172 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE, 
cient Chaldeans possessed this revelation. It existed among them, it is true, in a 
corrupt form, mixed up with idolatrous ideas; but it can be traced back as far as 
to the time of Abraham. The Father of the faithful may indeed, when he left 
Chaldea, have possessed in a written form all that part of Genesis which relates 
to the creation and the deluge. Thus the substance of the first chapter of Gene- 
sis probably belongs to antediluvian times, was a very old book in the days of 
Moses, may have been taught to him by his mother in the same form in which we 
now have it, and was a revelation to some antediluvian patriarch, perhaps to 
Adam himself. 
The questions raised by the first chapter of Genesis are, however, so many 
and complicated that they can not profitably be entered into in a short article. 
The more important of them may be included in the answers to two gestions: 
ffow was this revelation given? and why was it given? 
The first of these questions—the /ow of the revelation of creation—is an- 
swered by the form of the record. Its condensed, repetitive and rythmical form 
is evidently intended to facilitate remembrance and oral transmission. Its picto- 
rial character and division into days suggest a succession of visions granted to 
the seer, and in which he saw, day by day, the work of creation proceeding 
from its beginning to its close. This is perhaps the most intelligible conception 
we can form of the nature of the revelation; and since it is the mode in which 
the future was presented to inspired prophets in later Biblical times, there can be 
no impropriety in supposing it to have been the means of communicating the 
knowledge of the unknown past. We may thus imagine the seer, wrapped in 
ecstatic vision, having his senses closed to all the impressions of the present world, 
and looking with inward eye at a moving procession of the events of the earth’s 
past history, presented to him in a succession of apparent days and nights. This 
view may relieve us from the difficulties which have arisen from what has been 
called the ‘‘ literal day”’ theory of the creative week. Just as, in the visions of 
later prophets, a day may stand for a year, so in this ancient prophecy, the day 
of the seer may be an emblematic day of vision representing one of the long 
days of God’s creative working. 
This idea of long creative periods as represented by the days of creation is, 
however, too important, both in its relation to science and religion, to be lightly 
passed over. ‘Three affirmations may be made respecting it. 
1. The doctrine of long creative periods is in harmony with the general tes- 
timony of Scripture. Many proofs of this might be given. The word ‘‘day” is 
used in Genesis 2 to denote the whole period of the creative work ‘‘in the day 
when Jehovah created the heavens and the earth.”” In Psalm go, which is ‘‘a 
psalm of Moses,” one day is said to be with the Lord as a thousand years, in ref= 
erence to the period of human history, and the expression ‘‘ from everlasting to 
everlasting,” literally from ‘‘ age to age,” refers to the great length of the crea- 
tive days. In Psalm 104, which is a poetical version of the account of creation, 
the tone of the references shows that the writer understood the creative work to 
