The Work of the Third Day.
1. A globe of vapor in contact with the cold voids of space must
condense or liquify. The beginning would be upon the outside; constantly
growing heavier according to bulk, it would work its way nearer to the
sun. Having become a center of attraction, and coming back to the now
closed-up ring, it would claim a portion of the same as an atmosphere.
Increasing now its centrifugal force, it gained an orbit inside the
ring, still drawing nearer the sun. Job’s attention had been called to
the earth’s appearance in this “gathering” process. “When I made the
cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddling band for it.”
Moses began the third day as the globe began to condense. “And he
gathered the waters together into one place; and he called the gathering
together of the waters, seas.” While the globe was in a condition of
vapor, the waters were firmament waters; and the word firmament answered
very well for both globe and visible expanse. Hence, “God made a
firmament” by figure; covered both. But as soon as gathered, there was a
distinction. Now only the expanse, holding yet a cloudy vapor, could be
called firmament, or heaven; and the gathered waters he called seas.
2. Science claims that the present pointing of the pole of the Earth,
and its inclination to the ecliptic, could not produce such a warm
climate as the Earth once enjoyed. This fact, in connection with the
Earth covered with ice, at a remote period of the past, confounds the
mere seeker of cause in nature’s laws. The ancient pole-pointing is sung
by Job. According to his description of light and darkness, one pole of
the Earth must have pointed directly to the sun throughout the year. And
as that warm climate was uniform, it must have turned on its axis not
only daily, but as does our moon in reference to Earth, once over in its
entire orbicular journey. Its enlightened hemisphere was never in
darkness; its dark hemisphere was never in light. According to Job’s
statement, both light and darkness were stationary. “Where is the place
where light dwelleth? And as for darkness, where is the place thereof,
that thou shouldst take it to the bound thereof, and that thou shouldst
know the paths to the house thereof?” All our deposits then hung as
gases in the air; one-half of which science proclaims to have been
oxygen. In the language of Solomon, the mountains before rising must
have first “settled” in the sea. The psalmist saw that God spread out
the earth upon the waters, that he founded it upon the sea, and
established it upon the floods. Job saw that the very corner foundation
stone was made to sink. Moses rushes the deposits all into the evening
of the third day, to the appearance of dry land. “And God said, Let the
waters under the heaven (the new firmament) be gathered together unto
one place, and let the dry land appear.” Here are eighty miles deposit
made in the sea, all of which came out of the air and water. During this
time Moses says, “The Lord God had not caused it to rain on the Earth.”
“The plant and the herb of the field had not yet been made.”
3. With such a pole-pointing, only one end of the Earth could receive
deposits, and the sun could take hold only of that end. Job alludes to a
convulsion in which “The proud were shaken out of it, that the sun might
take hold of both ends of it.” 38:13. Before this change, “The waters
were covered as with a stone, and the deep was frozen.” Deposits are now
made from the air at the rate of four hundredths of an inch in a year.
At this rate it would take, possibly, eighty million of years to reach
the surface. Our globe was never a rain-less planet.
4. The allusion to its not having rained on the earth, is an allusion
that the deposits were yet beneath the waters, until the “dry land
appeared.” Following the changes of organic life up to the time of the
deposits of the “Old Red Sand Stone,” where God spread out the waving
forests of the Devonian plain, he had found the fit contrast to the
inorganic deposit of the evening.
5. The climate of the first part of the third clay was chilled to the
temperature of melting ice. The latter part was torrid. The equator
marked the bound between perpetual sunlight and perpetual darkness.
Along this equator a line of open sea would beat against a line of
perpetual ice. The spray and vapor from the open sea, going south, would
be rapidly converted into snow and ice, increasing the thickness and
gravity of the ice. At length, breaking by its own weight, it would
drift into the open sea. During the first part of this day, there was
nothing to prevent this drift-ice finding its way to the very north
pole. The sea, therefore, would be at a temperature of 32 degrees Fahr.
6. After the deposits neared the top, and before dry land appeared, the
larger bergs were kept back, and tropical waters resulted, followed by
the same climate upon the dry land, as it appeared. At the close of this
day there existed many kinds of water animals, but they did not form a
suitable contrast with what Moses had to start with, as evening. These
were inorganic deposits from the air. The organic deposits of the
Devonian forests are the morning. “And the earth brought forth the tree,
yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself (cryptogams) after his kind.”
“And the evening and the morning were the third day.”