hundreds of years of biblical study and theological thought since Bede in the eighth century, and Vincent of Beauvais in the thirteenth, had declared that creation must have taken place in the spring. Yet, alas! within two centuries after Lightfoot's great biblical demonstration as to the exact hour of creation, it was discovered that at that hour an exceedingly cultivated people, enjoying all the fruits of a highly developed civilization, had long been swarming in the great cities of Egypt, and that other nations hardly less advanced had at that time reached a high development in Asia.(6) (6) For Luther, see his Commentary on Genesis, 1545, introduction, and his comments on chap. i, verse 12; the quotations from Luther's commentary are taken mainly from the translation by Henry Cole, D.D., Edinburgh, 1858; for Melanchthon, see Loci Theologici, in Melanchthon, Opera, ed. Bretschneider, vol. xxi, pp. 269, 270, also pp. 637, 638--in quoting the text (Ps. xxiii, 9) I have used, as does Melanchthon himself, the form of the Vulgate; for the citations from Calvin, see his Commentary on Genesis (Opera omnia, Amsterdam, 1671, tom. i, cap. ii, p. 8); also in the Institutes, Allen's translation, London, 1838, vol. i, chap. xv, pp. 126,127; for the Peter Martyr, see his Commentary on Genesis, cited by Zockler, vol. i, p. 690; for articles in the Westminster Confession of Faith, see chap. iv; for Buffon's recantation, see Lyell, Principles of Geology, chap iii, p. 57. For Lightfoot's declaration, see his works, edited by Pitman, London, 1822. But, strange as it may seem, even after theologians had thus settled the manner of creation, the matter employed in it, the time required for it, and the exact date of it, there remained virtually unsettled the first and greatest question of all; and this was nothing less than the