Society, in 1811, on the subject of the celestial nebulæ, has given the history of his own observations carefully followed up during the course of a long life. He has there shown that those irregularly shaped and widely diffused masses of light, which under the name of luminous nebulæ, had long attracted the notice of scientific men, and which are known to exist in vast numbers, in various parts of the heavens, are, by a regular process of gradual condensation, made to approach more and more to a spherical form, until, having acquired a bright stellar nucleus, and losing their remaining nebulosity, they finally assume all the definite brightness of a regular fixed star. From the uniformity of this operation, so far as it has been remarked, and from the vast multitude of instances in which it has taken, and is still taking place, it seems natural to infer that a large portion of those stars, whose places have been recognised in the heavens from time immemorial, derived their first origin from the same process. But it is also the generally received opinion, that the sun of our own planetary system is a star precisely of the same nature with the rest; and if so, it seems not improbable from analogy, that it derived its present form from the same cause of condensation, and that its original state of existence was that of a thin luminous fluid, occupying a vast portion of the orbits of those planetary bodies of which it is now the centre. It is surely not a little remarkable, that what might a century ago have been quoted as a seeming absurdity and oversight in Scripture, should be found thus signally to accord with one of the most curious discoveries of modern astronomical science.

CHAPTER VI.

Of the Longevity of the Antediluvian Generations.

ANOTHER peculiarity in the scriptural account of the early period of the world, which, for convenience sake, we shall allude to somewhat out of its regular order, is the remarkable longevity which it attributes to the antediluvian races. This is a statement so little accordant with existing experience, that we believe it to have not unfrequently startled sincere believers in the general veracity of the Mosaic writings, whilst it has, undoubtedly, seemed to afford a handle for triumph to the declared sceptic. The case must be admitted to be a perplexing one; yet still we think that we can perceive reasons derived from the condition of mankind at that early epoch which would seem to make such an arrangement a not improbable result of the decrees of a wise Providence. Every well-founded criticism upon the internal evidence of revelation, we must again remind our readers, must be built entirely upon the admitted phenomena of human nature, both moral and physical. We must necessarily suppose that God willed the early civilization of mankind, but, as we have no reason to believe that the intellectual faculties of man, from the time of the fall of our first parents, were other than what we know them to be at the present moment, we must necessarily suppose that the earliest generations required precisely the same secondary helps to knowledge which, under ŝimilar circumstances, would be most available to their latest descendants. Now the objection of the sceptic, on this occasion, is founded upon the mere gratuitous assumption, that what appear to us to be the fixed laws of nature, must always have been such, even when the strongest necessity and the most urgent expediency required their pro

visional modification. It surely can be deemed no very bold assertion, if we assume that the rule of internal probability would rather incline us to adopt the opposite conclusion. Admitting the present three score and ten years, which are usually considered as the average maximum of human life, to be sufficient for every substantial purpose for which God has thought fit to place us in this world, it is still perfectly obvious that so contracted a term would have been quite insufficient, in the first commencement of society, to enable the human race to attain at any tolerably early period, to that quantum of cultivation for which it is impossible not to perceive that his Creator intended him. Let us suppose, then, the first inhabitants of the earth existing, not only without the more abstruse sciences, but without those simple rudiments of knowledge necessary for the accommodation of society in its ruder state, and let us consider what would be the different results of two distinct arrangements; the one allotting to the human individual a term of existence little short of one thousand years, and the other cutting him off at the present more contracted date. It is evident that knowledge, in the former case, would, from the vast accumulation of facts, increase, as compared with the latter, in almost a geometrical proportion. There we should find the experienced head of a family communicating to successive races of descendants the hoarded experience of centuries, whilst, according to the other supposition, we might expect to see the first commencements of knowledge cut off periodically in their very germ, and generation succeeding to generation with no better lights of science than the transmitted abortive attempts of persons whose lives have terminated almost before their really effective education had begun. It would, of course, be the height of presumption to assert that this is the real explanation of the remarkable dispensation of Providence now alluded to. It cannot, however, be

doubted, that allowing to the early race of mankind the same average faculties possessed by their descendants, such would be the very dissimilar degrees of benefit produced by the two different systems here supposed. How, then, would it be advocating an improbability, to suppose that a benevolent Creator may, under a special emergency, have peculiarly adapted the operation of secondary causes, for a limited period, to the wants of his creatures ?* Be,

It seems perfectly certain, from what we know experimentally of the nature of the human faculties, that man at his first creation must, for some short time at least, have depended for his animal existence upon the special superintendence of his Creator in a manner to which we find nothing analogous in the existing order of the universe. All well-informed persons, whether sceptics or believers in revelation, are agreed in admitting that the human race were first introduced into our planet at a comparatively recent period of time. What then was the condition of the aboriginal parents of mankind at the moment of their first production? The case admits of only two suppositions; they were either children or adults: in either supposition a miracle, or what is equivalent to a miracle, was necessary for their support. Had they been children, it is self-evident that they must have perished within a few hours after their creation, unless sustained by some such providential interference as that now supposed. If they were adults, the result would have been the same, although the argument from which we derive that inference may be somewhat less palpably obvious. All the practical knowledge which we arrive at through our bodily senses is, we know, derived solely from experience. A human adult, waking for the first time to the consciousness of existence, with all his animal faculties in full vigour, and under the most favourable circumstances of climate and bodily comfort, would be as incapable as a new-born infant of availing himself, by any natural effort, of the means of sustenance, however liberally spread around him, and would perish before he would have acquired the knowledge requisite for the support of life. He would possess eyes, but the impression of external objects upon the retina would convey no definite ideas: he would have limbs, but they would be useless for the purposes of locomotion. He would want every conception of space, distance, solidity, vacuity, &c. In addition to this, he would be debarred from the faculty of the communication of his feelings by speech. It is manifest, that under such cir cumstances, life could be maintained only by the direct intervention of some guardian power, either instilling miraculously that practical knowledge which, under ordinary circumstances, is the result of long expe rience only, or else directly providing for his physical necessities, as they successively occurred. That the human race does exist at this moment, is a proof that some such special care as that now supposed must have been extended by the mercy of the Creator to the parent stock from which we are descended. It is, therefore, perfectly vain and unphilosophical to assume what may have been the physical circumstances of the world in in its infancy, from what is at this moment passing before our eyes. far from inferring them to have been the same with the present course of events, we are compelled to suppose that they must have been in many

So

however, this as it may, it is certain that the inspired historian pleads neither this nor any other reason as an explanation of the seemingly anomalous fact which he records. He seems to compose his narrative merely ministerially, and without the insertion of a single comment. We detect in it nothing of the interested advocate, striving to show the real internal probability of a startling proposition. No mode of writing, assuredly, carries with it more of the air of real inspiration than that where the facts stated appear at first sight incongruous and anomalous, but lose, upon subsequent reflection, much of their apparent improbability; and where the writer himself appears to be perfectly unaware of the value of the truths he is communicating. Whether this observation will apply to the case now before us, may be matter of opinion. It is one, however, which may, with certainty, be extended to many striking passages both of the Old and of the New Testament.

respects essentially different. So fallacious is the argument derived from our own mere personal experience in these mysterious questions. With regard to the use of language, it seems difficult to imagine that it could have been possessed by the earliest generations of mankind, excepting through the aid of Divine instruction. This surmise, which the acknowledged circumstances of our nature seem to point out as the only probable solution of a great metaphysical difficulty, seems to derive some warrant from the statement given in Genesis ii. 19. "And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof."