besides which, many of their genera, and almost all their species, are extinct; and what is also a very strong objection, no human remains or works of art have, so far as geological research has hitherto gone, been found in any of the strata, excepting in those which, from physical evidence, are concluded to be of the most recent epoch. As all these facts are strongly against this hypothesis, it will be unnecessary to allude to them any further.

Even by those who have construed the term day as a natural day, it has been admitted that there is no sound critical or theological objection to the interpretation of the word as meaning a long period. The expression is often used in Scripture to express a period of indefinite length: thus, we have such expressions as the life of man called "his day," and others, "the day of God's wrath," "the day of the Lord,” and in Zechariah, a day described like as those in Genesis, "one day which shall be known to the Lord, not day, nor night; but it shall come to pass, that at evening time it shall be light." Daniel describes as the vision of the evening and the morning, a period formerly specified as "two thousand and three hundred days;" and in Psalms xc., 4, "For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past." Other and numerous instances in the Old Testament might be quoted. In the New Testament the same form of expression occurs. Luke xvii., 24, "So shall also the Son of man be in his day." John viii., 56, " Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad." 2 Peter iii., 8, "One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." Indeed, a further vindication of the term as applied in Scripture

I

to time of vast duration would merely be wearisome. There are those who insist on the natural day explanation, by using the argument, in regard to strata and fossils, that the Divine Being might as easily have made matter to assume the form of a shell, a fish, a lizard, or a waterworn pebble—such as we find in these rocks-or of any other shape or structure. On this, Professor Silliman remarks—“ We will not enquire whether Almighty Power inserted plants and animals in mineral masses, and was thus exerted in working a long series of useless miracles without design or end, and therefore incredible. The man who can believe, for example, that the Iguanodon, with his gigantic form 70 feet in length, 10 feet in height, and 15 in girth, was created in the midst of consolidated sandstone, and placed down 1000 or 1200 feet from the surface of the earth in a rock composed of ruins and fragments, and containing vegetables, shells, fish, and rolled pebbles, such a man can believe anything with or without evidence. If there be any such persons, we must leave them to their own reflections, since they cannot be influenced by reason and sound argument; with them we can sustain no discussion, for there is no common ground on which we can meet."

Lastly, a day of this earth's revolution is not a day with reference to the revolutions of the other innumerable created worlds. While the sun requires for its revolution on its axis twenty-five days, the days of Jupiter and Saturn are shorter than ours, although these bodies are much larger-Jupiter being 1470 times, and Saturn 887 times, greater in size. Without, therefore, extending the consideration of the question to other planets than those of

our own system, within it each planet differs from the other in the length of the day; and our day of twenty-four hours would be no measurement or rule of time to that Almighty Being who is the Creator of them all. Those who believe that the days immensely exceeded our days in length imagine that the earth, broken off from the sun, was either at rest, or, at least, that its motion on its axis was very slow. The most laborious enquiries of astronomers, and others, on this point, have never been able to discover that any variation whatever has occurred in the daily revolution of the earth. The days are considered by many of the eminent theologians and geologists of the present time as natural days, during which the transactions of vast epochs of time passed, in vision, before the eyes of Moses. The days, in fact, says Miller, "are removed altogether from the province of chronology to the province of prophetic vision; they are represented simply as parts of the exhibited scenery, or, rather, as forming the measure of the apparent time during which the scenery was exhibited." Moreover, "in the character of symbolic days, they were as truly representative of the lapse of foregone periods of creation, as the scenery itself was representative of the creative work accomplished in these periods." And again-" We cannot but see that there is strong ground for the suggestion, that the whole scene was communicated to the sacred historian in a succession of visions, each separate one occupying an evening and a morning—that is to say, an intermediate night, the season of visions or dreams—and the transactions of it appearing to Moses to be comprised in the compass of a natural day -which is defined to be the period of light-though the

realities, of which it was the vision, occupied many natural days and nights. It is well known that the transactions of years are often compressed, in a dream, into the space of a few minutes, or even a less space of time; on the same principle, the operations of the Divine Author of the creation, which may have occupied a long series of years, may have been presented to Moses as the events of a single day."

To those who would carp at the demands of geology to consider the days specified as eras of indefinite length, it may be suggested that days, and time generally, are long or short, according to the standard employed. The man of eighty is venerable compared with the infant in arms, but he becomes a child compared with Methuselah; and all time and days sink into an instant compared with His duration, at whose will, time, and days, and matter originated, and that eternal day of rest for which we are designed.

CHAPTER XI.

"The Lord is a great God,

And a great King above all Gods.

In His hand are the deep places of the earth:
And the strength of the hills is His also.

The sea is His, and He made it:

And His hands formed the dry land.”

We have now examined the Testimony of the Stony Record, and proved the authenticity of the Scripture Record, by inquiries into its validity as the true word of God handed down to us under His protection-its inspiration, as to the contents and authors—and the manner in which the account of the creation, as contained in the opening chapters of Genesis, has been given to us through their penman, Moses.

Let us now, in all reverence, and a spirit desirous to be taught, open the sacred volume, and compare what His word narrates with what His works declare.

First, however, it may be noted that the division of our Bible into chapters and verses has been executed in an arbitrary manner, and without regard to the subject, or connection, and consecutive order of ideas and events, thus often marring the sense and confusing the reader. Of this we have a glaring instance, in the account of the creation. The first chapter, instead of terminating as it does, should