reliquis vero diebus non creavit sed creata the beginning, God created the heavens and formavit et exornavit." Hence it is that the earth; calling forth from nothing the the word which is translated "creavit" is material elements of which they are comused in the first verse only, and is not met posed, and in their full integrity the angelic with again until we arrive at the creation intelligences with which the heavens are of man. This would imply a distinction filled. The material creation was then between the nature of the act described in subjected to various laws, moulded into the first and subsequent verses, and that various forms, and made to minister to while the first was a creation from nothing, many a purpose hidden from human scruthe other was a making of new forms and tiny. But in what manner these objects combinations out of already existing ele- were effected, whether by an instantaneous ments. The commentator now alluded to exercise of power, or, as is more in accordsays, in like manner, with reference to the ance with the tenor of God's works, by a evoking of light, "Nota hanc lucem pro-gradual increase and growth, and by what prie non fuisse creatam, quia Deus primo agency, or the operation of what laws their die creavit omnem materiam." The light destruction was in part or entirely effected, may have been in existence before this and for what immediate end, we have no command was issued, and the sun and moon means of ascertaining; but it is probable may have been in the vault of heaven before that they were a preparation for that yet they were bid to shine, and yet can be nobler and more perfect being by which strictly and truly said to be made for the in after times the earth was to be inhabitearth when the specific purpose of illumin-ed, and for whose use and benefit the proing the earth was appointed for them. They ducts of even the remotest period were may have shone on many a monster of form destined. There was no human eye to uncouth, and guided on its way many a contemplate the showing forth of the Divine creature of former times, and of other con-power and wisdom, but there were celestial ditions of our globe. We know that some intelligences to witness and adore, and luminary must have shone on the forms of many a bright spirit and child of God to organic life which are found in the primi- sing with joy when the foundations of the tive and secondary strata, for these have earth were laid. When the last great sethe organs of vision as powerfully develop-ries of events, immediately preceding the ed as those of the present time, and we can- present order of things, was completed, and not suppose these faculties to have been the vast globe itself was convulsed to its given by infinite wisdom in vain. But centre by the power of that Divine comwhen the earth was being prepared for man, mand, which went forth, as it shall again, they got another and a nobler purpose; to proclaim that the former things were to they were made to light and to comfort be no more, and that all things were to be him, and to be to him as signs for days and made new, the relations that existed befor seasons, and for years It is thus that tween it and the planetary orbs became the serpent was made to creep upon its disturbed, the transmission of light imbreast because of the fall of man; for that peded, the very luminiferous ether, by which was its natural condition before then whose undulations light is produced, bebecame its punishment. It is thus that God came torpid and inactive; and, as a necesplaced His bow in the clouds as a sign to sary consequence, there was darkness on Noah, though it must have been a necessary the face of the deep, in which earth and consequence of the laws of refraction sea and the remains of terrestrial and throughout all time; but it was a mere nat- aquatic existence, and every green tree ural phenomenon before, and it became in- and shrub, were confusedly mixed up tovested with a purpose, and pregnant with a gether. Then came the creative Spirit, symbolical meaning, to the patriarch and brooding over the face of the waters, and his posterity. It is thus that the sun, moon, the voice heralding the dawn of our preand planetary bodies may be considered to ent world: "Let there be light, and there be made when they acquired a purpose to was light," quickening into activity and fulfil in the natural economy of our globe. notion once more that fluid which science They may have existed before, but they has demonstrated to be the medium of did not exist for man. light, and to be distinct from any of those According to this interpretation, there-heavenly bodies whose influence can imfore, the following may be considered to part to it the undulations by which the have been the order of the creation. In sensation of light is caused. Hence the possibility of an evening and a morning on the first day. On the second, God made the firmament or terrestrial atmosphere, by which the waters of the earth are divided from those that are above the earth. On the third day was the separation of land and sea; on the fourth the sun and moon became visible; on the fifth the living and creeping things of the waters, and the winged fowls according to their kind. On the sixth the beasts and cattle of the earth; and when all was completed and seen to be good, God made man to His own image and likeness, and gave him power and dominion over the fowls of the air, the beasts of the earth, and the fishes of the sea. This is the opinion adopted by Dr. Wiseman. The omission in this narrative of any thing that had no immediate and necessary connection with its moral purpose, is, in our minds, a special instance of that infinite wisdom which presided