But these learned writers are not altogether of one accord as to the precise point in the First Chapter of Genesis, at which we may suppose a long interval of time to have intervened. Some, with Doctor Buckland, Doctor Pye Smith, and Doctor Chalmers, consider that this interval may best be introduced between the beginning of all time, when God created the Heavens and the Earth, and the beginning of the First Day, when He set about preparing the world as a dwelling-place for man. Sacred Scripture, they say, simply records these two events, (1) that “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth,” and (2) that, at some subsequent time, “God said: Let there be light: and light was made.” But Sacred Scripture does not tell us what length of time elapsed between these two great acts of Divine Omnipotence. For aught we know from Revelation, it may have been but a single day, or it may have been a million of years. Others again, as for instance Pianciani, prefer to suppose that each one of the Six Days may have been itself a period of indefinite, nay of almost inconceivable duration. So that, between the beginning of the world and the creation of man six great ages of the Earth’s history may have rolled by, each one distinguished by a new manifestation of God’s power, and the introduction of new forms of life. These writers even fancy that they can discover a close analogy between the successive acts of creation recorded in Genesis, and the gradual development of organic life exhibited in the great Epochs of Geology. To us it seems that either one or the other of these two systems, or both together, may be fairly admitted without any undue violence to the text of the Inspired narrative: and this, we would observe in passing, is the opinion to which Cardinal Wiseman appears to have inclined, thirty years ago, in his Lectures on the Connection between Science and Religion. We maintain, then, in the first place, that there is nothing in the Mosaic narrative, when carefully examined, at variance with the hypothesis of an indefinite interval between the creation of the world and the work of the Six Days. And, in the second place, we contend that it is quite consistent with the usage of Sacred Scripture to explain these Days of Creation as long periods of time. * * * * *