to a discerning hand, and all that can alter the sense or the grammatical construction conscientiously inserted. It is evident this is a task requiring no common abilities, for it is not always easy to say whether a various reading is of importance or not. Even when a correction purely orthographical, and not in the least affecting the sense, may be useless in a given case, it may become important by illustrating some other passage in which a fact or a doctrine is concerned. Whoever may undertake this part of the work must have fixed principles of rejection and admission, and these must be stated in the prolegomena, that the student may know to what he is trusting. Thus selected, the various readings should be printed immediately below the text, yet not so as to be confounded with the Masoretic notes. A line dividing those notes from the text, and another marking the boundary of the various readings, will add much to perspicuity, and be thankfully received by the scholar. The marks or signs by which the various readings are connected with the passages to which they refer must be very explicit and conspicuous, and on this subject the experience of printers of established reputation may be consulted. In the edition of Doederlein small italic letters are employed, and great distinctness is secured.

The use to be made of the ancient versions next demands attention. As it is to be desired that the Hebrew text should be compared thoroughly with those versions which it is proposed to employ, a selection of the most important is necessary, and we think the Targums, the Syriac, the Greek, and the Latin versions, must form the boundary, on account of the great difficulty and expense which would attend a careful comparison if extended to the Ethiopic and Arabic. Where those or other versions of critical value have been employed by former commentators, their aid may be borrowed in important passages; but this edition would have a higher value if the four sources of interpretation just mentioned are collated de novo. Wherever light is thrown on the text by these versions, or when they differ from it, they must be quoted in their own characters, and the advantage of a Polyglott will in this way be afforded without its expensiveness, and with the benefit of having important differences clearly indicated. These versional interpretations will be admitted first in the notes, unless in those cases in which the editors have any observations to make on the state of the text, compared with its various readings. Where the versions are widely different from the Hebrew, suggestions as to the cause of the discrepancy will be valuable, in the manner exhibited by Schleusner in his Lexicon of the Septuagint. Some of these variations indicate probable corruptions of the Hebrew text, and should be noted in the hope that the collation of manu

scripts

scripts may some day confirm the conjecture or show its incorrectness.

Grammatical observations deduced from the works of the most recent philosophical writers on that subject, as Gesenius and Ewald, may be introduced with good effect. The same remark will apply to lexicography, which we would make an important feature of the suggested undertaking. The meanings given by Gesenius or Fürst to words occurring only once or twice, if inserted in the notes will save time, by rendering the consultation of those authors unnecessary. By the way, all such words of unusual occurrence should be noted as they are met with. Oriental customs illustrative of Hebrew words and phrases must be briefly alluded to, and beyond this we would not allow miscellaneous observations to proceed. The work should be a critical edition of the Hebrew Bible, and not an exposition of its inspired contents. The fulfilment of prophecy or the doctrinal bearings of various passages we would leave out of sight altogether, as well as all pious reflections, which we presume the student can best supply for himself. We wish the undertaking to be a help to the proper understanding of the text, as an affair of philology, not as one of divinity. Divine revelation is the temple to which the text conducts as a porch, and it is the right way of attaining to the entrance which we desire to point out. We presume that those who labour to attain so much as we wish to present to them will not stop here, but will use their knowledge to assist in the promotion of their own piety and the happiness of their fellow-men.

In addition to the materials already noticed, some minor matters may receive attention without increasing the size of the work. Chronology, showing the variations of the Hebrew text and the versions, may occupy a niche at the top of the page; and some divisions, more philosophical than that of chapters, may throw the text into paragraphs. The margin should be available for references to illustrative passages, and, by proper discrimination, immense aid may be furnished in this way to the student. Marginal references in a critical edition of the Scriptures should not point to similar events and analogous doctrines, but to words peculiarly used, and to grammatical constructions of an anomalous character. The passages quoted from the Hebrew Bible in Gesenius's Lexicon are generally such as throw light on the meaning of the word under which they are found. Such references, thrown into the margin of the work now proposed, will be highly useful, and the reader will be sure to consult them when he finds that each one is explanatory of the text. We believe that we have now embodied in this essay our ideas of what is wanting in this department of sacred literature, and if anything like it could be brought to a

completion,

completion, a favour of no ordinary kind would be conferred upon all Biblical scholars, especially those who are not far advanced in their interesting studies. Such of us as have had to furnish ourselves with the critical helps which we propose to present in readiness for those who will come after us, are deeply sensible of the desirableness of shortening, as much as possible, the ways which lead to sound Biblical learning, and the critical edition of the Hebrew Scriptures suggested in this paper will accomplish that purpose to a great extent.

