I wish it to be distinctly understood, that I am endeavoring to show, only, that the language of Scripture will admit of an indefinite interval between the first creation of matter and the six demiurgic days. I am willing to admit, at least for the sake of argument, that the common interpretation, which makes matter only six thousand years old, is the most natural. But I contend that no violence is done to the language by admitting the other interpretation. And in further proof of this position, I appeal to the testimony of distinguished modern theologians and philologists, as I have to several of the ancients. This point cannot, indeed, be settled by the authority of names. But I cannot believe that any will suppose such men as I shall mention were led to adopt this view simply because geologists asked for it, while their judgments told them that the language of the Bible would not bear such a meaning. When such men, therefore, avow their acquiescence in such an interpretation, it cannot but strengthen our confidence in its correctness. "The interval," says Bishop Horsley, "between the production of the matter of the chaos and the formation of light, is undescribed and unknown." "Were we to concede to naturalists," says Baumgarten Crusius, "all the reasonings which they advance in favor of the earth's early existence, the conclusion would only be, that the earth itself has existed much more than six thousand years, and that it had then already suffered many great and important revolutions. But if this were so, would the relation of Moses thereby become false and untenable? I cannot think so." "By the phrase _in the beginning_," says Doederlin, "the time is declared when something began to be. But when God produced this remarkable work, Moses does not precisely define." "We do not know," says Sharon Turner, "and we have no means of knowing, at what point of the ever-flowing eternity of that which is alone eternal,--the divine subsistence,--the creation of our earth, or any part of the universe, began." "All that we can learn explicitly from revelation is, that nearly six thousand years have passed since our first parents began to be." "The words in the text," says Dr. Wiseman, "do not merely express a momentary pause between the first fiat of creation and the production of light; for the participial form of the verb, whereby the Spirit of God, the creative energy, is represented as brooding over the abyss, and communicating to it the productive virtue, naturally expresses a continuous, and not a passing action." "I am strongly inclined to believe," says Bishop Gleig, "that the matter of the corporeal universe was all created at once; though different portions of it may have been reduced to form at very different periods. When the universe was created, or how long the solar system remained in a chaotic state, are vain inquiries, to which no answer can be given."