THE FIRST CHAPTER OP GENESIS. 



143 



think exactly alike, but they did ask that all should discuss the 

 important problems, which were always springing up, in the same 

 spirit of reverent desire to arrive at the truth. 



He was bound to say, that after a very long experience, having 

 heard this first chapter of Genesis fought over ever since he was a 

 small boy, he knew of no better answer to the questions on both 

 sides than the paper to which they had just listened. Their first 

 duty was to take the words of the chapter as they found them and 

 not the words as they might wish to make them. 



Mr. M. L. EouSE had listened with delight to this admirable 

 paper, with its concise logic and rhythmical and harmonious 

 language, and had l^een struck by several thoughts contained in it, 

 which appeared to be wholly new. 



The theory to which the author inclined, that the six days of 

 creation were six nights of vision, in each of which a distinct 

 operation of God was revealed, appeared consistent v/ith the fact 

 that each day seemed to be limited by "an evening" and "a 

 morning." Yet it would have been difficult to have phrased the 

 sentence otherwise, if it had been intended to express a full day of 

 24 hours, and he thought "evening "and "morning" might have 

 been used, rather than " night " and " day," simpl}^ to avoid the 

 ambiguity between the two meanings of the word " day," which 

 might signify either the period "of daylight, or the whole 24 hours. 

 The older nations such as the Arabs and the Phoenicians put the 

 evening before the morning, beginning their day at sunset, but that 

 ordinary days of 24 hours were here meant appeared probable from 

 the fact that the seventh day was of this kind, being one that Adam 

 enjoyed in communion with his Creator, while the Ten Command- 

 ments put the six days in the same class as the seventh. 



He was a believer in the theory marked (/;) on page 132 of the 

 paper. In Hebrew where the verb " to be " would simply be the 

 copula, it was usually omitted, but it was exj^ressed where it meant 

 "became," or "came to be," as in verse 3. Now the word " was" 

 was expressed in the first clause of verse 2, but not in the second, 

 so it might be inferred that the first clause meant that the earth had 

 become " waste " (tohu), "and void," in harmony with Isaiah xlv, 18, 

 — " I created not the world a waste (tohii) I made it to be inhabited." 

 Geology taught that, just before the appearance of man, the earth 

 had passed through the cataclysm that brought on the glacial epoch. 



