_B._ We must not attach too much importance to the term 'God's image.' The sacred writer might make use of such an expression merely to show the excellency of the image or form of the body of this first human race, whose frame, relatively to the inferior animals, was, _par excellence_, God's image. And on the whole, the difference between the two accounts is very wide and very important. The first passage does not stand connected with the history of the present race at all: the second does. In the former passage the creation of a _race_ is described, but the _individual_ is not even named: in the latter we are not merely told of a race, we are introduced to an individual. His name is given, and he is connected with the existing race of mankind by a continuous history. In speaking of the difference between the two passages, it were well to consider that, till of late, there has been no reason to suspect their real significancy, _i. e._, to suppose that they spoke of two creations and two races. But now that the proofs of a pre-Adamite race are fast accumulating upon us, it were well to inquire whether God's revelation has not anticipated the story which the strange hieroglyphics of his finger are now unfolding. The philologist and the geologist are each deciphering the same story in two different books, that are equally divine. It remains to be seen which will be the first to read correctly. _A._ The account in the second chapter certainly speaks explicitly enough of the creation of the soul or spirit. _B._ Yes; and observe this: that the seventh day, a mighty geological era, has elapsed between the two creations--a period long enough for the first race to pass entirely away, leaving behind them as their only memorials a few skeletons, to be dug up here and there in the nineteenth century of the Christian era. When the last specimen of the anterior race had been long dead, God created the new man, 'breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,' and gave him a mind and a name to distinguish him from the former race that had borne the same image. _A._ Of course we cannot expect geologists to discriminate between the two races, seeing they differed only by the latter having a spiritual nature, while the former had not. _B._ Of course not. _A._ Perhaps, then, there is, after all not so much absurdity as has been supposed in the oriental traditions of pre-Adamite kings. _B._ It need not surprise us that there should, among primitive nations, exist some traditionary vestiges of the first race: and such traditions were probably derived from some very reliable source. But be that as it may, I am not afraid to trust the settlement of the entire question to the arbitration of time. WHO KNOWS?