“And the earth caused to go forth sprouts, the herb seeding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit whose seed is in it, after his kind, and God saw that it was good.  And there was evening, and there was morning, a third day.”

The record of the third day is a very important one, because it is the first point at which the Mosaic Record comes in contact with that other record which is written in the rocks.  Up to this time we have only been able to compare the statements of Moses with conjectural views of the earliest condition of the earth, which, though they may be highly probable, are at best only conjectures.  But from this point we have to deal with a number of ascertained facts—­certain landmarks stand out which enable us to fix the correspondent parts of the two narratives, and guide us to the identification and interpretation of their minor details.

The first of these landmarks is the appearance of the dry land, or, in geological language, the commencement of the process of upheaval.  At the close of the second day the earth was, in all probability, as we have seen, a globe internally molten, but having a solid crust which was uniformly covered with a layer of water, and surrounded by an atmosphere which, though it had parted with some of its ingredients, was still very much more complex, more dense, and more extensive than it is at present.  The newly condensed waters would rest on the surface of the primeval rock, whatever that rock might be.  The internal heat conducted through it would keep the waters in a state of intense ebullition, and at the same time their surface would be agitated by violent atmospheric currents as the heated air ascended, and was replaced by cooler air from the outer regions of the atmosphere.  Under these circumstances the water would dissolve or wear down portions of the newly-formed rock on which it rested.  At the same time the steam, which would be continually rising from the boiling ocean, would descend from the upper regions of the atmosphere in the form of rain, and bring with it in solution considerable quantities of those elements which still existed in the form of vapour, just as rain now brings down ammonia and carbonic acid which it has absorbed in its passage through the atmosphere.  New combinations would thus be formed between the materials dissolved or abraded by the ocean and those brought down by the rain.  When these combinations had reached a certain amount they would be deposited in the form of mud upon the bed of the ocean, and thus the earliest sedimentary rocks would be formed.  As the temperature gradually decreased, the character of these combinations would probably be changed, and at the same time the atmosphere would be diminished in volume and density, and become more pure by the absorption of a large portion of its original constituents, which would have been incorporated into various minerals.