315 
Genesis i What I understand by these two verses is this, -that the 
orrner refers to that lengthened period from the beginning of creation to 
he end of the tertiary; and the latter to what geologists term the 
post-tertiary, when God finished the preparation of the earth for the habi- 
tation of man. I use the word “ finished,” because all the previous con- 
ditions of the earth, -the carboniferous eras, for example, were evidently 
designed by an All-wise Providence for the exclusive use of man ; but I do 
not see any necessity for believing in any interval of long duration between 
the catastrophe which took place at the close of the tertiary, when the 
earth was again reduced, as it had often been before, to that state of chaos 
whmh is expressed in Scripture by the definite terms of tho M and bo hu.’ 
The late M. D Orbigny, in his Prodome de Paleontologie, after an elaborate 
examination of vast multitudes of fossils, gives reasons for believing that 
there have been twenty-nine creations, separated from one another by cata- 
strophes which have swept away the species existing at the time, with rare 
exceptions never exceeding H per cent, of the whole number discovered. 
m though he states that both animals and plants appeared in 
each of these twenty-nine periods, I am unable to see how it conflicts 
as some have concluded, with my theory that the duration of the vom 
or day mentioned in the first chapter of Genesis cannot be limited to a 
period of 24 hours. If the argument referred to in § 97, as Sir Charles Lyell's 
conclusion respecting the correct age of the falls of Niagara must be given 
up, -and I think that recent intelligence of the rapid way in which the°falls 
are decreasing tends to that conclusion, we have still the far stronger argu- 
ment of analogy to rest upon ; and if it be true chronology that man has 
existed on earth for a period of about 6,000 years, and has before him the 
promised millennial period of another 1,000 years, making 7,000 in all pre- 
vious to Christ delivering up the kingdom, as St. Paul teaches, to the Father 
in order that “God may be all in all,” I cannot see why Hugh Miller’s con- 
clusion should not be accepted by all believers in the Divine record ; viz., that 
t m Sabbath, during which God rested, was commensurate in duration with 
one of the Sabbaths of short-lived man, and that God’s Sabbath of rest has 
continued ever since His creation of a being after His own image,— while in 
consequence of the Fall, the work of redemption maybe understood as’ in 
some sense the most blessed work of His Sabbath Day. 
The Meeting was then adjourned. 
z 2 
