Page:Geology and Mineralogy considered with reference to Natural Theology, 1837, volume 1.djvu/33

 Rh beginning of one evening to the beginning of another evening.) This first evening may be considered as the termination of the indefinite time which followed the primeval The point, however, upon which the interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis appears to me really to turn, is, whether the two first verses are merely a summary statement of what is related in detail in the rest of the chapter, and a sort of introduction to it, or whether they contain an account, of an act of creation. And this last seems to me to be their true interpretation, first, because there is no other account of the creation of the earth; secondly, the second verse describes the condition of the earth when so created, and thus prepares for the account of the work of the six days; but if they speak of any creation, it appears to me that this creation "in the beginning" was previous to the six days, because, as you will observe, the creation of each day is preceded by the declaration that God said, or willed, that such things should be ("and God" said), and therefore the very form of the narrative seems to imply that the creation of the first day began when these words are lint-used, i. e. with the creation of light in ver. 3. The time then of the creation in ver. 1 appears to me not to be defined: we are told only what alone we are concerned with; that all things were made by God. Nor is this any new opinion. Many of the fathers (they are quoted by Petavius, l. c. c. 11, § i.—viii.) supposed the two first verses of Genesis to contain an account of a distinct and prior act of creation; some, as Augustine; Theodoret, and others, that of the creation of matter; others, that of the elements; others again (and they the most numerous) imagine that, not these visible heavens, but what they think to be called elsewhere "the highest heavens," the "heaven of heavens," are here spoken of; our visible heavens being related to have been created on the second day. Petavius himself regards the light as the only act of creation of the first day (c. vii. "de opere prima diei, i. e. luce"), considering the two first verses as a summary of the account of creation which was about to follow, and a general declaration that all things were made by God.

Episcopius again, and others, thought that the creation and fall of the bad angels took place in the, interval here spoken of: and misplaced as such speculations are, still they seem to show that it is natural to suppose that a considerable interval may have taken place between the creation related in the first verse of Genesis and that of which an account is given in the third and following. verses. Accordingly, in some old editions of the English Bible, where there is no division into verses, you actually find a break at the end of what is now the second verse; and in Lnther's Bible (Wittenburg, 1557) you have in addition the figure 1 placed against