THE THIRD DAY.-" AND GOD SAID, LET

THE WATERS UNDER THE HEAVEN BE GATHERED TOGETHER INTO ONE PLACE, AND LET THE DRY LAND APPEAR; AND IT WAS SO.

On this day was to be displayed that surprising and most beautiful spectacle, the first organization of life. While the waters of the firmament were left to range unconfined over their vast region, the waters still remaining on the globe were to be restricted within a boundary. But this restriction implies that a receptacle must have been provided for them, and the surface of the globe broken in, to a great depth and extent, before they could have left any large portion of the earth free. By whatever means this immense disruption was effected, whether by the volcano and the earthquake, or by still fiercer instruments of construction and change, the formation, in a single day, of an abyss for the reception of a body of waters sufficient to cover the globe, must have been a work of the most tremendous violence and rapidity. The clearest fact in geology, perhaps the only clear fact in geology, is-that the present dry land was the bed of the ancient ocean. What must be the force which could plunge all our existing continents, with all their mountains, in a day, perhaps in an instant, to a depth of, at least, four miles; perhaps of much more'. And we

'Dr. Young computes the mean depth of the Atlantic at three miles, and of the Pacific at four, (Lectures); and the French

ments.

have proof, that this could not have been a mere uniform subsidence. The whole ocean-bed was probably in a state of the most violent disruption in all its parts; for the fractures and positions of our present strata are anterior to the Deluge. Yet none of the countless wonders of the Divine hand in our world are more demonstrative of a provision for the future, than this permitted fury of the eleIn this very convulsion there was the finest forecast for the wants of unborn mankind, not merely of the race about to be formed, but of the generations who were to come into existence only when the Antediluvian generations and their world had passed away together. Nothing is more obvious, than that from this disruption arise the chief capabilities of our earth. To this we owe our wells and rivers, the easy access to the varieties of metals, to all the clays and materials of fertilizing the soil, to coal, marble, gems, and a multitude of products indispensable to human use or enjoyment, which, if buried in concentric layers, must have chiefly lain at depths beyond human labour, but are now, by the general upbreaking and commixture of the strata, brought within the reach of man.

philosophers (La Place, &c.) calculate the average depth of the ocean at four miles. Other authorities give it depths even to eleven. It has been asserted, that a less depth than eleven would be unequal to account for the lunar influence on the tides.

We may go further still, and discover even a more minute and direct forecast in some of the most remarkable and important products of the Earth, as in gold, iron, and coal. The purpose of gold seems to have been, expressly, to supply an universal medium of exchange, an use evidently of the first necessity to the intercourse of nations. If gold were a metal of less. beauty, greater bulk, or greater abundance, it would be equally unfitted for this purpose. By its possession of the due share of all those qualities, it has, from the earliest ages to this hour, constituted the chief standard of value. But, as its use was to be universal, so is its existence. There is scarcely a region of the earth in which gold is not found. The greater wealth of the Brazilian mines has turned the general eye for a while from the produce of the old continents; but gold is found from the arctic to the equator, and from the equator to the southern limits of life.

Iron is the great instrument of power, as gold is of civilization; and this tamer of the earth, and controuler of man, useful in every region of the globe, is accordingly found in all. But coal exhibits a striking discrepancy. Though an essential of life in the colder temperatures, it would, as a producer of heat, be thrown away on one half of the globe; in consequence, it is seldom found but in the colder regions, and it is found nearly in them

all. A double chain of coal formations appears to circle the world to the north and south of the tropics. Coal is found in a line extending from the British isles through the Netherlands, Germany, and Hungary, to the Euxine, through Tartary, China, and North America; it is found in New South Wales, and probably waits only for the investigation of the wildernesses stretching to the Straits of Magellan, and of the southern polar islands, to exhibit the same presence of a mineral palpably provided to arm man against the inclemencies of earth and sky.

"

The one place" into which "all the waters under the firmament were gathered together" was now a vast bed of dislocated and disrupted strata, left thenceforth to the regular action of the tides and currents in their various agencies of dissolving, blending, and recombining, for a period of more than two thousand years; when, the process being complete, and the sea-bed fitted for the support of human life, the ocean was poured back upon the land, and the former bed, elevated to its original level, finally became the world, to be inhabited by the new generations of mankind'.

The sterility of the antediluvian world, which, though a special infliction for the first crime, was yet doubtless provided for by the physical constitution of the surface, may probably be explained by the absence of this disruption of the strata. A land, overspread with one uniform layer of soil, must have soon become barren. The general barbarism too, may be, in some degree,

This original violent formation of the great seabed is commemorated in one of the noblest effusions of sacred poetry-" O Lord, my God! Thou art clothed with honour and majesty. Who laidest the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever. Thou coveredst it with the deep, as with a garment: the waters stood above the mountains. At thy rebuke they fled. At the voice of thy thunder they hasted away. They went over the mountains; they went down by the valleys into the place which thou didst found for them. Thou didst set a bound which they should not pass over." (Psalm civ.)1.

The land was now left open; and by an additional act of the Divine will, it was instantly covered with the three great classes of vegetable life-the grass, the shrub, and the tree, all marked as equally starting into existence, and their organization as being complete, not simply for imme

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accounted for by the want of the minerals. The discovery of iron is alluded to only at a period but little before the Deluge. The Jewish commentators expressly refer this detail to the original act of Deity. Amama says-" We perceive that this description regards the face of the earth at the Creation." Aben Ezra, in guarding against a probable error, further confirms the opinion: "But some one perhaps will say, that the waters returned at the Deluge. I reply, that we are to understand this passage of the order of nature. The Deluge was the exception." The language of the text declaring the original command," thus far shalt thou go," also appears to apply directly to the Creation.