[1] This will become more clear when I have further explained the
subject.
[Footnote 1: And of course if the true sense be "fashioned" or
"moulded," the question does not arise.]
II.--THE SECOND PART OF THE NARRATIVE.
But from this point the narrative commences to be more precise, and to
exhibit a very singular and altogether unprecedented division of
creative work into "days."
Now I have already indicated my doubt whether we ought to import any
unusual meaning to explain this term.
In the first place, the objection that till the movements and relations
of the sun to the earth were ordained there would be no _measure of a
day_ will not stand a moment's examination. Nor will the further
objection sometimes made, that even with the sun, a day is a very
uncertain thing: for example, a day and a night in the north polar
regions are periods of month-long duration, quite different from what
they are in England, or at Mount Sinai. Obviously, a "day" with
reference to the planet for which the term is used, means the period
occupied by one rotation of the planet on its own axis. The rotation of
the earth is antecedent to anything mentioned in the narrative we are
considering. In the nature of things, it would have been coeval with the
introduction of the _prima materies_--at least if any nebular hypothesis
can be relied on.
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