was 

 therefore burst, fractured, and subverted, in all those places 

 where depression was to produce the profundity ; and it carried 

 down with it, in apparent confusion, vast and extensive portions 

 of the materials which had been regularly deposited or com- 

 pacted upon it, leaving other portions partially dislocated and 

 variously distorted from their primitive positions. So that the 

 order of the materials of the globe, which, in the reserved, 

 unaltered, and exposed portion, retained their first positions 

 and arrangement, was broken, displaced, and apparently con- 

 founded in the other portion, which was to receive within it 

 the accumulated waters." 



On the same day, the newly-exposed portion was, by the 

 immediate creative act of God, covered with the maturity of 

 vegetation — " the herb yielding seed, and the tree yielding fruit," 

 each after its kind, in complete and instantaneous perfection. 

 On the fourth day, the clouds were dispelled and the sun be- 

 came visible in the heavens, " in the full manifestation of its 

 effulgence." The moon also became visible on this day, that 

 is, on the third evening of the earth's revolution, according to 

 common computation, which answers to the fourth evening of 

 the Mosaical day, or Nycthemeron. " Thus the Creator re- 

 served the exposure of his heavenly calendar, for the day when 

 the planet which, by his own laws, was to rule the night, had 

 acquired by those same laws the position which Jirst enabled it 

 to display its domination." Whence we infer, that at the mo- 

 ment of their creation on the first day, the sun and moon " were 

 in that particular relation to the earth, which astronomy calls 

 inferior conjunction, and that in its diurnal revolution they first 

 acquired, by their separation, that relative aspect which quali- 

 fied them to be manifested together, as the two great indices of 

 annual and menstrual time, but for which manifestation, boih 

 would not have been prepared on an earlier day." Thus the 

 first day of creation was the first day of the first solar yearj 

 and the first day of the first lutiar mouth ; and, as we learn 

 afterwards, by the sanctification of the seventh day, the first 

 day of the first week ; and '' it is sufficiently manifest, from the 

 concurring authorities of learning and philosophy, that the solar 

 light which, upon the fourth day of creation, was transmitted 

 immediately and optically from the solar orb, was the same 

 light that, during the three preceding days, had been transmit- 

 ted through a nebulous medium, interposed between it and thd 

 earth." 



But we must forbear to travel thus, step by step, -with our 

 author ; and, painful as the exertion is to quit even for a short 

 time so delightful a companion, we must leave him to comment 

 I 2 



