DISCOVERIES WITH SACRED HISTORY. 27 



The first verse of Genesis, therefore, seems expHcitly to 

 assert the creation of the Universe; " the heaven," including 

 the sidereal systems ;* " and the earth," more especially 

 specifying our own planet, as the subsequent scene of the 

 operations of the six days about to be described : no infor- 

 mation is given as to events which may have occurred upon 

 this earth, unconnected with the history of man, between 

 the creation of its component matter recorded in the first 

 verse, and the era at which its history is resumed in the 

 second verse ; nor is any limit fixed to the time during 

 which these intermediate events may have been going on : 

 millions of millions of years may have occupied the indefi- 

 nite interval, between the beginning in which God created 

 the heaven and the earth, and the evening or commencement 

 of the first day of the Mosaic narrative.f 



* Tlic Hebrew plural word, shamaim, Gen. i. 1, translated heaven, 

 means ctymologically, the higher regions, all that seems above the earth: 

 as we say, God above, God on high, God in heaven; meaning thereby to 

 express the presence of the Deity in space distinct from this earth. — 

 E. B. Pusey. 



t r have mucli satisfaction in subjoining the following note by m}' 

 friend, the Regius Professor of Hebrew in Oxford, as it enables me to 

 advance tiie very important sanction of Hebrew criticism, in support of 

 the interpretations, by which we may reconcile the apparent difficulties 

 arising from geological phenomena with the literal interpretation of the 

 first chapter of Genesis. — "Two opposite errors have, I think, been com- 

 mitted by critics, with regard to tlie meaning of the wrod bara, created ; 

 the one, by those who asserted that it 7nust m itself signify " created out 

 of nothing;" tlie other, by tliose who endeavoured by aid of etymology, 

 to show that it 7}iust in itself signify " formation out of existing mat- 

 ter." In fact, neither is the case; nor am I aware of any language in 

 which there is a word signifying necessarily " created out of nothing ;' 

 as of course, on the other hand, no word, when used of the agency of God 

 would, in itself, imply the previous existence of matter. Thus the 

 English word, create, by which baia is translated, expresses that the 

 thing created received its existence from God, without in itself implying 

 whether God called that thing into existence out of nothing, or no; for our 

 very addition of the words " out of nothing," shows that the word creation 

 has not, in itself, that force : nor indeed, when we speak of ourselves as 



