THE 
MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF THE CREATION. 
Tiie substance of the following paper was originally given as a verbal com- 
munication, at the meeting of the Academy of Natural Sciences, on the 9tli 
of May, 1854, in reply to the strictures of W. Parker Foulke, Esq., on the lec- 
ture of the late Hugh Miller, ' ' The two Records — the Mosaic and the Geologic. ' ' 
It was the design of the Author to show, that Mr. Miller, so far from using the 
classification by geologists, of the rocks on the earth's surface into three great 
groups, the ^^palceozoic, secondary, and tertiary,''^ to illustrate the striking coin- 
cidence between the two records, in an unauthorized manner, was perfectly 
Justified in showing that this classification, inade without any reference to the 
Scriptures whatever, yet, did, in a most wonderful manner, agree with them. He 
endeavored to show that by taking the most prominent fact in each of these 
periods, Mr. Miller had only followed the course which Moses had taken with 
each of the other, so-called, days. He had not stated, and did not intend to 
state, that these were the only facts, but that in each of them they were the 
most prominent and characteristic. Circumstances at the time prevented the au- 
thor from Avriting out his remarks, for publication with those of Mr. Foulke, 
and no good opportunity occurred until the present summer, when they were 
published in the form now given, in the Presbyterian Quarterly Review. It 
has been a source of regret to the author, that they were not published at the 
time, as they would probably have saved the lamented Miller from the feeling 
expressed in the notes to his last work, "The Testimony of the Rocks," iu 
regard to the remarks made by Mr. Foulke, which were certainly made in no 
unkind spirit towards Mr, M., for any such feeling was at the time most ex- 
j)licitly disclaimed. 
The various methods by which theologians and geologists have sought to 
reconcile "the testimony of the rocks," and our version of the first chapter 
of Genesis, may all be reduced to two, or perhaps, three general schemes. 
The first one supposes, that between the first verse and the second there was 
an undefined and enormous interval of time, in which the various geological 
changes, such as we now find upon the earth, took place ; that the earth was 
then brought into the chaotic state described in the second verse, and then it 
was, in six days of twenty-four hours each, prepared for the habitation of 
man, who was at that time placed upon it. This was the plan of reconciliation 
Oi Dr. Chalmers, and, with a single exception, that of Dr. John Pye Smith, who 
thought that the chaos described in the second verse, and the work of creation, 
in the rest of the chapter, extended over but a small part of the earth's sur- 
face, and that outside of that area, the rest of the earth continued to enjoy 
the light of the sun, and plants and animals lived, and grew, and have con- 
tinued by an unbroken series of generations to our own times. The progress 
of geological discovery has caused the scheme of Dr. Chalmers to be laid aside, 
for it does not meet the wants of the case, and that of Dr. Smith is opposed 
to the record of Moses, in making no provision for the creation of the heavens. 
The second method supposes, that the days were periods of great and indefi- 
nite extent, each embracing vast ages, in which the various geological changes 
