Creation and Its Records / A Brief Statement of Christian Belief with Reference to Modern Facts and Ancient Scripture

by B. H. Baden-Powell

But to return. Nothing, I submit, is gained by getting day to mean period. Let us put the matter quite squarely. Let us take day to mean period, and let us take all the verses to mean the process of producing on earth the various life-forms.

In order to come at once to the point, let us begin with the time when the dry land and the waters are separate. At that moment, there is nothing said (or implied) about life already having begun in either water or on dry land. God commanded plants to grow; consequently during that whole period nothing but plants, and that of all the kinds and classes mentioned, should appear either in water or on land. That period being done, then came the command for water animals, fish and great monsters, and also birds. We ought, accordingly, to come next upon a whole period in which no trace of anything but plants and these animals can be found; and lastly, we ought to find the period of mammalia, smaller reptiles, amphibia and insects (creeping things).

That is the fair and plain result of what comes of supposing the terms "let there be," &c., to mean production on earth of the thing's themselves, and that the days are long periods.

All overlapping of the periods is inadmissible. All meaning is taken away, if we allow of fish (e.g.) appearing in the middle of our first period; for God did not command another day's work till after the first was completed—"there was evening and there was morning, a first day" (period), &c.

No; to suit the text so interpreted, we must have a full period of plants with no fish; then a period of both but no insects, no creeping things, no animals; and so on. Now it is quite idle to contend any longer, that any such state of things ever existed.

If we pass over the long series of the most ancient strata in which doubtful forms of obscure elementary plant and animal life appear almost together, we shall come to shell-fish, and crustaceans fully established in the water, and scorpions, and some insects even on land, before plants made any great show. For the Carboniferous—the age of acrogen plants, par excellence—does not occur till after swarms of Trilobite Crustaceans had filled the sea and passed away, and after the Devonian fish-age had nearly passed away; and so on throughout.

The groups in nature overlap each other so closely, that though plant-life (in elementary forms) probably had the actual start; virtually the two kingdoms—plant and animal—appeared almost simultaneously. There is nothing like the appearance of a first period in which one alone predominated. And long before the plants are established in all classes, the great reptiles, birds, and some mammals, had appeared. The seed-bearing plants—true grasses and exogens with seed capsules (angiosperms) did not appear till quite Tertiary times. That is the essential difference between the facts and the theory. If we make a diagram, and let the squares represent the main groups, the order (according to the period interpretation) ought to be as in A, whereas it really more resembles B. Thus.

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,[^[66]] 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).