5. If the first is a literal day, so are the seven. If the first is poetic, so are the seven. That the first was not literal, is evident in that the “Earth was without form” as yet. Hence there was no twenty-four hour measurement. Day is also used to signify a nation’s history. It is not that. It is also used to signify the life of an individual. It could not be that. “A day with the Lord is as a thousand years.” It is evident that Peter was merely hinting at the indefiniteness, as to time, of the Mosaic days. It remains, then, that it is a cosmological day, without exact measurement of time. It certainly includes all that period of chaotic darkness before time commenced. Should these gases move across the radii of our system with the speed of light, it would take thirty-five days; but should the gases move like an atmosphere in space, it would take more than ninety million of years to gather the sun. The greater probability is that these contrasted conditions of the first day, poetically described without any exact measurement, if measured, would extend through more than one hundred million of our years.
Section 2.
The Work of the Second Day.
1. Creation includes not only the bringing into existence of matter, but all its undeveloped forces and changes. Revelation, upon this subject, is suggestive, rather than exhaustive, of what we need above what Nature shows, to trace creation back to God. The greatest difficulty in reading this poem understandingly, is in rightly rendering the phenomena noticed upon the second day. Figures of metonymy abound. As a rule, figures once used in prophecy are not changed when used by another prophet. Hence, we may derive benefit by seeing how other prophets have used them. Job had made the gathering of suns at the creation of light a morning in figure. Moses is about to use the same figure, and beholding the darkness of chaos preceding, he extended the figure to an evening preceding. This is the only day that pertains to light and darkness. The second day will be analogous in contrast. Whatever be the one, the other will contrast. The evening of Earth is given. “And the Earth was without form.” The contrast will be the Earth in form, for morning.
2. To read these allusions understandingly, every sentence must be cosmologically analyzed in the light of our present knowledge of astronomy, chemistry, philosophy, geology, and rhetoric. There is a grand suggestion of progress, couched in the figure of morning succeeding evening. The morning of each day is a complete contrast to its own evening; and yet the morning of that day is only the evening of the day following. The morning of the sun, with hosts of God’s angels rejoicing, is only the evening of the prospective globe, upon whose disk shall be perfected, in knowledge and true holiness, beings in God’s own image. The sun has perfected his day, in which Moses beholds the evening of the second.
3. He is looking at our system, as from the voids of space, as a whole; with its gathered sun and its immense ring of prospective planets. It is now shown him that a change is to take place in the ring, which will result in the form of a globe. To that part of the ring he draws near. The first phenomenon noticed was a separation in the ring between the “waters above, and those below.” The gases thus uniting in one substance, soon left this firmament ring of the sun, and had a firmament of its own, called heaven, or visible expanse. The Hebrew word translated “firmament” implies something tangible, and yet it was used to denote the visible expanse.
4. The first firmament was composed of tangible gases or waters, so called; the second is the expanse of heaven. The cause of the separated waters is seen in what follows. These fluids that evolved out, leaving the ring separated, are now in a condition that they only have to be gathered together into one place to be a sea. It was then steam. The suggestion is that an immense field of oxygen and hydrogen had united by the spark which separated the ring, and as the union was superheated steam, it evolved out into the voids of space as a globe. It is plain then “And God made a firmament in the midst of the waters,” means he made a globe, from which the visible expanse is seen. The vision now places the prophet upon this globe, the changes of which will occupy his attention to the end.
5. Whether any or all the planets were formed at the same time, we are not told. No allusion is made to them except an incidental one, on the fourth day, so that all things should be traced back to God as their Maker. If the union of two gases took out a segment of the ring, leaving it “separated,” it would only be temporary, as the ring would close up again. Whether our planet was the first, third, or last formed, no mention is made. The vision is designed henceforth to unfold what we need to know of Earth, not found in nature. Our globe in chaos of gases, sweeping around the sun in the form of a ring, is evening, being “without form.” Our globe in steam, having a firmament of its own, is in shape, and this is “morning.” Solomon must have given such an interpretation to the account of the second day. Prov. 8:27. Tracing the unmeasured age of wisdom, “Before the mountains were settled, before the hills, while as yet he had not made the Earth, when he prepared the heavens, I was there; when he set a compass (or circle) upon the face of the depth.” A globe of steam, possibly highly charged with electricity, revolving in an orbit outside the ring of planetary gases, was all that constituted Earth at this time. “And the evening and the morning were the second day.”
Section 3.
The Work of the Third Day.
1. A globe of vapor in contact with the cold voids of space must condense or liquify. The beginning would be upon the outside; constantly growing heavier according to bulk, it would work its way nearer to the sun. Having become a center of attraction, and coming back to the now closed-up ring, it would claim a portion of the same as an atmosphere. Increasing now its centrifugal force, it gained an orbit inside the ring, still drawing nearer the sun. Job’s attention had been called to the earth’s appearance in this “gathering” process. “When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddling band for it.” Moses began the third day as the globe began to condense. “And he gathered the waters together into one place; and he called the gathering together of the waters, seas.” While the globe was in a condition of vapor, the waters were firmament waters; and the word firmament answered very well for both globe and visible expanse. Hence, “God made a firmament” by figure; covered both. But as soon as gathered, there was a distinction. Now only the expanse, holding yet a cloudy vapor, could be called firmament, or heaven; and the gathered waters he called seas.
2. Science claims that the present pointing of the pole of the Earth, and its inclination to the ecliptic, could not produce such a warm climate as the Earth once enjoyed. This fact, in connection with the Earth covered with ice, at a remote period of the past, confounds the mere seeker of cause in nature’s laws. The ancient pole-pointing is sung by Job. According to his description of light and darkness, one pole of the Earth must have pointed directly to the sun throughout the year. And as that warm climate was uniform, it must have turned on its axis not only daily, but as does our moon in reference to Earth, once over in its entire orbicular journey. Its enlightened hemisphere was never in darkness; its dark hemisphere was never in light. According to Job’s statement, both light and darkness were stationary. “Where is the place where light dwelleth? And as for darkness, where is the place thereof, that thou shouldst take it to the bound thereof, and that thou shouldst know the paths to the house thereof?” All our deposits then hung as gases in the air; one-half of which science proclaims to have been oxygen. In the language of Solomon, the mountains before rising must have first “settled” in the sea. The psalmist saw that God spread out the earth upon the waters, that he founded it upon the sea, and established it upon the floods. Job saw that the very corner foundation stone was made to sink. Moses rushes the deposits all into the evening of the third day, to the appearance of dry land. “And God said, Let the waters under the heaven (the new firmament) be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear.” Here are eighty miles deposit made in the sea, all of which came out of the air and water. During this time Moses says, “The Lord God had not caused it to rain on the Earth.” “The plant and the herb of the field had not yet been made.”