84 The Testimony of the Rocks. 



best popular smximaiy of that theory of day-periods whicli is 

 likely now to be the currently received mode of reconciling Scrip. 

 ture with geology. In the present work this lecture is followed 

 up by anolher view, recently added to the former, and though 

 in a somewhat different aspect, long familiar to the minds 

 of expositors, that of the optical representation of creation to 

 Moses, in a series of days representative of periods. As this is 

 a comparatively unfamiliar view, we give the author's closing; 

 summary. 



"Such, a description of the creative vision of Moses as the one 

 given by Milton of that vision of the future, which he represents 

 as conjured up before Adam by the archangel, would be a task ra- 

 ther for the scientific poet than for the mere practical geologist or 

 sober theologian. Let us suppose that it took place far from man 

 in an untrodden recess of the Midian desert, ere yet the vision of 

 the burning bush had been vouchsafed ; and that, as in the vision 

 of St. John in Patmos, voices were mingled with scenes, and the 

 ear as certainly addressed as the eye. A "great daikness" .first 

 falls upon the prophet, like that which in an earlier age fell upon 

 Abraham, but without the " horror ;" and, as the Divine Spirit 

 moves on the face of the wildly troubled waters, as a visible aurora 

 enveloped by the pitchy cloud, the great doctrine is orally enun- 

 ciated, that " in the beginning God created the heavens and the 

 earth." Unreckoned ages, condensed in the vision into a few brief 

 moments, pass away ; the creative voice is again heard, — " Let 

 there be light," and straightway a gray diffused light springs up 

 in the east, and casting ils sickly gleam over a cloud-limited 

 expanse of steaming, vaporous sea, journeys through the heavens 

 towards the west. One heavy, sunless day is made the represen- 

 tative of myriads ; the faint light waxes fainter, — it sinks beneath 

 the dim, undefined horizon ; the first scene of the drama closes 

 upon the seer ; and he sits awhile on his hill-top in darknes, soli- 

 tary but not sad, in what seems to be a calm and starless night, 



" The light again brightens, — it is day ; and over an expanse of 

 ocean without visible bound the horizon has become wider and 

 sharper of outline than before. There is life in that great sea, — 

 invertebrate, mayhap also ichthyic, life ; but, fi'om the comparative 

 distance of the point of view occupied by the prophet, only the 

 slow roll of its waves can be discerned, as they rise and fall in long 

 undulations before a gentle gale ; and what most strongly impresses 

 the eye is the change which, has taken place in the atmospheric sce- 



