new harvests of sorrow; still there is sunlight enough in it to remind us that,

- howsoe'er the world goes ill,

The thrushes still sing in it.

We wish that the author had opened to us more adequate sources of hope and consolation. We take what he offers, but are glad that we are not limited to these. We close, indorsing his own trust for an eventual deliverance from these scourges of mankind:

"Must we continue to lift our eyes towards heaven? Is the luminous point which we there discern of those which are quenched? The ideal is terrible to see, thus lost in the depths, minute, isolated, imperceptible; shining, but surrounded by all these great black menaces monstrously massed about it; yet in no more danger than a star in the jaws of the clouds."

ARTICLE V.

THE SIXTH DAY OF CREATION.

As Orthodox reviewers, we cannot admit the claim of some geologists, that the Mosaic account of the creation is to be set aside as inconsistent with some of their alleged facts. We readily admit that, where inspiration has given us a mere outline, geology, or any other human science, may fill up that outline with well-ascertained facts, if it can; and the details thus supplied, though they cannot become articles of religious faith, will have all the certainty that belongs to them in science, and an additional presumption in their favor, in proportion as they naturally and perfectly fit into and fill out the inspired outline. We also concede, that where inspiration uses terms which logicians call general, and which are equally capable of either of several specific meanings, geology may, if it can, show us in which of those specific meanings the general term is to be taken. In all this, there is no inconsistency between the inspired decla

ration and the geological showing. We will even concede that geology may, without impiety or irreverence, ask us to reconsider an old and generally received interpretation of a passage of Scripture, which it knows not how to reconcile with its apparent discoveries; and that it may be lawful, and even a duty, to comply with the request; and if the old interpretation is found to rest on erroneous or insufficient grounds, and a new interpretation presents itself, equally justified by the language of Scripture, and in harmony with the discovery of geology, we may receive it as true. But in such a case, the new interpretation must be one which we might receive and defend if geology had been silent. In no case can geology be allowed to contradict the words of the Sacred Record rightly interpreted, or to force upon them an unnatural interpretation by its own authority. Wherever there is an actual contradiction between the facts of geology and the words of inspiration properly interpreted, geology is wrong, and needs to reconsider its facts.

But facts recorded by the pen of inspiration have an authority, such as we cannot accord to the alleged discoveries of geology. When we have in Scripture, a statement in general terms, and then the particulars given, the particular facts have a right to control our interpretation of the general terms. We cannot send them back, like the facts of geology, to be reëxamined. We must take them as true, and interpret other passages so as to harmonize with them.

We propose to rely on such facts exclusively, and not on geology at all, in our inquiry concerning the length of the sixth day of creation.

Evidently, the word day is not used in one definite and uniform sense throughout this account of the work of creation. It is first used, Gen. i. 5, to designate the period of light, in distinction from the period of darkness with which it alternates. "And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night." It is again used in the same sense in verses 16 and 18. It is also used, repeatedly, as including "the evening and the morning." This occurs at the end of the account of each day's work. It is used in a third sense in Gen. ii. 4. "These are

the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the

heavens." Here, the whole time in which God created the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, is spoken. of as "the day" the one day in which he created them. It is used as Christ used it, when he said, "Abraham rejoiced to see my day." In this sense it means the period during which some person lived, or some event or connected series of events occurred. This idiom is common, even in our day.

The fact that the word is used in all these senses in this very connection, leaves us at liberty to inquire, or rather, imposes on us the duty of inquiring, what is its meaning in each particular instance of its use.

It is worthy of remark, too, that the usual formula for denoting a completed day is not applied to the seventh. It is not said that "the evening and the morning were the seventh day." The history of the seventh day is begun, by stating that thereon "God ended his work which he had made, and he rested on the seventh day"; but we are not informed that the history of that day was finished, as we had been informed concerning the history of every previous day. Why is this change of phraseology? Does the seventh day, the day of God's rest from the work of creation, still continue? Does it include the day in which we live? His rest from the work of creation continues.

