Diversity of opinion among the early fathers regarding the days of creation—Saint Augustine, Philo JudÆus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Saint Athanasius, Saint Eucherius, Procopius—Albertus Magnus, Saint Thomas, Cardinal Cajetan—Inference from these testimonies—First argument in favor of the popular interpretation; a day, in the literal sense, means a period of twenty-four hours—Answer—This word often used in Scripture for an indefinite period—Examples from the Old and New Testament—Second argument; the days of creation have an evening and a morning—Answer—Interpretation of Saint Augustine, Venerable Bede, and other fathers of the church—Third argument; the reason alleged for the institution of the Sabbath-day—Answer—The law of the Sabbath extended to every seventh year as well as to every seventh day—The seventh day of God’s rest a long period of indefinite duration. N No one who will take the trouble to investigate, with any reasonable diligence and research, the nature of the Mosaic Days, can fail to be struck with the remarkable diversity of opinion that existed on the subject among the early Fathers of the Church. Yet this diversity of opinion is often overlooked by modern writers. They fancy that the meaning of the word Day is so plain as to leave no room for doubt or controversy; that a day can be nothing else than a period of twenty-four hours, marked by the succession of light and darkness; and that in this sense the Nevertheless, this great Doctor, having long pondered over the subject, and considered it on many sides, does not hesitate to express his own opinion. And he departs very widely, indeed, from the literal and obvious interpretation. He maintains, at great length,137 as we had before occasion to observe, that God created all things in a single instant of time, according to the words of Ecclesiasticus, “He who liveth forever created all things at once.”138 Thus he is led to infer that the Six Days commemorated by Moses were, in reality, but one day; and this not such a day as those which are now measured by the revolution of the sun, for we find three successive days recorded by Moses before the sun appeared in the Heavens. It was, in fact, nothing else than that one single instant of time in which all things were created together.139 Nor was this opinion peculiar to Saint Augustine. At the very dawn of the Christian Era it was set forth by Philo the Jew; and afterward it was maintained by Clement of Alexandria, and by Origen. The great Saint Athanasius seems to throw the weight of his authority in the same It will be said, perhaps, that we are here arguing against ourselves: these eminent writers are in favor of reducing the days of Creation to one single point of time; whereas it is our purpose to stretch them out to periods of indefinite length. But no: our object just now is not precisely to establish our own hypothesis, but rather to prepare the way for its discussion. We want to show that we are quite free to abandon the popular view of the Mosaic Days if there be good reason for our doing so. And it seems to us that we have abundantly established this point by a long list of eminent ecclesiastical writers, who, without any note of censure, have diverged very widely from the common interpretation. No doubt they have shortened the time, and we want to lengthen it. But in this they agree with us, that the days of Creation are not of necessity days in the ordinary sense of the word. Nay, Saint Augustine goes farther, and maintains, from the evidence of the Sacred Text itself, that they cannot be understood in this sense.141 Having thus cleared away a serious difficulty that seemed to obstruct our path, we may proceed without hesitation to the direct object of our inquiry. The burden of proof, let Throughout the first chapter of Genesis the Hebrew word ???? (yom) is everywhere employed by Moses to designate the Days of Creation. And many writers contend that the use of this word is, in itself, evidence enough that he spoke of days in the common sense of the term. It is plain, they say, from the usage of Scripture, that the word ???? (yom) had a fixed and certain meaning in the Hebrew language; the same precisely as that which we now attach to the English word Day. Sometimes, when contra-distinguished from night, it was applied to the period of light, from sunrise to sunset; otherwise, it meant the civil day of twenty-four hours, measured by the revolution of the Sun. Moreover, it had unquestionably attained this meaning at the time when Moses wrote, and therefore it could not have been employed by him in any other sense. This argument rests upon a false foundation. It is true, no doubt, that the word ???? (yom) was more usually employed in one or other of the two senses just explained;—that is to say, (1) for the period of light from sunrise to sunset, or (2) for the period of twenty-four hours corresponding to a complete revolution of the Sun. But, for the validity of the argument, it would be necessary to show that, beside these two senses, there is no other in which the word may be fairly understood, conformably to the usage In the second chapter of Genesis, Moses, having completed his account of the Creation, says (v. 4): “These are the generations of the Heavens and the Earth when they were created, in the Day (????, yom) that the Lord God created the Earth and the Heavens: (v. 5), and every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew.” There is a good deal of controversy about the precise meaning of this passage. But one thing at least appears to be plain, that the word ???? (yom), is not used to designate a day of twenty-four hours; nor