over and directed its inspired author. If he had spoken to his people, or to the people, however learned, of his time; or yet more, if he had spoken to the people of modern times, before scientific research had laid bare the, secrets of the earth, or the forms of life with which the earth formerly teemed; if he had spoken to them of the paleotherium and the icthyosaurus, those great monsters of the ancient world; if he had had a chapter on the stupendous dimensions of the iguanodon, and a paragraph on the seemingly incongruous properties of the "Had the Scripture," he says, " allowed pterodactylus, would the details seem credno interval between creation and organiza- ible to an ignorant and unscientific genetion, but declared that they were simulta- ration? Would not his history seem to neous, or closely consecutive acts, we surpass in absurdity the rhapsodies of the should perhaps have stood perplexed be- Koran, or the institutes of Menu? The tween its assertions and modern discove- very avataras of Buddha, or the transmiries. But when, instead of this, it leaves grations of Vishnu, would seem more reaan undecided interval between the two, sonable and more worthy of belief. If nay, more, informs us that there was a Voltaire had found it laid down in Genesis, state of confusion and conflict; of waste before science seemed to bear testimony and darkness, and a want of a proper basin to the fact, that such things formerly exfor the sea, which then would cover first isted on the earth, that the vegetation of one part of the earth, then another; we England was more luxuriant, and its climay truly say that the geologist reads in mate warmer than it is now beneath the these few lines the history of the earth, line; if he had found there one-half of such as his monuments have recorded it, what is now generally admitted, what a a series of disruptions, elevations and dis- rich armory would it not have furnished locations, sudden inroads of the unchained him for his unholy purposes? It was, element, entombing successive generations therefore, wise-and it argued a more of amphibious animals; calm, but unex- than human prudence in the sacred writer pected subsidences of the waters, embalm--to pass them over in silence, and to ing in their various beds their myriads of leave them unnoticed and unknown until aquatic inhabitants; alternations of sea the persevering zeal of other times revealed and land and fresh-water lakes; an atmos- them to the world. His narrative, if it phere obscured by dense aquatic vapors, did not make known their existence, so which, by gradual absorption in the waters, was cleared away, and produced the pervading mass of calcareous formations, till at length came the last revolution preparatory for our creation; when the earth, being now sufficiently broken for that beautiful diversity which God intended to bestow on it, or to produce the landmarks and barriers which His foreseeing counsels had designed, the work of ruin was suspended, save for one more great scourge, and the earth remained in that state of gloomy prostration from which it was recalled by the reproduction of light, and the subsequent work of the six days' creation." —Vol. i. p. 309. neither did it place any impediment to their admission when science was to admit them within its privileged domain. The supposition which we have advanced with regard to the existence and mutations of the earth during long and to us unknown periods of time, before the work of the six days commenced, is by no means new. It was so believed by some of the most illustrious and most able of the early Christian fathers.* It was, if we mistake The following are the words of Origen: "Nos vero consequenter respondebimus, observentes regulam pietatis et dicentes quoniam non tunc primum, cum visibilem istum mundum fecit Deus ceperit operari, sed sicut post corruptionem deed of mercy? And were man to rest his claim to that favor, or to rely for the truth of that mystery on his own excellence, or the importance of the position he holds in the scale of creation, it would be an argument conclusive against him. But his claim, if so it can be called, is of a far other kind and derived from a different principle, and becomes so much the stronger as science extends its empire. His title is derived from his own helplessness, on the one hand, and on the other, from the infinite love and mercy of Him who came from heaven to save. If that love could be measured by the standard of human feeling, if it were to save only the nobler being and abandon the less noble to destruction; not, suggested by Perrerius, in his learned commentaries on Genesis, and has been adopted, as we have just now seen, by Dr. Wiseman, and by the learned editors of the admirable work the Cursus Completus Sacræ Scripturæ. It satisfactorily meets all the requirements of science without offering violence to the obvious and literal meaning of the Mosaic narrative. It may be objected to us that the extended period and the remote antiquity to which the creation is thus assigned (if the word antiquity be at all applicable to the measureless extent of duration which the necessary geological time requires), are not in fit accordance with the position which man occupies with respect to it, and it may seem unreasonable to admit that the earth has been if it were to be inclined to mercy because for ages the abode of living beings, while of the high qualities of that being towards man is but lately arrived upon its surface. whom it is exercised, it might be such as If the earth was made for him, as we are man could conceive and estimate, but it assured it was, why was he not placed would not be the mercy of God. It would upon it before? The