Why not, then, the day of his rest? In Heb. iv. 1-11, it seems to be implied that the rest into which God entered on the seventh day, is that same rest from which unbelievers shall be excluded, and into which believers shall enter; and a consideration of the whole argument, beginning at Heb. iii. 7, in connection with the Old Testament scriptures there quoted and alluded to, seems to encourage this view of the subject. It might do no obvious violence to the language of Scripture, to understand that the day of God's rest is to last till that other day of the Lord," spoken of in 2 Pet. iii. 10 et seq., which shall come as a thief in the night, and in which the earth and the works therein shall be burned up, and a new heavens and earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness, constructed from its ruins. We do not claim this length of the seventh day as a point fully proved; but if it is an open question, as it seems to us to be, the question of the length of the sixth day must also be

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open.

We know it has been argued, that the seventh day, on which he rested from his work, was the same which he blessed and sanctified as a Sabbath for man, and therefore only a common day of twenty-four hours; and from this it has been inferred, that the preceding six days were of the same length. The argument is plausible, but does not appear to us conclusive. The seventh day, on which God rested from his work, and which he blessed and sanctified, may be as long as we have supposed, and the weekly Sabbath which he appointed for man, may be only an emblem and memorial of it; a "type," as some are fond of saying, of God's rest, into which believers shall enter. In the fourth commandment, the distinction between "the seventh day," on which God rested, and "the Sabbath day,' which he commanded us to keep holy, is sharply drawn, so that the letter of the commandment, as well as its spirit, is obeyed by us when we keep holy the first day of every week as the Christian Sabbath. If God, having ended his work, and entered on a day of rest, commanded Adam to do the same, beginning at the same time, it does not follow that Adam's day of rest must be as long as God's; and, therefore, it does not follow that God's working days must have been as short as Adam's were to be.

The sixth day may be characterized as the day of the creation of mammalia. The birds, a lower order, ranking more nearly with fishes, had been created on the fifth. The time of the creation of land serpents, insects, and other oviparous land animals, does not seem to be clearly specified. But even if they are included in the phrase, "every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth," still, the creation of two-footed and four-footed viviparous animals was the great characteristic work of the day.

It is not said that the whole work of the day was done at the same moment. On the contrary, the expression, "Let us make man, . . . and let them have dominion over" the inferior animals, evidently represents the inferior animals as made first, and man as made afterward. To that extent, at least, the work of the day was done gradually, by successive acts of creation. Nor is it said that all the inferior animals created that day were created at once. The different species of them may,

consistently with the record, have been brought into being successively. If the sixth day was as long as we have suggested that the seventh may be, there may have been long intervals between the creation of one species and that of another. But whether the intervals were long or short, it seems most in accordance with the style of the whole narrative, to suppose that one species was made after another till all the inferior species had been made. Then there was a pause, and a survey of what had been done, "and God saw that it was good"; after which he said, "Let us make man," to have dominion over them. Doubtless, the Omnipotent was able to make them all in a moment, or in such rapid succession, that the whole would have been finished in one minute, or less. But the impression naturally made by the narrative is, that the work was done deliberately, and with no appearance of haste. The whole narrative, were it not for the closing sentence, "The evening and the morning were the sixth day," would naturally suggest a period much longer than twenty-four hours.

After so much of the sixth day had passed as was occupied by the creation of the lower animals, "God created man in his own image. In the image of God created he him. Male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it." It appears from these words, that the creation of Eve, as well as Adam, was the work of the sixth day. On that day, he created them male and female. On that day, he blessed them, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply; which we cannot well suppose him to have said to Adam alone. And we are expressly informed that at the close of the sixth day, "the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them; and that on the seventh day, God ended his work of creation, and rested from it, and blessed and sanctified it, "because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.”

Will it be said that the creation of Eve, though it did not occur on the sixth day, is mentioned here by anticipation, as a part of the plan entered upon by the creation of Adam? The positive assertion, that on the seventh day God rested from all his creative work, seems sternly to forbid such an hypothesis;