ON GEOLOGY. 



79 



tion of the sun and moon, and their display in the sky or firmament, it gives 

 us, as I have just observed, no information whatever. We only know that 

 the flow of luminous matter which measured them advanced or was kindled 

 up by regular tides ; so that it alternately appeared and disappeared, com- 

 mencing with a dawn and terminating with a dusk or darkness ; for at the 

 close of each it is said, " and the eveniug and the morning were the first day 

 or, more literally, as iudeed suggested in the marginal reading of our national 

 version, " and there was evening and there was morning the first day that 

 is, there was dusk and dawn, and by no means such an evening and morning 

 as we have at present. And hence, Origen observes, that " no one of a sound 

 mind can imagine there was an evening and a morning during the first three 

 days without a sun."* So that the passage should, perhaps, be rendered, as 

 most strictly it might be, " and there was dusk as there was dawn, the first 



day."— nnx ar ipn ^n^i n-i;; ^n^v 



It has, indeed, been contended, that each of these periods constituted a so- 

 lar day, or a revolution of the earth round its own axis, and consequently 

 answered to the measure of twenty-four hours, as at present. But to main- 

 tain this opinion it is necessary to suppose that the sun and the moon were 

 set in the sky " to rule over the day and over the night," — " to divide the light 

 from the darkness," — and to " be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and 

 for years," on or before the very first day or generation ; for otherwise there 

 could be no solar day, or such as we have at present, produced by a revolu- 

 tion of the earth round her own axis. And there have not been wanting 

 cosmologists and critics, as Whiston and Rosenmiiller, who have maintained 

 that the sun and the moon were created antecedently to the earth ; that they 

 had their stations allotted ihem in the heavens, and actually produced solar 

 days and diurnal revolutions of the earth from the first. But though their 

 own hypothesis require this, the idea is directly opposed to the spirit and the 

 letter of the Mosaic narrative, and hence can in no respect be acceded to by any 

 one who is anxious to preserve this narrative in its integrity and simplicity. 



How much more explanatory and pertinent is the remark of our own ex- 

 cellent Bishop Hall, when speaking of the primeval light, that during the first 

 three days illuminated the face of nature: "Not," says he, "of the sun or 

 stars, WHICH were not yet created ; but a common brightness only, to dis- 

 tinguish THE TIME, and to remedy the former confused darkness." And how 

 admirably to the same eff"ect does Bishop Beveridge thus express himself; 

 " When he said, let there be light, by that word the light, which was not be- 

 fore, BEGAN TO BE. But whcu hc said (that is, three days or generations 

 afterward), let there be lights in the firmament, to divide the day from the night, 

 he thereby gave laws to the light he had before made, where he would have 

 it be, and what he would have it do. This is what we call the law of nature: 

 that law which God hath put into the nature of everything; whereby it 

 always keeps itself within such bounds, and acts according to such rules, as God 

 hath set it, and by that means shows forth the glory of his wisdom and power." 



Nothing, indeed, can be clearer, than that, according to Moses^ the sun and 

 the moon were only set in the heavens during the fourth day or generation in 

 the work of creation ; and that, whatever may be the relative proportion of 

 the times and the seasons, the light and the darkness, the day and the night, 

 that have occurred subsequently, we have no reason to suppose they occurred 

 in the same proportion antecedently ; since we are expressly told by the same 

 inspired writer, that their immediate office, on being set in the sky, was to 

 RULE these divisions of time, as they have ruled them, with a single miraculous 

 exception or two, ever since, and to divide the light from the darkness, as it 

 has since been divided. 



We have no knowledge whatever, therefore, of the length of the first three 

 or four DAYS or generations that marked the great work of creation, antece- 

 dently to the completion of the sun and moon, and their appointment to their 

 respective posts. And hence, for all that appears to the contrary, they may 



* TLtpi 'Apx^ : in loc. 



