444 COIJSISTENCY OF GEOLOGY WITH SACRED HISTORY. 



are such as do not not absolutely imply that these bodies were at 

 this epoch first created, but admit of the interpretation that their mo- 

 tions were then first made the measures of our present days and sea- 

 sons. We had found it already stated in the 1st verse, that the heav- 

 ens and the earth were created in the beginning, antecedently to the 

 work of the six days, by which they were reduced to their present 

 order, and the earth was peopled with organized beings. It would 

 seem an unwarrantable interpretation to exclude the sun, moon and 

 stars from among the objects expressed by the general terms, the 

 heavens and the earth. It is the most obvious interpretation, that 

 Ihey were then created, and were lighted up on the first day, but that 

 it was only during the fourth epoch, that they were made, the greater 

 light to rule over the present day, and the lesser light to rule over the 

 present night, and to be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and 

 for years, according to the measures of time, which we now find es- 

 tablished by them. This part of the history, then, when interpreted 

 in consistency with the 1st verse, and without any violence to the 

 terms, implies, (in the common language of men, which, in all na- 

 tions, refers the diurnal and annual revolutions of the heavenly bodies 

 to the motions of these bodies themselves,) that the earth was during 

 this epoch, finally brought into its present orbit. 



The work of the third epoch v/as the appearance of the dry land, 

 and the creation of tlie vegetable kingdom. The history of the latter 

 in our common translation, is v. 11, "God said, Let the earth bring 

 forth grass {in the margin tender grass,) the herb yielding seed, and 

 the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon 

 the earth : and it was so." V. 12, " And the earth brought forth 

 grass, and the herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding^ 

 fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind." The terms grass (in 

 Hebrew, deshe,) herb (Hebrew, oeseb,) and tree (Hebrew etz,) are 

 here all put disjunctively in the Hebrew ; there being only one conjunc- 

 tion in the twelfth verse between herb and tree, which does not affect 

 the disjunctive character of the three terms, as it is a common prac- 

 tice in the Hebrew writings to couple, in this manner, the two last of 

 a series of disjunctive terms, as, for example, the names of the four 

 kings in Genesis xiv. 1. In the two last of these terms, herb and 

 tree, we find a recognition of a remarkable natural distinction among 

 the vegetable tribes, and this very circumstance would lead us to infer 

 that the first term, which has obviously presented a difficulty to our 

 translators, since they have given two interpretations of it, is intend- 

 ed to express some class or tribe of the vegetable kingdom, naturally 



