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anything else than “ without form and void,” when without light, and without 
the created beings which the author assumes are included in the words, “ in 
the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” He says that that 
includes all created beings, and even including men, as I understand him ; 
but he afterwards speaks of the creation of light subsequent to the destruction 
of that world. But how can he realize a living world existing in total 
darkness ? What created beings could live in it ? Some explanation on 
that point seems required to enable us even to understand the theory he 
holds. With regard to the meaning of the words thohu and bohu, we have 
had that question discussed on two occasions before. In the 10th number of 
our Journal of Transactions we find Mr. Warington objecting to the rendering 
put forward in Dr. Baylee’s paper “ On the Nature of Human Language.” 
Mr. Warington, alluding to a passage in Isaiah, says : — 
“ In Isaiah the usage of the word thohu differs considerably, and looking 
through the latter half of the prophecy of Isaiah, which some think is by a 
different hand, I find six places in which thohu is used as meaning simply 
nothing, — nothingness, without the slightest trace of ruin. It also means 
empty, worthless.” 
On a more recent occasion, when Mr. Warington read his own very interest- 
ing paper “ On the Biblical Cosmogony,” he quoted, oddly enough, that 
very rendering given by Dr. Pusey in the preface to his work on the 
prophet Daniel ; but it seems now as if we shall require to have not only an 
interpretation of Scripture, but an interpretation of Scripture interpreters ! 
for Mr. Warington makes the words of Dr. Pusey to signify exactly the 
opposite to what Mr. Monle gives us as his reading of them. I rather think 
Mr. Warington’s interpretation of the words is the sound one. But it is 
difficult to criticise the verbal accuracy of a paper when we have not that 
paper in print before us, owing, in this instance, to the fact that Mr. Moule 
was rather pressed for time, so that we could not have it printed this evening. 
Then, with regard to the supposed agreement with Mr. Moule’s theory, of 
the allusions to the covering of the earth with the waters in the Psalms, in 
the Book of Job, and elsewhere, I think it is very likely that the language 
agrees perfectly with the description of a universal flood, because I think 
they do most probably allude to the flood of Noah, and not to any imagined 
previous deluge. I think that most people would be startled to find that 
more floods than one are spoken of in the Scriptures. Another weak point in 
the paper is that many of Mr. Moule’s arguments rest on mere verbal expres- 
sions ; as, for instance, where he considers that the words, “ the heavens and 
the earth,” do not include the water. If you consider that the words, 
<{ God created the heavens and the earth,” in the first verse of Genesis, did 
not include the waters in a separate condition, as they now are in, but that 
the earth and waters were then in a state of mixture and confusion before 
ever being separated, or the earth as covered with the water, the whole is 
clear, and this new theory of a former flood disappears. Observe, too, there 
is no creation of the waters recorded at all, if il the earth ” merely means the 
