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confidently assume from those passages which have been already 
adduced respecting the Hebrew cosmogony, the truth of the 
following propositions : — 1st. That a self-existent Creator in the 
beginning called the earth into existence ; and that this earth is 
poised in the air, balanced by its own weight. 2nd. That He did 
not create it “ empty,” or, as a heathen philosopher would term it, 
in a chaotic state. 3rd. That it subsequently became “ empty.”* 
4th. That light exists independent of that which the earth 
receives from the sun. 5th. That during a certain period, 
termed six Yoms, the Creator prepared the earth for the use of 
man. 6th. That man is an entirely separate act of creation on 
the part of the Divine Being. 7th. That after this had been 
accomplished, God rested from the creative work which He had 
done. 
65. Thus we have in the cosmological record of the Hebrews 
a clear, and as far as it goes, a scientific statement of the origin 
of the universe, not yet superseded by the theories of the 
speculative philosophy, nor contradicted by the discoveries of 
modern science ; but sufficient to prove that it was made known 
to the writer as a revelation from on high. Had the objectors 
to this revelation been better acquainted with the language in 
which it was written, they would not have committed themselves 
to such marvellous mistakes as, e.g., of asserting that Moses 
taught the earth was created only 6,000 years ago ; that it was 
immovably fixed in its position ; that he makes the birds fly 
through a solid vault ; that the term Yom must mean a period 
of twenty-four hours, and can mean nothing else ; that the 
* This appears to have been the view of Dr. Bucklancl, as he says in his 
Bridgewater Treatise : “ The word beginning as applied by Moses expresses 
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 
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 was barely to state that the matter of the universe i* not 
eternal and self-existent, but was originally created by the power of the 
Almighty The first verse of Genesis seems explicitly to assert the creation 
of the universe, the heaven, including the sidereal systems, and the earth more 
especially specifying our own planet as the subsequent scene of the opera- 
tions of the six days about to be described Millions of millions of years 
may have occupied the indefinite interval, between the beginning in which 
God created the heaven and the earth, and the evening or commencement 
of the first day of the Mosaic narrative We have in verse 2, a distinct men- 
tion of earth and waters, as already existing, and involved in darkness; their 
condition also is described as a state of confusion and emptiness (tohu boliu), 
words which are usually interpreted by the vague and indefinite Greek term 
chaos, and which may be geologically considered as designating the wreck 
and ruins of a former world.” 
VOL. X. 
x 
