What, then, is the day of creation, as distinguished by Moses himself from the natural day. The general opinion, and that which at first sight appears most probable, is that it is merely the ordinary civil day of twenty-four hours. Those who adopt this view insist on the impropriety of diverting the word from its usual sense. Unfortunately, however, for this argument, the word is not very frequently used in the Scriptures for the whole twenty-four hours of the earth's revolution. Its etymology gives it the sense of the time of glowing or warmth, and in accordance with this the divine authority here limits its meaning to the daylight. Accordingly throughout the Hebrew Scriptures _yom_ is generally the natural and not the civil day; and where the latter is intended, the compound terms "day and night" and "evening and morning" are frequently used. Any one who glances over the word "day" in a good English concordance can satisfy himself of this fact. But the sense of natural day from sunrise to sunset is expressly excluded here by the context, as already shown; and all that we can say in favor of the interpretation that limits the day of creation to twenty-four hours, is that next to the use of the word for the natural day, which is its true popular meaning, its use for the civil day is perhaps the most frequent. It is therefore by no means a statement of the whole truth to affirm, as many writers have done, that the civil day is _the ordinary_ meaning of the term. At the same time we may admit that this is _one_ of its ordinary meanings, and therefore may be its meaning here. Another argument frequently urged is that the day of creation is said to have had an evening and morning. We shall consider this more fully in the sequel, and in the mean time may observe that it appears rather hazardous to attribute an ordinary evening and morning to a day which, on the face of the record, preceded the formation and arrangement of the luminaries which are "for days and for years."[47]