made the worlds," or, literally,
"constituted the aeons"--the long time-worlds of the creation. For
God's worlds must exist in time as well as in space, and both may to
our minds alike appear as infinities. If, then, we find that Moses
himself seems to have understood his creative days as aeons, that the
succeeding Old Testament writers favor the same view, that this view
is essential to the true significance of the Sabbath and the Lord's
day, and that it is sustained by Christ and his apostles, there is
surely no need for our clinging to a mediaeval notion which has no
theological value, and is in opposition to the facts of nature. On the
contrary, should not even children be taught these grand truths, and
led to contemplate the great work of Him who is from aeon to aeon, and
to think of that Sabbatism which he prepared for us, and which he
still offers to us in the future, in connection with the succession of
worlds in time revealed by geology, and which rivals in grandeur and
perhaps exceeds in interest the extension of worlds in space revealed
by astronomy. In truth, we should bear in mind that the great
revelations of astronomy have too much habituated us to think of
space-worlds rather than time-worlds, while the latter idea was
evidently dominant with the Biblical writers as it is also with modern
geologists. Viewed as aeons--divine days, or time-worlds--the days of
creation are thus a reality for all ages; and connect themselves with
the highest moral teachings of the Bible in relation to the fall of
man and God's plan for his restoration, begun in this seventh aeon of
the world's long history, and to be completed in that second divine
Sabbatism, secured by the work of redemption, the final "rest" of the
"new heavens and new earth," which remains for the people of God.

But supposing that the inspired writer intended to say that the world
was formed in six long periods of time, could not he have used some
other word than _yom_ that would have been liable to fewer doubts.
There are words which might have been used, as, for instance, _eth_,
time, season, or _olam_, age, ancient time, eternity. The former,
however, has about it a want of precision as to its beginning and end
which unfits it for this use; the latter we have already seen is used
as equivalent to the creative _yom_. On the whole, I am unable to
find any instance which would justify me in affirming that, on the
supposition that Moses intended long peri