A List of all the Chinese Characters contained in Dr. Williams' Syllabic ... P. Poletti. 479 A Week's Prayer for Family Worship in the Colloquial of the Hakka American Oriental Society, Proceedings at New Haven, Conn., October ... ... 74 Annual Report of the Evangelical Alliance of Japan, for the year 1881. Annual Report of the Lao-ling Medical Mission, 1881-82. Around the World Tour of Christian Missions. Asia, with Ethnological Appendix. Rev. Frank S. Dobbins. 79 Cunnigham Geikie, D.D. 158 Parables with Chinese Illustrations. ... Plain Questions and Straight-forward Answers about the Opium Report of the Medical Missionary Society in China for 1881. Report of the Medical Missionary Hospital at Swatow, for 1881. Report of Christian Literature in China; with a Catalogue of Publications. Review of the Customs Opium-Smoking Returns. Report of the Second Annual Convention of the American Inter-Seminary Rev. Wm. Muirhead. The Gospel of Luke in the Colloquial of the Hakka Chinese, in the Eastern The Contents Primer transferred in the Colloquial of the Hakka The Ely Volume; or the Contributious of onr Foreign Missions to Science The Opium Trade and Sir Rutherford Alcock. The Eleventh Annual Report of the Foochow Medical Missionary Hospital. 817 The Mosaic Account of the Creation Geologically Considered. The Sacred Books of the East. Translated by various Oriental Scholars and OF CONSIDERED. Read before the Peking Missionary Association, November 11th, 1881. BY REV. G. OWEN. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Gen. 1. 1. the origin of things science gives us no information; nor does it But what science cannot do, or at least has not yet done, the existence and prepared through long ages for the new forms they were then to assume, or whether this was the first creative act, the calling into existence of matter itself, is not expressly stated. The Hebrew word ( bārā) will suit either meaning. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." By heavens we must here understand the whole ethereal expanse with its countless worlds, and by the earth, this globe on which we stand. Of this first act of creation science of course knows nothing. It can neither prove nor disprove it, for it lies beyond the region of observation and experiment, nor indeed does it come within the limits of legitimate scientific conjecture. But this first act of creation was only the initial act of a long series yet to follow. The materials were produced and the forces set in operation, out of which our earth was to grow. It was far from being perfect then. In the second verse we are told: "And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the abyss. And the Spirit of God moved [or brooded] upon the face of the waters." It was "without form and void;" a shapeless, desolate mass as unlike what our beautiful earth is now as a lump of protoplasm is unlike yon strong man or that fair girl. This description of the early condition of our earth is in striking accord with the nebular theory of La Place which is now generally held by scientific men. That great thinker supposed that the sun and all its attendant planets were originally one huge vaporous body, occupying the whole, or more than the whole, of the space now occupied by the solar system. This nebulous mass by virtue of the rapid motion of its constituent particles and of the mass itself, flashed and glowed like a seven-times heated furnace. In process of time the outskirts of this vaporous mass cooled and as it cooled threw off ring after ring, which, contracting, formed the planets and our earth. In the sun we see what was the centre of that great vaporous body, its original fires still burning. The earth after its separation from the central body still continued to cool, and, cooling, contracted and solidified. From glowing gas it became a globe of liquid fire. The outer portions further cooling by radiation hardened into a solid crust. From this cooling, but still hot, mass rose continually great clouds of black, seething vapour and enveloped our incipient earth in blackness, or in the language of Scripture "Darkness covered the face of the abyss." The glow of its own internal fires was shut in by its outer crust, while the dense vapour which hung over it effectually excluded any light from luminous bodies around. |