Now, as a matter of fact, there was no one long (or short) period during which the whole of this command was realized, before the next creative act occurred.
At first algae and low forms of vegetable life appeared; and doubtless we have lost myriads upon myriads of such lower forms of plant-life in the early strata, because such forms were ill calculated for fossil-preservation, owing to the absence of woody fibre, silicious casing, or hard fruit or seed vessels. But when we first have a marked accumulation of specialized plant-life in the coal measures (Upper Carboniferous), it is still only of cryptogams—ferns and great club mosses. A beginning of true seed-bearing plants (Gymnosperm exogens) had been made with the conifers of the Devonian strata; but true grasses, and the other orders of phanerogamic plants and arboreous vegetation, do not appear till the tertiary rocks were deposited, very long after the age of fish and great reptiles had culminated, and the inauguration of the bird age and the mammalian age had taken place.
Looking only to the abundant, prominent, and characteristic life-forms of the several strata, it could certainly be said that the period when the water actually brought forth a vast mass of its life-forms—corals, sertularias, crustaceans, and fish of the lower orders—must have preceded (not followed) the time when the earth produced vegetation of all kinds, and further that it must have come after the appearance of scorpions and some land insects.[[77]]
Moreover, as the regular succession in periods of light and darkness on the earth, and the sequence of seasons was not organized (but only a generally diffused light, and, probably, an uniform and moist state of climate without seasons) till after the commands for the formation of the whole of the large classes of plants, both cryptogams and phanerogams, it is obvious that as many of these would require the fuller development of seasonal influences, the whole process could not have been worked out before the fourth day's creative work was begun.
This instance alone—and it would be easy to add others—shows that the narrative cannot be meant to indicate what actually happened on earth, i.e., to summarize the entire realization of the Divine command.
Such being the plain facts with regard to the kind of accomplishment meant by the terms "it was so," "the earth brought forth," &c., it is quite plain that no violence is done to the text by explaining it as intended to describe what God did in heaven, with the addition, that as each command was formulated, the result on earth surely followed, the thing "was so," and the earth and water respectively no doubt began to "bring forth." More than this cannot be made out on any interpretation that accords with facts. It seems so clear to me that this is so, that I hardly need refer to the use of the terms the "waters brought forth" and the "earth brought forth" and the phrase in chapter ii. 5—the Lord made every plant before it grew.
If, as we have been long allowed to suppose, God spake and the water and earth were at once fully and finally peopled with animals where before nothing but plants had existed, and so on, I should hardly have expected the use of words which imply a gradual process—a gestation and subsequent birth (so to speak) of life-forms.
How the order in which the events are recorded stands in relation to the subsequent history of life-development on earth, and what its significance may be, I will consider later on. First I will conclude the argument for the general interpretation of the narrative.
2. The Second Genesis Narrative.
I have only one more direct argument to offer; but I think it is a very important one. The first division of Genesis ends with the Divine commands creating man and the day of rest which followed. The narrative ending at chapter ii. verse 3 (the division of chapters here, as elsewhere, is purely arbitrary), we have at verse 4 of chapter ii, what has been loudly proclaimed as another account of the same Creation, which, it is added (arbitrarily enough—but any argument will do if only it is against religion!) is contrary to the first.[[78]]