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to do justice to the great design of its author; and to silence, at the same time, the cavils of those who could see in its shocked and broken form nothing but a subject for mirth and ridicule.

In the same way, following the clew afforded by the legends of mankind and the revelations of science, I shall suggest a reconstruction of this venerable and most ancient work.  If the reader does not accept my conclusions, he will, at least, I trust, appreciate the motives with which I make the attempt.

I commence with that which is, and should be, the first verse of the first chapter, the sublime sentence: 

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

Let us pause here:  “God created the heavens and the earth in the beginning";—­that is, before any other of the events narrated in the chapter.  Why should we refuse to accept this statement? In the beginning, says the Bible, at the very first, God created the heavens and the earth.  He did not make them in six days, he made them in the beginning; the words “six days” refer, as we shall see, to something that occurred long afterward.  He did not attempt to create them, he created them; he did not partially create them, he created them altogether.  The work was finished; the earth was made, the heavens were made, the clouds, the atmosphere, the rocks, the waters; and the sun, moon, and stars; all were completed.

What next?  Is there anything else in this dislocated text that refers to this first creation?  Yes; we go forward to the next chapter; here we have it: 

Chap. ii, v. 1. “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.”

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And then follows: 

Chap. ii, v. 4.  “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth, when they were created, IN THE DAY that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.

Chap. ii, v. 5.  “And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew; for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.”

Here we have a consecutive statement—­God made the heavens and the earth in the beginning, and thus they were finished, and all the host of them.  They were not made in six days, but “in the day,” to wit, in that period of remote time called “The Beginning.”  And God made also all the herbs of the field, all vegetation.  And he made every plant of the field before it was cultivated in that particular part of the world called “The Earth,” for, as we have seen, Ovid draws a distinction between “The Earth” and the rest of the globe; and Job draws one between “the island of the innocent” and the other countries of the world.

And here I would call the reader’s attention particularly to this remarkable statement: 

Chap. ii, verse 5.  “For the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.