d with an immense atmosphere, and the series of phenomena
which I imagine consequent to the creation, I supposed produced by powers
impressed upon matter by Omnipotence."

Ambrosio said: "There is this verisimility in your history, that it is
not contradictory to the little we are informed by Revelation as to the
origin of the globe, the order produced in the chaotic state, and the
succession of living forms generated in the days of creation, which may
be what philosophers call the 'epochas of nature,' for a day with
Omnipotence is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day."

"I must object," Onuphrio said, "to your interpretation of the scientific
view of our new acquaintance, and to your disposition to blend them with
the cosmogony of Moses. Allowing the divine origin of the Book of
Genesis, you must admit that it was not intended to teach the Jews
systems of philosophy, but the laws of life and morals; and a great man
and an exalted Christian raised his voice two centuries ago against this
mode of applying and of often wresting the sense of the Scriptures to
make them conformable to human fancies; 'from which,' says Lord Bacon,
'arise not only false and fantastical philosophies, but likewise
heretical religions.' If the Scriptures are to be literally interpreted
and systems of science found in them, Gallileo Gallilei merited his
persecution, and we ought still to believe that the sun turns round the
earth."

_Amb_.--You mistake my view, Onuphrio, if you imagine I am desirous of
raising a system of geology on the Book of Genesis. It cannot be doubted
that the first man was created with a great variety of instinctive or
inspired knowledge, which must have been likewise enjoyed by his
descendants; and some of this knowledge could hardly fail to have related
to the globe which he inhabited, and to the objects which surrounded him.
It would have been impossible for the human mind to have embraced the
mysteries of creation, or to have followed the history of the moving
atoms from their chaotic disorder into their arrangement in the visible
universe, to have seen dead matter assuming the forms of life and
animation, and light and power arising out of death and sleep. The ideas
therefore transmitted to or presented by Moses respecting the origin of
the world and of man were of the most simple kind, and such as suited the
early state of society; but, though general and simple truths, they were
divine truths,