ked
before. Gigantic birds stalk along the sands, or wade far into the water
in quest of their ichthyic food; while birds of lesser size float upon
the lakes, or scream discordant in hovering flocks, thick as insects in
the calm of a summer evening, over the narrower seas, or brighten with
the sunlit gleam of their wings the thick woods. And ocean has its
monsters: great "_tanninim_" tempest the deep, as they heave their huge
bulk over the surface, to inhale the life-sustaining air; and out of
their nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a "seething pot or cauldron."
Monstrous creatures, armed in massive scales, haunt the rivers, or scour
the flat rank meadows; earth, air, and water are charged with animal
life; and the sun sets on a busy scene, in which unerring instinct
pursues unremittingly its few simple ends,--the support and preservation
of the individual, the propagation of the species, and the protection
and maintenance of the young.

Again the night descends, for the fifth day has closed; and morning
breaks on the sixth and last day of creation. Cattle and beasts of the
fields graze on the plains; the thick-skinned rhinoceros wallows in the
marshes; the squat hippopotamus rustles among the reeds, or plunges
sullenly into the river; great herds of elephants seek their food amid
the young herbage of the woods; while animals of fiercer nature,--the
lion, the leopard, and the bear,--harbor in deep caves till the evening,
or lie in wait for their prey amid tangled thickets, or beneath some
broken bank. At length, as the day wanes and the shadows lengthen, man,
the responsible lord of creation, formed in God's own image, is
introduced upon the scene, and the work of creation ceases forever upon
the earth. The night falls once more upon the prospect, and there dawns
yet another morrow,--the morrow of God's rest,--that Divine Sabbath in
which there is no more creative labor, and which, "blessed and
sanctified" beyond all the days that had gone before, has as its special
object the moral elevation and final redemption of man. And over _it_ no
evening is represented in the record as falling, for its special work is
not yet complete. Such seems to have been the sublime panorama of
creation exhibited in vision of old to

"The shepherd who first taught the chosen seed,
In the beginning how the heavens and earth
Rose out of chaos;"

and, rightly understood, I know not a single scientific truth that
militates against even the