ON GEOLOGY. 



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hours, as it ordinariiyiniports : for there is no term in any language that is 

 used with a wider latitude of construction than the Hebrew or \jom)^ or 

 its Arabic form, which is the word for day in the original. We are con- 

 stantly, indeed, employing this very word, as Enghshmen, 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 revolution, 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 appealed to in support of this remark, but in plain historical nar- 

 rative as well. Thus in Exod. xiii. 10, the verse, " thou shalt keep this 

 ordinance in its season from year to year^^"* if literally rendered, would be 



through days of days^^' or " through days upon days^^^ — riD'D'' CD'*D^D» 

 And in like manner. Judges xvii. 16, " I will give thee ten shekels of silver 

 by the year^^^ if strictly interpreted, would be '''per dies— for the days^^^ 

 — that is, " for the annual circle of days," — £D^D''S. 



Sometimes, again, the Hebrew av, 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. Q, 



Turn from him that he may rest, 



Till he shall accomplish, as a hireling, his day—^q^i. 



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 nar- 

 rative 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, ch. ii. 4, proceeds to 

 tell us, these are," — or rather, " such were the generations of the hea- 

 vens and of the earth when they were created ; in the day (ar3) 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 av 

 day 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 hmiting us 

 to the idea of twenty-four hours' duration, naturally leads us to ascribe, not 

 only a different, but a much enlarged extent of time to the divisions he has 

 marked by the word or, or day : or at least to those terms which oc- 

 curred before the government of the sun and the moon was estabhshed, 

 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 revolu- 

 tions of twenty-four hours, it is impossible exactly to determine. But it is 

 a question which by no means affects the actual face of nature or the geo- 

 iogical system before us : for as the third or horizontal series of rocks 

 in which petrifactions of known animal and vegetable substances begin 

 to make their appearance must have continued to augment for ages after 

 the. completion of the hezaemeronu or epochs of creation, whatever 