same or a similar not be that mercy of which man knoweth objection was made, if our readers recol- not the height nor depth, nor length nor lect, to the truths of astronomical science, breadth,-a mercy which left the angels to when the depths of space were first exam- perish while it redeemed men, which left ined with the telescope, and suns and sys- the ninety-nine sheep in wilderness to seek tems, surpassing in beauty and magnifi- the poor truant,-it may be the least valucence even our own, were seen scattered able of the flock, that strayed away; which over the fields of space in multitudinous preferred the dying thief on Calvary to the profusion. It was said then, as it is said great and the beautiful and the accomplishnow, that the diminished position which ed that it could have chosen from Jerusaman was made to occupy in the immensity lem. The more you diminish man's place of God's works, was also a diminishing of in the scale of the Creator's works, and the dignity which religion ascribed to him, the more science expands that creation in and was an argument against the fact of widening circles around him, the more his his having been redeemed by an incarnate God. Why, it was asked, should the inhabitant of a second or third-rate planet in the solar system, which system is itself but a minute speck in the vast expanse of the created universe, invisible perhaps to the eye of an individual residing in some distant star, be favored by such a wondrous bujus erit alius mundus, ita et antequam hic esset, fuisse alios credimus "-Periarchon, lib. iii. cap. 5. Huet, commenting on these words of Origen, says, "Materiam autem a Deo ante mundum creatam, posuerunt Philo, Tatianus, Lactantius, et alii ex qua mundum postea fabricaverit."-Origeniana, lib. ii. questio 12. Compare the words of the Council of Lateran, which state that the material and spiritual worlds were created together, with the following of St. Jerome, lib. i. in Epist. ad Titum. "Sex millia necdum nostri orbis implentur anni et quantas prius æternitates, quanta tempora, quantas sæcuforum origines fuisse arbitrandum est, in quibus angeli, Throni, Dominationes ceteræque virtutes servierint Deo et absque temporum vicibus absque mensuris Deo jubente subsisterint." redemption becomes in harmony with that Creator's attributes, and the deeper and more grateful the impression which is left upon the mind for that love which rescued him from his calamitous doom. The more you prove that there is no measurable proportion between the Redeemer and the redeemed, the more will that redemption be in keeping with the charity which passeth all human understanding, and whose ways we believe to be incomprehensible. How The same concession which we make to the requirements of astronomy with respect to space, it is scarcely fair to refuse to geol. ogy with respect to time, when the ascertained facts require that concession. far soever removed the heavenly bodies may be from our earth, we know not what influence they may exercise in the adjustment and stability of its movements; and though destined to fulfil other objects in the economy of creation, it will still be true to say that they were appointed for the use of men. So also with respect to the requirements of fist, which would either confirm or unsettle the geology, however remote the period at greater part of what is now admitted as which the globe had its origin; and though certain. We should, therefore, proceed onthe stratification and mineral structure of ward with caution, gladly receiving any adits surface may have required many succes-dition to our previous stock of information, sive revolutions and long periods of time for journeying hopingly and perseveringly, but their production, it is still true that they yet with a salutary diffidence. To take a ministered to the purposes of man. This metaphor from itself, we would say that the may have been (if even no other immediate progress of geology has been like that of its or ulterior object was attained) the course own formations. In its eocene period, and mode adopted to prepare the earth truths and established principles, like the for his use, and comfort and subsistence. fossil types of the existing order, begin to The coal which diffuses warmth round dawn upon us, and to present themselves his hearth, the glittering gem which lends the matin harbingers of knowledge. Then its charm to the cheek of beauty, the use- comes, slowly and by degrees, the pliocene ful and ornamental metals which are ne- period, in which these truths and principles cessary for the wants of civilized society, the present themselves in greater abundance, marble which he employs for his artistic and of a more decided character. Shall we purposes, the stone with which he constructs say that we have yet reached the miocene, his dwellings, the limestone with which he in which the ascertained truths are to prefertilizes the earth, nay, the very earth on ponderate over, and exceed in number, the which he treads, and from which he draws unknown? or can it be that we are yet subsistence, were all prepared by long and to see our present systems again exploded, laborious processes by the agents, animate and the human mind, like the Sysiphus of and inanimate, of God's bountiful provi- Grecian story, doomed again to the same sad dence, and at remote times, when only the round of toil, and thought, and fruitless infar-seeing eye of God could tell for what fi-vestigation? for has it not been said of man, nal purpose they were destined. and of the earth on which he treads, "Mun We shall not dwell longer on this import-dum tradidit disputationibus eorum, ut non ant subject. We could wish that our limits cognoscat homo opus quod