8 Inlroduction. 



thousand years, at the commencement of which they choose to 

 suppose the heavens and the earth were first created. These 

 words, then, cannot mean the beginning of eternity, which has 

 no beginning, nor are they placed there to assert that creation 

 had a beginning, which would be superfluous, since we cannot 

 conceive of an act without a beginning. Without reference, 

 then, to any time whatever, we must regard it as a declara- 

 tion, that the heavens and the earth were created, and by 

 God, leaving room for no inference that they existed without 

 a maker. 



The next verse is still more explicit — " and the earth was 

 without form and void." Here is a declaration that the earth 

 was ; that its creation had been effected, antecedently to that 

 period of time usually called the six days of creation. Such we 

 may suppose to have been the geological state of the earth, void 

 of all living forms, at the period immediately preceding the 

 establishment of the present order of nature, and which is stated 

 to have been effected in the distribution of the six days' work men- 

 tioned in Genesis. Now we find no allusion in the Bible to the 

 geological periods which preceded the restoration of the surface, 

 or to the mineral and organic evidences which v^^e now find, un- 

 der such various circumstances, in the crust of the earth, and 

 many of which lie at vast depths from the present surface. The 

 inspired historian, had he been competent to the disclosure, 

 would probably have deemed it foreign to the moral purpose he 

 had in view, and would have preferred leaving such discoveries 

 to the restless inquiries of man, always seeking to enlarge the 

 boundaries of knowledge, and destined to construct, out of geo- 

 logical phenomena, one of the strongest bulwarks of natural 

 theology. 



It is evident, that it was not a principal object in the narrative 

 of the Jewish cosmogony, to make such allusions, or to treat the 

 physical subjects spoken of with any particular accuracy. The 

 evenings and the mornings of the first, second, and third days are 

 enumerated, before the creation of the sun is mentioned ; and 

 yet exaiing and morning can correspond to no portions of time, 

 save those fixed by the setting and rising of the sun. It is on the 

 fourth day only, the creation of the sun is mentioned. From these 

 considerations, it may be reasonably maintained, that the ac- 

 count of the creation, in Genesis, concerns only the present order 



