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GENESIS.-CHAPTER I.

1. In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth.

It has always been a fundamental doctrine of Christianity that the world was created, by the almighty power of God, out of nothing. His word called into existence not only the various forms of animate and inanimate nature, but also the very material of which they all consist. Mankind could never, by any effort of reason alone, have arrived at this great truth: it is essentially a doctrine of Divine revelation. All heathen philosophers appear to have supposed that matter was eternal. By some it was held to have existed separately, out of God, for an infinite period; by others to have been joined with God from all eternity. Some believed it to be a perpetual emanation from the Deity; while others attributed to it a nature altogether distinct, and even antagonistic. There are, it is true, many passages in the writings both of the poets and philosophers which, taken by themselves, appear to favour the idea of the absolute creation of all things by the Deity out of nothing; but these will be found, upon comparison with other expressions of the same writers, to refer only to that work of arrangement by which order was produced from Chaos. The voice of nature or tradition seems to have given a confused, imperfect echo of the second verse of Genesis-" The Earth was without form and void," but to have been silent as to the first verse-" In the beginning GOD CREATED."

The following passages will show the opinions generally entertained on this subject by the heathen writers :

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"O Jove, much-honour'd, Jove supremely great,

To thee our holy rites we consecrate,

Our prayers and expiations, King divine,

For all things to produce with ease, through mind, is thine.

Hence, mother earth, and mountains swelling high

Proceed from thee, the deep, and all within the sky.

Saturnian King, descending from above,

Magnanimous, commanding, sceptred Jove;

All-parent, principle, and end of all,

Whose pow'r almighty shakes this earthly ball;

E'en nature trembles at thy mighty nod,

Loud-sounding, arm'd with light'ning, thund'ring God."

"Jove, in counsel wise,

ORPH. Hymn in Jov.

Father of Gods and men."-HES. Theogon. v. 457.

"There is in truth one only God, who made the heaven, and the wide earth, and the blue depths of the sea, and the force of the winds."-SOPHOC. Fragm. apud Grot.

"Thee, the self-sprung, I invoke, who enfoldest the whole nature of things, whirling in etherial gyration, around whom day, and variegated night, and the countless throng of stars perpetually dance."-EURIP. Pirith. apud Grot.

"A beginning is uncreate; for everything that is created must necessarily be created from a beginning, but a beginning itself from nothing whatever; for if a beginning were created from anything it would not be a beginning.”—PLAT. Phædr. c. 24.

"Before Heaven existed there was, through reason, Form and Matter, and the

God who is the worker out of the better."-PLAT. Tim. Locr. c. 2.

B

"God seems to be a cause of all things, and a certain principle."—ARISTOT. Metaph. 1. 1. c. 2.

"It is impossible that there be a production of anything if nothing pre-exist."IBID. 1. VI. c. 7.

"One energy is invariably antecedent to another in time, up to that which is primarily and eternally the moving cause."-IBID. 1. VIII. c. 8.

"Not in infinite time did chaos or night subsist; but the same things continually were in existence as are in existence at present, either in a revolutionary system or otherwise, on the supposition that energy is a thing antecedent to potentiality."-IBID. 1. XI. c. 6. "The poets of the early ages assert the dominion and the rule, not of these first principles, such as Night, and Heaven, or Chaos, or even Oceanus, but of Jupiter."IBID. 1. XIII. c. 4.

"Those things which exist in themselves by necessity are all eternal. But things eternal are uncreate and incorruptible."-IBID. Eth. 1. vi. c. 3.

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"All the philosophers assert that the world was made."-IBID. de Cœlo, 1. 1. c. 10. According to the Brachmans the world was created, and is liable to corruption: it is of a spheroidal figure the god who made and governs it pervades the whole of it."-STRAB. 1. xv. c. 1.

"Heraclitus said: 'All things are formed from fire, and fire from all things.' -PLUT. de Ei apud Delph. c. 8.

"Plato calleth the one unmade and eternal God, the father and maker of the world, and of all other things generated."-IBID. Sympos. 1. VIII. c. 1.

"God, the father and creator of all things that exist, is more ancient than the sun, more ancient than the heavens, more excellent than time, than eternity, than every flowing nature."-MAX. TYR. diss. 38.

"Thales, the Milesian, said that God was the oldest of all things, because he is uncreate."-DIOG. LAERT. 1. 1. c. 35.

"There was a certain eternity from infinite time, not measured by any circumscription of seasons; but how that was in space we cannot understand, because we cannot possibly have even the slightest idea of time before time was."-Cic. de nat. deor. 1. 1. c. 9. "What conception can we possibly have of a Deity who is not eternal ?". IBID. 1. I. c. 10.

"Can any one in his senses imagine that this disposition of the stars, and this heaven, so beautifully adorned, could ever have been formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms ?"-IBID. 1. II. c. 44.

Lucretius argues from the progress of arts and sciences and from the gradual extent of civilisation that the world had a beginning, and that at no very distant time :

Thoughtful man

And all the world, not long ago began:

And therefore arts, that lay but rude before,

Are polished now; we now increase the store;

:

We perfect all the old and find out more."-LUCRET. de rer. nat. 1. v. v.331.

"The first parent of the world set apart the shapeless realms and unformed matter."-Luc. Phars. 1. II. v. 7.

2. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

"Night, parent of gods and men."-ОRPH. Hymn. in noct. v. 1.

"First Chaos was; next ample-bosomed Earth;

Then Love, who is pre-eminent among the immortals."-HES. Theogon. v. 116. "Heaven and Earth were anciently of one form from these, as soon as they were separated from each other, all things were produced and brought to light-trees, birds, and beasts, and the race of mortal men."-EURIP. Menalippe apud Diod. Sic. 1. 1. c. 7.