yet the period of light from sunrise to sunset; but rather the whole period of the Creation. On this point almost all our best commentators are agreed. “It is manifest,” says Venerable Bede, “that in this place the sacred writer has put the word Day for all that time during which the primeval creation was brought into existence. For it was not upon any one of the Six Days that the sky was made and adorned with stars, and the dry land was separated from the waters, and furnished with trees and plants. But, according to its accustomed practice, Scripture here uses the word day in the sense of time.” Saint Augustine gives even a wider expansion to the word when he writes: “Seven Days are enumerated above, and now that is called one Day in which God made the Heavens and the Earth, and every green thing of the field; by which term we may well suppose that all time is meant. For God then made all time when He made creatures that live in time; and these creatures are here Another striking example occurs in the prophet Amos. “Behold, the days are coming, saith the Lord God, and I will send forth a famine into the land: not a famine of bread, nor a thirst of water, but of hearing the word of the Lord. And they shall wander from sea to sea and from the north to the east; they shall go about seeking the word of the Lord, and shall not find it. In that day (???? yom) shall the fair virgins and the young men faint for thirst.”143 Every one will see at a glance that the word Day in the latter part of this passage does not mean a day of twenty-four hours. It evidently refers to the whole period during which the calamities here foretold were to be inflicted on the Jewish people. What that period was may be a Then we have those well known words addressed by God the Father to His Eternal Son: “Thou art my Son, this day (????, yom) have I begotten thee.”144 The Son of God was begotten of the Father before all ages; and the day, therefore, on which he was begotten, cannot be a common day of twenty-four hours, but must rather be the long day of Eternity, without beginning and without end. This text, we know, is sometimes applied to the day of our Lord’s Resurrection; and sometimes, too, to the day of His Incarnation: nor do we want to deny that it may be thus rightly explained in a secondary and mystical sense. But in its literal sense we think it plainly refers to the Eternal Generation of the Son. This meaning is sufficiently implied by the word begotten, which cannot be understood with propriety, except of that Generation by virtue of which our Divine Lord was from Eternity the natural Son of God. Moreover, this is the sense in which the passage is adopted by Saint Paul in his Epistle to the Hebrews. Wishing to show that Our Lord has received by inheritance a name more excellent than any given to the Angels, he argues thus: “For to which of the Angels hath he said at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee?”145 Now it seems to us that, unless we understand these words of the Eternal Generation, the point of the Apostle’s argument is completely lost. The Angels are sometimes called in Scripture the sons of God; but they Again, it is quite a common thing, with the prophets generally, to use the word ???? (yom) for the season of tribulation and affliction, though the same may have extended over a period of many days or even many years. Jeremias employs it in this sense when he describes so vividly the manifold calamities that were impending over the ill-fated Babylon. “I have caused thee to fall into a snare, and thou art taken, O Babylon, and thou wast not aware of it: thou art found and caught because thou hast provoked the Lord. The Lord hath opened His armory, and hath brought forth the weapons of his wrath: for the Lord the God of hosts hath a work to be done in the land of the Chaldeans. Come ye against her from the uttermost borders: open, that they may go forth that shall tread her down: take the stones out of the way, and make heaps, and destroy her: and let nothing of her be left. Destroy all her valiant men, let them go down to the slaughter: woe to them, for their day (????, yom) is come, the time of their visitation. The voice of them that flee, and of them that have escaped out of the land of Babylon: to declare in Sion the revenge of the Lord our God, the revenge of His temple. Declare to many against Babylon, to all that bend the bow: stand together against her round about, and let none escape; pay her according to her work: according to all that she hath done, do ye to her: for she hath lifted up herself against the Lord, against the Holy One of Israel. Therefore shall her young men fall in her streets: and all her men of war shall hold their peace in that day (????, yom), saith the Lord. Behold I come against thee, O proud one, saith the Lord the God of hosts: for the day (????, yom) is In another place the same prophet applies the word ???? (yom) to the whole duration of a long campaign carried on by Nabuchodonosor against Pharao Nechao, king of Egypt. “Prepare ye the shield and buckler, and go forth to battle. Harness the horses, and get up, ye horsemen: stand forth with helmets, furbish the spears, put on coats of mail. What then? I have seen them dismayed, and turning their backs, their valiant ones slain: they fled apace, they looked not back: terror was round about, saith the Lord. Let not the swift flee away, nor the strong think to escape: they are overthrown and fallen down, toward the north by the river Euphrates. Who is this that cometh up as a flood: and his streams swell like those of rivers? Egypt riseth up like a flood, and the waves thereof shall be moved as rivers, and