GEOLOGY
•98
GEOLOGY
ative periods allow time for the operation of second causes, such as were obviously at work for long ages in the formation of the earth, whereas six mere days Avould be no more called for than a single instant, such as that in which the Almighty fiat evoked the primitive matter into being. lUit wc are not compe- tent to prescribe what would be a worth}' ])rocess for the Creator, and this objection overlooks the moral significance of these week-days as compared with the Sabbath. Besides, the tiieory in question affords equal scope with any other for the cvcles of geogony, geol- ogy, and gcontology, while it brings the inspired nar- rative closer to man's present home, with his animal and vegetable companions. For example, on the op- posite view, little propriety could be made out of the historical statement, Gen. ii, 19, 20: ''Now Jehovah God had formed from the ground every living [thing] of the field, and everj' bird of the heavens, and brought [each] to the man to see what he would call it ; so [that] whatever the man might call it [as] a living creature, that [was] its name ; accordingh', the man called names to all the cattle, and to the Ijird of tlie heavens, and to every living [thing] of the field; but for the man [one] did not find a heljier as liis counter- part [(or mate)]."' Surely Adam did not call forth in review the fossil forms of long-extinct species from the bowels of the earth ; and yet he must have done so if the animated tribes just spoken of, whicli are ob- viously the same with those of the sixth demiurgic day, were those of the geological ages. The advocates of a literal — although not local — creation on the sixth da}' are at liberty to apply the above-quoted language to an inspection of merely the surrounding creatures, or those inhabiting the garden of Eden along witii Adam, as specimens of the various r.;ces roaming the earth — as in the case of the animals assembled from his own neighborhood by Noah into the ark [see Del- uge] ; for their interpretation gradual!}' narrows down the scopj of the Mosaic cosmogony to man's special accommodation ; but this symbolical theory, b?ing throughout of cosmopolitan extent, requires all its terms to be taken in tlieir most universal application. Indeed, in order to be consistent, it should not be con- tent with the creation of a single human pair, and their location in a particular spot; but it really favors the modern skeptical demand for an aboriginally wide- spread humanity in various independent centres of or- igin. See Adam.
Tlie objections of Kalisch (Commentary on Genesis, p. 48 sq.), who concludes that, " with regard to astron- omy and geology, the Biblical records are, in many essential points, utterly and irreconcilably at variance with the established results of modern researches" (p. 52), are as follows : (1.) That the connecting 1, and, of ver. 2, "expresses immediate sequence." So little force is there in this as an absolute or universal re- mark, tliat the connection in question occasionally ap- pears at tlie beginning of a book (Exod. i, 1 ; 1 Kings i, 1 ; Ezra i, 1) or even an isolated epistle (2 Kings v, G; X, 2). See Gesenius, Thesaurus, p. 395, b. (2.) Exod. XX, 11, "For in six days the Lord made the heaven and the earth," etc., so far from being "in di- rect opposition" to this view, is in exact agreement with it, since that expression, which is a mere repeti- tion of the summary statement in Gen. ii, 1, contains not one syllable concerning the creation (it is {I'i"' there, not X^a, as in Gen. i, 1) of matter. The for- unila " heavens and earth" in Gen. i, 1 denotes the universe., as its absolute position there shows ; whereas in Exod. xx, 11 it merely designates the sky and the land as sul)divisions of our planet, in distinction from tlie sea, which is immediately added to embrace the whole. (3.) "In Matt. xix,'4 man is said to have been created ' in the beginning ;' the work of the sixtli day was therefore believed to be coeval with tlie thne specified in the first verse." This is a piece of reason-
ing which refutes itself. (4.) " The earth could not have been termed ' dreary and empty' if it [had] teem- ed with life and vegetation long before." Certainly it could if this life and vegetation had been destroyed, as we suppose. (5.) For the same reason, the argu- ment cited by the same author (p. 45) from Hugh Miller (Testimony of the Rocks, p. 121, 122) is inappo- site here, tiiat "for many ages ere man was nsliered into being not a few of [the species of] his humble contemporaries of the fields and woods enjoyed life in their present haunts, and tliat for thousands of years previous to their appearance many of the existing [species of] moUusks were in our seas ;" for these spe- cies may ver}' readily have been recreated, on the the- ory we are now advocating, even if they had been ex- terminated just before the period of man — which, how- ever, does not necessarily follow, for their germs may have survived the cataclysm supposed.