ence with
the Scripture narrative: for instance, the Self-existent Creator; the
agency of the Son of God and the Holy Spirit; the absolute creation of
matter; the hovering of the Spirit over the primeval waters; the
sevenfold division of the creative process; and the idea of days of
the Creator of immense duration. If we suppose the day of Brahma in
the Hindoo cosmogony to represent the Mosaic day, then it amounts to
no less than 4,320,000 years; or if, with Sir W. Jones, we suppose the
manwantara to represent the Mosaic day, its duration will be 308,571
years; and the total antiquity of the earth, without counting the
undefined "beginning," will be either more than twenty-five or than
two millions of years. It would be folly, however, to suppose that
these Hindoo numbers, which are probably purely conjectural, or based
on astronomical cycles, make any near approximation to the facts of
the case. The Institutes of Menu are probably in their present form
not of great antiquity, but there are other Hindoo documents of
greater age which maintain similar views, and it is probable that the
account of the creation in the Institutes is at least an imperfect
version of the original narrative as it existed among the earliest
colonists of India.[64] It corresponds in many points with the oldest
notions on these subjects that remain to us in the wrecks of the
mythology of Egypt and other ancient nations, and it aids in proving
that the fabulous ages of gods and demigods in the ancient mythologies
_are really pre-Adamite_; and belong not to human history, but to the
work of creation. It also shows that the idea of long creative periods
as equivalents of the Mosaic days must, in the infancy of the
postdiluvian world, have been very widely diffused. Such evidence is,
no doubt, of small authority in the interpretation of Scripture; but
it must be admitted that serious consideration is due to a method of
interpretation which thus tends to bring the Mosaic account into
harmony with the facts of modern science, and with the belief of
almost universal antiquity, and at the same time gives it its fullest
significance and most perfect internal symmetry of parts. It is also
very interesting to note the wide diffusion among the most ancient
nations of cosmological views identical in their main features with
those of the Bible, proving, almost beyond doubt, that these views had
some common and very ancient source, and commanded universal belief