he shall say: I will go up and will cover the earth: I will destroy the city and its inhabitants. Get ye up on horses, and glory in chariots, and let the valiant men come forth, the Ethiopians and the Lybians, that handle the shield, and the Lydians that handle and bend the bow. For this is the day (????, yom) of the Lord the God of hosts, a day of vengeance that He may revenge Himself of His enemies: the sword shall devour, and shall be filled, and shall be drunk with their The prophet Ezechiel, too, furnishes a forcible illustration when he thus foreshadows the course of a second expedition against Egypt undertaken by the same prince:— “Therefore thus saith the Lord God: Behold I will set Nabuchodonosor the king of Babylon in the land of Egypt: and he shall take her multitude, and take the booty thereof for a prey, and rifle the spoils thereof: and it shall be wages for his army; and for the service he hath done me against it: I have given him the land of Egypt, because he hath labored for me, saith the Lord God. In that day (????, yom) a horn shall bud forth for the house of Israel, and I will give thee an open mouth in the midst of them: and they shall know that I am the Lord.”149 And a little further on:—“For the day (????, yom) is near, yea the day of the Lord is near: a cloudy day, it shall be the time of the nations. And the sword shall come upon Egypt: and there shall be dread in Ethiopia, when the wounded shall fall in Egypt, and the multitude thereof shall be taken away, and the foundations thereof shall be destroyed. Ethiopia and Lybia, and Lydia, and all the rest of the crowd, and Chub, and the children of the land of the covenant, shall fall with them by the sword.... And they shall know that I am the Lord: when I shall have set a Once more, this word is applied to the period of Our Lord’s life upon earth, and even to the whole duration of the Christian Church. Sophonias, for example, thus foretells the coming of the kingdom of Christ. “Wherefore expect me, saith the Lord, in the day of my resurrection that is to come, for my judgment is to assemble the Gentiles, and to gather the kingdoms.... From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia shall my suppliants, the children of my dispersed people, bring me an offering. In that day (????, yom) thou shalt not be ashamed for all thy doings, wherein thou hast transgressed against me: for then I will take away out of the midst of thee thy proud boasters, and thou shalt no more be lifted up because of my holy mountain.... Give praise, O daughter of Sion: shout, O Israel: be glad and rejoice with all thy heart, O daughter of Jerusalem. The Lord hath taken away thy judgment, he hath turned away thy enemies: the King of Israel the Lord is in the midst of thee, thou shalt fear evil no more. In that day (????, yom) it shall be said to Jerusalem: Fear not; to Sion: Let not thy hands be weakened. The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty, He will save: He will rejoice over thee with gladness, He will be silent in His love, He will be joyful over thee in praise.”151 And Isaias: “Is it not yet a very little while, and Libanon shall be turned into a charmel, and charmel shall be esteemed as a forest? And in that day (????, yom) the deaf shall hear the words of the book, and out of darkness and obscurity the eyes of the blind shall see. And the meek shall increase their joy in the Lord, and the poor men shall We may trace this use of the word even in the New Testament. Our Lord says, arguing with the Jews: “Abraham your father rejoiced that he might see my day: he saw it and was glad.”154 Saint Paul, too, though writing in the Greek language to the Corinthians, does not hesitate to adopt a passage from Isaias, in which the same meaning is conspicuously brought out: “And we helping do exhort you, that you receive not the grace of God in vain. For he saith: In an accepted time have I heard thee, and in the day of salvation have I helped thee. Behold, now is the acceptable time: behold, now is the day of salvation.”155 And finally, Our Divine Lord, in His last touching address to the city of Jerusalem, applies the word day to the season of grace and mercy: “When he drew near, seeing the city, He wept over it, saying: If thou also hadst known, and that in this thy day, the things that are to thy peace: but now they are hidden from thy eyes. For the days shall come upon thee; and thy enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and straiten thee on every side.”156 So much, then, for the first argument. From the numerous examples we have given it is plain enough that the word ???? (yom), in Scripture language, was often used for a period of many days, and even many years; nay sometimes for a period of many centuries. If so, Moses was free to use it in this sense. And consequently, as far as the word itself is concerned, it affords no conclusive proof that But it is urged—and this is the second argument,—that, whatever may be the meaning of the word ???? (yom) elsewhere, in the first chapter of Genesis it must mean a day of twenty-four hours. For we are not merely told that there was a First Day, and a Second Day, and a Third Day; but each day is in a manner analyzed by the sacred writer, and its component parts set forth for our instruction. There was evening and there was morning, he says, the First Day; there was evening and there was morning the Second Day; there was evening and there was morning the Third Day; and so on. Now if the word were understood of those indefinite periods we have been speaking about, there would be no meaning in this analysis: for it could hardly be maintained that each of those periods