The recent
interpretation of the commencement of Genesis--by which the first verse
is simply supposed to affirm the original creation of all things, while
the second immediately refers to the commencement of the human economy;
passing by those prodigious cycles which geology demands, with a silence
worthy of a true revelation, which does not pretend to gratify our
curiosity as to the previous condition of our globe any more than our
curiosity as to the history of other worlds--was first suggested by
geology, though suspected and indeed anticipated by some of the
early church Fathers. But it is now felt by multitudes to be the more
reasonable interpretation,--the second verse certainly more naturally
suggesting previous revolutions in the history of the earth than its
then instant creation: and though we frankly concede that we have
not yet seen any account of the whole first chapter of Genesis which
quadrates with the doctrines of geology, it does not become us hastily
to conclude that there can be none. If a further adjustment of those
doctrines, and a more diligent investigation of the Scripture together,
should hereafter suggest any possible harmony,--though not the true
one but one ever so gratuitously assumed,--it will be sufficient to
neutralise the objection.
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