the orbs above our heads, that he sees a world in which guilt never trod, a guarded region of existence, a celestial paradise, untroubled by the passions of life around him, and untouched by the grave.

CHAPTER V.

THE MOSAIC GEOLOGY.

Yet

THE BOOKS of Moses are so closely connected with revelation, that infidelity, in all ages, has made them a peculiar object of attack. The Atheists and Deists of the last century assailed them on the side of their antiquities, morality, and descriptions of the Divine attributes. But those assailants were so completely convicted of ignorance, groundless assertions, and false logic, that they rapidly shrank, and were heard of no more. as infidelity will exist, so long as there are those who feel a personal interest in overthrowing the credit of the great rebuker of personal vice; or a public interest in breaking up the obligations which form the great cement of all society; who "hate the light, because their deeds are dark," or who would extinguish the belief in a God, as an essential step to the extinction of allegiance to a king; the union of Jacobinism and Infidelity on the Continent has been distinguished by a series of attempts to overthrow the credit of the inspired

record. Cosmogony, a system bearing the same contemptible relation to the science of the earth, which the search for the philosopher's stone bears to the science of metals; has been fixed on as the point from which the attack is especially to be made. The German Geologists, a race of men more fitted to collect facts than to draw conclusions; and the French Geologists, another race proverbial for flying to the conclusion in scorn of the tardy wisdom of the facts; have thus invented a succession of theories, all alike vague, baseless, and perishing; yet all, as they successively go down, equally grasping at a name by hostility to the narrative of Moses. The whole spirit of the foreign school has been to substitute secondary causes for Divine, to make mechanism an ultimate principle, to sneer down the record which vindicates the work of Deity, and finally to exile the Deity himself alike from the creation and the government of his world.

The Mosaic history declares that the whole fabric of the globe was formed, and furnished with vegetable and animal life, by the immediate act of the Divine will, in six days. The Foreign Geology, or Cosmogony, raised on the supposed facts of geological knowledge, affirms, on the contrary, that this fabric was not formed and furnished by the immediate Divine will, but by the processes of nature; and that, instead of being completed in six days, it could not have been

completed in as many thousand, or perhaps ten times as many thousand, years.

The rash policy of attempting to convert an adversary by conceding all that he claims, has induced some writers of our country to propose various compromises on this subject. It has thus been said, that the word day may not be conclusive; that it may have been meant for a year, for six thousand years, for any indefinite duration. But this spirit of compromise is, in every form, totally inadmissible. The Sacred Historian as

plainly expresses the common day of twenty-four hours, as it can be expressed in language; even as if for the direct purpose of putting an end to all ambiguity, he defines it by "a day of morning and evening," a day like every other day. The word is the same which is used for the purpose throughout the Bible. The historian was writing to Jews, who knew of no other day. If he had meant six thousand years, no reason can be assigned why he should not have said six thousand years. The length of the period could not have been derogatory to the honour of the Deity, for the making of a world, in whatever time, must be equally beyond the powers of man'.

'Mr. Penn satisfactorily disposes of the interpretations which would make the Mosaic day indefinite. Thus, it is objected-1st. that it sometimes denotes a single revolution of the earth round its axis, which, according to the increased or decreased velocity of the globe, might equally mean an hour or a thousand years.

Another compromise is, that it was not the duty of the historian to give a philosophical

But the literal meaning of the word is simply the "time between two sunsets" (Simon: Lex. Heb.); in strictness, the time of heat and light, DV, yom, from yama, ferbuit.

2dly, that it sometimes denotes a year, as in Numb. xiv. 34. "After the number of days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day (yom) for a year (shanah) shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years." And (Ezek. iv. 6.) "Thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days; I have appointed thee each day (yom) for a year" (shanah).

But here the distinction between the day and the year is perfectly preserved.

3dly, that it denotes a whole Chiliad, (Psalm xc. 4.) “A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday." But the objects are still kept perfectly distinct. If day and year were not distinguished in the passage, the Psalmist's object, which is to illustrate the independence of the Divine actions on time, would be defeated.

4thly, it is said that it denotes a period of indefinite length, as" the day of the Lord." (Zech. xiv. 7.) "And it shall come to pass in that day, that the light shall not be clear nor dark."

But here it denotes the presence of a time, but not its duration. Thus the common phrase of the last day simply intimates that a time is to come when judgment shall commence, without inferring any thing as to the length of the period.

5thly, that it denotes years, as in the celebrated passage, (Dan. xii. 11.) "And from the time the daily sacrifice shall be taken away, there shall be days (yamim) a thousand two hundred and ninety." Mr. Penn conceives that this is answered by saying, that yom in the plural may signify a year, because the year is only a plurality of days, a sense in which it is familiar to the student. But the true answer is, that in this passage "days" are literally meant, and that the prophecy alludes merely to the desolation by Epiphanes.