regions, nor held in solution by the air under the form of vapour.

By this drainage of the waters from the land we have advanced another step toward a fit residence for animal life; for how could those living beings have existed in a mixture of mud, whom Providence designed to roam the earth? They would want SOLID earth for their support, and for their residence; on the other hand, how could those live which were appointed to inhabit the waters? they would want water purified, not mixed with earth; but, let this mud be separated into its parts, earth and water, and accommodations for both these descriptions of creatures are furnished by one single operation.

We have now acquired the distinctions, and have separated the elements of earth, water, air, light; light, the first great stimulus; air, the general envelope of the globe; that element most easily affected by light; that in which light produces heat, the next in kin to light; after air, water, a fluid possessing many of the properties of air, capable of mingling with air, of rising into the air, transparent like air, and like air expansible in the highest degree: on the other hand, possessing many of the properties of earth, capable of being condensed by pressure, of being consolidated by privation of heat, of being converted into the substance of plants, of animals, of minerals, and even composing the basis of many articles which mankind have agreed to call earths. Lastly, earth, an indurated, substantial, solid body, compact, dense, and firm, in all its variations of clays, metals, stones, and rocks; its surface varied by undulating vallies and hills, depths and prominencies; earth with all its varieties meets our observation, and thus the chaotic state of the globe is exchanged for a state of regularity, order, and arrangement.

VERSES 11, 12.

Now let life start into exercise, but in regular order; first vegetable life, "Let the earth bring forth grass," DESHA, Boтavnv xopт8, tender grass, succulent herbage; not the first shoots, but the whole plant, complete, mature, prolific. Vegetation of all kinds: 1st, Grasses which clothe the earth with verdure; 2dly, Herbs yielding seed; shrubs, rising higher than grass; more spreading, more umbrageous; but perhaps not permanent; 3dly, Trees of various foliage and figure, lofty, solid, vigorous, perennial.

Among botanic writers grasses are humble plants, feebly supported by jointed stems, and perishing after a single season: shrubs are plants approaching the nature, appearance, and form of trees, but their stems die down to the earth, according to the seasons; whereas trees are permanent, and during many a year they equally abide the sultry suns of summer, and the piercing frosts of winter.

The sacred writer observes of these patriarchal vegetables," each having his seed in himself;" so that

not merely the existence of the individual, but that of posterity, was completely provided for.

The conformation of vegetables is among the most interesting and instructive inquiries which can engage our attention; more especially such parts of their structure as are adapted to the furnishing, the ripening, and the impregnating of their seed. The anatomy of plants discovers one set of vessels for the circulation of air throughout them; another for the transmission of a liquid, which rises into exercise, as roused by the genial warmth of spring, and diffuses its enlivening influence throughout the whole. The stem draws moisture from the earth, to supply the branches and leaves which it supports; the leaves too imbibe moisture from the air, and exhibit a most curious expansion of nerves, enveloped by the most delicate of coatings for their protection. But nothing is more wonderful than the seed vessels, which, in a space extremely small, and in some plants scarcely visible, contain millions of future offspring enclosed in each grain of their contents. In short, vegetative life, though it be not of equal powers with animal life, yet in some instances approaches it, and in general holds the place of a medium between minerals, fossils, &c. whose life is dubious, if indeed it be life; and animal life, which enables its possessor to exercise those senses and motions by which it is distinguished.

In surveying the productions of the vegetable world we are delighted with their variety, their beauty, and their utility. As they spring out of the earth, and sport their green shoots above the surface, they interest us; the beauty of their flowers, their infinitely diversified forms, the elegance of their attitudes, their graceful bendings, or their majestic firmness, attract our attention, and our attention glows into admiration and praise. As means of our sustenance vegetables are of the first importance to us, and from them we derive as well our habitation as our food.

Such are the obvious and evident properties of vegetables; but what shall we say to those numerous species, which go through all the functions of life unseen by us? those which the microscope has discovered? those which in a few hours burst into life, ripen, perpetuate their successors, and die? those which grew in the waters? under the waters? those which inhabit the sultry desert? and those which diversify the regions of ice? and which, it greatly surprises us are of the same nature and genera? I say, those vegetables, which under the extreme frosts of the polar circle shew the last efforts of vegetative life, are the same as those which the torrid zone of Africa scarce suffers to exist beneath the burning beams of a vertical sun.

To follow this subject, even moderately, would lead us too far at present, but I strongly wish to recal to the reader's mind the many various ways by which vegetables furnish and preserve their seed.

