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has been any devastation on the earth corresponding to the description of 
Gen. i. 2, in recent geological times, and if the yoms date from that period, 
then there is plenty of time for the Pakeozoic, Mesozoic, and Cainozoic 
eras, without malting the yoms also great epochs. It appears to me that 
the most natural way of reading Genesis, is to think that a day means a day, 
and not 7,000 years. And nothing is gained by the extended time ; the 
difficulty of time is met by the yoms commencing, as stated, in the post- 
tertiary period. There is no difficulty in the yoms being natural days that 
would be removed by making the six days 42,000 years. I would now, in 
support of Mr. Savile’s interpretation of Gen. i. 2, ask the question, 
Whether physical science knows of any great devastation of the earth’s 
surface and destruction of the flora and fauna taking place in the post- 
tertiary period, that would correspond with the Tho hu and Bo hu of that 
verse ? And I would repeat the question that I put some years ago, — 
whether the glacial epoch was not the period of such destruction of the 
flora and fauna as would make the creation recorded by Moses a necessity, 
if life was to be continued on the globe i Mr. Savile has quoted an eminent 
geologist, Mr. David Page, who without any attempt to harmonize the Mosaic 
cosmogony with the discoveries of science, says, that at the close of the 
Pleistocene period “ the present distribution of sea and land seems to have 
been established, and at the same period the earth also appears to have been 
peopled by its present flora and fauna.” And M. Agassiz, after exploring 
the valley of the Amazon, in an address given before the Cooper Institute, 
New York, and quoted in the Neiu York Tribune , , December 30th, 1873, 
says, “that the valley of the Amazon about the equator was filled by a vast 
glacier which came down from the Andes, and went into the Atlantic ; the 
ice then, perhaps, covered the sea to such an extent that it is a question 
whether any open water was left at the equator, as it is a question 
whether there now is open water at the pole. And if this be so,” he adds, 
“you see at once how this intense cold must have modified the surface of 
the globe to the extent of excluding all life from the surface, .... and 
prepared the earth for the new creation which now exists upon it.” 
If Agassiz is right (and modern discoveries are leading to the conclusion 
that the glaciation of the globe was vastly greater than was at first suspected), 
and if it can be made out that man’s creation took place near to the time of 
this glacial period, it will be for us to consider whether that glaciation was 
not the cause of the “without form and void” of sacred Scripture. 
A difficulty in recognizing this will exist in the mind of Mr. Savile, 
arising from his having accepted for the present the theory of Mr. Croll 
respecting the cause of the glacial epoch, which theory, if correct, would 
necessarily place the glacial period at 210,000 or 850,000 years back, because 
astronomy teaches us that those were the periods when there occurred great 
excentricities of the earth’s orbit. But if it should be proved, and I think it 
can be proved, that the excentricity of the earth’s orbit, together with the 
precession of the equinoxes, was not the cause of the glacial epoch, then there 
