disease, death. We come into the world weeping; we go out of it with sighs, and groans, and agony, and often with a terrible struggle, till, exhausted with suffering, our bodies return to the earth from which they were taken, to be devoured by worms, dissolved by corruption, and changed into a handful of dust.

Ah, my friends, let us rejoice to remember that a second Adam has come to the earth. Let us pray that, as "we have borne the image of the earthly, we may also bear the image of the heavenly."

And "now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and for ever. Amen" (Jude 24, 25).

CHAPTER XI.

THE PERFECTION OF THE WORK OF GOD.

"And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day."-GEN. i. 29–31.

HAVE you perfectly understood the explanation given of these words of the 31st verse, "And the evening and the morning were the sixth day?" Where would you place the evening here spoken of? At the end of the sixth day? O no; certainly not. On the contrary, it was at the beginning of it, according to the custom of the Hebrews in reckoning their days-beginning with the evening. This evening was at the end of the fifth day, that is to say, after the creation of the fish of the sea of all kinds, of marine creatures, and birds of the air.

Remember, I pray you, that it was during this evening, between the fifth and sixth days,

mentioned in verse 31, that the calcareous Jurassic mountains of our country were formed, and that then so many shell-fish and sea creatures were buried in the heart of these rocks.

A friend, who was present at our last lesson, told me that a few days ago he had seen two beautiful fish which had been sent from Savoy to be placed in the cabinet of a very learned professor in Geneva. And who, think you, had caught these beautiful fish? -the boatmen or fishermen of Bellerive or Belotte? No, my friends; they were got by Savoyard masons. Did they catch these fish with a line and a hook, or with a net, in the waters of the lake? No; they took them out of the heart of a rock with a hammer, on the mountain of the Voirons, where workmen were quarrying stones to build our houses!

I return to the history of the sixth day, as related in the last three verses of the chapter.

Man had just been placed in this beautiful world. He was pure and upright; perfect in health and strength; perfect in beauty both of body and mind; perfect in understanding, happiness, and innocence,-formed to enjoy God, to reflect his image, and to glorify him.

Then God spoke to him in the words of the 29th verse: "And God said, Behold, 1 have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.”

Remark here, that when God assigned to man, while still innocent, his proper food, he gave him only the fruits of the field; and it was not till after the earth had been twice cursed because of sin that he was permitted to eat the flesh of animals.

Upon this point also," says M. de Rougemont, in his interesting "History of the Earth," upon this point, as well as others, science has arrived, by long, circuitous ways, and painful study, at the very same truths which are plainly revealed to us in Genesis." "It is a question," says M. Flourens, "which has much perplexed physiologists, and which they have not yet been able to determine, what was the natural and primitive food of man. Now, thanks to comparative anatomy, it is very easy to see that man was originally neither herbivorous nor carnivorous, but frugivorous."

This is precisely what we are told in the verse we have read.

Remark, too, that God gave also vegetable food to all the birds, reptiles, and quadrupeds: Verse 30, "And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so."

It was not till after the curse had been brought on the earth by sin that man began to feed on the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. Before he sinned he had a dominion over the creatures, which he lost in a great measure, and which he only keeps in a degree by force and violence; but at first they did not flee from him, and he did not eat them. It was not till after the Fall, and even after the Deluge (Gen. ix. 3), that he began to feed on blood and dead bodies-that he cut off the heads and limbs of sheep to eat them-that he slaughtered oxen and skinned them, in order to devour their flesh-or that he plunged the knife into the throat of the gentle lamb and timid calf, to feed on their shoulders, their brains, their sides, or their limbs.