DISCOVERIES WITH SACRED HISTORA'. 2.9 
The interpretation here proposed seems more- 
ver to solve the difficulty, which would otherwise 
end the statement of the appearance of light 
pon the first day, whilst the sun and moon and 
s ars are not made to appear until the fourth, 
we suppose all the heavenly bodies, and 
le earth, to have been created at the indefi- 
itely distant time, designated by the word be- 
S*nning’, and that the darkness described on the 
evening of the first day, was a temporary dark- 
*iess, produced by an accumulation of dense va- 
the objection which has sometimes been urged against the Mo- 
saic cosmogony, from its representing the works of creation 
as eing no more than six or seven thousand years old, for Moses 
gives no such representation of the age of those works. How- 
whp probably very distant, 
timp" heavens and the earth ; there has been a 
Tho.ip'^ iT * hour. 
GoA ’ "''ro contend that the glory of the Almighty 
perio^^f ' limited to the short 
same oV ’^•'°“®and years, are not aware that the 
possiblv^h^'^'^'^ made to the longest period which can 
quantitv f by the mind of man. No assignable 
mid thoi^h^'*'^'^^^*"^^ duration bears any proportion to eternity, 
been c should suppose the corporeal universe to have 
cavillpr millions or six hundred millions of years ago, a 
Almi!rbt""in *"1 reason, that the glory of 
is not t/ manifested in his ^vorks cannot be so limited. It 
existenc ' f objections as this, that I have admitted the 
sistent w'tV. 'u earth and visible heavens to be not incon- 
part of ^ cosmogony of Moses, or indeed with any other 
reader Prevent the faith of the pious 
pretended*" f unsettled by the discoveries, whether real or 
’ o oiir modern geologists. If these philosophers have 
