36 CONSISTENCY OF GEOLOGICAL 



tained, is in perfect accordance with the highly valuable 

 opinion of Dr. Chalmers, recorded in the following passages 

 of his Evidence of the Christian Revelation, chap. vii. : — 

 " Does Moses ever say, that when God created the heavens 

 and the earth, he did nnore, at the time alluded to, than trans- 

 form them out of previously existing materials? Or does he 

 ever say that there was not an interval of many ages 

 between the first act of creation described in the first verse 

 of the book of Genesis, and said to have been performed at 

 the beginning, and those more detailed operations, the 

 account of which commences at the second verse, and which 

 are described to us as having been performed in so many 

 days ? Or, finally, does he ever make us to understand that 

 the genealogies of man went any farther than to fix the 

 antiquity of the species, and, of consequence, that they left 

 ihe antiquity of the globe a free subject for the speculation 

 of philosophers ?" 



It has loner been matter of discussion amonar learned theo- 

 iogians, whether the first verse of Genesis should be con- 

 sidered prospectively, as containing a summary announce- 

 ment of that new creation, the details of which follow in the 

 record of the operations of the six successive days : or as 

 -an abstract statement that the heaven and earth were made 

 by God, without limiting the period when that creative agen- 

 cy was exerted. The latter of these opinions is in perfect 

 harmony with the discoveries of Geology. 



The Mosaic narrative commences with a declaration 

 that " In the beginning God created the heaven and the 

 earth." These first few words of Genesis may be fairly 

 appealed to by the geologist, as containing a brief statement 

 of the creation of the material elements, at a time distinctly 

 preceding the operations of the first day : it is no where 

 affirmed that God created the heaven and the earth in the 

 first day, but in the beginning ; this beginning may have 

 been an epoch at an unmeasured distance, followed by 

 periods of undefined duration, during which all the physical 

 ■operations disclosed by Geology were going on^ 



