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    in the first verse , and whose temporary submersion and temporary darkness are 'described in the second vetseV " - —pp . 21—26 . u The interpretation here proposed seems , moreover , to solve the difficulty which would otherwise attend the statement of the appearance

    of light upon the first day , whilst the sun and moon and stars are not made to appear until the fourth . If we suppose all the heavenly bodied and the earth to have been created at the indefinitely distant time , designated by the word ' beginning / and that the darkness described on the

    evening of the first day was a temporary darkness , produced by an accumulation of dense vapour- —an incipient dispersion of these vapours may have re-admitted light , to the earth upon the first day , whilst the existing cause of light was still obscured ; and the further purification of the atmosphere , upon the fourth day , may have caused the sun , and moon &nd stars to reappear in the firmament of heaven . "—pp . 29—3 () ,

    Th £ whole of the preceding description is rich in scientific and ingenious speculation , taking that form of poetry which maybe called the mythological , and very beautifull y accords with a suggestion we lately received from listening to ah eloquent lecture on the' fcoetry and Poetical Character of the Bible / The

    lecturer thought it by no means improbable that the Circumstance which produced by analogy , in the poet ' s mind , the description of the Creation , may have been the annual revival of Egypt from its submersion by the Nile . He pictured the waste Or waters , the gloomy , vast desolation during the flood ; the festival , when all the people went out in illuminated boats , and the country was covered with light ; the subsiding of the

    waters , and the appearance of dry land ; the sudden spring of vegetation ; the birds and beasts and creeping things returning to their old haunts ; and , lastly , man resuming his usual place and occupations . Such a suggestion is equally poetical and ingenious , and the analogy is rendered more complete b y the supposition of Dr Buckland ( p . 32 ) as to the first verse . It may be satisfactory to the learned , in further support of this supposition , to be told that the wfcrds used in Gen . i . 7 and Gen . l * 16 ,

    ( tKat is to say with regard to the appearance of the earth and of the " . sun ) is asflk , " itoad ' e ; which does not imply " created " otit of ndthing ( as the word bara does ); so ^ that it may here be eftiployect to express a n ^ w aitangeriient of material that ^ xi ^ ted bWdre /^ . 'Sl T } ie discoveries bf science lead to the belief that there was a time when the materials of the e&rth were iti a fluid or perhaps even in a ^ efyttiair state , owing to intense heat : btiept ^ df of this id the fdhft pf the fcarth , which is just that wftioh a fluid mass ivould Assume fr 6 m revolution round its axis , the heat would radiate into « pac ^; theparticles of tn ^ tt ^ rw ^ old'then approximate atl « Ct ^ taH ^ e ; thus there \ vottld b ^ forfched I bIiell or crust , comp ^^ d of oxidated metal and metalloids , Woffitituting granitic rocks around an incandescent nucleus of melted

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    272 Buckland ' $ Geology .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 1, 1837, page 272, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1831/page/17/