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to our solar system, the so-called nebular theory, according to which enormous separate spheres of vapour, were formed from the immense mass of gas-like fluid spread out in the obscurity of space, which were afterwards fashioned into globes; our solar system having been such a gaseous sphere, within which first the external, then the internal planets, and last of all the sun, were formed, so that the sun certainly became a solid body subsequently to the earth. Of the fixed stars and of their formation, nothing can be said. Hence this theory may easily be reconciled with the Scripture account.

It

One thing alone does science imperatively demand, -viz. the concession of extensive periods, that she may not be confined to perhaps six days of twentyfour hours each, which is simply impossible. may suffice to refer, e.g., to the great coal measures, formed from a vast world of vegetation by the saturating power of water, and occupying, e.g., in North America alone, according to H. Rogers, a space of 6250 square miles, or reaching in the Saarbruck district from nineteen to twenty thousand feet below the level of the sea (28), and to the peat-fields of a later period; a colossal fossil cypress trunk, found in Transylvania, where thirteen layers of peat are found piled one upon another, being estimated by Hartrig to have been 3100 years of age. (29) We cannot and must not entertain the notion that God, having created them at once, only impressed upon them the appearance of gradual formation, so that our investigation

might be deceived and deluded, by our being able to persuade ourselves that they must have arisen gradually. And certainly, when we consider these and other circumstances, we do need, if not the billions of years in which the school of Lyell deals so liberally, yet still extremely long periods, and this it is which geology demands. As to how we are to understand the demiurgic days, even orthodox theologians are not unanimous, since days are spoken of before the sun. Whether they express extensive periods, one day with the Lord as a thousand years, and hence designate not days according to human computation, but days measured according to the proportions of the universe; or whether we are to regard the day only as a form in which the subject is clothed for the sake of bringing it nearer to the human imagination, which might not be otherwise able to grasp those acts of creation,-this much is certain, that the chief matter in question in the work of each day, is not the day, but the work. For the interests of religion are concerned not in the time, but in the fact; that is, in the fact that God created the world by the power of His own will, in free love; that He fashioned it in an ascending gradation of separate formations up to man, to reach in him the end of His creative work, and to ally Himself with him in community of spiritual nature.

If the world, then, was created by God, we are also certain that we possess in it a mirror of divine power, wisdom, and goodness. Science sees in it that scene of action in which the laws and forces of nature exert

their agency.

But it is also some

And rightly so. thing more than this. In the productions of these

laws and forces, the mind and attributes of God are also manifested and realized. This religious view has both its intrinsic right and its satisfactory evidence,not merely its subjective, but also its objective justification, and as little militates against the scientific view, as the tenet of a creating God does against the scientific investigation of individual phenomena. It is a view from which man cannot escape, and without which the world becomes poor and cold to him; while, on the other hand, it is a joy both to his mind and heart to find the thoughts of God embodied in every object which surrounds him. Nature is a world of symbolism, a vast hieroglyphic which he both can and must decipher and read. Everything visible conceals an invisible mystery, and the ultimate mystery is God.

And if the whole world was made with a view to man, it is not something alien to us, but meets us with a life akin to our own, and awakening sympathetic emotions. We can but feel that it teems with life which is incomplete without us; that we are the answer to its enigma. Hence all the voices of nature find an echo in the breast of man, and man is the tongue of creation.

The universe is reflected in his spirit, and he is the expression of its mystery. Should not, then, the language in which he utters what his spirit perceives be an ascription of praise to the world's Creator?

LECTURE V.

MAN.

CRIPTURE teaches us that the world was made by God; that it was the free act of His power, wisdom, and love; and that God had man in view when He created the world. It was not for the plants or the animals, but for man, that God was concerned. He was the peculiar thought of God, the divine idea ruling the whole creation, the realization of the essential will of God. This notion is expressed by Scripture when it represents God as taking counsel with Himself, and this counsel as resulting in the formation of man. Herein is also involved the fact, that something new was introduced with man; that he differs specifically from the other corporeal beings by whom he is surrounded; that they are but preliminary to him, that he is the ultimate purpose and climax of creation, and consequently its end. It is thus that man appears in Scripture. Modern science, however, has raised many objections to such a view. The chief of these have concerned the antiquity, the origin, and the unity of the human

race.

1. The question concerning the antiquity of man is at present exciting the liveliest interest. (1) According to Scripture the antiquity of the human race is estimated at about six thousand years; while modern science computes it by bundreds of thousands. And naturally, if Lyell is right in asserting that the present form of the earth has been produced with infinite slowness, by forces at present in operation, but that man belonged to an earlier period of the earth's formation; or Darwin in maintaining that man was produced only by the extremely gradual improvement of lower forms, we shall be constrained to remove the origin of our race to an excessively remote era. Such an inference is said to be corroborated by a series of new discoveries, and it is now considered as good as settled, that man lived upon the earth contemporaneously with such animals-cave bears, cave hyænas, mammoths, etc.-as have been hitherto referred to the Tertiary period, a period preceding the era during which the last formation of the earth took place. The recent discovery of Aurignac on the northern slope of the Pyrenees has been a specially important one. A burying-place has been here excavated containing seventeen human skeletons, rude weapons, and ornaments, together with traces of a primeval funeral feast which had been held there. With these, however, were found bones of these extinct animals, leading us back to an age in which man must have still shared the earth with these beasts of prey. The question, however, is whether we have to move the

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