xii. 12, contrasts the Mosaic dispensation under the figure of νύξ, with the Christian under that of ἡμέρα, in interpreting which every unprejudiced person must admit, that vú expresses the whole period of the Mosaic, and nuέpa the whole period of the Christian : —if then or nuépa so frequently involves in itself the idea of a long duration, may it not be legitimately applied both to the creation and to the final judgment, without necessarily confining the period to that of a natural day? But Mr. Penn urges, the Son of Man shall come in a day and hour, when for him who understands the words day and hour, to denote and include the eternity, which he is sensible will follow ?'

ye

look not

"Here it is but necessary to remark, that the day and hour are Hebraisms used to express time, that the terms are frequent in the Evangelists, and that in Mark xiii. 13, these are called kapós: hence, the day of the Son of Man not merely refers to his second advent, but also to the period of that judgment, which will be consecutive to it. For, no one aware how widely the corresponding term is used by the Arabs, and who has examined its extensive force among the ancient Hebrews, can dispute these philological

assertions.

"I have now arrived at the main question. If in other instances has this figurative sense, and if geology and philosophy in general oppose the idea, that the process of the creation was completed in six natural days, are we, when observing the fuller sense of the word in passages not to be disputed,

1 "The Hamasa contains innumerable instances of this fact."

authorized in confining the six D'D' of the cosmogony to six natural days?

"SCHOETTGEN, in Acts ii. 17, has adduced the Jewish legend or opinion, that each yōm occupied 1000 years', whence the Jews computed six millennaries before the advent of the Messiah, whom they expected or in the sixth yōm, i. e. anno 6000assigning the whole of the seventh yōm or millennary to his reign.

66

Now, as GLASSIUS and others have shown, that where human properties and periods of time are predicated of the divine being, the language is necessarily anthropopathetical; connecting the Jewish opinion cited by Schoettgen, with St. Peter's assertion in Ep. 2. ch. iii. 8., we may without violence suppose, that D was simply a term expressive of each period of the creation, without actually defining the period of its continuance.

"If so, the six were indefinite epochs. In corroboration of this, the first chapter of Genesis details the six D, during which the process advanced to its perfection, but in the second, at verse 4, we read of the creation of the heavens and the earth, in the day or at the period () when the Lord God made them: therefore these six must be comprised in this individual, and the term must imply an indefinite period.

"Mr. Penn, however, argues that they must have been natural days, because each had its y or evening, and p or morning.

"This objection has been already refuted, because

1 "Cf. Zohar. in Gen. 13. c. 52."

the erev and the boker were necessary to preserve the uniformity of the metaphor, and therefore yield no evidence that the yōm was a natural day.

66

Although in Daniel viii. 14. 26. and in Exodus and Leviticus, the vxonμepov be, as it is urged, implied by the erev-boker, the inference, that it imports the same in the first chapter of Genesis amounts to nothing, because the real question is,--not whether the erev and boker are ever expressive of a day of twenty-four hours, but whether the yōm in the cosmogony, of which the erev and boker are parts, be predicated of a natural day, or metaphorically of an indeterminate period.

When, therefore, we consider the stupendous work of the creation, it is consentaneous to sound criticism to presume, that if instances occur, in which is invested with a wider signification than that of the ordinary day, in which it expresses periods of time not defined by the passage, it must à fortiori have possessed this more ample and enlarged sense in the first chapter of Genesis.

"The very

give the idea of ויהי ערב ויהי בקר יום words

successive periods, and mark the erev as the commencement, and the boker as the termination.

"From which collective reasons I have no hesitation in believing, that in the first chapter of Genesis referred to a period consisting of a length not to be determined."

Connection between the Mosaic narrative of the Creation and Geological Phenomena.

But further-while the first chapter of the Book of Genesis sets forth a certain order of operations which have taken place in periods of indeterminate length, that very order, up to the first existence of man, is manifested by geological phenomena.

That in the following Letters, the conformity of geological monuments with the sacred history of the creation may not escape the reader's observation, the author has divided the series of physical operations which resulted from the introduction of light, into six periods, until the appearance of man upon our globe.

This striking agreement, first pointed out by De Luc, is acknowledged in the valuable work of Mr. Parkinson. After observing that the formation of the exterior part of the globe, and the creation of its several inhabitants, must have been the work of a vast length of time, and have been effected at several distant periods, he thus continues:-" In the first of these periods, the granitic and other primary rocks were separated from the water. (Gen. i. 9.) That this separation took place, as is stated in the Scriptural record, previously to the creation of vegetables and animals, is evident from no remains of any organised substance having ever been found in any of these substances. In the next period we are informed by Scripture, that the creation of vegetables took place, (Gen. i. 12.) Almost every circumstance in the situation and disposition of coal accords with this

...

order of creation. The creation of the succeeding period was that of the inhabitants of the water and of the air. (Gen. i. 20.) In agreement with this order of creation, are the contents of all the numerous strata lying above those already mentioned; including the blue clay which we have seen disposed in many places almost at the surface In the next period it is stated, that the beasts of the earth, cattle, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth, were made. (Gen. i. 24.) The agreement of the situations in which the remains of land animals are found with this stated order of creation, is exceedingly exact; since it is only at the surface, or in some superficial stratum, or in comparatively some lately formed deposition, that any of the remains of these animals are to be found. The creation of man was the work of the last period. (Gen. i. 26.) And in agreement with his having been created after all the other inhabitants of the earth, is the fact that not a single decided fossil relic of man has been discovered." Thus, " a pleasing, and perhaps unexpected accordance, appears between the order in which, according to the Scriptural account, creation was accomplished, and the order in which the fossil remains of creation are found deposited in the superficial layers of the earth. That so close an agreement should be found of the order of creation, as stated in Scripture, with the actual appearance of the depth of stratification which has been examined in modern times, must satisfy or surprise every one-Moses could not have learned this accordance from the Egyptians '."

1

Organic Remains, &c. Vol. iii. p. 449, et seq.