on between
the Divine and the Geologic Records, in a "Review of Cuvier's Theory of
the Earth;" and that scheme, perfectly adequate to bring the Mosaic
narrative into harmony with what was known at the time of geologic
history, has been very extensively received and adopted. It may, indeed,
still be regarded as the most popular of the various existing schemes.
It teaches, and teaches truly, that between the first act of creation,
which evoked out of the previous nothing the _matter_ of the heavens and
earth, and the first act of the first day's work recorded in Genesis,
periods of vast duration may have intervened; but further, it insists
that the days themselves were but natural days of twenty-four hours
each; and that, ere they began, the earth, though mayhap in the previous
period a fair residence of life, had become void and formless, and the
sun, moon, and stars, though mayhap they had before given light, had
been, at least in relation to our planet, temporarily extinguished. In
short, while it teaches that the successive creations of the geologist
may all have found ample room in the period preceding that creation to
which man belongs, it teaches also that the record in Genesis bears
reference to but the existing creation, and that there lay between it
and the preceding ones a chaotic period of death and darkness. The
scheme propounded by the late Dr. Pye Smith, and since adopted by
several writers, differs from that of Chalmers in but one circumstance,
though an important one. Dr. Smith held, with the great northern divine,
that the Mosaic days were natural days; that they were preceded by a
chaotic period; and that the work done in them related to but that last
of the creations to which the human species belongs. Further, however,
he held in addition, that the chaos of darkness and confusion out of
which that creation was called was of but limited extent, and that
outside its area, and during the period of its existence, many of our
present lands and seas may have enjoyed the light of the sun, and been
tenanted by animals and occupied by plants, the descendants of which
still continue to exist. The treatise of Dr. Pye Smith was published
exactly a quarter of a century posterior to the promulgation, through
the press, of the argument of Dr. Chalmers; and this important
addition,--elaborated by its author between the years 1837 and
1839,--seems to have been made to suit the more advanced state of
geological science