of the Manicheans. The eternal existence of two elemental principles, matter and mind, probably furnished them with their conception of a good and an evil principle. From mind, simple, indissoluble, incorruptible, flowed reason, right thoughts and all goodness; and from corruptible and changeable matter, appetites, passions, and whatever in our nature is terrene and unworthy. Hence all in our nature that is good flowed from mind, the good principle; and all that is evil from the evil principle, matter.

The opponents of the eternity of matter, among other arguments against it, consider the doctrine at war with the Mosaic account of creation, and by consequence with divine revelation. That being simple truth, it must, of course, be equally contrary to fact. It is certain, beyond question, that the human race would be poorly compensated for the abandonment of the guidance and immortal hopes of the Scriptures, by the adoption of any theory, however plausible and splendid.

But the sober and religious advocates of this theory, (and it has such,) contend, that the one view is no more incompatible with the history of creation in Genesis, than the other. They affirm, that Moses had no purpose, in his record, to inculcate systems of physics or astronomy, but simply to advance such great moral and religious truths as were equally important to human well being, or any theory of creation; and that, had he undertaken to propound to the Jews a system of cosmogony, physics and chronology, in exact accordance with abstract truth, beside that it would have had no tendency to enlighten and guide men to moral truth and duty, it would have been so directly at war with the received hypotheses of the times, as would have required another revelation, and another series of miracles to sustain it. They insist, moreover, that the term in Genesis, which is rendered created,' would be more properly translated arranged,' or disposed,' and that the passage should read, in the beginning God arranged or harmonized the heavens and the earth, which before were chaotic and without form.

That illustrious and pious oriental scholar, Sir William

Jones, informs us, that the Hindoo Institutes of Menu are supposed to be as ancient as the writings of Moses. A definition is given in that book of the word 'day' as applied to creation. It states, that, when used to express this idea, it imports a period of several thousand years. The theorists in question apply this solution to the term ' days' in the first chapter of Genesis. The six days, in which the Creator arranged the chaotic elements, and reduced them to order, in their view, indicate the successive epochs of creation, or the different changes, which our world has undergone in acquiring its present arrangement and form.

To investigate these high questions is a natural, and it seems to me, an innocent impulse of the human mind. Every one, in the present order of things, has greater or less facilities for making them. Different and conflicting views of these grounds of opinion cannot but meet the inquiring eye. There can be no harm in the love and the stern investigation of truth, lead where it may. The inquirer should bear in mind, that nothing should be conceded to the love of system, or the pride of opinion. The best and most vigorous minds will always be most docile, and most ready to see, that the faith of the scriptures and the motives and hopes of immortality are interests not to be suspended, or put at hazard, by reasonings predicated upon the probabilities of a theory of creation. It seems to me, that the truth and importance of 'the sure word of prophecy' are in no wise connected with the reception or rejection of the one system or the other.

22*

LECTURE XLIII.

THE DELUGE.

No one, among the readers of our country, is ignorant that we lately possessed an accomplished scholar, and a most amiable man, who maintained, with all the devoted and absorbing zeal of a Columbus, seeking the means of exploring a new world, that the earth is a hollow sphere, concave instead of convex at the poles, and that our globe possesses an interior as well as an external world; that the interior world is habitable, and may be entered at the poles. What a treatise of geology he would have been able to give us, had he discovered and entered his interior world!

As it is, our knowledge of the interior of the earth is very limited. The lowest depths, to which human research has penetrated, in mines, caverns, the beds of rivers and ravines, bear no more proportion to the central point of the earth's semi-diameter, than the thickness of the coat of varnish on an artificial globe, to the distance between its circumference and centre. The earthy matters thrown out by the explosion of volcanoes, though in most instances evidently ejected from depths below any point reached by human exertion, are found to be so nearly similar in all eruptions, as to furnish very little evidence, in regard to the interior structure of the earth.

As far as we are acquainted with its internal constituents, it is an accumulation of earths, oxydes, metals, salts and gases, so arranged in juxta-position, as that the heterogeneous elements sustain a perpetual and mutual action and reaction. It consequently carries, in its own bosom, the cause of a ceaseless series of changes, which, to vague indifferent observation, might seem an evidence of imperfection; but which are, probably, tending towards a result of

and

beneficent design. Geological investigation teaches us beyond the possibility of doubt, that the earth has undergone various successive changes, of a power adequate to the obliterating of all other records of their action, except those traced in its own enduring bosom. Whether, with Hutton, we are to attribute the chief change to fire, as the innumerable crystallizations over the whole earth, and its substratum of granite, a species of half crystallized rock, would seem to indicate; or to water, as the marine exuviæ imbedded in the strata of limestone and secondary formation, and the traces of diluvial action manifest, wherever the earth has been penetrated, are supposed to show, is not capable of discussion in the narrow limits prescribed to us.

Geological science seems at present divided between the two rival schools, one of which contends, that investigation shows no changes in the earth, for which causes now in action, such as rivers, ocean-currents and changes, volcanoes, chemical action, and the insect formation of coral reefs are not abundantly adequate to account. Theirs is called the fluviatile system, which is supposed at present to be the ascendant theory.

The disciples of the diluvial school contend, that the earth bears manifest traces, that it has been submerged beneath the waters, in such a way as to have acquired stratified deposits of sand, marine exuvia, and organic remains in the dry and interior parts of all the continents. Not only are traces of a catastrophe, which cannot be assigned to any other known cause, every where visible, but mythic tradition, and the wonderful coincidence of the testimony of the ancient poets, concur in striking congruity with the recorded narrative of the deluge in the Scriptures.

The Chaldeans have their history of Xisustrus preserved, which is only that of Noah with some slight variations. The Egyptians left it on record, in their sacred books, that Mercury engraved the rudiments of science for them on columns, which resisted the deluge. The Chinese have their Peyron, a mortal beloved of the gods, who saved him

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self in a boat from the general deluge. There are many traits of resemblance between their history of Fohi and the scripture account of Noah. The East Indians, in their sacred books, give still more detailed traditions of a deluge which happened, according to them, more than twenty thousand years since. A single woman, and seven men, were all that were saved on a remote mountain of the north. They add, that two animals of each species, and two individuals of every plant, were preserved with them; and that the god, Vistchnou, transformed into a fish, brought a boat to the mountain to their relief. The same tradition is preserved in the Edda. The killing of the giant, Ymus, produced such a flow of blood as submerged the world, with the single exception of Belgemer, who was saved in a boat with his wife.

We e may consider the beautiful lines of Ovid on the deluge, and the fable of Deucalion and Pyrrha, as a general summary of the traditions of all the ancient poets respecting it. They present a most impressive picture, which, in its general features, seems almost a transcript of the narrative recorded in Genesis. The recess of the flood, and the emersion of the earth from the waters, are thus presented in the last five lines of the picture of Ovid :-'The sea again has a shore, and it absorbs the swollen rivers. The streams subside. The hills are seen to emerge. Dry places are multiplied from the decreasing waves. After a long day, the groves display their bare trunks, and retain the slime upon their branches.'

The sum of the narrative of the Scriptures, is in the following terms: -The fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven opened; and the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered. Fifteen cubits upwards did the waters prevail, and all the high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered.'