Year: 1875

shall have to hold very loose notions OF
the truth. of Scripture. We cannot say
that the vague term 1.-The beginning"
covers the geological ages, because there
is no chaotic condition between these
and the human period Further, when
we look along into the narrative, the
creation of animals begins in the fifth day
of the Bible series, so that even if we sup
pose our geological chronology to extend
to a little before the introduction of ami
NAL life, it will cover at most three of the
six days and perhaps the seventh.


The explanation of the whole mystery
is that the creative days themselves are
long periods. 1t has been left to geolo-
gists to discover this; for Independently
of the traditional impression prevailing
throughout antiquity that the world had
existed through long pre-human times,
there are venerable Christian authorities,
as Auges tine, for instance, who on grounds
of purely natural character held this
doctrine. Let US look at the evidence;


l. The perfectly indefinite phrase, ''in
the beginning, places no limit in back
ward extension of time to the commence
ment of Gods creative week. But the
six days seem to limit the period occu-
pied in the arrangements of the earth
and of the solar system. Let US consider
how this stands.


2 The Hebrew word for day does, not
necessarily mean a natural day In Gen
esis lst and 9TH it is used in two senses
the earlier creative days preceded the
institution of the natural day, and in
Genesis, I'd chapter and 4th verse, the
whole creative week is called one day.


3. Many internal difficulties occur in
the hypothesis of natural days. One of
these is the interval which in chapter 2
appears to have occurred between the
creation of the man and that of the wo-
man Others arise from the difficulty of
replenishing the earth with plants and
animals in the course of few natural
days.


4. In Psalm 80, attributed to Moses,
and certainly written in the style of his
poetry in Deuteronomy, one day of Je-
hovah, relating to human history, is said
to be a thousand years; relating to crea-
ton it must be much longer.


s. The seventh day is not said to have
had morning and evening, nor is God
said to have resumed his work on the
eigth day. Hence the seventh day is the
period of man in which we still live. Our
Savior sustains this view of Gods Sab
bath in his remarkable expression, my
father worketh hitherto and l work.


6. The fourth commandment, as ex-
planned by Moses, requires the supposi-
ton OF long creative days. 1t cannot be
meant that God works six natural days
and rests on the seventh as we do, but it
may be intended that on Gods seventh
day we should have entered on His rest,
and that the weekly Sabbath is an en-
blem of that rest lost by the fall and to
be restored in the future


q y. g
the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews,
whose argument in his fourth chapter has
no force unless on the supposition that
God entered into a rest of indefinite char
acter which man lost by the fall, retain
ing only the weeks Sabbath as a shadow
of it; but which is to be restored in
Christ, who is already entered into his
rest, of which the Lords day is in like
manner a foreshadowing


s. There is further good reason to be-
lieve that the use of the Greek word
aiones, with reference TO the creation, in
Hebrews, chapter l. verse 2 and in Ephe-
slams, chapter 3, verse IL, refers to the
creative days as indefinite periods, and
that these passages should be translated
in accordance with this view, while we
have this authority for rendering the pas
sage of Genesis l, by the word aeon rather
than by day.


These things being considered, it is
worthy the attention of theologians
whether it would not be better to aban-
don the literature of mediaval theology
and a return to the patristic authority
and to the internal harmony of Scripture
itself in this matter, and thus to put
Moses in accordance with modern science
as to the length of the creative days,
which there seems good reason to believe
he himself intended to assume. We
have occupied some time with this dis
cussion of the length of creative days.
Let US now look at the order of the week
in so far as the earth is concerned, and
taking with US the idea that the days of
creation are very long aeons, the days of
a creation with which even in human tes-
timony one day is as thousand years.
That an order of creation is given is in
itself a remarkable fact. STILL in that
Moses might cover all the ground of an
cient heathenism it was necessary to
place the work of creation in some order,
and none so appropriate as the order of
time l do not here discuss how this
revelation of the creative work was COM
municated, whether in visions CORES
ponding to days or otherwise That it
was a divine revelation we may rest as
sured, unless we can believe that the CO.
temporaries of the writer had already
made such progress in physical and nat
ural science as to have reached to a sci
entifc cosmogony The sacred record
opens with "hegemony," a time when
neither the heavens nor the earth existed
except in the mind of the Eternal. To
US it is as equally impossible to conceive
an eternal succession of natural things as
an entire absence of matter and force.
Yet it is plain that one or the other must
be assumed, and if we exclude God, we
place ourselves in an absolute dilemma
On the other hand believing in an eternal
spiritual first cause, we fall back on Him.
and with Moses say, "God created"
Further, the tendency of all modern geo
logical and astronomical research has
been to point by positive indications to a
beginning. Geology shows us that the
animals and plants which are our cotem-
poraries did not always exist, and we can
trace back animal and vegetable life per-
haps to their origin on our earth. Even
the rocks and continents have their
geological dates, and there are none of
them that we cannot assign to an origin
in geological time. So in astronomy,
the moon, once apparently a similar
mass, has rusted into dryHvolcanic Gin
der destitute of water and air. The earth
and Mars are advancing to the same
stage. Jupiter and Saturn from their
great mass, are further behind On
the one hand we can look back to
a time when the whole solar system
was in a state of incandescence or
vaporous diffusion and forward to a time
when the sun himself will have dissipated
all his energy. The Prophet of creation
introduces US to the earth at a stage
where it was without form and void, or
literally desolate and empty, and dark
ness was on the face of the abyss stage
precisely corresponding with the one in
dicated by physical and chemical science
when the earth having not vet ceased to