[Footnote G: Journal of Discourses, Vol. xiv: p. 234-5.]
As a further evidence that "day" as used in connection with the acts of creation does not mean a period of duration of twenty-four hours, it may be mentioned that it was not until the period called the fourth day that the sun reflected his light upon our earth and ruled the day; and divided the light from the darkness, giving us the day and night regulated by the rotation of the earth upon its axis; so that the preceding three days were not of twenty-four hours duration, but certainly referred to some other division of time, which was also, doubtless, employed throughout in speaking of these acts of creation.[H] Moreover, it is said in this first chapter of Genesis,
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
"And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep."[I]
[Footnote H: Respecting this creation of the sun as referred to in the above, Apostle Orson Pratt has made some remarks at once ingenious and instructive, he says:
"What I understand by the formation [creation] of these celestial luminaries, is that He [God] then caused them to shed forth their light [that is upon the earth.] I cannot suppose that it would take the Lord six days to form such a little speck of a world as ours, and then for Him on the fourth to form a globe fourteen hundred thousand times larger than the earth. This does not look consistent to me. If it took six days to form a small world like ours, we might certainly suppose that it would require more than one day to form the sun, which contains a quantity of matter sufficient to make some three hundred and fifty four thousand worlds like this, and whose actual size or magnitude is fourteen thousand times larger than our globe; consequently I understand by the formation of the sun and moon and stars, and setting them in the firmament of the heavens, that He merely suffered their light to shine on the fourth day, to regulate the evenings and mornings, that were produced prior to that time, probably by some other cause. The Lord wanted by these luminaries to divide the day from the night, and he set them for times and seasons in the firmament of the heavens." Journal of Discourses, Vol. xvi: pp. 316-7.]
[Footnote I: Genesis i: 1,2.]
How long it remained in that condition before the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, or the six great periods of creation began, it would be impossible to say, since we have no data in revelation to go upon; but the duration was doubtless sufficient to allow all the myriads of years claimed by geologists as necessary for the formation of our planet. Then how long those periods of time were which are called "days" in the Bible, is uncertain; but enough is known to justify us in the belief that they were great periods of time, in which the successive acts of creation occurred. In which continents were up-raised, and mountains were heaved up by volcanic eruption, exposed to warmth and light and covered with vegetation, and animal life, and then worn away by the combined action of the atmosphere and rains, much of their matter being carried back to old ocean's bed, and settling there as sediment, forming new strata of rocks, occasionally imbedding vegetables and animals which became fossilized; and these strata, being afterwards thrown up from the bottom of the ocean are exposed to view, and from what he there finds, the geologist conjectures at the condition of the earth and forms his judgment as to what animals and vegetation were then upon it—there was time for all this, let it be performed ever so slowly.
While the Bible account of the creation gives sufficient margin to allow all the time claimed by the geologists for that work, let their claims be ever so extravagant, still let geologists have some modesty about them and admit—as perforce they must—that they do not know that the same conditions existed, or the same forces operated in those long ages of the past that now exist and operate. Hence it is not unlikely that changes resulting in the advancement of the earth's formation, and in its preparation for the abode of man were much more rapid then than now. This is not begging the question, there is no need of that; but it is mentioned in passing, as pointing to a condition of things not unlikely to have existed.