But from this point the narrative commences to be more precise, and to exhibit a very singular and altogether unprecedented division of creative work into "days." Now I have already indicated my doubt whether we ought to import any unusual meaning to explain this term. In the first place, the objection that till the movements and relations of the sun to the earth were ordained there would be no _measure of a day_ will not stand a moment's examination. Nor will the further objection sometimes made, that even with the sun, a day is a very uncertain thing: for example, a day and a night in the north polar regions are periods of month-long duration, quite different from what they are in England, or at Mount Sinai. Obviously, a "day" with reference to the planet for which the term is used, means the period occupied by one rotation of the planet on its own axis. The rotation of the earth is antecedent to anything mentioned in the narrative we are considering. In the nature of things, it would have been coeval with the introduction of the _prima materies_--at least if any nebular hypothesis can be relied on. The "day" would be there whether it were obscured by vapours or not, and whether specially made countable and recognizable by what we call the rising and setting of the sun, or not, and whether we were standing in Nova Zembla or in Australia. Nor is it of much use to refer to the general use of "day" for indefinite periods, which is just as common in the English of to-day as it was in the Hebrew of the Old Testament. But the double use of the term in different senses has become general, just because it was found in practice that no confusion ordinarily resulted; and surely such a practice would not have been common, or at any rate would have been specially avoided in the sacred volume, wherever any mistake or confusion was likely or even possible. No one can mistake what is meant when allusion is made to "the day in which God made the heaven and the earth." No one falls into doubt when the "days" of the prophets are spoken of--any more than they do now when a man says, "Such a thing will not happen in my _day_." Whenever in Daniel, or in similar prophetic writings, the term "day" is used in a peculiar sense as indicating a term of years, we have no difficulty in recognizing the fact from the context and circumstances of the narrative; nor am I aware that any controversy has ever arisen regarding the use of the term "day" _in any passage of Scripture excepting in this_.