oth give grounds at least to suspect that the evening, or
earlier part of each period, was a time of comparative inaction,
sometimes even of retrogression, and that the latter part of each
period was that of its greatest activity and perfection. Thus, on the
views stated in a former chapter, in the first day there was a time
when luminous matter, either gradually concentrating itself toward the
sun, or surrounding the earth itself, shed a dim but slowly increasing
light; then there were day and night, the light increasing in
intensity as, toward the end of the period, the luminous matter became
more and more concentrated around the sun. So in our own seventh day,
the earlier part was a time of deplorable retrogression, and though
the Sun of Righteousness has arisen, we have seen as yet only a dim
and cloudy morning. On the theory of days of vision, as expounded by
Hugh Miller, in the "Testimony of the Rocks," in one of his noblest
passages, the evening and night fall on each picture presented to the
seer like the curtain of a stage. Secondly: Though the explanation
stated above is the most probable, the hypothesis of long periods
admits of another, namely, that the writer means to inform us that
evening and morning, once established by the separation of light from
darkness, continued without cessation throughout the remainder of the
period--rolling from this time uninterruptedly around our planet, like
the seal cylinder over the clay.[54] This explanation is, however,
less applicable to the following days than to the first. Nor does this
accord with the curious fact that the seventh day, which, on the
hypothesis of long periods, is still in progress, is not said to have
had an evening or morning.

(3.) It is objected that the first chapter of Genesis "is not a poem
nor a piece of oratorical diction," but a simple prosaic narrative,
and consequently that its terms must be taken in a literal sense. In
answer to this, I urge that the most truly literal sense of the word,
namely, the _natural_ day, is excluded by the terms of the narrative;
and that the word may be received as a literal day of the Creator, in
the sense of one of his working periods, without involving the use of
poetical diction, and in harmony with the wording of plain prosaic
passages in other parts of the Bible. Examples of this have already
been given. It is, however, true that, though the first chapter of
Genesis is not strictly poetical, it is thrown i