uring the Azoic period, once during the earlier or
middle Palaeozoic period, once during the Carboniferous period, once
during the Permian or Triassic period, once during the Oolitic or
Cretaceous period, and finally, once during the Tertiary period. Dr.
Kurtz holds, taking the Sabbath into the series, that the division into
_seven_ scenes or stages may have been regulated with reference to the
importance and sacredness of the mythic number seven,--the symbol of
completeness or perfection; but the suggestion will perhaps not now
carry much weight among the theologians of Britain, whatever it might
have done two centuries ago. It is true, that creation _might_ have been
exhibited, not by seven, but by seven hundred, or even by seven thousand
scenes; and that the accomplished man of science, skilled in every
branch of physics, might have found something distinct in them all. But
not the less do the seven, or rather the six, exhibited scenes appear to
be not symbolic or mystical, at least not exclusively symbolic or
mystical, but truly representative of successive periods, strongly
distinctive in their character, and capable, with the three geologic
days as given points in the problem, of being treated geologically.
Another of the questions raised, both by the German doctor and the
writer in our own country, must be recognized as eminently suggestive.
"We treat the history of creation," says Dr. Kurtz, "with its six days'
work, as a connected series of so many prophetic visions. The appearance
and evanishing of each such vision seem to the seer as a morning and an
evening, apparently because these were presented to him as an increase
and decrease of light, like morning and evening twilight." And we find
the Scottish writer taking essentially the same view. "Each day
contains," he says, "the description of what he [Moses] beheld in a
single vision, and when it faded it was twilight. There is nothing
forced in supposing that, after the vision had for a time illumined the
fancy of the seer, it was withdrawn from his eyes, in the same way that
the landscape becomes dim on the approach of evening.... From this point
of view, a 'day' can only mean the period during which the Divinely
enlightened fancy of the seer was active. When all continued bright and
manifest before his entranced but still conscious soul, it was 'day' or
'light.' When the dimness of departing enlightenment fell upon the
scene, it was the evening twilight." The