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LECTURE X.

PSALM CİV. 24.

O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all.

THE organizing process, which adapted our planet for the reception of living beings, having been announced by the Sacred historian in the preceding part of his narrative, he proceeds in the twentieth and following verses to the detail of the agency allotted to the Fifth day of the Hexaëmeron. Hitherto our researches amongst those ancient records have concurred in establishing one remarkable fact, the perfect propriety of Succession in the distribution of their members. () The evidence which this involves of antecedent Design on the part of the First Cause, and of Inspiration on that of the Narrator, has, so far as these researches have extended, been submitted to your consideration; we proceed to contemplate a similar aspect throughout the remainder of the Record.

The arrangement of this visible order of things having been, from its commencement, referred in the scheme of Infinite wisdom to one

pre-eminent final cause, we observe this latter, as a predominant conception, influencing the aspects of its several assemblages. To the creation of a Moral agent, destined to move amongst them with such endowments of intelligence, as should most conduce to his own felicity, and best express his Creator's honor, we perceive the particular ends of their being subordinated. We behold it, the fixed point of moral contemplation in the midst of a vast physical assemblage, round which (so to speak) as the centre of a system, revolved the secondary agencies which gave birth to the material world.

We add therefore to that beautiful continuity of events which characterises the record of Moses a distinct evidence of its origin...its Unity of reference. The Oneness of the Mind which planned we conceive to be indicated by the latter, not less than its supreme endowments by the connexion of the former, and their adequacy to fixed purposes. We trace it in the convergence of the aspects of all which preceded to the concluding act of the sixth day, and in the retrospect of this act to the characters of the several assemblages (*), to which the properties and powers which it originated were adapted.

Details the most interesting are connected with this subject, on the full discussion of which our limits forbid us to enlarge. Having noticed one of its principal features, we content ourselves

at present with the outline of a view which may afford scope for future consideration.

The concluding agency of the sixth day has been presented in a twofold light. Regarded as an individual of a groupe it is announced as a single act, and is, like those which preceded it, consigned to a single epoch. But in its Moral pre-eminence it assumes a higher character. We behold in it a point of union for the past, and a commencement of era for the future. From this station therefore may a spectator view, not merely the instincts of animal life, or those shadows of its higher being, the impulses of material assemblages...but instincts and impulses which transcend them all, quickening a creation which would else have been inanimate, and originating capacities which would otherwise have been unknown. He may view again, in this energy of the Almighty, "the Spirit moving upon the face of the waters,"...the Fiat sent forth, which" divided the light from the darkness," "the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind," overspreading a beautified surface...the surface of a Moral world... the sphere of agency of an intellectual being.

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We pass from hence to the notices which introduce it in the twentieth and following verses, which appear thus in our translation :

And God said, Let the waters bring forth

abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

The inconsistency which appears, at first view, in this passage, "let the waters bring forth the winged fowl," is removed by considering that the single term "waters" indicates, not merely the fluids of the surface, but those which exist in a state insulated from them in the upper regions of the atmosphere (3). We conceive the term to be used, in the present instance, for the atmosphere itself, which a former part of the narrative describes as having been created for the purpose of " dividing the waters from the waters." The expressions therefore of the Sacred historian amount, when expanded, to the following ;..." Let the waters (below the firmament) bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and (those above the firmament) fowl (that) may fly" etc. The Record thus presents us with a brief classification of the animals created on this day. The Ocean and its tributary streams are assigned their inhabitants in two terms of the Hebrew zoology, which include the various aquatic tribes, from the Zoophyte, connecting the Kingdoms of Or

ganic nature, to the Leviathan of the deep. The question naturally presents itself,...do the announcements of modern physiology in any wise corroborate this statement? We answer that they do so in its doctrine of Organic Remains, when detached from those obscurities in which efforts to generalise have so contributed to involve it.

The Wernerian law of petrifactions admits the first occurrence of marine remains, and the record of Moses assigns them a priority of creation. The shelly exuviæ of the former, its testacea, and its corals, which it groupes according to the order of the strata, are announced in "the moving creature that hath life" of the latter (4). Thus far the indications of both are coextensive. But when science proceeds to its arbitrary classifications, we perceive these admirable congruities to disappear, and little else to await the anxious student but inconsistencies which he cannot reconcile, and doubts which impede his best-directed researches.

A due attention to the Mosaic record may, notwithstanding those difficulties of investigation, impart much light to geognostical science. Its terms lead us to suppose, that the outer covering of our globe was, at this early period, in a plastic and yielding state. This we infer from the notices of the second verse, and the

general aspect of calcareous strata. We con