THE PREPARATION OF THE EARTH FOR MAn's ABODE. lOo 



Then we have the next thing represented, viz., that "the spirit 

 of God moved on the face of the waters." It is very remarkable 

 we should have tliese two distinct words, the " deep " and the 

 "waters." They are evidently used deliberately to indicate two 

 conditions. 



Then Professor Logan Lobley has told us there subsequently 

 came a period when the dry land appeared. We do not know what 

 the first continental land may have been ; bat the late Professor 

 Dawson has told usabout the Laurentian formation — the Laurentian 

 upheavals and Laurentian deposits; and then we have, following 

 the formation of land, the formation of plant life. Professor 

 Lobley told us about the cryptogamic and the phanerogamic 

 coining at the first appeai^ance of continental land, and in. that 

 chapter you have the statement made that God created green 

 things, and two classes are mentioned — herbs and the tree, " every 

 tree in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed." So that 

 the cryptogamic and phanerogamic ai-e mentioned in that chapter. 

 Then we have a statement of the reptiles following the Car- 

 boniferous period — creatures Avhich, as Professor Lobley says, 

 were as much as seventy-five feet long. 



Then next you come to the creation of the mammalia and cattle, 

 and you have exactly that same thing in the paper in our hands, 

 following, as you see, the period of the Cretaceous strata. Then 

 yon have finally the creation of man — the last of all the works of 

 God. "And then God rested from all His work which He had 

 created and made " ; and it does certainly appear that there is no 

 creative action going on at the present time, but that the 

 Almighty is " keeping His Sabbath." Whether or not that 

 creative power may be put forward again we do not know, at any 

 rate until, as we are told in the inspired record, " God will create 

 a new heaven and a new earth." It seems to me that the two 

 records fit each other as closely as hand and crlove, and it seems 

 impossible to account for the writing of this beautiful chapter, so 

 many thousands of years ago, unless we attribute to it an inspira- 

 tion which afl:ects the very words and language in which the 

 chapter is written. 



The Rev. Canon Girdlestone, M.A. — I think it is very good 

 sometimes to survey shortly that which we are dwelling upon, the 

 earth and its foundation, and I think the paper brings us to three 

 good results. First, the unity of the earth ; secondly, its progres- 