Usually the flower precedes the seed, and when the flower has done its office the seed is mature. The flower has been taken by botanists as the distinguishing organ of plants, and the different forms in which it appears have contributed to their arrangement and classification. But arrangement and classification are human ideas, ideas resulting from the attainments and advances of science: whether they are natural principles is another question. Be that as it may, some plants have no flowers, yet they bare seed, but bear it on their leaves; others bear their seed in berries, others in pods, others in nuts, others in stones, enclosed in their fruit; some have many seeds associated, as it were; others have single seeds; some expose their seeds to open day, others ripen them under the earth; some plants render their seeds prolific without the assistance of a partner, others must unite the offices of both sexes, or else their productions are barren: in short, in a thousand yarious manners, and by a thousand different contrivances, they are diverse one from another, yet each has its seed, its own proper kind of seed, in itself. Vide 1 Cor. xv. 37, &c.

FOURTH DAY. LUMINARIES, HEAT.

Directly after the appearance of vegetation we read of the influences of the celestial luminaries; and here I wish to observe, that although the element light has already engaged our attention, yet no mention, or hint, has occurred of the element heat; heat, however, is necessary to the existence of vegetables, to their maturity, and to their fertility. Now, though I do not consider the sun as truly the fountain of heat, or that streams of fire, which are the cause of heat, issue from the sun, yet I consider the sun as the great agent, whose beams call into exercise those principles of heat on our earth, which otherwise would be quiescent, and even immobile. Loosely speaking, then, the sun is the cause of heat; heat is necessary to vegetative life, especially to its maturity, and its succession.

The periods of vegetation, also, are determined by the celestial luminaries. Plants which are annuals, which yearly shed their leaves, and die in their stems, whether or not they die in their roots, these must needs be influenced by the annual effects of the sun which certainly determines their periods. Plants whose duration is shorter, which more quickly ripen, and more quickly terminate their various stages, are not to be reckoned by the solar revolution, but by the lunar; and these are monthly productions. This statement is perfectly accordant with the sentiments of the same inspired writer on another occasion, Deut. xxxiii. 14. and with those words in the passage under consideration, which describe the offices and duties of these luminaries, which are, he informs us, 1st, to divide day from night; 2dly, to be for signs; 3dly, for seasons; 4thly, for days; 5thly, for years.

1st, To divide day from night; this is effectually performed by the sun, whose light constitutes day, whose absence implies darkness.

2dly, To be for signs, nn LEATUTH, DISTINGUISHMENTS, recollections to bring to rememberance; in short, to form so many epochas; from which to begin reckoning, toward which to direct reckoning, in the course of ages. Accordingly, we find that nations which have not the use of letters, consequently, no registers, yet observe very accurately the courses and stations of the sun and moon, and are rarely mistaken in their observations on the situations, aspects, effects, &c. of those heavenly bodies.

3dly, To be for seasons, y MUODIM, literally, for appointments; now this idea includes in it that of a meeting, a prefixed meeting of two or more persons. I do not well know how the sun could be the sign of an appointment for a distant period of time, as a year, or even half a year, since in the course of so many days an appointment might be forgot, or vacated, by sundry interventions; yet it might serve as a sign for one day; a meeting when the sun rises, when the sun declines, when the sun is at its height, would be clearly understood and remembered; and so we find it actually was employed in later ages: "by the time the sun be hot ye shall have help," 1 Sam. i. 9. vide also, Judg. ix. 33; Lev. xxii. 27; Josh. viii. 23; Nehem. vii. 3. The moon, however, being of shorter course than the sun, and,

"nightly varying in her circling orb,"

affords the means of fixing appointments in a much better manner than the sun; and this I apprehend was a part of her duty, and was among the earliest uses actually made of her light, and her course.

This

In hot countries the heat of the day is a time for resting, not for exercise; appointments, therefore, would be made for a time when the sun declined, the cool of the evening, the breeze of the day, as the Hebrew speaks; but if appointments referred to a day more distant than that now current, the moon would denote the arrival of the period of time prefixed. luminary then answered the purpose of some great clock, which being universally seen, universally heard, conveyed intelligence of the proper hour, to every one who exercised a due attention, to every one over the face of the whole earth: This is the use now made of the aspects of the satellites of Jupiter, those telescope planets; for when our ships sail to the uttermost parts of the globe, yet they always know the time at London, by inspection of those luminaries. It was however, as it still is, much more natural for man to direct his eyes toward his own moon, which needed no telescope to render her visible, and which at once reported by her aspect the time or season of public appointments, especially.

