80 ON GEOLOGY. 



have been as long as the Wernerian system, and the book of nature, and I 

 may add the term generations, employed by Moses himself, seem to indicate. 



Nor let it be supposed for a moment, that the term day in the Hebrew- 

 tongue seems to demand a limitation to the period of four-and-twenty hours, 

 as it ordinarily imports ; for there is no term in any language that is used 

 with a wider latitude of construction than the Hebrew av {jom), or its 

 Arabic form, which is the word for day in the original. We are constantly, 

 indeed, employing this very word, as Englishmen, with no small degree of 

 freedom, in our own age ; for you will all allow me to drop the phrase " in 

 our own age," and to adopt "in our own day" in its stead; thus making age 

 and DAY terms of similar import. But in Hebrew the same term is employed, 

 if possible, in a still wider range of interpretation : for it not only denotes, as 

 with ourselves, half a diurnal revolution of the earth, or a whole diurnal revo- 

 lution, but in many instances an entire year, or revolution of the earth round 

 the sun ; and this not only in the prophetic writings, which are often ap- 

 pealed to in support of this remark, but in plain historical narrative as well. 

 Thus in Exod. xiii. 10, the verse, " thou shalt keep this ordinance in its 

 season Jrom year to year,'''' if literally rendered, would be " through days of 

 days,'' or, " through days upon days,''—TM:i'D' O^D^Q- And in like manner, 

 Judges, xvii. 16, "I will give thee ten shekels of silver by the yeart'^ if 

 strictly interpreted, would be ^'per dies— for the that is, "for the 



ANNUAL CIRCLE of days," — □"'D''^. 



Sometimes, again, the Hebrew or, or day, comprises the whole term of 

 life, as in 1 Chron. xxix. 15 — 



Our DAYS on earth are a shadow, 



And there is none abiding. 



So again. Job, xiv. 6 — 



Turn from him that he may rest, 



Till he shall accomplish, as an hireling, his day— TQV. 



But the clearest and most pertinent proof of the latitude with which the 

 term ar? or day, is employed in the Hebrew Scriptures, is in the very narra- 

 tive of the creation before us : for after having stated in the first chapter of 

 Genesis that the work of creation occupied a period of six days, the same 

 inspired writer, in recapitulating his statement, chap. ii. 4, proceeds to tell 

 us, " these are" — or rather, " such were the generations of the heavens and 

 of the earth when they were created; in the day (CDV:]) that the Lord God 

 made the earth and the heavens." In which passage Moses distinctly tells us 

 that, in the preceding chapter, he has used the term oVjDay, in the sense of 

 generation, succession, or epoch ; while we find him here extending the same 

 term day to the whole hexaemeron, the entire term of time, whatever it may 

 be, that these six days or generations filled up. So that the sense given to 

 the word by Moses, instead of limiting us to the idea of twenty-four hours' 

 duration, naturally leads us to ascribe, not only a different, but a much en- 

 larged extent of time to the divisions he has marked by the word tDV» or 

 DAY : or at least to those terms which occurred before the government of the 

 sun and the moon was established, and the heavenly orrery commenced its 

 harmonious action. 



Whether, indeed, the days from this last period, constituting the fifth and 

 sixth, were of a different length from any of the preceding, which may also 

 have differed from each other, and were strictly diurnal revolutions of 

 twenty-four hours, it is impossible exactly to determine. But it is a ques- 

 tion which by no means affects the actual face of nature or the geological 

 system before us : for as the third or horizontal series of rocks in which pe- 

 trifactions of KNOWN animal and vegetable substances begin to make their 

 appearance must have continued to augment for ages after the completion 

 of the hexaemeron, or six epochs of creation, whatever be the duration 

 assigned to them ; and as the two loftiest, the fourth and fifth sets of rocks. 



