NOMO8. 171 



was shared by more than one of the Fathers, and he 

 points out the fact that in some old editions of the 

 English Bible, which are not divided into verses, 

 there is a break at what is now the end of the second 

 verse, and that in the edition of Luther's Bible 

 which was published at Wittenburg in 1557, and 

 which is divided into verses, the figure 1 is placed 

 against what is now reckoned as the third verse of the 

 chapter. Now this, as Dr. Pusey says, " is the sort of 

 confirmation which one wished for, because, though 

 one would shrink from bending the language of God's 

 Book to any other than its obvious meaning, we 

 cannot help fearing lest we might be unconsciously 

 influenced by the floating opinions of our own day ; 

 and we therefore turn the more anxiously to those 

 who explained Holy Scripture before these theories 

 existed." The Scriptures are therefore silent, and 

 all we have to do is to ask what is the scientific 

 version of the history of the earth. 



In asking, then, what is the scientific version of 

 this history, we find some differences of opinion as 

 to the earliest passages, and wonderful 



XT Thepre- 



unammity as to the rest. .N early all are adamue cos- 

 agreed in supposing that the earth was 

 created in times immeasurably antecedent to the first 

 day of the Mosaic record. Nearly all are agreed 

 that the bed of the sea has often changed places 

 with the land, and that these mighty revolutions 

 were caused by the casual penetration of water to 

 the inflamed or inflammable interior of the earth. 



Many follow Laplace in saying that the heavenly 

 bodies were formed by the gradual cooling and con- 