When I mention public appointments I must own I allude principally to the seventh day, which was.

ordained as a time of sacred commemoration; for, observe how perfectly the moon is adapted to this service; when her young crescent just gilds the close of evening with its mild lustre, her figure is totally unlike what it is seven days afterward, when light and shade divide her between them; or when after another seven days she rises in full splendour, her whole surface radiant with reflected light, and a flood of glory bursts on all the skies. View the effect of the next seven days, observe how light and darkness have changed their quarters; what had been light, to the right hand, now is dark; what had been dark to the left hand, now is light; so that at these four periods of the lunar revolution, the time of appointment indicated by her form could not be mistaken.

I own I think it impossible to deny, and to support the denial by convincing arguments, that these peculiarities of the moon's appearance were coincident with the appointment of sacred worship among mankind; if a private person, or a private family, might offer adoration to the Author of all things every evening, as day declined, yet that more numerous assemblies should unite their public devotions every seventh day, wherever were inhabitants capable of public devotion, seems to be an irrefragable inference from those marks of time, which the moon exhibits to every eye. Surely in these respects she was appointed, divinely appointed, for sacred seasons.

4thly, For DAYS, IMIM; this word, in the plural form, I conceive means somewhat more than merely a natural day; it means a peculiar, fixed, or set day. It has the appearances of sometimes meaning a year, as some think; so, Gen. xxiv. 55. "Let the damsel abide with us days, i.e. a full period of days, or ten," ten months, say some, 'ten days, say our translators. I suspect it means a month, or at least a period of days determinable by the moon, at shortest perhaps a fortnight. Lev. xxv. 29. "If a man sell a house, within days, a period of time, a year, a full year, he may redeem it," say our translators; whether this also should be a month I do not now inquire, but I think on the whole it should be distinguished from a year, as in the following verse, "And if it be not redeemed until the fulfilment of a whole year;" i.e. at the utmost, at farthest. Perhaps the word period expresses as much as this phrase does in the Hebrew. So, Exod. xiii. 10. "Thou shalt keep this ordinance from year to year," from period to period: here it clearly refers to an appointed time for a religious service, and so it does, Gen. iv. 3. "And it was at the end of days, process of time, Eng. Tr. Cain brought his offering to the Lord." Now this agrees perfectly with the Indian histories, which say that Abel was slain by his brother at a general family sacrifice and as it was customary for the ancients to offer social sacrifices after gathering their fruits, I take this sacrifice to have been of that kind; but whether it referred to an annual harvest,

:

to a half yearly harvest, or to a monthly harvest, we must leave undecided at present.

Our inference, however, remains undeniable, that days in the passage before us does not relate to the natural day, but to a period of time of some length; yet certainly not so long as a year, as is fairly implied, in that being the period of time mentioned in the following verse.

5thly, And for years: these heavenly bodies are still used in calculating years; we have therefore no occasion to stay to prove this to be any part of their original appointment.

A remark or two arises from the foregoing statement, which I think may be of some consequence : 1st, that these periods of time were connected with, and either did regulate, or were regulated by, services. of a religious nature: they were therefore common to all mankind; known by all mankind; the concern of the whole human race. 2dly, That the antediluvians had a more complete manner of calculating time than some have been ready to allow them; they had days, weeks, half years, and years; those therefore who have taken the antediluvian years for months, in order to reduce the length of life in that early age of the world, have overlooked this decisive instance of the rudiments of chronology which they possessed. 3dly, If these heavenly bodies were appointed officially to remind mankind of the return of religious opportunities, what shall we say to those who neither heed these monitors, nor any others, but who "refrain their feet from the house of God," and forget his worship, in spite of the united voices of wisdom, of revelation, and of nature.

FIFTH DAY. VERSES 20, 21.

ANIMAL LIFE.

When the earth was prepared to receive and support vegetation, vegetation was commissioned to cover and adorn the earth; but vegetation itself is preparatory to the reception and support of new classes of beings, which though they do not derive existence from it, yet are to inhabit and to feed on its productions, plants, herbs, and fruit. The divine command is, "let the waters produce, SHERеTJ, creeping things." Insects, say some, and very properly; but not insects exclusively; it is certain that insects of many thousands of kinds breed in the waters, and after a proper time spent in them they become inhabitants of the air; but so do frogs, efts, and many other creatures, which we cannot properly reckon among insects. In fact, I presume this word includes whatever kind of creature is not properly ranged in the superior classes of animal life: say, tortoises, frogs, snails, slugs, &c. worms of a thousand sorts; insects, as gnats, beetles, locusts, ants; and those ten thousands of minute animalculæ, which animate the pool;

but whose names would convey no intelligible idea to the reader.

