I take leave to add that even the respectful attempt to make Genesis accommodate itself to the supposed requirements of Geology, by boldly assuming that the days of Creation were each a thousand years long,--seems inadmissible. Even were such an hypothesis allowed, nothing would be gained: for _Geology_ does not by any means require us to believe that after a thousand years of misty light, there came a thousand years of ocean deposit: and again, a thousand years of moist and dry, during which vegetable life alone prevailed: and then a thousand years of sun, moon, and stars. The very notion seems absurd[300].--But, what is more to the purpose, such an interpretation seems to stultify the whole narrative. A _week_ is described. _Days_ are spoken of,--each made up of an evening and a morning. GOD'S cessation from the work of Creation on the Seventh Day is emphatically adduced as the reason of the Fourth Commandment,--the mysterious precedent for _our_ observance of one day of rest at the end of every six days of toil,--"_for_ in six days" (it is declared,) "the LORD made Heaven and Earth[301]." You may not play tricks with language plain as this, and elongate a week until it shall more than embrace the span of all recorded Time. Neither am I able to see what would be gained by proposing to prolong the Days of Creation indefinitely, so as to consider them as representing vast and unequal periods; (though I am far from presuming to speak of _any_ pious conjecture with disrespect.) My inveterate objection to this scheme is again twofold. (1) The best-ascertained requirements of Geology are _not satisfied_ by a _sixfold_ division of phenomena corresponding with what is recorded in Genesis of the Six Days of Creation. (2) This method does even greater violence to the letter of the inspired narrative than the scheme of reconcilement last hinted at.