20 CONSISTENCY OF GEOLOGICAL 
beginning, and those more detailed operations, 
the account of which commences at the second 
verse, and which are described to us as having 
been performed in so many days? Or, finally, 
does he ever make us to understand that the 
genealogies of man went any farther than to fix 
the antiquity of the species, and, of conse- 
quence, that they left the antiquity of the globe 
a free subject for the speculation of philo- 
sophers ?" 
It has long been matter of discussion among 
learned theologians, whether the first verse 
of Genesis should be considered prospectively, 
as containing a summary announcement of that 
new creation, the details of which follow in the 
record of the operations of the six successive 
days ; or as an abstract statement that the 
heaven and earth were made by God, without 
limiting the period when that creative agency 
was exerted. The latter of these opinions is 
in perfect harmony with the discoveries of 
Geology. 
The Mosaic narrative commences with a de- 
claration, that " In the beginning God created 
the heaven and the earth." These few first 
words of Genesis may be fairly appealed to by 
the geologist, as containing a brief statement 
of the creation of the material elements, at a 
time distinctly preceding the operations of the 
