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itself; while, in speaking of the luminary which rules the dav, 
,. C f Ils lt: maor > i ' e ' “ a P^ce or instrument 
0 i & i , a light-bearer/ like a lighted lamp, as science has 
shown it to be. Hence, as M. Marcel dc Serres, Professor of 
geology at Montpellier, observes, “ Scripture does not say that 
tjocl^ created the light or made it, but said, ‘Let it be, and it 
urns. If, then, light be not a separate and definite body, but 
only vibrations or undulations of ether, somehow set in motion, 
the sacred writer could not have expressed its appearance in 
words more beautiful or more agreeable to truth. 
87. Assuming, then, that ver. 3 speaks of the existence of 
^ht independent of that which we receive from the sun, and 
which in the Mosaic cosmogony is described as acting on the 
eat th in the fourth day, when the Almighty was preparing 
eaith for the habitation of man, we may consider whether 
Sciipture affords us any clue to determine the duration of that 
period which is here so frequently mentioned under the term 
“ Day” 
88. It is a remarkable fact that the Hebrew word “yam,” 
which we translate by the term “ day,” has no less than three 
different meanings in the first thirty-five verses of Genesis. 
1. The diurnal continuance of light, or half one revolution of 
the earth on its axis, is called "day ” (v. 5). 2. The evening 
and the morning combined, constituting an entire revolution of 
the earth, is also called “ one day ” in the same verse. 3. In 
the fourth verse of the following chapter the same word is 
employed to describe the six days’ creation, or, more correctly 
speaking, the whole period employed in preparing earth for the 
habitation of man (Genesis ii. 4). And believing this period 
to represent what geologists term the “Post-Tertiary,” I would 
adduce the testimony of an acknowledged authority, whey 
observes, irrespective of any attempt to harmonize the Mosaic 
cosmogony with the discoveries of science, that “ at the close 
of the Pleistocene period the present distribution of sea and land 
seems to have been established; the land presenting the same 
surface of configuration, and the sea the same coast-line, with 
the exception of such modifications as have since been produced 
by the atmospheric, aqueous, and other causes. At the close 
of that period the earth also appears to have been peopled bv 
its present flora and fauna, with the exception of some local 
1. aor, “fight”; 2. maor, “light-bearer” ; 3. chamah . “heat of the sun” • 
4. dura, “ orb of the sun ” ; 5. Shcmesh, “ The Visible Sun.” This last, as 
Gesenius notices, is the primitive word for “ sun,” and found under the radi- 
cal letters sm, sn, si, in very many languages besides the Hebrew, as in 
Sanscrit, German, Latin, English, &c. 