Perhaps such a scheme as we have presented may be considered Utopian, and thrown aside as impracticable; but it is asked respectfully in what the insuperable difficulties consist? Two sorts of aid are needed, that of Biblical learning and that of pecuniary resources. For one man to attempt and to carry through such an undertaking, would still leave him far behind the Biblical scholars who have laboured for us in former years, such as Walton, Leusden, Michaelis, and Schleusner. But by cooperation the work would be comparatively easy, and, under one editor, the labours of many learned men might be secured, without breaking in upon the continuity and harmony of the whole. One might collate the Syriac, another the Septuagint version; one might write the prolegomena, and another the notes; while a fifth could grapple with the various readings. As to the pecuniary question, that may be left to those enterprising booksellers our country can furnish, some of whom are not backward in patronizing attempts which can be shown to afford the promise of ultimate, even though distant, remuneration. In several London printing-offices all the types necessary for such an undertaking are ready furnished, and we long to see them occupied on some work of a truly national character, or rather, on one which will be acceptable wherever Sacred Literature is valued.

MISCELLANEA.

MISCELLANEA.

THE DAYS' OF CREATION.

BY WILLIAM M'COMBIE.

THE Mosaic account of creation, viewed in relation to modern geological discovery, is a subject which has given rise to much discussion, and it must continue to be one of considerable interest even to persons who view the Scriptures as not at all intended to teach scientific truth. For here there seems to be involved not merely a question of science, but one of fact. Both in the first chapter of Genesis and in the fourth commandment God is represented as in the space of 'six days' bringing the visible universe, if not from absolute non-existence, at least from a state of chaos, into its present condition of order and beauty. Almost all who are competent to form an opinion on the subject are now agreed that periods altogether out of proportion to such a number of natural days must have been embraced in the progress of the works there narrated. Are we then shut up to the conclusion unhesitatingly avowed by a writer well known to the readers of your Journal,a that there exist 'palpable contradictions between the language adopted in the Old Testament, and in the delivery of the Jewish law, and the existing evidences of the order of creation?' Assuming for a moment the duration of the periods designated 'days' to be still an open question, I should like to see some of your contributors who are the most versant in geological inquiries bringing the stores of their knowledge to bear on the question, whether there really are contradictions in regard to the order of creation between the Mosaic account, and the monuments of its progress found embedded in the earth's crust? or, whether we are not warranted rather to regard the account in question as a hasty sketch expressed in language accordant with the notions of cosmogony then prevalent, yet substantially, and for all the purposes of the document, correct? It must not be hastily, or without the maturest inquiry and discussion, assumed, that we are held precluded from this conclusion, for then we must be reduced to regard the Mosaic account either

a The Rev. Baden Powell, in his Connexion of Natural and Divine Truth, pp. 266, 267.

as

as a mere myth, or as the worthless embodiment of a popular tradition, either of which would seem sufficiently incongruous and unaccountable, as found placed at the opening of a tract which professes to narrate historically the leading events and transactions of the first three thousand years or so of human existence.

That the question as to the length of the periods designated 'days' is yet an open one, or that we are not shut up to the conclusion that these periods necessarily embraced only the length of natural days, we would beg to suggest the following considerations. If they are of any weight, let them stimulate inquiry; if merely whimsical, let them be disregarded.

And first, the term 'day' is by no means restricted in Scripture any more than it is in popular language still, to designate merely the twenty-four hours. Besides the uniform use of 'days' in prophecy to represent years in the fulfilment, we find it frequently used to express indefinite periods, as Now is the day of salvation,' If thou hadst known, even thou at least in this thy day,' &c. Then, creation is uniformly represented in Scripture as the unconstrained and voluntary work of God; and in harmony with this, the main object of the Mosaic account may be expected to be found, the presenting to our view of this work under the aspect of its revelation to him. Now under that aspect the predicating of extreme duration is absurd, for the voice of philosophy combines with the announcements of Scripture in declaring that 'one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.' In regard to man, the leading impressions intended to be given evidently being that creation was the work of the One living God,' and that it was spontaneous and progressive work, the time occupied by it-if time was predicable at all previous to the existence of rational and progressive natureswas of very secondary importance.

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6

And then the mode of reckoning by the evening and the morning' would quite harmonise with each day' standing for a cosmogonic era, its evening representing the close of one majestic epoch, and its morning the opening of another. If we might speak in accommodation to the impressions of our limited and progressive nature, such would have been days' bearing some faint relation to the vast cycle of the years of the Most High.' But there appears to us to be a yet stronger aspect of the case: for is it not equally true of every natural day that has elapsed since the completion of the visible creation, as it was of the first which succeeded that completion, that in it God has rested? The work of creation on our globe has never been resumed. The rest on the part of God, in the sense in which it ever was a rest, has run on unbroken. When man was created the pyramid of terrene