Even if we suppose that before this act, the sun was already incandescent, and the moon capable of reflecting the light, the whole arrangement of the earth’s rotation may have been such that the alternations of light and darkness may have been very different from what they are now, and the seasons also.  A moment’s reflection regarding the obliquity of the earth’s axis, nutation, the precession of the equinoxes, the eccentricity of the orbit and the changes in the position of the orbit, will show us what ample room there was for a special adjustment and adaptation between the earth and its satellite and between both to the solar centre.[2] So that faith which accepts this as a Divine arrangement made among the special and formal acts of Creation, cannot be said to be unreasonable, or to be flying in the face of any known facts.

[Footnote 1:  Ver. 19, &c.  The same word is also used of “making” priests (l Kings xii. 31), and appointing (R.V.)("advancing” A.V.), ("making,” as we familiarly say) Moses and Aaron (1 Sam. xii. 6).]

[Footnote 2:  And the Psalmist justly speaks of God as preparing the light of the sun (Psa. lxxiv. 16).]

It is very remarkable, as showing how little we can attribute this narrative, on any basis of probability, to mere fancy or guess-work, that this matter should have been assigned to the fourth day—­after the fiat for plant-life had gone forth.

But the fact is that the unregulated light, and the vaporous uniform climate that must have continued if the fourth day’s command had never issued, though it might have served for a time for the lowest beginnings of life, especially marine or aquatic, would ultimately have rendered any advance in the series of design impossible.  Such a fact would never have occurred to an ignorant and uninspired writer.

It is here impossible to say whether the whole arrangements indicated were made at once in obedience to the Divine Design, or were produced gradually.

It has been suggested that uniformity of climate and temperature continued up till the carboniferous ages, at any rate; and it is only in the later ages that such differences of fauna in different parts of the world appear, as to show differences of climate more like what we have at present.

Whether this is so or not, I am not concerned to argue.  The narrative tells us that God did, at a certain point in his Creative work, design and ordain the necessary arrangements; and physical science may find out, when it is able, how and when the adjustments spoken of came about.

(5) AND GOD SAID—­
     (i.) Let the waters bring forth the moving creature that hath life,
     (ii.) Let fowl fly above the earth on the face of the expanse.

As to (i.) the “creation” consisted of—­great sea-monsters (or water monsters), and every living thing that moveth.

Then the animal life received a blessing.  Animals, even the lowliest, are capable of a new feature in life—­happiness in their being, which cannot be predicated of plants.