had but one evening and one morning like an ordinary day. Furthermore, it is argued that there is a peculiar appropriateness in this phrase, which goes far to confirm the common interpretation. Amongst the Jews it was usual to compute the civil day from sunset to sunset. The civil day began then with the evening. And accordingly Moses, in describing the Days of Creation, puts the evening first, and says: There was evening and there was morning the First Day; there was evening and there was morning the Second Day; and so for the rest. All this reasoning seems to us unsatisfactory and inconclusive. In the first place, it is not a fact, as would seem to be supposed, that the civil day is made up of evening and morning. The evening and the morning do not make the whole day; they are only certain periods of the day. Neither do they mark the limits of the day: for, though it is quite true that, in the computation of the Jews, the civil day began with the evening, it certainly did not end with the morning. Many writers seem to suppose that the evening and the morning are intended by Moses to designate the night and the day;—that is to say, the whole period of darkness and the whole period of light, which put together make up the civil day of twenty-four hours. If the text could be explained in this way, it would fit in, no doubt, much more appropriately with the theory of ordinary days than with the theory of indefinite periods. But the text cannot be explained in this way. The evening is not the whole period of darkness, and the morning is not the whole period of light. No English writer could say, with propriety, that the Day is made up of the evening and the morning. Neither could Moses have meant to say this in the first chapter of Genesis: for the Hebrew words ??? (Ghereb) and ??? (Boker) which are found in the original text, have a meaning not less fixed and definite than the corresponding words Evening and the Morning in the English language. To prove the truth of this assertion by an investigation of all the passages in the Hebrew Bible, in which these words are found, would be a tedious and uninteresting task. But it may be easily tested in another way. If the words ??? (Ghereb) and ??? (Boker) were ever used to mean, not strictly the evening and morning, but the whole period of night and the whole period of day, this fact would surely have become known in the course of time to some of the many eminent and accomplished Hebrew lexicographers. Perhaps, however, some of our readers might be unwilling to accept the authority of lexicons as conclusive on a point of this kind; seeing that lexicons very often represent but imperfectly the full power of a language. Well, then, there is another process, and a simple one enough, by which they may demonstrate the inaccuracy of our statement, if inaccurate it be. Let them produce any passage from the Hebrew Bible in which the words ??? (Ghereb) and ??? (Boker) are employed to designate the whole night and the whole day. If they fail to do so,—and as far as we are aware, no such passage has yet been discovered,—then surely we may fairly contend that the interpretation which thus explains the words in the first chapter of Genesis cannot be regarded as certain: nor can the argument founded on that interpretation be received as conclusive. There is a text in the eighth chapter of the prophet Daniel which might, perhaps, appear at first sight to militate against our opinion. The prophet had a vision in which it was foreshadowed that Antiochus Epiphanes should come and prevail against the Jews, and should profane the temple of God, and should abolish the daily sacrifice. One of the Angels in the vision is heard asking of another, for how long should the daily sacrifice cease, and the sanctuary remain desolate. And the answer is given in these words: “Unto evening-morning (?? ??? ???, ghad ghereb boker) two thousand three hundred; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.”157 Now, this is commonly understood to mean that the daily sacrifice should be abolished for two thousand three hundred days. And therefore, it We will not dispute the correctness of the interpretation which is here set forth, although the words of the Angel are explained in a very different sense by many eminent commentators. But we think that the passage, even when understood according to this interpretation, cannot fairly be brought in evidence against us. The evening and the morning do not make up the whole day: but they occur once, and only once, in each day. Therefore a period of many days may be properly signified by noting the recurrence of the evening and morning a certain number of times. And in point of fact, a usage of this kind seems to prevail in most languages. The common word fortnight, in English, affords a good illustration. It signifies a period of fourteen nights and days: yet it does not specify the recurrence of fourteen days, but only the recurrence of fourteen nights. Again, the poet says: Nobody would argue from these examples that the word summer means a period of twelve months; or that the word night means a period of twenty-four hours. And so, in the case before us, the recurrence of the evening and morning two thousand three hundred times may be pointed out to mark a period of two thousand three hundred days, although the evening and morning are not the whole day, but only certain parts of the day. Nay, more; we fancy we can see a good reason why the Angel in the vision should single out the evening and the morning for special notice. He had been asked about the profanation of the sanctuary, and the abolition of the daily sacrifice. Now it was in the