These notions about the history of the Creation continued to prevail almost down to our own time. It is to be observed, however, that they were not founded on a close and scientific examination of the Sacred Text. The hypothesis of a long and eventful state of existence prior to the Creation of Man may be said rather to have been overlooked, than to have been rejected, by our Commentators. There was no good reasons for entertaining such a speculation, and so they said nothing about it. But now that the world is ringing with the wonderful discoveries of Geology, which seem to point more and more clearly every day to the extreme Antiquity of the Earth, it becomes an imperative duty to examine once again with all diligence and care the Inspired narrative of the Creation, and to consider well the relation in which it stands with this new dogma of Physical Science. We are not the first to enter upon the inquiry. Already it has engaged the attention and stimulated the industry of Theological writers for more than half a century. Many eminent men, distinguished alike for their extensive acquirements and for their religious zeal, have protested warmly against the opinion of Geologists, concerning the Antiquity of the Earth, as one that cannot be reconciled with the historical accuracy of the Bible. But, on the other hand, there are writers no less illustrious, and no less sincerely attached to the cause of religion, who contend that there is nothing in the Sacred Text to exclude the supposition of a long and indefinite interval--an interval if necessary of many millions of years--between the first creation of matter and the creation of man. Thirty years ago this opinion was defended by Cardinal Wiseman with great learning, and with great felicity of illustration, in his famous Lectures on the Connection between Science and Revealed Religion. The eminent Roman Jesuit, Father Perrone, has followed the same line of argument in his Prælectiones Theologicæ, which, as every one knows, has long since become a classic work in schools of Theology. It has been yet more fully discussed, and supported by more elaborate reasoning, in a work entitled Cosmogonia Naturale Comparata col Genesi, lately published in Rome at the press of the Civiltà Cattolica, by another distinguished Jesuit, John Baptist Pianciani. Amongst Protestant writers, too, this view of the Mosaic narrative has found no inconsiderable number of able advocates. It is defended by Doctor Buckland, the eminent Geologist, in his celebrated Bridgewater Treatise, by Doctor Chalmers in his Evidences of the Christian Revelation, by Doctor Pye Smith in his dissertations on Geology and Scripture, by the eloquent and original Hugh Miller in his interesting work on the Testimony of the Rocks; and by a host of others scarcely less distinguished than these.