In the present connection these words inform us that the earth was in a chaotic state, and unfit for the residence of organized beings. The words themselves suggest the important question: Are they intended to represent this as the original condition of the earth? Was it a scene of desolation and confusion when it sprang from the hand of its Creator? or was this state of ruin consequent on convulsions which may have been preceded by a very different condition, not mentioned by the inspired historian? That it may have been so is rendered possible by the circumstance that the words employed are generally used to denote the ruin of places formerly inhabited, and by the want of any necessary connection in time between the first and second verses. It has even been proposed, though this does violence to the construction, to read "and the earth became" desolate and empty. Farther, it seems, _a priori_, improbable that the first act of creative power should have resulted in the production of a mere chaos. The crust of the earth also shows, in its alternations of strata and organic remains, evidence of a great series of changes extending over vast periods, and which might, in a revelation intended for moral purposes, with great propriety be omitted. For such reasons some eminent expositors of these words are disposed to consider the first verse as a title or introduction, and to refer to this period the whole series of geological changes; and this view has formed one of the most popular solutions of the apparent discrepancies between the geological and Scriptural histories of the world. It is evident, however, that if we continue to view the term "earth" as including the whole globe, this hypothesis becomes altogether untenable. The subsequent verses inform us that at the period in question the earth was covered by a universal ocean, possessed no atmosphere and received no light, and had not entered into its present relations with the other bodies of our system. No conceivable convulsions could have effected such changes on an earth previously possessing these arrangements; and geology assures us that the existing laws and dispositions in these respects have prevailed from the earliest periods to which it can lead us back, and that the modern state of things was not separated from those which preceded it by any such general chaos. To avoid this difficulty, which has been much more strongly felt as these facts have been more and more clearly developed by modern science, it has been held that the word earth may denote only a particular region, temporarily obscured and reduced to ruin, and about to be fitted up, by the operations of the six days, for the residence of man; and that consequently the narrative of the six days refers not to the original arrangement of the surface, relations, and inhabitants of our planet, but to the retrieval from ruin and repeopling of a limited territory, supposed to have been in