1879.] ^-1 [Grote. 



of light and darkness sprang 'day' and 'night,' and 'the evening and 

 morning were one day.' To take these days as indefinite periods is a proof 

 of want of exact thought, it is an effort to reconcile an exploded statement 

 with the new facts, rather than cut loose at once from demons! rated error. 

 The Hebrew word Tom not only means a day of twenty-four hours, but it 

 expressly means day in this connection. 



"But even granted that we take the less natural meaning of the word 

 'day 'as the proper rendering, and that by this word 'day' any con- 

 ceivable measurement of time is intended, it is only on the fourth of these 

 days that the Sun appears. Astronomy, if it shows anything, proves that 

 the satellites of a central orb, as separate masses of matter, must have been 

 projected from it ami at one time formed a part of such a body. The rela- 

 tion between the earth and the sun, as we gather it from astronomical 

 sources, is a different one from that intended by the account in Genesis. 

 We cannot conceive that the sun or the moon were created for the benefit 

 of the earth or its inhabitants. Night and day are not necessities in the 

 sense that we could not have become accustomed to some other division 

 of times, for darkness and light, as indeed the Eskimo now are. Our organs 

 of vision have plainly adapted themselves to the light which evidently- 

 existed before eyes were developed. And as to the succession we find that 

 the earth is the child of the sun and the parent of the moon. But, that such 

 a succession was comprehended by the writer of Genesis cannot be main- 

 tained. He undoubtedly believed that the sun and the moon were created 

 for the benefit of the earth, which he did not know was round and a satel- 

 lite, but imagined as flat and the center of the sj^stem. Li ;ht is also con- 

 ceived of as independent of the sun. Plants bearing 'seed and fruit after 

 their kind,' are regarded as being created before the sun, whose rays, the 

 physiological botanist now shows, alone give them health and vigor. 

 Again, whole groups of animals of whose remains mountains are made, 

 such as corals and rhizopods, are omitted from the account. Such an 

 omission, if it tallied with the restricted knowledge of the times in which 

 such an account was believed, proves conclusively that the account was 

 nut extraneous, or in any way above the level of ancient civilization. And 

 undoubtedly it does so tally, and the most powerful argument against 

 Genesis, for those accessible to reason, lies in the fact that it contains no 

 information superior to a very low grade of observation in natural history. 

 Later on, in the magnified and equally improbable story of Noah's ark, we 

 find no mention of the rescue of the plants or how they stood the flood. 

 At that time it was simply not known that plants breathed like animals 

 and would drown as well as they. 



"The records of the rocks tell us unmistakably that plants and animals have 

 flourished through untold ages side by side, new forms succeeding old on is. 

 But in Genesis, the creation of trees and shrubs took place in a period 

 perfectly distinct from animals. The paleontologist must, then, reject the 

 account of Genesis as perfectly incredible. Again the distinction between 

 the ' beast of the earth after his kind and cattle after their kind.' shows 



