Olympas. Let me propose this matter in another form: How many distinct commands did God give in all the details of creation? Can you inform us, John ?*

John. I find ten distinct imperatives.

appear.

1st. Let there be light. 2nd, Let there be a firmament. 3rd. Let the waters be gathered together. 4th. Let the dry land bring forth grass, &c. naries in the heavens. forth abundantly. 8th. living creatures.

5th. Let the earth 6th. Let there be lumi7th. Let the waters bring Let the earth bring forth 9th. Let us make man. 10th.

Let him have dominion.

Olympas. Observe especially the order of creation. It is as perfect as the creation itself. Order has respect to the nature and relations of things as regards cause, effect, mechanical force, time, place, circumstance. The creation of the materials is naturally first. Hence the substance of the universe was first made. Out of this mass light is first formed, because of the unsuitableness of darkness to a display of wisdom, power, and goodness; and because in light, associated with heat, as expressed in the Hebrew AUR, is the vital principle of animated nature. After light, the ethereal, as essential to the separation of the various creations, as well as to life; probably itself the effect of the electric principle associated with light. Then the separation of land and water, as prerequisite to vegetable existence; then the clothing of the new formed earth with vegetable apparel; next the sun, moon, and stars to nourish those plants, and shrubs, and trees; for although they could be made without this influence, they could not live or flourish without it. Then the peopling

of the water sand the air after the vegetable kingdom produced them subsistence. Finally, the earth-borns, when all things were ready for their nourishment and defence. And last of all, man, for whom, as the ultimate end, all mundane things exist.

John. How could light and darkness alternate so as to produce night and day three days before the sun, moon, and stars were created?

Olympas. Have you never observed the Aurora Borealis, sometimes called the Northern Lights, irradiate our portion of the earth almost with the brightness of day? Now this is demonstrated to be electric light, or, if you please, primitive light; and we have only to conceive of an increase of said light and of the rotatory motion of the earth on its axis, antecedent to the creation of the celestial luminaries. Terrestrial light, or the light of electricity, was necessarily prior to solar light, as an agent to form the expanse or firmament; the medium through which the "bright effulgence" of solar light reaches our eyes. Into this light the earth merged as it now merges into solar light, because of its diurnal motion. But, Edward, are we to suppose that the process of creation can be fully comprehended by man?

Edward. God's ways are often inscrutable, and he is said to dwell in light, to which no man can approach.

Olympas. We do not, then, seek to explain the process; but we intend to show that it is as congruous to our reason as any thing we can imagine; or, in other words, that it cannot be rationally objected to: so far from it, that the more the

order of creation is considered, the more philosophy-the more wisdom will be discovered in it. The creation is a grand original. It had no model. It was no imitation or resemblance of antecedent existences. The archetype of the whole and of each part lay eternally in the deep recesses of the Supreme Intelligence. But we must interrogate you more particularly on the formation and primitive state of man. This, however, we must reserve for the evening lesson

CONVERSATION 11.

AFTER reading on Monday evening the first, second, and third chapters of Genesis, Olympas resumed his interrogations on the creation of

man.

Olympas. Tell me, James, of what materials did God make man?

James. We are not told in the first chapter of what he was made. It reads, "God created man in his own image; " but it does not say of what. Olympas. But we have a second narrative of the creation of man in the second chapter. What do you learn from it, Susan?

Susan.

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God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life;" and thus he 'became a living soul." Father, how did God "breathe into his nostrils?" Olympas. He caused the air, which is the breath of lives of all animal lives, to enter his lungs, and thus to put them in motion; and so man began to live but he also inspired him with a spirit-as Elihu says, There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding;" and thus he teacheth us more than the beasts of the earth, and maketh us wiser than the fowls of heaven." We are not, indeed, told of

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The words created and formed are as different in the original Hebrew as they are in the Greek and English. God created man, he formed him out of the dust, and breathed into him the breath of life; and thus man became a living soul.

the manner of the communication of the spirit, because we could not understand it; for man cannot understand any thing about the nature of spirit. We only know that God has given us a spirit as well as a body.

Olympas. Can any of the senior class mention any passage of scripture that distinctly states the two-fold origin of man-as springing from Heaven and from Earth?

Thomas Dilworth. Solomon, when speaking of death, seems to refer to this double origin of man. His words are, "Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to God that gave it." Eccles. xii. 7.

Olympas. But does not the same Solomon elsewhere say that the beasts and their souls, and man and his soul, alike return to the earth? His words are, "All go unto one place; all are of dust, and all turn to dust again.' And the all in this connexion relates to man and beast,

T. Dilworth. But he only there speaks of all that is visible for concerning the invisible spirit of both, he immediately adds, "Who [discerneth or] knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward,' ascends to God; "and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth." Man's spirit, then, ascends to God, and the beast's spirit or animal soul goes with it to the dust.

Olympas. Reuben, can you name any portion of the New Testament scripture that speaks of the compound nature of man?

Reuben. Paul somewhere speaks of the body, soul, and spirit of man; but I know not where. Olympas. You allude to his praying that God would sanctify the Thessalonians-body, soul, and