contemporaneous: if any creation of vegetables preceded that of animals, no evidence of such an event has yet been discovered by the researches of geology. Still there is, I believe, no sound critical, or theological objection, to the interpretation of the word "day," as meaning a long period; but there will be no necessity for such extension, in order to reconcile the text of Genesis with physical appearances, if it can be shown that the time indicated by the phenomena of Geology[1] may be found in the undefined interval, following the announcement of the first verse.
In my inaugural lecture, published at Oxford, 1820, pp. 31, 32, I have stated my opinion in favour of the hypothesis, “which supposes the 'word' beginning, as applied by Moses in the first verse of the book of Genesis, to express an undefined period of time, which was antecedent to the last great change that affected the surface of the earth, and to the creation of its present animal and vegetable inhabitants; during which period a long series of operations and revolutions may have been going on; which, as they are wholly unconnected with the history of the human race, are passed over in silence by the sacred historian, whose only concern with them was barely to state, that the matter of the universe is not eternal and self-existent, but was originally created by the power of the Almighty."
I have great satisfaction in finding that the view of this subject, which I have here expressed, and have long entertained, is in perfect accordance with the highly valuable
- ↑ A very interesting treatise on the Consistency of Geology with Sacred History has recently been published at Newhaven, 1833, by Professor Silliman, as a supplement to an American edition of Bakewell's Geology, 1833. The author contends that the period alluded to in the first verse of Genesis, “In the beginning,” is not necessarily connected with the first day, and that it may be regarded as standing by itself; and admitting of any extension backward in time which the facts may seem to require.
He is further disposed to consider the six days of creation as periods of time of indefinite length, and that the word "day" is not of necessity limited to twenty-four hours.