"At first Chaos was, and night, and dark Erebus, and wide Tartarus; nor was there earth, or air, or heaven; but first of all black-winged night lays a wind-egg in the boundless bosom of Erebus, from which in revolving time sprang the much-desired Eros, his back glittering with golden wings, like to the swift whirlwinds."-ARISTOPH. Aves, v. 692. "Nature produceth at the first rude lumps and masses, not as yet brought into shape and fashion."-PLUT. Sympos. 1. II. c. 3.

"Before the seas, and this terrestial ball,

And heaven's high canopy, that covers all,
One was the face of nature, if a face,-
Rather a rude and indigested mass,
A lifeless lump, unfashioned and unframed,
Of jarring seeds, and justly CHAOS named.
No sun was lighted up the world to view;
No moon did yet her blunted horns renew;
Nor yet was earth suspended in the sky;
Nor poised, did on her own foundations lie;
Nor seas about the shores their arms had thrown,
But earth, and air, and water, were in one.
Thus air was void of light and each unstable,
And water's dark abyss un-navigable.
No certain form on any was impressed;

All were confused and each disturbed the rest:

For hot and cold were in one body fixed,

And soft with hard, and light with heavy mixed.

But God, or Nature, while they thus contend,

To these internal discords put an end.”—OVID. Metam. 1. 1. v. 1.

"He sang of the dark and ancient Chaos, on which the day dawned not; and of a world without light; and how the God divided the liquid depths and fixed in the midst this globe of earth."-SIL. ITAL. 1. XI. v. 456.

Water was considered in the Thalesian philosophy the most excellent of all the elements, as that from which all other things were produced.

v. 200.

"Oceanus, the parent of the Gods, and Tethys their mother."-Hoм. Il. 1. xiv.

"The most ancient Philosophers constituted both Oceanus and Tethys as the parents of generation, and Water as the object of adjuration among the gods-called Styx by the poets. For most entitled to respect is that which is most ancient; and an object of adjuration is a thing most entitled to respect."-ARISTOT. Metaph. 1. I. c 3.

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According to the Brachmans the principles of all things are different; but the principle of the world's formation was water."-STRAB. 1. xv. c. 1.

"Thales the Milesian affirmed that water was the first principle of the whole world."-PLUT. de placitis philos. 1. 1. c. 8.

"Thales the Milesian asserted water to be the origin of all things; and that God was that mind which formed all things from water."-Cic. de Nat. Deor. l. I. c. 10.

"Anaximenes said that the air was infinite, but that the things which were generated from it were finite; and that the earth and water and fire were generated, and from them was produced everything else."-Cic. Quæst. academ. c. 37.

"Know, first, that heaven, and earth's compacted frame,

And flowing waters, and the starry flame,
And both the radiant lights, one common soul
Inspires, and feeds, and animates, the whole.

This active mind, infused through all the space,

Unites and mingles with the mighty mass."-VIRG. En. 1. VI. v. 724.

3. And God said, Let there be light and there was light. "All power is his; and whatsoe'er He wills,

The will itself, omnipotent, fulfils."-Hoм. Odys. 1, xiv. v. 445.

"Easy alike to Jove the word, the deed."-Æsc. Suppl. v. 595.

"From Chaos Erebus and ebon night;

From night the day sprang forth and shining air,
Whom to the love of Erebus she gave.

Earth first produced the Heaven, whose starry cope,
Like to herself immense, might compass her

On every side, and be to blessed gods

A mansion unremoved for aye."-HES. Theog. v. 123.

Orpheus sang

"-how earth and ocean and the sky,
Discordant union of deformity,

Were mixed in chaos, ere the pow'r divine
Bade beauteous order from confusion shine;
Bade the bright orb his stated journeys know,
And mountains rise, and sounding rivers flow.
Then beauteous nymphs along the margins rov'd
And living creatures through creation mov'd."

·APOL. RHOD. Arg. 1. 1. v. 496.

5. The evening and the morning were the first day.

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Different nations have adopted various methods of reckoning the beginning and end of the civil day. Among the Babylonians it was reckoned from sunrise to sunrise; by the Romans, from midnight to midnight; by the Umbrians from noon to noon; and by the Athenians and others, as well as by the Hebrews, from sunset to sunset. In the 23rd chapter of Leviticus it is written "From even to even shall ye celebrate your Sabbath; and this was, doubtless, the method which prevailed from the beginning of the world. Among the Celtic nations the same custom may be observed; whence our expressions se'nnight," and "fortnight." The Greek word vuxenμepov a night and a day, or the space of 24 hours, may be referred to the same origin.

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"The Gauls do not reckon time by the number of days, but by the nights."CES. de bell. Gall. 1. vI. c. 18.

"The Germans, in reckoning time, do not count the number of days, but of nights."-TAC. Germ. c. 11.

7. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

8. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

"First I will sing a lofty song concerning ancient chaos,
How natures were assimilated and heaven made perfect,
And the broad-breasted earth and the depths of the sea created;
And of much-wise love, the ancient and self-perfect,
Who produced all these things, separating one from another."

ORPH. Argon. v. 423.

"God taking up whatever is visible, not as being possessed of tranquillity, but greatly and irregularly agitated, brought it from disorder into order."—PLAT. Îimæus, c. 6.

Aristotle shows the folly of those who argue that the world was made by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, saying,

"A carpenter would give a better account than this; for he would not think it sufficient to say that because the instruments, the axes, the planes, and chisels happened to fall so and so upon the timber, cutting it here and there, that therefore it was hollow in one place and level in another, and by that means the whole came to be of such a form; but he will say it was because he himself made such strokes and that he directed the

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