20 CONSISTENCY OF GEOLOGICAL 
be geologically considered as designating the 
wreck and ruins of a former world. At this 
intermediate point of time, the preceding unde- 
fined geological periods had terminated, a new 
series of events commenced, and the work of the 
first morning of this new creation was the calling 
forth of light from a temporary darkness, which 
had overspread the ruins of the ancient earth.* 
We have further mention of this ancient earth 
and ancient sea in the ninth verse, in which the 
waters are commanded to he gathered together 
into one place, and the dry land to appear ; this 
dry land being the same earth whose material 
creation had been announced in the first verse, 
and whose temporary submersion and temporary 
darkness are described in the second verse ; the 
appearance of the land and the gathering together 
of the waters are the only facts affirmed re- 
specting them in the ninth verse, but neither 
land nor waters are said to have been created on 
the third day. 
A similar interpretation may be given of the 
fourteenth and four succeeding verses ; what is 
* I learn from Professor Pusey that the words let there be 
light,” yelii or, Gen. i. 3, by no means necessarily imply, any 
more than the English words by which they are translated, that 
light had never existed before. They may speak only of the 
substitution of light for darkness upon the surface of this, our 
planet ; whether light had existed before in other parts of God’s 
creation, or had existed upon this earth, before the darkness de- 
scribed in V. 2, is foreign to the purpose of the narrative. 
