456 CONSISTENCY OF GEOLOGY WITH SACRED HISTORY. 



cept such as may have been going on ever since. According to the 

 popular understanding, the transition and secondary mountains with 

 their coal beds, plants and animals were therefore, formed, in two 

 or three natural days, by physical laws, which is incredible, because 

 it is impossible. 



We cannot conceive therefore, that even the limitation of morn- 

 ing and evening is decisive against the extension which we would 

 claim, and we are left at liberty to interpret the word day in harmony 

 with the facts of geology. 



It is granted that Moses himself might have understood the word day 

 according to the popular signification and that this sense would be the 

 most obvious one to every mind not informed as to the structure of 

 the globe ; even those who are learned on other subjects, but ignorant 

 of geology, always adopt, in this case, the literal and obvious meaning. 

 This however proves nothing; for the truths of astronomy, are in ex- 

 actly the same situation. Until the modern astronomy arose, no one 

 whether learned or unlearned, entertained a doubt that the earth is 

 an extended plain ; that it stands on a firm foundation, even on pillars, 

 and that the sun and starry heavens and the azure canopy revolve 

 around it as a centre. 



Such is still the impression of barbarous nations, but few even of 

 the common people of enhghtened countries would now fall into so 

 gross an error; and no one in this age fears that he shall, like Galileo, 

 be thrown into prison for declining (on this subject) to understand the 

 scriptures in their literal sense.* 



It is objected that as the sabbath is a common day and that as it is 

 mentioned in the fourth commandment, and in other parts of the 

 scriptures, in connexion with the other six days, they ought to be 

 limited to the same time. 



* When the present system of astronomy was introduced, it met with the most 

 violent opposition and the following is the " Judgment pronounced at Rome, in 

 1622, only two hundred and eleven years ago, on the Philosophy of Galileo, and 

 on the Philosopher himself, by the seven Cardinal Inquisitors." " To affirm that 

 the sun is in the centre, absolutely immoveable, and without locomotion, is an 

 absurd proposition, false in sound philosophy, and moreover her£tical, because it 

 is expressly contrary to Holy Scripture. To say that the earth is not placed in 

 the middle of the world, nor immoveable, is also a proposition absurd and false 

 in sound philosophy ; and considered theologically, is at least erroneous with res- 

 pect to faith." " Whereupon Galileo so refuted, was compelled on his knees to 

 abjure, curse and detest, the absurdities, errors and heresies, which the sagacity of 

 the Cardinal Reviewers and Inquisitors had discovered in his writings." — Penn's 

 Compar. Estimate, ^-c. 2d. Ed. Vol. L p. 37. 



