in three conditions, in which it is the primary representative or symbol of the Triune Jehovah, produces by its agency all the phenomena of nature, as those of Grace are produced by the Divine Trinity.

The earth is, of itself, and independent of exterior agency, a passive substance, which is acted upon by these etherial agents. Of its formation, after stating the creation of that substance, the inspired historian proceeds to give an account. It was, after its creation, "without form and void," a mere chaos of loose unconnected matter without order, regularity, beauty, or utility. "And darkness," the matter of THE HEAVENS in a torpid stagnant state,* not having yet been brought into action, "lay upon the face of the deep," the surfaces of the chaotic mass being enveloped by it.

Then "the Spirit of God," the matter of THE HEAVENS SO described as being brought by a new exertion of the Divine power into one of its active conditions, moved on the surfaces of the waters, the fluid mass which lay beneath it, sorting and compressing the particles of which it consisted, and communicating to the globe its rotary motion.

I now proceed to consider the third verse of the chapter, where the heavens are brought into action on the earth in another condition.

*See note from Horsley. p. 39, &c.

"AND GOD SAID, LET THERE BE LIGHT; AND THERE WAS LIGHT."

This passage is noticed by Longinus, in his Treatise on the Sublime, as one of the most remarkable instances of his subject with which he had met. Nor can I wonder that even a heathen author, professing true taste, should have been struck with it. The Evangelist St. Mark (Chap. iv. 39.) has a passage of a similar description.

This command, you will observe, referred to formation, and not to creation.* The substance of THE HEAVENS, now first formed into light, had before been called into existence (ver. 1): That which the Divine command now effected, was a new condition of the celestial fluid. LIGHT and SPIRIT are the same in substance, but not in form and operation; and therefore it is not recorded that God created light, but that he said, “Let there be light." The command is addressed to "the Spirit of God," the material spirit which had just before been called into action; and the object of the command was a change in the condition of that agent. Spirit or air produced

The agitation of the "light," which is the

substance of the heavens in a more attenuated form. Modern philosophy has shown, by experiment, that air is convertible into light, and light again into air. The atoms are the same;

* See note from Horsley, p. 39, &c.

but in light they are of a finer and more pene trating kind.

I shall not take up your time by stating my views of that division "between the light and between the darkness," which ensued on the production of light, nor of the nature, office, and operation of the expansion (called in our translation "the firmament") which arose out of that division. It will be observed that the expansion was formed in the same way as the light, not as a creation of something new in substance, but as a condition of what before existed. "Let there be an expansion,"* ver. 6. All I have promised is an hasty sketch, containing some general outlines: if therefore the subject should sufficiently arrest your mind to excite a wish of pursuing it, I must refer you again to the authors whom I have before specified, to whom I would now add the name of the younger Catcott, in his "Remarks

Praise ye the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary; praise Him in the firmament (or expansion) of his power;' called either as being itself an effect of omnipotent agency, or as being the instrument whereby omnipotence exerts and manifests itself in all the phenomena of the universe—the revolutions of its orbs, the productions of the earth, and the life of the animals that people our world. Angels and the spirits of just men made perfect, praise Him in his heavenly sanctuary: and it is the duty and privilege of man who lives by means of that expanse of light and air, which fills this lower system to praise HIM who, by means of that expanse, enables us to utter his praises. “Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord." Ps. cl. 1, 6.

on the Creation and the Deluge." Though I believe that Mr. C. has erred in the Geological part of his system (when he supposes that the whole substance of the earth was reduced, by a miraculous suspension of the mechanical agency which causes cohesion in bodies, to its primitive terraqueous state;) such an error will not affect his general view of the process of creation, and of the character of the stupendous machine which was then brought into being. I would also recommend to your attention "A letter from Sir Isaac Newton to the Hon. Mr. Boyle, on the cause of Gravitation," published in the fourth volume of Bishop Horsley's edition of Sir Isaac's works, from which I have given you an extract in a note to my second letter.

I wish to dwell no longer on the philosophical branch of my subject than is necessary to the explanation of that analogy with which it is connected; I shall, therefore, only again remind you, that light, in co-operation with the spirit, was, at first, the subordinate cause of all arrangement and formation; and that it has been ever since, and is now, the cause of all natural life, motion, and beauty. Thereby the planets revolve in their orbits, and the seasons are interchanged; thereby life, animal and vegetable, is produced and maintained : in short, to this two-fold agency deriving its influence from a third, all the phenomena of nature, great and small, owe their

existence. "A certain most subtle spirit," says Sir Isaac Newton, at the close of his Principia, "pervades and lies hid in all gross bodies; by the force and action of which spirit the particles of bodies mutually attract one another at near distances, and cohere if contiguous; and electric bodies operate to greater distances, as well repelling as attracting the neighbouring corpuscles; and (by the force and action of this spirit) light is emitted, reflected, refracted, inflected, and heats bodies; and all sensation is excited, and the members of animal bodies move at the command of the will, namely, by the vibration of this spirit, mutually propagated along the solid filaments of the nerves, from the outward organs of sense to the brain, and from the brain to the muscles, &c." Whatever may be the opinion of Newton's disciples, he himself was no enemy to the mechanism of the universe: and I verily believe that had Newton and Hutchinson been cotemporary writers,* the former would have discovered, and cordially would have acknowledged, that his mathematical demonstrations strongly confirmed the scriptural philosophy of the latter; and that the phenomena he explained could only be accounted for on the principles of

* Sir Isaac died in 1727, ætat. 85. Mr. Hutchinson published the first part of his Moses's principia in 1724, three years only before Newton's death, and when that great man was 82 years of age.