employed these words to represent metaphorically the opening and the close of the various works which are ascribed to each successive period in the history of the Creation. It may be observed, moreover, that this explanation seems quite in accord with the etymology of the Hebrew words עֶרֶב (_Ghereb_), and בּקר (_Boker_). The latter is formed from the root בּקֶר (_Bakar_), _to lay open_, and used to signify the morning, because in the morning the light of the sun is, as it were, unveiled, and _laid open_ to the earth. Hence, the word might be applied with much propriety, in a metaphorical sense, to the unfolding of the various works of God, as each new period was, in its turn, ushered in with a new act of Creation. On the other hand, עֶרֶב (_Ghereb_) seems to be derived from ערב (_Gharab_), _to mingle_, and has probably come to signify the evening, as the famous Hebrew scholar, Aben Ezra, suggests, because, in the uncertain light of evening, the forms of external objects lose their distinctness of outline, and become, in a manner, blended together. And so this word might have been employed, not unfitly, to represent the close of each period in the creation, which was marked, as Geologists tell us, by the gradual dying out or extinction of the various forms of life peculiar to that period. Anyhow, in following the opinion of so ancient and so venerable an authority as Saint Augustine, we cannot be charged with unduly straining the Sacred Text to meet the exigencies of modern science. * * * * * The next argument is founded on a passage in Exodus, to which we have already had occasion to refer: “Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: thou shalt do no work on it, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy beast, nor the stranger that is within thy gates. For in six days the Lord made the Heavens and the Earth, and the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the seventh day and sanctified it.”[159] We are to work upon six days, and to rest upon the seventh; _because_ in six days God accomplished all the works of the creation, and rested on the seventh. There can be no mistake as to the meaning of this commandment. The six days on which it is lawful to labor are, beyond all doubt, six days in the common sense of the word; six days of twenty-four hours each: and the seventh day, on which it is forbidden to work, is a day of the same kind. But the example of God’s labor and God’s rest is set forth, in the text, as the pattern after which this law of the Sabbath was framed. And therefore, the six days in which God furnished and embellished the earth must have been likewise six days of twenty-four hours each. This argument is regarded by many writers as decisive.