Newton, who always maintained that the commencing axillary movement of the Earth was due to an impulse from the hand of the Creator when He launched it into space,[5] and who declared that without this he could in no way account for its having rotatory motion at all, was nevertheless willing to allow that the time occupied in the first rotation may not have been, as now, twenty-four hours, but possibly an entire year. And as the Earth, once projected, would fulfil, according to the Law of Gravity, the conditions of “a body falling through space,” we find that taking the nth term (2_n_-1) of the arithmetical series … 1. 3. 5. 7. … (2_n_-1) … where the successive terms represent the _velocities_ acquired in successive annual periods, about 183 such terms must elapse before 365 rotations would be accomplished within the space of one year, or, in other words, the rotation of the earth be _diurnal_, as at present. This point of speed once reached, the centrifugal and centripetal forces balanced one another, and the axillary movement became steady. Of course, in the above hypothesis, the assuming of one year for the first period is arbitrary; it may have been more, it may have been less; but within certain limits there is no absolute reason for supposing that it was a span of twenty-four hours, as now. _Revelation_ nowhere asserts such a dogma. _Supposing_, then, amid confessed ignorance as to how the fact stood, that the Earth’s early times of rotation were far longer than now, and taking, say, _one year_ as the first period, how would this influence other features in a scene which has now long gone by? How would it influence the Tides of the Ocean? Assuming a correspondingly slow motion of the Moon in her orbit, we should, it seems, have in the lapse of the first year _one_ rotation of the Earth and _two Tides_ of the Ocean; in the second year, _three_ rotations of the Earth and _six Tides_ answering to them; and so on. Now these flowing Tides would, in fact, have been vast _inundations_, the sea rising steadily for many months together; and in like manner the prolonged ebb which followed upon each flood would have given rise to a _subsidence_ and to the deposition of such particles of mud, lime, silex, &c., as the waters then held in solution after their visiting the higher land. And thus we see at once, without going further, that the agency exerted by the ocean in ancient times may probably have been different from and greater than any with which we are now actually acquainted, save in the account given to us, in the inspired Record, of the Deluge in the days of Noah.