indicated) that the term "created" will, on my own
interpretation, get us into difficulties, I reply that here, in its
position and with the context, there is no room for doubt, for clearly
the word implies _both_ the great primary idea of the Divine design or
plan formulated in heaven, _and_ the subsequent result in time and
space.[1] This will become more clear when I have further explained the
subject.

[Footnote 1: And of course if the true sense be "fashioned" or
"moulded," the question does not arise.]

II.--THE SECOND PART OF THE NARRATIVE.

But from this point the narrative commences to be more precise, and to
exhibit a very singular and altogether unprecedented division of
creative work into "days."

Now I have already indicated my doubt whether we ought to import any
unusual meaning to explain this term.

In the first place, the objection that till the movements and relations
of the sun to the earth were ordained there would be no _measure of a
day_ will not stand a moment's examination. Nor will the further
objection sometimes made, that even with the sun, a day is a very
uncertain thing: for example, a day and a night in the north polar
regions are periods of month-long duration, quite different from what
they are in England, or at Mount Sinai. Obviously, a "day" with
reference to the planet for which the term is used, means the period
occupied by one rotation of the planet on its own axis. The rotation of
the earth is antecedent to anything mentioned in the narrative we are
considering. In the nature of things, it would have been coeval with the
introduction of the _prima materies_--at least if any nebular hypothesis
can be relied on. The "day" would be there whether it were obscured by
vapours or not, and whether specially made countable and recognizable by
what we call the rising and setting of the sun, or not, and whether we
were standing in Nova Zembla or in Australia.

Nor is it of much use to refer to the general use of "day" for
indefinite periods, which is just as common in the English of to-day as
it was in the Hebrew of the Old Testament. But the double use of the
term in different senses has become general, just because it was found
in practice that no confusion ordinarily resulted; and surely such a
practice would not have been common, or at any rate would have been
specially avoided in the sacred volume, wherever any mistake or
confusion was likely or even possible.

No one can mi