appearing in their literature at all, and especially in a limited portion of their writings, is only that which is seen everywhere. How many thousand words in our language are wanting in the brief vocabulary of the Bible? How many have one meaning there, which have, in popular and classic use, another? And the Hebrew or in, as it is written in the name of the patriarch Moab, does not appear, as we can discover, in the sense which it bears in that compound, neither before his day at all, nor afterwards, for at least about twelve hundred years, when it occurs once in Isaiah. The word y, the firmament, which occurs nine times in the first chapter of Genesis, is after that found only twice in the Psalms, in two several chapters of Ezekiel, and once in Daniel;* and in neither of these places, except in the nineteenth Psalm, does it signify the visible heavens.

We have not sought to prove that the word in question does in the first chapter of Genesis signify a great period; but only to set it in such a light, that whatever extent the geologist feels compelled to assign it, he shall not find a discrepancy here between the works of God and the words of His revelation. And we think the following conclusions may be safely received.

I. That the idea of time in this word is generic, and it may with equal propriety signify a day, a year, or any other period having limits fixed by nature, authority, or custom.

II. That the argument from usage fails to establish that the form i was restricted to the sense of day.

We rest the argument here, though it might, with great confidence, be pushed further; for these two points, the one neutral, the other negative, are all that we wish to establish. And these settled, it becomes a matter of more importance how the ancients understood this account, than how the moderns have interpreted it. And for the elucidation of this question antiquity brings from every quarter her varied store of tradition. The great miracle of creation was everywhere remembered as the wonder of the universe. And in many of these traditions, when separated from the fable which ignorance and imagination have drawn around them, we find a veritable paraphrase of the primitive record. What testimony then do we gather from the profane Targums?

The legends of the Hindoos, the Birmese, and the Egyptians, so far as they are intelligible, agree with the theory of great cycles for the Mosaic days. The myths of the Greeks and Latins, though indefinite, point unequivocally to the same notion. The Etruscans, a people who parted from the Asiatic tribes in very early times, who

* So Turner," Companion to the Book of Genesis."

did not degenerate into barbarism, but retained a high degree of cultivation till swallowed up in the Roman empire; whose language, though almost entirely unknown, has some marks which seem to ally it directly with the Oriental; and whose testimony is therefore of the highest moment, are very explicit. We give it in the words of an eminent and judicious scholar,* that the inference which follows may bear the weight of so excellent an authority:

"According to Suidas, the ancient Etruscans had a history of very early date, in which the work of creation was described as accomplished in six periods of 1,000 years each. During the first chiliad or millennium the heavens and earth were created; during the second, the visible firmament; during the third, the waters of the ocean, and those contained in the earth; during the fourth, the great luminaries of heaven; during the fifth, vegetables, and all kinds of animals; and during the sixth and last, man. A similar opinion prevailed among the Persians.

"It is very clear that the Hindoo,† Etruscan, and Mosaic cosmogonies were derived from the same original source. There is too much common to them to permit the belief that each of them had an independent origin. How happens it, then, that the idea of long periods, instead of literal days, is so thoroughly incorporated into the two former? Can we avoid the presump tion that the demiurgic periods were thus originally understood, and that they are thus to be interpreted in the Mosaic accounts?"

*Professor Hitchcock, in the Bib. Rep. for Oct., 1835, p. 293,-a very able and temperate article, giving a review of the various theories proposed for reconciling revelation and geology. A little farther on (p. 327) this writer adds, in the spirit of true philosophy," But, finally, even if none of the modes of reconciling the two records that have been examined are satisfactory, we still maintain that it would be premature, in the present state of geology and of sacred philology, to infer any real discrepancy between them." And again, (p. 329 :)" The exegesis of the first chapter of Genesis can be considered as by no means settled."

† Not only is there coincidence in the great facts of the narrative, but sometimes a remarkable preservation of the original terms. The Hindoo Vach is represented as saying, (we quote from Milman, Hist. Christ., c. 2, note, and he from De Guigneaut :)" La première parole que proféra le Créateur, ce fut oum: Oum parut avant toutes choses, et il s'appelle le premier né du Créateur. Oum ou Prona, pareil an pur éther renfermant en soi toutes les qualités, tous les élémens, est le nom, le corps de Brahm, et par conséquent infini comme lui, créateur et maître de toutes choses. Brahm, méditant sur le Verbe divin, y trouva l'eau primitive." That is, oum, interpreted light (os) and ether, was the first word spoken by the Creator, or the name given to the first created substance, and was personified under the title of Vach or Word, as the efficient agent (like the Logos in John) in the work of creation. So in Moses, "Let there be light," were the first words uttered by the Almighty. “And God called the light, iom." In Moses the dark chaos of waters was first, and light, or iom, second. In the Brahmic cosmogony, oum was first, containing in itself the elements of all things. Out of it was produced next the waters, or material substance, from which the agency of oum formed, and still governs, the world.

No one feature more generally pervades the ancient cosmogonies than that of an active and a passive principle combining for the production of the world,—the dark mass of inert matter, the origin of which was ever a mystery to the heathen; and on the other hand an active, pervading, developing, generating, and vivifying power,

Viewed in the light of the commentaries which these traditions afford, it would be consistent with the highest reason, in the absence of all testimony, to believe that the Hebrews, down to the later periods of their history, may have understood this term to mean a. great age, not only here, but elsewhere, as in the decalogue, whenever the work of creation is referred to. But neither are we without some slight testimony to this very point. Josephus intimates that he understood the first chapter of Genesis as having truly some particular explanation not obvious, according to the common understanding of the Hebrew in his day.* Professor Hitchcock (supra, p. 287) says, that "Philo affirms that the Mosaic account of the six days is metaphorical; and it is a piece of rustic simplicity to understand it literally." And to this express declaration he adds, on the authority of De Luc and De la Fitte, "It seems to have been a prevalent opinion among the Jews, that each bi occupied one thousand years; hence that people reckon six millenaries before the advent of the Messiah."

