Having thus cleared away a serious difficulty that seemed to obstruct our path, we may proceed without hesitation to the direct object of our inquiry. The burden of proof, let it be remembered, is not with us, but rather with those who contend for Days of twenty-four hours. They must prove that this word Day in the first chapter of Genesis means a period of twenty-four hours, and _can mean nothing else_. If it _may_ be understood in a wider sense, consistently with the usage of Scripture, that is quite enough for us. We are perfectly at liberty to adopt an interpretation which, on the one hand, the Sacred Text fairly admits, and on the other, the discoveries of Natural Science would seem to demand. Let us examine, then, the arguments that are usually adduced in favor of the popular interpretation. Throughout the first chapter of Genesis the Hebrew word יוֺם (_yom_) is everywhere employed by Moses to designate the Days of Creation. And many writers contend that the use of this word is, in itself, evidence enough that he spoke of days in the common sense of the term. It is plain, they say, from the usage of Scripture, that the word יוֺם (_yom_) had a fixed and certain meaning in the Hebrew language; the same precisely as that which we now attach to the English word Day. Sometimes, when contra-distinguished from night, it was applied to the period of light, from sunrise to sunset; otherwise, it meant the civil day of twenty-four hours, measured by the revolution of the Sun. Moreover, it had unquestionably attained this meaning at the time when Moses wrote, and therefore it could not have been employed by him in any other sense. This argument rests upon a false foundation. It is true, no doubt, that the word יוֺם (_yom_) was more usually employed in one or other of the two senses just explained;--that is to say, (1) for the period of light from sunrise to sunset, or (2) for the period of twenty-four hours corresponding to a complete revolution of the Sun. But, for the validity of the argument, it would be necessary to show that, beside these two senses, there is no other in which the word may be fairly understood, conformably to the usage of the Hebrew language. Now this has never yet been proved. On the contrary, the Scripture affords abundant evidence that the word יוֺם (_yom_) had a third meaning quite different from the other two; that it was freely used to designate a period of time much longer than a common day, and generally of uncertain and indefinite duration. A few examples will be interesting, we hope, to our readers.