But on the view of the periods, some such position must be taken up.  And if so, I must maintain that Professor Huxley has shown—­if indeed it was not obvious already—­that the idea of a series of periods, and in each of which a certain kind of life began and culminated (if it was not fully completed) before another began, is untrue to nature.  This, therefore, cannot have been intended by the author of Genesis.

I will here interrupt my argument for a moment to say that there is a certain degree of coincidence between the succession of life on the earth as far as it is explained by palaeontological research, and the order of creation stated in Genesis; but that is not concerned with any forced interpretation of the term “day.”  The coincidence is just near enough to give rise to a desire to identify creative periods with the series shown by the fossil-bearing rocks; while it is attended with just enough of difference to furnish matter for controversy, and to expose the interpreters to be cut up.

But to return.  Nothing, I submit, is gained by getting day to mean period.  Let us put the matter quite squarely.  Let us take day to mean period, and let us take all the verses to mean the process of producing on earth the various life-forms.

In order to come at once to the point, let us begin with the time when the dry land and the waters are separate.  At that moment, there is nothing said (or implied) about life already having begun in either water or on dry land.  God commanded plants to grow; consequently during that whole period nothing but plants, and that of all the kinds and classes mentioned, should appear either in water or on land.  That period being done, then came the command for water animals, fish and great monsters, and also birds.  We ought, accordingly, to come next upon a whole period in which no trace of anything but plants and these animals can be found; and lastly, we ought to find the period of mammalia, smaller reptiles, amphibia and insects (creeping things).

That is the fair and plain result of what comes of supposing the terms “let there be,” &c., to mean production on earth of the thing’s themselves, and that the days are long periods.

All overlapping of the periods is inadmissible.  All meaning is taken away, if we allow of fish (e.g.) appearing in the middle of our first period; for God did not command another day’s work till after the first was completed—­“there was evening and there was morning, a first day” (period), &c.

No; to suit the text so interpreted, we must have a full period of plants with no fish; then a period of both but no insects, no creeping things, no animals; and so on.  Now it is quite idle to contend any longer, that any such state of things ever existed.