many divines. Thus, we find the word used in 1 Cor. xiii. 
cannot be used but in a limited sense. 
Our Lord himself said : “ All things which I have heard of 
my Father, I have made known unto you.” Here it is 
evident that the term is not to be understood universally, but 
restrictively. So, in the vision of St. Peter, he beheld “a 
certain vessel wherein were all manner of four-footed beasts 
of the earth, and wild beasts and creeping things, and fowls 
of the air.” It is not necessary to suppose that the animals 
here were, zoologically and numerically, all the living creation, 
but only a variety sufficiently great for the selection that Peter 
was called upon to make. Besides, Peter afterwards qualifies 
it in chap. xi. 6, in which the word “all” is left out 
altogether. “I considered,” he says, “and saw fourfooted 
beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and 
fowls of the air.” We have another example where an universal 
term could not have any other than a limited sense. Obadiah 
says to Elijah, “As the Lord thy God liveth, there is no nation 
or kingdom whither my lord hath not sent to seek thee.” 
But there is no instance we could mention, perhaps, which 
bears so closely upon our present subject, while it will, I hope, 
help to make it more definite and clear, as the word day, which, 
whether in its wider or more limited sense, is so differently 
rendered in different places, as thereby to lead to the most 
painful doubts. If geologists had always borne in mind this 
fact, that whenever the word day was limited in its sense, to 
mean only twenty-four hours, that limitation is always borne 
out by the context, — the words evening and morning, or some 
like expression, being invariably added, — they would have been 
unmistakably sure, that in rendering the six days of creation 
in Genesis i. the words evening and morning take it quite out 
of our power to attach the more lengthened period to the 
word day in this place. 
The words of Scripture do not oblige us to understand 
that every variety of living creature at the time of the Deluge 
was necessarily taken by Noah into the ark, though all flesh 
wherein was the breath of life at that time perished. And if 
it were possible for such a thing to have taken place, we should 
actually have attributed to God an unnecessary act. For, 
while there was an unerring design in not breaking the moral 
chain which was to link the existing man with the old Adam , 
there could be no such necessity for linking the brute creation — 
those animals which were unable to see the cause which brought 
their existence to an end. 
It seems, therefore, that the idea of taking animals into the 
