DISCOVERIES WITH SACRED HISTORY. 19 
favour of the hypothesis, " which supposes the 
word * beginning,'' as applied by Moses in the 
first verse of the book of Genesis, to express an 
undefined period of time, which was antecedent 
to the last great change that affected the surface 
of the earth, and to the creation of its present 
animal and vegetable inhabitants ; during which 
period a long series of operations and revolutions 
may have been going on ; which, as they are 
wholly unconnected with the history of the 
human race, are passed over in silence by the 
sacred historian, whose only concern with them 
was barely to state, that the matter of the uni- 
verse is not eternal and self-existent, but was 
originally created by the power of the Al- 
mighty." 
I have great satisfaction in finding that the 
view of this subject, which I have here expressed, 
and have long entertained, is in perfect ac- 
cordance with the highly valuable opinion of 
Dr. Chalmers, recorded in the following passages 
of his Evidence of the Christian Revelation, 
chap. vii. : — '^ Does Moses ever say, that when 
God created the heavens and the earth he did 
more, at the time alluded to, than transform 
them out of previously existing materials? Or 
does he ever say that there was not an interval 
of many ages between the first act of creation 
described in the first verse of the Book of Ge- 
nesis, and said to have been performed at the 
