remains have been discovered among the fossils of the lower animals, to arrive, by parity of reasoning, at some conclusion concerning that state in which, if there have been men existing before, those men may have been placed. They may have been transplanted and translated, as some have since been; so that, without tasting of death, they may have been removed to the presence of the Lord. And, indeed, may it not have been with the intent of familiarizing our minds with something like this, that we have those two instances which we do find, of men who have passed away from this world without suffering the pains of death? "Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him." And the very manner of Elijah's translation is circumstantially given. The horses and chariot of fire which carried him away from the vision of men, took him likewise, without passing through death, to the presence of the Lord. If, then, these men passed away under such circumstances, in our fallen state, surely some may have previously passed away still more gloriously; and thus we form some notion of the scale of position which might have been reserved for Adam, had not Adam fallen. And we are led to consider, that it was in consequence of that fall, already devised from the beginning of the universe, in the eternal and inscrutable counsels of the Great Supreme, that this our nature should be dignified by the Advent! In whatever light we look upon it, this fallen nature does arise in dignity and sublimity. It presents itself under the most awful development; and the love of God, radiating through the clouds and darkness of our lapsed condition, shines out more brightly, and reveals to us him whose name is LOVE, who willeth that none should perish, but that all should come to the knowledge of his truth, and hath made such full and plentiful provision that this his will should be carried into effect.

Many of the theories which we have endeavored in such brief words to lay before the reader in this chapter, have been presented in language inadequate to give anything like a true and proper conception of the grounds on which they rest, and, indeed, of the theories themselves. We are well aware, too, that many of them are in themselves but conjectures. The facts are few and simple; and the very science which rests upon them, must be said to be in its infancy. So

far as they are confirmed to us by astronomical truth, they, of course, increase in importance; we may set greater value upon them, and rely more entirely upon the deductions which they present to us. Still we give them simply as a collection of facts, and only in order to show that there are ways whereby in our present darkness, and in the present infancy of this most interesting science, the word of God as revealed to us in the book of his revelation, and the works of God as revealed to us in his creation, are by no means irreconcilable the one with the other; and also to show, that the more closely we examine the one, and the more diligently we survey the other, the smaller will the difficulties become, and the greater the probabilities of an ultimate and perfect coincidence being proved between them. when we speak of a coincidence between the one and the other, it is not that we take them at present to be at all dissevered, and as though they were telling us different histories, but it is because the one presents us with that which we can understand and receive as a whole, the other that which comes to us in small fragments, and by parts at a time. These, then, are a few hints thrown out in order to show in what way we may perceive their reconcilement; how careful we ought to be not to allow our minds to be biased by any system, however universally received. "To the word and to the testimony." This is the court of ultimate appeal. No theories of any man can bind us. Not the opinion of any commentator, however wise, nor the opinions of any bodies of men, however august, are to weigh with us. The words of God alone are to be our guide in the matter. Many helps are given us, rightly to investigate the truth; but we are to lay aside any theory which may have been formed, however apparently consistent, directly we find that truth, coming to us from another point, shows to us that that theory has not the consent of the rest of God's works, and, consequently, not of his word. Hence it is that we are taught to "search the Scriptures." We claim for no other book that which we claim for this. Here we have the unadulterated word of God, and it therefore must be true. The comments and decisions of men upon it are the works of beings as finite as ourselves, subject to the same error, and, it may be, even greater. From this we perceive, that while we read the Word of

God with deep reverence, it is necessary to examine it carefully for ourselves. "Search the Scriptures." Search them not only for scientific purposes-search them not only for historical events—but search them above all, because "in them ye think ye have eternal life; and these," says our Lord," are they which testify of me."

CHAPTER V.

NATURAL HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT WORLD.

NATURAL HISTORY OF MOSES-RELICS OF FORMER CREATIONS-TWO DISTINCT CREATIONS-TREES OF LIFE AND KNOWLEDGE-THEORIES CONCERNING THE FORMER-MAN DRIVEN FROM EDEN-ANTEDILUVIAN LONGEVITY-HOW ACCOUNTED FOR-TREE OF LIFE IN THE APOCALYPSE-HISTORY OF THE FALL-LEVIATHAN -BEHEMOTH-SERPENT OF PARADISE-RABBINICAL LEGENDS OF-WINGED SERPENTS OF THE DESERT-THE BRAZEN SERPENT-TYPE OF CHRIST-CONCLUSION.

AMONG the most interesting branches of science to which the human mind can be turned ranks the investigation of the nature of those living beings who occupy a rank lower than ourselves in the scale of creation. This is a study which pre-eminently points out to us the wonderful power and wisdom of God: and there is a light in which we may regard it which tends to give us much information with respect to the sacred writings. It will be the object of this chapter to bring before the reader some of the principal facts connected with the natural history of the ancient world, more especially those which are revealed to us in the book of God. Not those relics of former creations with which the discoveries of geologists have made us familiar, but those which existed at the time when Adam was established as a sovereign over all the globe, and his new subjects were brought to him by their common Creator, that he might receive from the Divine hand the investiture of his sovereignty.

If we descend into the crust of the globe, and observe what relics there are of strange and gigantic creatures, the former denizens of a more colossal creation, we shall perceive that they are altogether unadapted for the state in which we now find the world, and we have reason to believe that they were for the most part inhabitants of seas sustained at a much higher temperature than those of the

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present era. The land animals, too, seem to have been adapted for different climates, and their relics are found in latitudes where beings of the same class could no longer exist. But we are not now to speak concerning these monstrous animals, which strike us with astonishment at once by their gigantic proportions, and by their destructive character; but rather to show what kind of light is thrown by Scripture upon the natural history of the existing creation.1

'That the climate of the tropics was once diffused over the surface of the globe, and that the earth has been gradually cooling down to its present temperature, is scarcely to be considered as a mere theory.

"To account, then, first for the origin of the unstratified and granitic rocks, to which the geologist so uniformly arrives, we must remember that these rocks are compounded of quartz, mica, feldspar, and other substances, all of which are demonstrated by the experiments of M. Mitscherlich to be reducable to gases, or vapor, by means of heat. The minerals, therefore, and other substances which form the granitic and primitive rocks, may have been the solidified residuum of a large mass of gases and vapors. The manner, therefore, in which the Great Creator, in the beginning, may have commanded the commencement of the nucleus of the substance of the earth, may be illus trated by the discovery of Encke's comet in modern astronomy. A mass of vapor, through which the stars are visible, of sixty millions of leagues in extent, is found to exist in space. This mass of vapor is, probably, composed of gases in an unsolidified condition. If the granite of this earth is composed of gases in a solidified condition; if it is made up of quartz, mica, and feldspar, all of which are reducible to gases; then the earth may have once existed in the form of gases, and have occupied at first a different place in the universe from that in which it moves at present. If the Almighty first created the substance of the earth of gases in their unsolidified state, and many of these gases by their blending together were kindled, as seems to be the case with Encke's comet, then, to use the words of Dr. Buckland," the passage of this nebulous matter to a solid state may have been produced by the radiation of heat from its surface into space.' If this could possibly have been, then we are at liberty to believe that it was so; and that Moses described only, in anticipation of the discoveries of modern astronomy, the manner in which the substance of the earth was framed; namely, that it was first a mere aggregate of atoms, elements, or gases, similar to Encke's comet; that these constituted the substance of the whole globe; that they were commanded as one congregated mass of vapor to move through space; that they gradually assumed a solid or granitic state; and after proceeding through space for a certain period, without any centre round which they might move, they were guided to that part of the universe which they now occupy in the form of the stratified and unstratified earth."