h
different classes of passage do occur in Scripture, it is merely a
question of criticism whether any given passage is of this class or
that, and whether its terms do admit of or require explanation. It is no
doubt possible to make mistakes and to err by refusing the direct
meaning, and giving to the terms an assumed meaning for which there is
no real necessity.[1] We have always to be on our guard against giving
special meanings to words where they are not required; but granted that
caution, there undoubtedly are passages in which either the terms
themselves are not plain, or in which they may really have a meaning
different from the ordinary one.

[Footnote 1: As, for example, where persons desirous to get over the
plain reference to Baptism in St. John iii. 5, try to explain away the
term "water" to mean something metaphorically but not actually water.]

To descend from the general to the particular, it is obvious that the
account of Creation in Genesis i., ii. is in such a form that we must
assume our own ideas of the term "day" therein employed, and also those
to be attached to "created" and similar terms.

In early times, no one would take "day" to mean anything else but an
earth day of the ordinary kind, and no one would question whether or not
the whole existing animals and plants, or their ancestors, appeared on
earth in six such days, or whether anything else was meant. Again, by
the time St. Augustine was writing, a little more knowledge of nature
and a little more habit of reasoning about the origin of things was in
the world, and that knowledge led people to suppose that creation meant
only the making of things "out of nothing," but that it would take
longer than six times twelve hours, so that "days" might mean "periods."

And people imagined for a long time that--taking for an example the
work in the middle of the narrative--there was a time when the earth
emerged from the tumult of waters, that it then got covered with plants,
the waters remaining barren of life; but that when the plants had come
up all over the ground, then the waters all at once became full of all
sorts of sea-shells, fish, and monsters of the deep, and so on.

They did all this, by naturally _assuming_ that the terms "creation,"
"day," &c., meant what the _existing state of knowledge_ at the time
suggested.

At the present day, one would have supposed that every one must feel
that while the term "day" might or might not admit