are clearly seen, _being understood by the things that are
made_' (Rom. i., 20). Man, they felt, could not have lived upon earth
without _animal_ food; ergo, 'cattle' preceded him, together with
birds, reptiles, fishes, etc. Nothing living, they knew, could have
existed without light and heat; ergo, the _solar system_ antedated
animal life, no less than the _vegetation_ indispensable for animal
support. But terrestrial plants can not grow without _earth_; ergo,
that dry land had to be separated from pre-existent 'waters.' Their
geological speculations inclining rather to the _Neptunian_ than to
the _Plutonian_ theory--for Werner ever preceded Hutton--the ancients
found it difficult to 'divide the waters from the waters' without
interposing a metallic substance that 'divided the waters which were
_under_ the firmament from the waters that were _above_ the
firmament;' so they inferred, logically, that a _firmament_ must have
been actually created for this object. [_E.g._, 'The _windows_ of the
skies' (Gen. vii., 11); 'the waters _above_ the skies' (Psa. cxlviii.,
4).] Before the 'waters' (and here is the peculiar error of the
genesiacal bard) some of the ancients claimed the pre-existence of
_light_ (a view adopted by the writer of Genesis 1st); while others
asserted that 'chaos' prevailed. Both schools united, however, in the
conviction that DARKNESS--_Erebus_--anteceded all other _created
things_. What, said these ancients, can have existed before the
'darkness?' _Ens entium_, the CREATOR, was the humbled reply. _Elohim_
is the Hebrew vocal expression of that climax; to define whose
attributes, save through the phenomena of creation, is an attempt we
leave to others more presumptuous than ourselves."

The problem here set to the "unknown" author of Genesis is a hard
one--given the one fact that "man is" to find in detail how the world
was formed in a series of preceding ages of vast duration. Is it
possible that such a problem could have been so worked out as to have
endured the test of three thousand years, and the scrutiny of modern
science? But there is an "oversight" in one detail, and a "blunder" in
another. By reference farther on, the reader will find under the
chapters on "Light" and the "Atmosphere" that the oversight and
blunder are those not of the writer of Genesis, but of the learned
American ethnologists in the nineteenth century; a circumstance which
cuts in two ways in defense of the ancient author so un