It still continues to be the property of the waters to swarm with life, to bring forth animalculæ, whose minuteness and whose structure perplexes us. It is worth our reflecting on the infinite variety of insects, on their wonderful changes and transformations, and their instinctive foresight. Nor should we forget that the microscope discovers in water, insects so small that thirty thousand of them may inhabit a single drop; yet has each one of these its muscles, nerves, veins, arteries, stomach, blood, bowels, and animal spirits, or something equivalent; and if they also breed by laying eggs, what shall we say to the minute dimensions of their parts, and of those agents which perform these important functions?

Let us descend; no, it is not descending; let us rise to a conception of these ranks of creatures, then to insects, &c. whose dimensions render them more visible; let us think of their structure, and of their various modes of life; for some expend their whole existence on a single leaf, while others fly abroad at pleasure; some multiply by division of themselves; some bear their posterity growing from them as branches from trees; nay, these very branches shall have young shoots, as it were budding on them, and shall be parents even before they quit their maternal stock; three generations growing at once! What shall we say to those which are multiplied by being cut to pieces, of which, however minutely divided, each division acquires the parts necessary to life and action, and with them that vitality which animates those powers. I could wish to impress this on the reader. Imagine a single creature divided into ten parts, by what power does each part acquire proper members? was it originally the head? how does it acquire a body, legs, bowels? was it the body? how does it acquire a head, legs, members? Moreover, take one of these creatures, turn it inside out, it shall nevertheless after a time replace its parts in a proper order, and resume the proper functions of each; nor are these the only classes of creatures which are offered to our wondering eyes; think of those whose bodies are soft, as worms, yet whose productions after a time become hard as rocks; of those which inhabit others, without any visible way of entrance; of those which after years of apparent death are yet endued with life, and recover their vivacity after twenty years of suspended animation! of those which we suffer to die, and to which we restore life under our own eyes! In short, the mere enumeration of their wonders would lead us beyond our present limits.

But like the vegetables formerly noticed, these insects also have their seed in themselves, and extremely worthy of remark, are the various attentions they pay to the welfare of their future progeny. See with what solicitude they choose the right kind of leaves on which to deposit their eggs, with what care they glue 3

VOL. IV.

those eggs to the proper surface of the leaf, to guard them against dangers from the violence of the wind, from the power of rain, from frost, from snows: see how they roll up the leaf for this purpose: or how they choose those branches of trees in whose crevices they may deposit their important burden: some enter the cups of flowers, others seeds, or fruits, or roots, or woods; nay, flesh in its various states of freshness or putridity; nay, even while living. Many are those animals which receive the deposited future progeny of insects, and which furnish that nest which is to be the mean of their opening into life. In these instances, and in how many others, what wonders rise to the view of intelligent observation!

From insects we are led to birds, whose creation is referred to the same day; the transition is in correct order, for insects have wings like birds, like birds are oviparous, and like birds they are of land, and water, and air. I know that there is that admirable structure in a feather, which would justify our most accurate examination of it. The beauty and the fitness of its parts are surprising; and the internal conformation of it, no less than the external, is wonderfully adapted to its purposes. But we must not enlarge on what comes under daily notice.

VERSE. 21.

God created great WHALES, Hebrew, taninim: for what these taninim might be, vide the plate, &c. Lam. iv. 3. No doubt but the epithet great describes a class of sea animals of the most considerable magnitude; whatever, therefore, is known as a water animal immense, or unweildy, is included in it. At the same time every living creature that moveth in the waters, i.e. in the sea, received its being. How innumerable these are needs no demonstration; we are aware that the most indefatigable naturalist never has seen, much less has observed, any considerable portion of these; for indeed their situation in the great deep ever has prevented, and ever will vent, any adequate knowledge of their numbers, their structures, or their manners.

pre

God created the fishes; they were not productions of water itself, that element only furnished a place for their residence. Consider on one hand the nature and the simplicity of the element water; on the other hand, the admirable structure of fishes, which is diversified into so many forms and manners. Some have their teeth in the jaws, others in the throat, others in the stomach; some have a single row of teeth, others have many rows. Consider the structure of their eyes, of their fins, which answer the purposes of legs, or which like oars impel them with incredible swiftness; of their tail, which serves them as a rudder; of their exterior covering, scales, for instance, which differ prodigiously from the feathers of birds: consider the provision made for their breathing beneath the watery element, the air-bladder, the

gills; nor omit the parts necessary to digestion, the stomach, the intestines, &c. Consider the structure and organization of their bones; some have them in ternally, and of these some are solid masses, strength itself! others are pliant cartilages; the bones of oth ers are on the outside of the creature, in the form of shells; also shells are the habitation of many kinds, wherein they constantly reside; which "grow with their growth, and strengthen with their strength," and which by means of a hinge of curious construction, are opened or closed by the inhabitant at his pleasure.

