f the importance of
the facts suggested by the writer of Genesis in mentioning the use of
the heavenly bodies as signs of time. To what extent civilization or
even the continued existence of man as an intelligent being would have
been possible without the marks of subdivision of time given by the
great astronomical clock of the universe, it is almost impossible for
us to imagine. Without such marks of time, in any case, the whole
fabric of human culture must have been different from what it is.
Farther, in connection with this, it is a grand thought of our early
revelation that all these heavenly bodies, however magnificent, and
however they might seem to the heathen to be objects of worship, are
but marks on God's clock, parts of a mere machine which keeps time for
us, and is therefore our servant, as the children of the great
Artificer, and not our ruler. The idea has been termed an astrological
one; but astrology as a means of divination has no place in the
record. The heavenly bodies are under the law of the Creator, and
their function relatively to us is to give light and to give time.
Astrological divination is an outgrowth of the Sabaean idolatry, and
held in abomination by the monotheistic author of Genesis. His object
may be summed up in the following general statements:

1. The heavenly hosts and their arrangements are the work of Jehovah,
and are regulated wholly by his laws or ordinances; a striking
illustration of the recognition by the Hebrew writer both of creative
interference, and that stable, natural law which too often withdraws
the mind of the philosopher from the ideas of creation and of
providence.

2. The heavenly bodies have a relation to the earth--are parts of the
same plan, and, whatever other uses they were made to serve, were made
for the benefit of man.

3. The general physical arrangements of the solar system were
perfected before the introduction of animals on our planet.

CHAPTER X.

THE LOWER ANIMALS.

"And God said, Let the waters swarm with swarming living
creatures, and let birds fly on the surface of the expanse
of heaven. And God created great reptiles, and every living
moving thing, which the waters brought forth abundantly,
after their kind, and every bird after its kind; and God saw
that it was good.

"And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, and
fill the waters of the seas, and let the flying creatures