Page:Essays ethnological and linguistic.djvu/222

210 crypha, "Thou gavest a body unto Adam without living soul, and didst breathe into him the breath of life, and he was made living before Thee." (2 Esdras, iii. 5.) I presume to think, that the word should be more generally considered a substantive word, which whether necessarily to be translated or not, has nevertheless its substantive signification.

Returning to the consideration of the six periods of the world's mutations, it is interesting to observe how many traces of true history are to be found in the earliest traditions of mankind, in opposition to modern prejudices. The Persians, as Bellamy has stated at length, had a distinct and particular recognition of those six periods; and he might have added, so had the Etruscans also, as we are informed by Suidas (voce Tyrrhenia). The latter, as a Lydian colony, were, it may be presumed, a cognate people to the Phœnicians, and these being conterminous to the Israelites on the one side, as the Persians were on the other, may well all be supposed to have derived their traditions from authentic sources, which may so be entitled to be quoted as confirmatory of our argument. Bearing this in mind, we may perceive the beautiful precision of the communication given us by Moses, of the substance, or nucleus of the earth having been created in the "beginning," the first period of its existence. It was then that, floating through space in an uncertain orbit, perhaps as a comet, this globe had, in its several primary states or periods, to have its fluid compounds gathered together in due order, the atmosphere regulated, and the dry land emerged and fitted to produce the rank herb suitable to its condition. It had then to enter on another important stage of the work of creation: to be placed under the influence or attraction of that orb which we now recognize as the centre of our system, beginning then to revolve around it so as to form our days and nights, by periodical evolutions. This, we are informed, was on the fourth æra, or day, of the world; and this consideration alone shows the impossibility of our ordinary days of twenty-four hours, as we call them, being intended in the sacred narrative: inasmuch as these alternations of time only commenced at so late a period of the creation.

The Hebrew text does not state that the greater and lesser lights were then created; but made, or caused, to rule the day and night, "for signs and for seasons, and for days and years." In like manner with our globe, they had no doubt an immeasurable prior existence; but it was then their present relative courses began to form this planet a part of the system such as we find it. The rank produce of the earth under the anterior period would now become enriched to a finer vegetation under the genial influence of the sun and the planet be prepared for