evening and the morning that the daily sacrifice was wont to be offered. And the Angel seems to answer: The evening and the morning shall return two thousand three hundred times; and there shall be no evening and morning So far we have been arguing from the common usage of Scripture that the evening and the morning mentioned in the history of the Creation cannot mean the whole night and the whole day. But there is a special objection against this interpretation from the history of the Creation itself. The fifth verse in the first chapter of Genesis runs thus: “And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning the First Day.” In the first sentence it is recorded that God, having divided the light from the darkness, gave to each its proper name: He called the light, Day; and the darkness, Night. Is it not highly improbable that, after this announcement, the sacred writer would himself, in the very next sentence, employ names altogether different, if he wished to designate the period of light and the period of darkness? We are not maintaining that the phrase under consideration—“there was evening and there was morning the First Day”—cannot be explained on the hypothesis that the Days of Creation were days of twenty-four hours. But we do contend that it affords no conclusive proof in favor of that hypothesis; because even in that hypothesis the meaning of the phrase is still doubtful and obscure. For ourselves, we candidly confess we can offer no explanation that seems to us, in any system of interpretation, altogether satisfactory. We may be allowed, however, to call attention to an opinion put forward by Saint Augustine, which fits in very appropriately with the doctrine that the Days of Creation were long periods of time. The distinctions of evening and morning, he says, are not to be understood in reference to the rising and setting of the Sun, which, in point of fact, was not created until the Fourth Day; but rather in reference to the works themselves that are recorded to have been produced. In this way the evening will naturally represent It may be observed, moreover, that this explanation seems quite in accord with the etymology of the Hebrew words ????? (Ghereb), and ???? (Boker). The latter is formed from the root ????? (Bakar), to lay open, and used to signify the morning, because in the morning the light of the sun is, as it were, unveiled, and laid open to the earth. Hence, the word might be applied with much propriety, in a metaphorical sense, to the unfolding of the various works of God, as each new period was, in its turn, ushered in with a new act of Creation. On the other hand, ????? (Ghereb) seems to be derived from ??? (Gharab), to mingle, and has probably come to signify the evening, as the famous Hebrew scholar, The next argument is founded on a passage in Exodus, to which we have already had occasion to refer: “Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: thou shalt do no work on it, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy beast, nor the stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days the Lord made the Heavens and the Earth, and the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the seventh day and sanctified it.”159 We are to work upon six days, and to rest upon the seventh; because in six days God accomplished all the works of the creation, and rested on the seventh. There can be no mistake as to the meaning of this commandment. The six days on which it is lawful to labor are, beyond all doubt, six days in the common sense of the word; six days of twenty-four hours each: and the seventh day, on which it is forbidden to work, is a day of the same kind. But the example of God’s labor and God’s rest is set forth, in the text, as the pattern after which this law of the Sabbath was framed. And therefore, the six days in which God furnished and embellished the earth must have been likewise six days of twenty-four To us, on the contrary, it seems by no means necessary to understand the days on which God labored and rested, in precisely the same sense as the days on which it is enjoined that we should labor and rest. The examples of God is, no doubt, represented in the Sacred Text as the reason for the Jewish Sabbath: “Six days shalt thou labor, and rest upon the seventh; for in six days the Lord made the Heavens and the Earth, and rested on the seventh.” But, suppose for a moment that the days of creation were long periods of time, will not the significance of this reason remain unchanged? As God, in the great work of the creation, labored for six successive periods, and then rested for a seventh, so shall you likewise do all your work during six of those successive periods into which your time is divided, and rest upon the seventh. In support of this view, we may observe that the Jews were commanded to abstain from work, not only every seventh day, but also every seventh year. “Six years thou shalt sow thy ground, and shalt gather the corn thereof; but the seventh year thou shalt let it alone, and suffer it to rest, that the poor of thy people may eat, and whatsoever shall be left, let the beasts of the field eat it: in like manner shalt thou do with thy vineyard and thy oliveyard. Six days shalt thou work: the seventh day thou shalt cease, that thy ox and thy ass may rest; and the son of thy handmaid and the stranger may be refreshed.”160 And in another place we read: “When you shall have entered into the land which I will give you, observe the rest of the Sabbath to the Lord. Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and shalt gather the fruits thereof; but in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath to the land, of the resting of the Lord; thou shalt not sow thy field, nor prune It is urged, however, that in this passage of Exodus, we have the same word ???? (yom) applied in the very same context to the six days of the Creation and to the six days of the week; and it can hardly be supposed that the inspired writer would pass thus suddenly from one meaning of the word to another, and a very different meaning, without giving any intimation to his readers of such a transition. If this argument is a good one, we can only say that it completely oversets the opinion of those against whom we are contending. In the fifth verse of the first chapter of Genesis we read: “And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning the first Day.” Now, those who reject the theory of long periods, maintain that by the word Day in the latter part of this verse, is meant the whole civil day of twenty-four hours; while it is plain that, in the earlier part of the verse, the same word Day is emphatically But we do not want to shrink from dealing with this argument on its merits. The principle on which it is founded seems to us unsound and inconsistent with the evidence of the Sacred Books themselves. It is quite a common thing, we contend, in Scripture, for the writer to pass from one meaning of a word to another without any explicit indication of such a transition, when, as in the case before us, the two senses, though different, are analogous: the one being, as it were, the figure, or the symbol, or the pattern, of the other. A few examples will make this clear. In the Second Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians, we read as follows: “For the charity of Christ presseth us: judging this, that if one died for all, then all were dead; and Christ died for all.”162 Here, when it is said that “all were dead,” the meaning is, that all men were dead spiritually by sin; whereas, in the clause immediately preceding, and in the clause immediately following, the same word is used in its literal sense for the death of Christ upon the cross. And yet the Apostle, though he thus passed from the literal to the metaphorical sense of the word, and then back again from the metaphorical sense to the literal, gives no express indication of these transitions. Again, in the Gospel, when a certain man, being called by our Lord, said: “Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father,” Jesus reproved him in these words: “Let the dead bury their dead; but go thou and preach the kingdom of God.”163 There is some difference of opinion amongst commentators as to the exact meaning of this The Epistle of Saint Paul to the Romans furnishes an instance in which the transition from one meaning to another occurs in the case of the word Day itself: “The night is passed, and the day is at hand. Let us, therefore, cast off the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light. Let us walk honestly as in the day.”165 The word Day, in the earlier part of this passage, is used by Saint Paul for the Day of Eternity which is to follow the darkness of this life; while, in the next sentence, it means clearly the period of light between sunrise and sunset. Another illustration of the same kind occurs in the first Epistle to the Thessalonians. “But you, brethren, are not in darkness that that day should overtake you as a thief; for you are all the children of light and the children of the day.”166 No one familiar with the language of Scripture can doubt that the first day here is the Day of Judgment; and it is quite plain that the second day is not the Day of Judgment. Our next example, and one most appropriate to our We hope it is now pretty clear that neither the reason assigned for the institution of the Sabbath Day, nor the particular form of words in which that ordinance is set forth, offers any insurmountable obstacle to the opinion we are defending. And this is quite enough for our purpose. For we would again remind our readers that we are not attempting to prove from the Sacred Text that this opinion must be true, but only that it may be true. Our object has been sufficiently attained if we have succeeded in showing that the hypothesis which makes the Days of Creation long periods, is not inconsistent with the language of Scripture. We are tempted, however, in the case of this objection, to go somewhat further than the scope of our argument strictly demands. The text we have just been discussing brings before us, in fact, a consideration of great weight in favor of the system of long periods. “In six days the Lord made the Heavens and the Earth and the sea, and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day.” Now, what was this Seventh Day on which God rested? Was it a common day of twenty-four hours? or was it not rather a long and The common sentiment of Theologians, as far as we know, seems to point in the same direction. They tell us that God is said to have rested, inasmuch as He ceased from the creation of new species; and they hold that since the close of the Sixth Day no new species have been brought into existence. But whether this be true or not, it would be very difficult, we think, to point out any sense in which God can be said to have rested after the work of the Six Days, and in which He is not resting at the present moment. If so, the day of His rest is still going on; and it is not a period of twenty-four hours only, but a period of many thousand years. Now, if the Seventh Day on which God rested is a period of many thousand years, are we not fully justified in supposing that the Six Days on which He formed and furnished the Heavens and the Earth were likewise periods of many ages? |