Descending to the era of the Christian fathers, we find the most eminent of them revolving doubts or expressing opinions similar to these. The language of St. Augustine is, "It is very difficult, if not impossible, for us to conceive, much less to explain, what sort of days these were." The venerable Bede, one of the latest luminaries of the ancient church, says, "Perhaps the word day here means all time, and includes all the revolutions of ages."

When these uncertain words-the failing echo of that voice sent down from the morning of time, and repeated along the line of centuries in so many different tongues-were uttered, the light of the Christian world was beginning to suffer that obscuration which settled at length so dark and dense on all her borders. She had already passed the verge of that awful gulf, and was fast descending to the wide chaos of hieratic despotism, the misrule of ignorance, and the tyranny of fearful superstitions, in which the learning and wisdom of the ancient world were wrecked, and well-nigh lost. In that "night of a thousand years" which oppressed the nations, and shut men's minds from knowledge and from inquiry, the Hebrew became a sealed tongue; Greek literature was unknown in the West; the Latin was almost forgotten, even in the formularies of the

-denominated variously, fire, light, and ether,—a tertium quid, too subtile to be called matter, and too gross to be reckoned pure spirit. Query: What shall a better knowledge of the nature and office of electricity add to confirm or refute this notion?

Cf. Ant., b. 1, c. i, § 2, and Pref., § 4.

See Wiseman's Lectures, Lect. 5, and Hitchcock, supra.

Church; what of grammar remained in the cloisters degenerated to puerilities for the divertisement of idle monks; philology was never dreamed of. And when a new order of things began to dawn, and some rays, penetrating the gloom, shed their light on an humble student of nature, teaching him to enunciate faintly some of the simple principles of science, he was speedily arraigned for damnable heresies, and kneeling at the footstool of an unholy inquisition, was made to swear, with his hand on the Gospels, "With a sincere heart and undissembled fidelity, I abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid errors and heresies;" his indignant soul the while, deeply moved, still forcing him in the next breath to give utterance to the convictions of science; casting thereby a perjury on his life, if, indeed, it be not a desecration of the dignity of perjury to affirm it of such stark mockery. The fate of the unhappy Galileo is but an index to the profound degradation in which the world reposed, and of the struggle which then waited. Every successful effort for the recovery of lost truth, or the investigation of new, was thenceforth to meet with an opposition, the same in kind, though, by the spirit of this reformed age, graduated to that which is reckoned a wholesome conservatism. And when, among other questions of a liberal kind, this old one-not new-of the days of creation, was brought forth from its millennial slumbers, and the demonstrations of science seemed of necessity to unsettle the vulgar opinion, it was natural that skepticism, with her wonted temerity, should seize upon the fact, in hope-vain hope-to find a new shaft for her impoverished quiver. It was natural that the cautious believer should look with suspicion, and the timid with alarm, on the announcement of sentiments which struck the world, at first, as a dangerous novelty. But considering that the common opinion became settled in the age when that lofty pyramid of darkness overshadowed the lands; and in view of all the obstacles that have beset the progress of truth; and of the yet imperfect state of sacred philology; and the yet further fact, that the interpretation which claims for i in this place the sense of a solar day, has all our strongest prejudices in its support, and the other has them all against it; we submit to the candid reader, whether an opinion, which, if our deduction be true, can be at the most only a choice between two equals, can, in a just balance, preponderate against the consent of antiquity and the strong and inevitable indications of science.

We have directed attention mainly to such considerations as have not, to our knowledge, been before exhibited, to show that the word in question may have the full range of meaning needed to make it agree with the demands of geology. Many other and weighty rea

sons may be gathered from previous discussions, going to sustain the same position. It would extend the present article too far, and is quite unnecessary now, to notice the secondary objections to this view, which have been urged from other parts of this history; as the morning and evening. We simply remark, that if this leading proposition be established as a philological fact, all the minor parts, as has been already shown by previous writers, will easily adjust themselves to this primary one.

ART. VII.-SUNDAY-SCHOOL LITERATURE.

Descriptive Catalogue of the Sunday-School Publications and Tracts of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 8vo., pp. 180. New-York: Lane & Scott.

"AFTER God had carried us safe to New-England, and we had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God's worship, and settled the civil government, one of the next things we looked and longed after was, to advance learning, and to perpetuate it to posterity." Such were the sentiments of the Puritans of New-England. And they are noble thoughts, pregnant with wisdom, patriotism, and piety; beautifully illustrating the lofty exaltation of soul which moved those heroic men to abandon their ancestral homes, and to establish themselves in the primeval forests of an inhospitable climate, amidst a savage race, whose tender mercies were cruelty. The grand idea which ruled the mind of the Puritan was, that if men would enjoy free, pure, and permanent political or social institutions, they must build them upon the corner-stones of Evangelical religion and universal education. Springing from this, there grew up another mighty conception, which swayed him with the force of a conviction: he believed it to be the duty of every good man, and of every Christian Church, to labour earnestly in the work of diffusing intelligence and virtue. And if in America republican liberty has its strongest fortresses; if popular education, social purity, and religious influence, are more universally prevalent throughout our Titanic confederation than in any other part of the globe; our superiority is mainly attributable to the blessing of God operating through these expansive and energetic thoughts.

The characteristics of the present age, startling beyond all precedent, imperatively demand of the modern Church a scrupulous