crests of the mountains. Of these also, having seen in our review
of ancient and modern landscape various strange differences in the way
men looked upon them, it will be well in the outset to ascertain, as far
as may be, the true meaning and office.

The words which marked for us the purpose of the clouds are followed
immediately by those notable ones:--

"And God said, Let the waters which are under the heaven be gathered
together unto one place, and let the dry land appear."

We do not, perhaps, often enough consider the deep significance of this
sentence. We are too apt to receive it as the description of an event
vaster only in its extent, not in its nature, than the compelling the
Red Sea to draw back, that Israel might pass by. We imagine the Deity in
like manner rolling the waves of the greater ocean together on a heap,
and setting bars and doors to them eternally.

But there is a far deeper meaning than this in the solemn words of
Genesis, and in the correspondent verse of the Psalm, "His hands
prepared the dry land." Up to that moment the earth had been _void_, for
it had been _without form_. The command that the waters should be
gathered was the command that the earth should be _sculptured_. The sea
was not driven to his place in suddenly restrained rebellion, but
withdrawn to his place in perfect and patient obedience. The dry land
appeared, not in level sands, forsaken by the surges, which those surges
might again claim for their own; but in range beyond range of swelling
hill and iron rock, for ever to claim kindred with the firmament, and be
companioned by the clouds of heaven.

Sec. 2. What space of time was in reality occupied by the "day" of Genesis,
is not, at present, of any importance for us to consider. By what
furnaces of fire the adamant was melted, and by what wheels of
earthquake it was torn, and by what teeth of glacier and weight of
sea-waves it was engraven and finished into its perfect form, we may
perhaps hereafter endeavor to conjecture; but here, as in few words the
work is summed by the historian, so in few broad thoughts it should be
comprehended by us; and as we read the mighty sentence, "Let the dry
land appear," we should try to follow the finger of God, as it engraved
upon the stone tables of the earth the letters and the law of its
everlasting form; as, gulf by gulf, the channels of the deep were
ploughed; and cape by cape, the lines were traced, with Divine
foreknowledge, of