butary streams became prolific, and brought forth by myriads, in endless and strange diversity, its destined offspring, beginning, perhaps, with the viewless animalcule or the senseless polype, half animal and half plant, and ending with the half fish and half quadruped, cetaceans, and their kindred monsters. Nor was the Ocean prolific of aquatic animals alone, and those whose habitation was the restless world of waters, with all its streams, its caves, and its abysses, it also gave birth to all the winged and feathered tribes -from the brilliant humming bird to the mighty eagle and the giant vulture-that people and enliven the atmospheric sea, and make it the field of their excursions. The animals created on this day were destined to dwell or move, independent of the earth, in a fluid medium of greater or less tenuity, and for that purpose were fitted with appropriate and peculiar organs, in one case both for respiration and locomotion, in the other for locomotion only.

Again the word of power was spoken,-" Let the earth bring forth," and instantly the various tribes of quadrupeds issued from her teeming womb, varying infinitely in size, from the minute harvest-mouse to the giant bulk of the elephant and hippopotamus; then also the earth-born reptiles, whether four-footed, six-footed, eight-footed,

1 See Appendix, note 2.

2 Mus messorius.

or many-footed, started into life, and connected the terrestrial tribes with those produced from the waters. In the majority of these, the fins of the fishes and cetaceans, and the wings of the birds, were replaced by legs best fitted for motion on the theatre on which they were to act their part, and to fulfil the will of their Creator.

The earth was now completely furnished and decorated to receive her destined king and master. The sun, the moon, and the stars were shedding their kindly influences upon her; she and her fellow planets had commenced their annual and diurnal revolutions; the plants and flowers, her first born progeny, had sprung out of her bosom, and covered her with verdure and beauty; and the fruit and forest trees flourishing in all their glory of leaf, blossom, and fruit, were ready to minister to the support, comfort, and enjoyment of their future lord: the sea, the air, the earth, were each filled with their appropriate inhabitants, and throughout the whole creation was beauty, and grace, and life, and motion, and joy, and jubilee. But still, in the midst of all this apparent glory and activity of vegetable and animal life in the new created world, there was not a single being endued with reason and understanding; one that could elevate its thought above the glorious and wonderful spectacle to the great Author of it, or acknowledge and adore its Creator.

Amidst this infinite variety of beings there was not a single one which to a material body added an immaterial immortal soul; so that there was still a great blank in creation. A wonderful and magnificent temple was reared, and shone in glory and beauty, but there was as yet no priest therein to offer up incense to the Deity to whom it was dedicated.

We are now, therefore, to consider the creation of him for whom this high office was reserved, who, as king and priest, was to render to the common Creator the praises due from all created things, and be the spokesman for all the inhabitants of this terrestrial globe.

The vast distance, on this account, intervening between man and the highest animals in the scale of being, appears evident from the different circumstances attending their creation. When they were brought into existence, the word was-"Let the waters bring forth-Let the earth bring forth," from which it should seem that God did not act immediately in their creation, except by his agency on those powers that he had established as rulers in nature, and by which he ordinarily taketh hold, as it were, of the material universe. But when a being, combining the spiritual with the material world, is to be created, all the persons of the Godhead unite immediately in the work, and without the intervention of any other agent,

"Let us make man." He was therefore neither sea-born nor earth-born, as some ancient nations claimed to be, but born of God; though, as Christ moistened clay when he was about to exercise his creative power, in the re-forming of an eye;1 so was the humid earth used in the creation of the body of man by his Maker, and when that wonderful machine, with its complex apparatus of organs, both external and internal, was finished; when a throne and presence chamber were pre- .. pared for the intellectual and spiritual, and governing part of his nature, and that wonder-working pulp the brain, with its silver spinal cord and infinitely divaricated threads, already fitted for the mastery of every motive organ, was in a state to transmit without obstruction, each flux and reflux of that subtile fluid, intermediate, as it were, between matter and spirit, which so instantaneously conveys and causes the execution of the commands of the will by every external bodily organ; when the heart was ready to beat ; the lungs to play; the blood to circulate; and every other system to start for the fulfilment of its prescribed errand. "Then the Lord God breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives, and man became a living soul." He was now installed into his kingdom over the globe which he inhabited, and dominion was given him over the

1 John, ix. 6.

2 See Appendix, note 3.

inhabitants of the water, of the air, and of the earth; and the divine image, in which he was to be created, was rendered complete.

Now, the generations of the world were perfect and healthful, and God saw every thing that he had made, and behold it was very good. That is, every individual essence, whether inanimate or animate, was fitted in every respect to answer the end of its creation, and perform its allotted part in contributing to the general welfare. The entire machine was now in action, every separate wheel was revolving, and the will of Him who contrived and fabricated it had full and uninterrupted accomplishment. The instincts of the whole circle of animals urged them, by an irresistible impulse, to fulfil their several functions; I mean those that were necessary to the then state of things: for if the instinct of the predaceous 'ones was not restrained, they would soon have annihilated the herbivorous ones, even if, as Lightfoot supposes, they were at first created by sevens.1 They must, therefore, originally have eaten grass or straw like the ox, and neither injured nor destroyed their fellow-beasts of a more harmless character; this, indeed, appears clearly from the terms of the original grant, "To every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon

1 See Appendix, note 4.