As to the creeping things in the sea, they are innumerable, whether we class them as worms, polypi, &c. some are crustaceous, as lobsters, crabs, shrimps, &c. others leather coated as the star-fish, the cuttle, &c. some are soft, others hairy, others slimy.

Fishes are extremely active, indefatigable, voracious, and destructive; whatever may be said on the question of beasts being carnivorous in their primitive state, fishes seem to have devoured one another from the very beginning; and were it not for the wonderfully prolific powers with which they are endued, one might almost suppose some of the weaker species would ere now have been extinct; but when we read of millions, many millions, of eggs contained in the roe of a single fish, we are led to infer, and to admire, the wonderful provision of Providence for the maintenance of every species. Fishes then, also, have their seed within themselves, and this receives life after a thousand different chances, and amid a thousand different dangers.

The air was ready for the reception of inhabitants before the waters, and the waters before the earth; we have seen insects and birds fly in the air, and fishes swim in the seas; it remains that the solid earth should be peopled also, and then the whole habitable globe is occupied. This is the work of the sixth day.

The legs and wings of birds, the fins of fishes were analogous to the legs of quadrupeds, as they are instruments of motion; and their organs of digestion were not unlike those which were requisite to enable animals also to receive food, and to convert it into nutriment. We perceive, then, that the same principles of formation which were already in exercise, varied to suit the element wherein they were to act, would accommodate a new race of creatures, whose habits and manners were different from those of the former. They were not, it is true, called to fly in the air, but they were to breathe this element as a condition of their life; they were not to swim like fishes, but to walk, to run, to climb, to migrate, and to seek their food by various stratagems, whether of open force or secret fraud; whether from the vege

table productions of nature, or those of a more elevated rank. The same intentions but under another form, the same ideas but varied, perhaps heightened in their powers, or exalted in their application, were directed to the formation of animals in their various genera and species, and at last of man himself. Animals are divided by the sacred writer into, 1st,

Bенеман, great beasts, or cattle, animals capable of domesticity; say horses, cows, &c. perhaps even to the elephant; 2dly, w ReмеSH, creepers, or animals of a smaller kind, say, such as weasels, ferrets, hedgehogs, &c. add to these, the hare, the rabbit, the rat; and why not worms, serpents, snails, and slugs? all of which creep on the earth; 3dly,

CHIан, wild animals, literally, livelies, those of a savage nature, and which obtain their living by prey, or other acts of rapidity and exertion. Lions and tigers, perhaps, and carnivorous animals in general.

We shall not stay to examine the peculiar natures of these, but shall proceed at once to introduce the chief of all, man; man who is raised above the creatures, not so much by the form or figure of his person, as by the qualities of his mind; not by the more exquisite construction of his members, by their action, or by their powers, as by his enlarged understanding, his mental capacities, his reason, his soul, his intelligence. We have seen the world prepared for his reception, the elements called into activity, and various distributions of life among animals; all prior to the appearance of him who was to reside among them, and over them, the vicegerent of Deity itself.

Man is allied by the structure of his body to the animals; his arms, his legs, differ no great deal from those of some among them; they too possess the senses of seeing, of hearing, of smelling, of tasting; they too move, walk, run, leap; their lives like his depend on the blood which circulates in their veins, on the air which plays in their lungs; they too have nerves, and those nerves are the instruments of sensation, like the human. But speech is appropriate to mankind; it was evidently fit that a tribute of praise should be paid to the great Author of all; and this was the office appointed to man. "For we also are his offspring," is a noble sentiment of the poet Aratus, quoted by St. Paul, Acts xviii. 28. and it has been thought by many, that more than that proportion of care which had been employed on the creatures, was exercised when man was about to be formed. Certainly, as man only was made "in the image of God," invested with dominion, capable of knowing God in his ways, of admiring him in his works, of expressing his sentiments to those around him, and of directing ascriptions of praise to his almighty Author, man was distinguished by faculties of the most important nature, by abilities which, wisely improved, must have perpetuated his happiness, and probably would have augmented it.