We hope it is now pretty clear that neither the reason assigned for the institution of the Sabbath Day, nor the particular form of words in which that ordinance is set forth, offers any insurmountable obstacle to the opinion we are defending. And this is quite enough for our purpose. For we would again remind our readers that we are not attempting to prove from the Sacred Text that this opinion _must_ be true, but only that it _may_ be true. Our object has been sufficiently attained if we have succeeded in showing that the hypothesis which makes the Days of Creation long periods, is not inconsistent with the language of Scripture. We are tempted, however, in the case of this objection, to go somewhat further than the scope of our argument strictly demands. The text we have just been discussing brings before us, in fact, a consideration of great weight in favor of the system of long periods. “In six days the Lord made the Heavens and the Earth and the sea, and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day.” Now, what was this Seventh Day on which God rested? Was it a common day of twenty-four hours? or was it not rather a long and undefined period of time? Saint Augustine answers plainly enough: “The seventh day,” he says, “is without an evening, and has no setting.” And Venerable Bede, asking why the sacred writer had assigned no evening to the seventh day, gives this answer: “Because it has no end, and is shut in by no limit.”[168] The common sentiment of Theologians, as far as we know, seems to point in the same direction. They tell us that God is said to have rested, inasmuch as He ceased from the creation of new species; and they hold that since the close of the Sixth Day no new species have been brought into existence. But whether this be true or not, it would be very difficult, we think, to point out any sense in which God can be said to have rested after the work of the Six Days, and in which He is not resting at the present moment. If so, the day of His rest is still going on; and it is not a period of twenty-four hours only, but a period of many thousand years. Now, if the Seventh Day on which God rested is a period of many thousand years, are we not fully justified in supposing that the Six Days on which He formed and furnished the Heavens and the Earth were likewise periods of many ages? [Illustration] [Illustration] _CHAPTER XXI._ APPLICATION OF THE SECOND HYPOTHESIS TO THE MOSAIC HISTORY OF CREATION--CONCLUSION.