28 CONSISTENCY OF GEOLOGICAL 
to their real importance in the boundless uni- 
verse. 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 heaven to give light upon the earth ; since 
without the aid of telescopes, by far the greater 
number of them are invisible. The same prin- 
ciple seems to pervade the description of creation 
which concerns our planet : the creation of its 
component matter having been announced in the 
first verse, 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 by 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 the existence of 
the human race. 
" I am indeed strongly inclined to believe that the matter of 
the corporeal 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 enquiries, to which 
no answer can be given. Moses records the history 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 
