30 C0NSI5TEXCY OF GEOLOGICAL 



creation announced in the first verse, and as the commence- 

 ment of the first of the six succeeding days, in which the earth 

 was to be placed in a condition, and peopled in a manner fit 

 for the reception of mankind. We have in this second verse, 

 a distinct mention of earth and waters, as already existing, 

 and involved in darkness ; their condition also is described 

 as a state of confusion and emptiness, {tohu bohu,) words 

 which are usually interpreted by the vague and indefinite 

 Greek term " chaos," and which may be geologically con- 

 sidered as designating the wreck and ruins of a former 

 world. At this intermediate point of time, the preceding 

 undefined geological periods had terminated, a new series 

 of events commenced, and the work of the first morning of 

 this new creation was the caUinsr forth of li^ht from a tem- 

 porary darkness, which had overspread the ruins of the 

 ancient earth.* 



the figure 1 placed against the third verse, as being the beginning of the 

 account of the creation on the first day. 



This then is just the sort of confirmation which one wished for, because, 

 though one would sljrink from the impiety of bending the language of 

 (too's boolf, to any other than its obvious meaning, we cannot help fear- 

 ing lest we might be unconsciously influenced by the floating opinions 

 of our own day, and therefore turn the more anxiously to those who ex- 

 plained Hoi}' Scriptures before these theories existed. You must allow 

 me to add that 1 would not define farther. We knovr nothing of creation, 

 nothing of ultimate causes, nothing of space, except what is bounded b}' 

 actual existing bodies, notliing of time, but what is limited by the revolu- 

 tion of those bodies. I should be very sorry to appear to dogmatize upon 

 that, of v.'hich it requires very little reflection, or reverence, to confess that 

 wc are necessarily ignorant. " Hardly do we guess aright of things that 

 are upon the earth, and with labour do wc find the things that are before 

 us; but the things that are in heaven who hath searched out?" — Wisdom, 

 ix. 16.— E. C, Pusey. 



* I learn from Professor Puscy that the words " let there be light,''* yehi 

 or. Gen. i. 3, b}' no means necessarily imply any more than tiic English 

 words by which they are translated, that light had never existed before. 

 They may speak only of the substitution of light for darkness upon the 

 surface of this, our planet : whether light had existed before in other 



