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as a weekly rest. It may be perfectly right for modern criticism 
to contend that the days here spoken of are capable of being 
interpreted as “ extended epochs of untold duration.” Yet we 
are bound to allow, in all honesty, that this was not its natural 
or primitive teaching. The very fact that the seventh day’s 
rest was a day of natural duration could not but have carried 
with it a conviction that all the other days Avere of a like 
character, and that thus the whole work of Creation, from 
beginning to end, was the product of six days’ Avisdom and skill 
on the part of the Heavenly Architect. In other Avords, the 
language of Scripture in this particular makes no pretensions 
to be scientifically accurate. 
8. The truth of this need scarcely be examined at any length 
in a Society like ours. We will, however, make a few brief 
remarks upon it in connection Avith some of those magnitudes 
of time and space, which are now disclosed to us by the 
researches of geology and astronomy. Let us begin Avith the 
former. 
9. Of the enormous epochs Avhich must have been necessary 
to produce the various phenomena of the earth’s crust, no man 
Avho has seriously studied the subject can entertain a doubt. 
Easy-going indifference may toss the thought aside; but only 
ignorance can deny it. Ever since Mr. W. Smith first pointed 
out that there was a regular order in the deposition of sedi- 
mentary rocks, each of the divisions being marked by distinct 
organic remains representing many successive races of plants 
and animals Avhich have been buried by the aqueous changes of 
our globe, and during Avhich changes thousands of species and 
genera have become extinct, so that the flora and fauna hoav 
living are but a small part of those which once lived in the past ; 
ever since that moment our conviction has become more and 
more clear that the time required for the gradual formation of 
such rocks must have been vast beyond all measurement. As 
observations have increased, and fresh records of fact have 
accumulated, showing the deposition of many rocks perfectly 
separate in composition, and varying from the Laurentian 
(which in Canada are 30,000 feet thick) to the Tertiary (which 
are, upon the whole, 9,000 feet in thickness), this conviction 
has become so strong as to be irresistible. Some of these rocks 
are entirely made up of the remains of zoophytes and tes- 
tacea, the concretion of which cannot but have been gradual. 
How can we see millions of shells dispersed through a long 
series of strata Avithout allowing time for the multiplication of 
successive generations ? How can we contemplate certain de- 
posits, such as those which are composed of Diatomacea (take 
the Tripoli rock in Bohemia, for example, Avhere the microscope 
