But supposing that the inspired writer intended to say that the world was formed in six long periods of time, could not he have used some other word than _yom_ that would have been liable to fewer doubts. There are words which might have been used, as, for instance, _eth_, time, season, or _olam_, age, ancient time, eternity. The former, however, has about it a want of precision as to its beginning and end which unfits it for this use; the latter we have already seen is used as equivalent to the creative _yom_. On the whole, I am unable to find any instance which would justify me in affirming that, on the supposition that Moses intended long periods, he could have better expressed the idea than by the use of the word _yom_, more especially if he and those to whom he wrote were familiar with the thought, preserved to us in the mythology of the Hindoos and Persians, and probably widely diffused in ancient Asia, that a working day of the Creator immeasurably transcends a working day of man.[50] Many objections to the view which I have thus endeavored to support from internal evidence will at once occur to every intelligent reader familiar with the literature of this subject. I shall now attempt to give the principal of these objections a candid consideration. (1.) It is objected that the time occupied in the work of creation is given as a reason for the observance of the seventh day as a Sabbath; and that this requires us to view the days of creation as literal days. "For in six days Jehovah made the heaven and the earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day; therefore Jehovah blessed the Sabbath-day and sanctified it." The argument used here is, however, as we have already seen, one of analogy. Because God rested on his seventh day, he blessed and sanctified it, and required men in like manner to sanctify their seventh day.[51] Now, if it should appear that the working day of God is not the same with the working day of man, and that the Sabbath of God is of proportionate length to his working day, the analogy is not weakened; more especially as we find the same analogy extended to the seventh year. If it should be said, God worked in the creation of the world in six long ages, and rested on the seventh, therefore man, in commemoration of this fact, and of his own loss of an interest in God's rest by the fall, shall sanctify the seventh of his working days, the argument is stronger, the example more intelligible, than on the common supposition. This objection is, in fact, a piece of pedantic hyperorthodoxy which has too long been handed about without investigation. I may add to what has been already said in reference to it, the following vigorous thrust by Hugh Miller:[52]