32 CONSISTENCY OF GEOLOGICAL 



spoken of only according to their relative importance to our 

 earth, and to mankind, and without any regard to their real 

 importance in the boundless universe. It seems impossible 

 to include the fixed stars among those bodies which are said 

 (Gen. i. v. 17,) to have been set in the firmament of the hea- 

 ven to give light upon the earth ; since without the aid of 

 telescopes, by far the greater number of them are invisible. 

 The same principle seems to pervade the description of 

 creation which concerns our planet : the creation of its com- 

 ponent matter having been announced in the first Averse, the 

 phenomena of Geology, like those of astronomy, are passed 

 over in silence, and the narrative proceeds at once to details 

 of the actual creation which have more immediate reference 

 to man.* 



* The following observations by Bishop Gleig (though, at the time of 

 writing them, he was not entirely convinced of the reality of facts announced 

 l>y geological discoveries) show his opinion of the facility of so interpreting 

 the Mosaic account of creation, as to admit of an indefinite lapse of time 

 prior to tlie existence of the human race. 



" I am indeed strongly inclined to believe that the matter of the corpo- 

 real universe was all created at once, though different portions of it may 

 have been reduced to form at very different periods ; when the universe 

 was created, or how long the solar system remained in a chaotic state are 

 vain inquiries, to which no answer can be given. Moses records the his- 

 tory of the earth only in its present state ; he affirms, indeed, that it was 

 created, and that it was without form and void, when the spirit of God 

 began to move on the surface of the fluid mass; but, he does not say 

 how long that mass had been in the state of chaos, or whether it was, or 

 was not the wreck of some former system, which had been inhabited by 

 living creatures of different kinds from those which occupy the present. 

 I say this, not to meet the objection which has sometimes been urged 

 against the Mosaic cosmogony, from its representing the works of crea- 

 tion as being no more than six or seven thousand years old, for Moses 

 gives no such representation of the age of those works. However dis- 

 tant the period may be, and it is probably very distant, when God created 

 the heavens and the earth: there has been a time when it was not dis- 

 tant one year, one day, or one hour. Those, therefore, who contend 

 that the glory of the Almighty God manifested in his works, cannot be 

 limited to the short period of six or seven thousand years, are not aware 

 that the same objection may be made to the longest period which can 



