It will be said, perhaps, that we are here arguing against ourselves: these eminent writers are in favor of reducing the days of Creation to one single point of time; whereas it is our purpose to stretch them out to periods of indefinite length. But no: our object just now is not precisely to establish our own hypothesis, but rather to prepare the way for its discussion. We want to show that we are quite free to abandon the popular view of the Mosaic Days if there be good reason for our doing so. And it seems to us that we have abundantly established this point by a long list of eminent ecclesiastical writers, who, without any note of censure, have diverged very widely from the common interpretation. No doubt they have shortened the time, and we want to lengthen it. But in this they agree with us, that the days of Creation are not of necessity days in the ordinary sense of the word. Nay, Saint Augustine goes farther, and maintains, from the evidence of the Sacred Text itself, that they cannot be understood in this sense.[141]
Having thus cleared away a serious difficulty that seemed to obstruct our path, we may proceed without hesitation to the direct object of our inquiry. The burden of proof, let it be remembered, is not with us, but rather with those who contend for Days of twenty-four hours. They must prove that this word Day in the first chapter of Genesis means a period of twenty-four hours, and _can mean nothing else_. If it _may_ be understood in a wider sense, consistently with the usage of Scripture, that is quite enough for us. We are perfectly at liberty to adopt an interpretation which, on the one hand, the Sacred Text fairly admits, and on the other, the discoveries of Natural Science would seem to demand. Let us examine, then, the arguments that are usually adduced in favor of the popular interpretation.
Throughout the first chapter of Genesis the Hebrew word יוֺם (_yom_) is everywhere employed by Moses to designate the Days of Creation. And many writers contend that the use of this word is, in itself, evidence enough that he spoke of days in the common sense of the term. It is plain, they say, from the usage of Scripture, that the word יוֺם (_yom_) had a fixed and certain meaning in the Hebrew language; the same precisely as that which we now attach to the English word Day. Sometimes, when contra-distinguished from night, it was applied to the period of light, from sunrise to sunset; otherwise, it meant the civil day of twenty-four hours, measured by the revolution of the Sun. Moreover, it had unquestionably attained this meaning at the time when Moses wrote, and therefore it could not have been employed by him in any other sense.