creation announced in the first verse, and as the commencement of the first of the six succeeding days, in which the earth was to be fitted up, and peopled in a manner fit for the reception of mankind. We have in this second verse, a distinct mention of earth and waters, as already existing, and involved in darkness; their condition also is described as a state of confusion and emptiness, (tohu bohu), words which are usually interpreted by the vague and indefinite Greek term "chaos," and which may be geologically considered as designating the wreck and ruins of a former world. At this intermediate point of time, the preceding undefined geological periods had terminated, a new series of events commenced, and the work of the first morning of this new creation was the calling forth of light from a temporary darkness, which had overspread the ruins of the ancient earth.[1]
- ↑ I learn from Professor Pusey that the words "let there be light," yehi or, Gen. i. 3, by no means necessarily imply, any more than the English words by which they are translated, that light had never existed before. They may speak only of the substitution of light for darkness upon the surface of this, our planet: whether light had existed before in other
the third verse, as being the beginning of the account of the creation on the first day.
This then is just the sort of confirmation which one wished for, because, though one would shrink from the impiety of bending. the language of God's book, to any other than its obvious meaning, we cannot help fearing lest we might be unconsciously influenced by the floating opinions of our own day, and therefore turn the more anxiously to those who explained Holy Scripture before these theories existed. You must allow me to add that I would not define further. We know nothing of creation, nothing of ultimate causes, nothing of space, except what is bounded by actual existing bodies, nothing of time, but what is limited by the revolution of those bodies. I should be very sorry to appear to dogmatize upon that, of which it requires very little reflection, or reverence, to confess that we are necessarily ignorant. "Hardly do we guess aright of things that are upon the earth, and with labour do we find the things that are before use but the things that are in heaven who hath searched out?"—Wisdom, ix. 16.-E. B. Pusey.
