Objections are often made to the word “day,”--as if its use limited the time of each of the six periods to a day of twenty-four hours. But in the course of the document this word “day” has various significations, and, among them, all that are common to it in ordinary language. These are--(1) The light,--“God called the light day,” v. 5; (2) the “evening and the morning” before the appearance of the sun; (3) the “evening and the morning” after the appearance of the sun; (4) the hours of light in the twenty-four hours (as well as the whole twenty-four hours), in verse 14; and (5) in the following chapter, at the commencement of another record of creation, the whole period of creation is called a “day.” The proper meaning of “evening and morning,” in a history of creation, is _beginning and completion_; and, in this sense, darkness before light is but a common metaphor. A Deity working in creation like a day-laborer by earth-days of twenty-four hours, resting at night, is a belittling conception, and one probably never in the mind of the sacred penman. In the plan of an infinite God, centuries are required for the maturing of some of the plants with which the earth is adorned. The order of events in the Scripture cosmogony corresponds essentially with that which has been given. There was first a void and formless earth: this was literally true of the “heavens and the earth,” if they were in a condition of a gaseous fluid. The succession is as follows: (1.) Light. (2.) The dividing of the waters below from the waters above the earth, (the word translated _waters_ may mean _fluid_.) (3.) The dividing of the land and water on the earth. (4.) Vegetation; which Moses, appreciating the philosophical characteristic of the new creation distinguishing it from previous inorganic substances, defines as that “which has seed in itself.” (5.) The sun, moon, and stars. (6.) The lower animals, those that swarm in the waters, and the creeping and flying species of the land. (7.) Beasts of prey (“creeping” here meaning “prowling”)-- (8.) Man. In this succession, we observe not merely an order of events, like that deduced from science; there is a system in the arrangement, and a far-reaching prophecy, to which philosophy could not have attained, however instructed. The account recognizes in creation two great eras of three days each,--an _Inorganic_ and an _Organic_. Each of these eras opens with the appearance of _light_: the _first_, light cosmical; the _second_, light from the sun for the special uses of the earth.