operatus est permitted us to offer a few observations on Deus ab initio usque ad finem ?" the subject of central heat, without which our notice must be imperfect. But we think that it is not here that the really serious difficulty is to be met with, and therefore, have the less hesitation in passing it by for the present unnoticed. We have said enough to show that the Mosaic narrative presents no serious, much less insurmountable, impediment to the admission or onward progress of geological science. In its infan cy, and when it served to furnish the materials of many a theory to dreaming visionaries, and invest them with the name and semblance of philosophy, it was calculated and deserved to excite hostility, as well as to provoke opposition, from the ill-regulated and illegitimate mode of inquiry which it adopted. The more scientific truth is known, the more perceptible becomes its harmony with that which is revealed. But we should ever bear in mind that the research MUNIFICENCE OF A POLE.-An act of great munificence in the cause of humanity, performed by a noble Pole, of Odessa, the Baron de Gryzmala Eulewitz, is worthy of record. Touched by the sufferings of the Jews on the western frontier of Russia, under the ukase which expels them from the Czar redeems in snuff-boxes), has set out in their homes (one of those imperial measures which that direction, with the view of selecting a hundred poor Jew families of the working class, and taking them with him into the province of Kherson-where he has prepared houses for their reception, and will present them with the tools proper to their occupations, and supply their immediate wants.—Athenæum. THE UPAS TREE -A living plant of this celebrated tree was recently presented to the Horticultural Society by the East India Company, and is now growing in the Chiswick-garden It is in perfect health, and, notwithstanding the fables of Dutch travellers, may be approached with safety. es of geology can never unfold to us the perfect and uniform system of our globe. It may turn up a page or decipher a sentence in the great book of nature, but it can never spread out the whole (what science is there It is, however, so virulent a poison, that no pruthat can ?); and in the part that remains unex-dent person would handle it without proper preplored may not some fossil or phenomenon ex- caution.-Gardener's Chronicle. hair with his hand, shook his head, making horrible faces, and giving a sort of savage RECOLLECTIONS OF THE EMPEROR NA- howl. The little girl screamed so violently POLEON. From the Literary Gazette. that mamma was afraid she would go into hysterics, and took her out of the room. Napoleon laughed a good deal at the idea of his being such a bugbear, and would hardly be Recollections of the Emperor Napoleon, du-lieve me when I told him that I had stood in ring the first three years of his Captivity in St. Helena, &c. By Mrs. Abell (late Miss E. Balcombe). Pp. 244. London, J. Murray. the same dismay of him. When I made this confession, he tried to frighten me as he had poor little Miss Legg, by brushing up his air, and distorting his features; but he looked more grotesque than horrible, and I only laughed at him. He then (as a last resource) tried the howl, but was equally unsuccessful, and seem hel As steel brought into contact with the magnet becomes itself magnetic and attractive, so would it seem has the life of Mrs. Abell be-ed, I thought, a little provoked that he could not coine romantic in consequence of contact with that vast impersonation of romance, Napoleon Bonaparte. Pleased should we be to state that it had not also borne a resemblance to his misfortunes; but such, we fear, has been the case, which makes us the more earnest in our recommendation of this volume to the public. By its patronage a balm will be laid to wounds of no slight suffering, and hard for even female fortitude to endure; and it is possible that the auspicious introduction of a fair and accomplished daughter to the musical world may, in some measure, be promoted by the encouragement which talent and virtue so forcibly claim. Tenderly and delicately educated in the house of her father, Mr. Balcombe, the Briars (ill-omened name), where Bonaparte resided for a season, in St. Helena, till his own abode was prepared for his reception, the young girl enjoyed singular opportunities for observing the eclipsed sun; and her frankness and playfulness appear to have made her quite a little companion to divert his sombre reflections and elicit ebullitions of his more natural disposition. No longer the hero, the conqueror, the dictator to prostrate monarchs, the petulance of the child was sometimes the only care of his cabinet, and her reconciliation with him the object of his counsels. The stern warrior softened into the gentlest feeling; and the picture is altogether one of extreme interest, where the slightest traits are as worthy of study as the more elaborate paintings of his historical era. The New Monthly Magazine having already enjoyed the privilege of publishing some of Mrs. Abell's Recollections, we shall endeavor in our selections from the present work to choose what is more new than the New M. M., though our memory cannot assure us of success. Shortly after his arrival. a little girl, Miss Legg, the daughter of a friend, came to visit us at the Briars. The poor child had heard such terrific stories of Bonaparte, that when I told her he was coming up the lawn, she clung to me in an agony of terror. Forgetting my own former fears, I was cruel enough to run out and tell Napoleon of the child's fright, begging him to come into the house. He walked up to her, and, brushing up his frighten me. He said the howl was Cossack; |