he ages.]

[Illustration: _A New Interpretation suggested_]

But then it will be asked, if the day means only an ordinary day--not a
long period--what is there that actually could have happened, and did
happen, in _three days_ (for that is the real point, as we shall see),
such as the writer describes as the third, fifth, and sixth days?

I answer that on those days, and on the previous ones, God did exactly
what He is recorded to have done. After the creation of light (first
day), and the ideal adjustment of the distribution of land and water
(second day), He (_a_) "_created_," on the third day, plants, from the
lowest cryptogam upwards; then (_b_) paused for a day (the fourth) in
the direct work of creating life-forms, to adjust certain matters
regarding times and seasons, and regulation of climate, which doubtless
would not be essential during the early stages of life evolution, but
would become so directly a certain point was reached; then (_c_) resumed
the direct creating work (fifth day), with fishes, great reptiles,[1]
and birds (grouped purposely so, as we shall see); and, lastly (_d_),
before the Day of Rest, created the group of mammals (_carnivora_ and
_herbivora_), the "creeping things" of the earth, and man (also grouped
together).

[Footnote 1: This term may be here accepted for the moment--not to
interrupt the argument. It will be more fully dealt with in a subsequent
chapter.]

But some one will ask, You then accept the earlier theory, that the
whole life-series that is now revealed to us by the rocks, from the
Laurentian to the Recent, is excluded from the narrative; and that some
special acts of creation, regarding only modern and surviving
life-forms, were made immediately before man appeared? By no-means; for
such a theory is not only in itself improbable, but is contrary to all
the evidence we possess of life-history on the earth, and is so hopeless
that it is really not worth serious examination and refutation.

We have no evidence of any such gap--such sudden change in the history
of life. Nor is it possible to find any place in the Mosaic story at
which we could reasonably interpolate a _long_ period, such as that
indicated by the entire series of rock strata. For a great part of such
a period, not only must there have been a regular succession of life
just the same in nature (though specifically different) as that now on
earth, but a regular distribution of land and water, and a settled