The Work of the Fourth Day.
Up to the Carboniferous time of deposit, the air had never been
sufficiently cleared of its dark clouds of deadly gases, to admit
sunshine on the earth. Vegetation had not reached a climax. No mention
is to be made of animals existing, until this climax is reached. It will
be reached when the sun shall have taken off the “swaddling band” of her
childhood, and depositing the same, as coal, in the earth, shall give
the earth a clothing of flowers. Non-flowering plants are evening, the
contrast will be the flowering plant in the sunshine.
1. By figure of metonymy, again he traced the progress of deposits
through the sun, which God had made, with the moon and stars. The labor
of the sun to clear the atmosphere, calling for immediate help of God,
was long and persevering. Poetically, the narrative is enriched by this
elegant figure, in putting cause for effect. As now from the earth for
the first time he beholds the clear sunlight, he doubtless is reminded,
that in mentioning the creation of this center of attraction in our
system, he had given a name which indicated a specific property of the
sun, viz, light; whereas it also had heat and force.
Now, calling it by a generic name, and remembering also that in
describing the origin of Earth no mention had been made of the rest of
the heavens, he incidentally mentions that God made them all, without
attempting the individual history of either. His mission is to trace in
progress the contrasting changes of God’s work in the Earth. And to his
text he adheres.
Since the sun is the only source of permanent natural light within our
system, and since Moses had made light to contrast with the darkness of
chaos in the first day, it seems strange that any intelligent reader
should understand him to speak of the bringing into existence of the
great orb of light the fourth day. Shining in on the earth is all that
is noted.
2. Sir Charles Lyell, the great English geologist, gives us the process
by which sunlight was let in on the earth during the carboniferous age.
This age corresponds to the fourth day of Moses. The dark band of gases
intercepted the clear rays of sunlight, so that a somber hue of gray
covered the earth, as in twilight. Vegetation must slowly do the work of
depositing these gases, until diminished so that fire, or flame, could
be supported. Such was the resinous and oily nature of all vegetation of
that period, that a stroke of lightning might set the world on fire, to
burn for six months or a year. Some of the carbonated growth of the
forests would be hidden away beyond the reach of flame. In this
condition it would ripen into coal. But enough carbonic acid would
escape, to intercept the clear rays of the sun, and another period of
deposit would set in. In the Nova Scotia coal mines, alone, he had
noticed one hundred of these burnings, implying a long period of deposit
between each. It is thus the long ages struggled, to enable the sun to
kiss the vegetation into bloom. The widely scattered coal beds of this
period show that the whole earth was covered with a tropical forest.
Large veins of this coal are found in Greenland, Nova Zembla Island,
Tasmania, and the Melville Islands.
3. We have had subsequent periods of deposits of carbon in forests that
produced coal. But the coal formed since that age is generally soft. One
short coal period occurred this side the great upheavals of mountains.
This coal is found on the Pacific Coast, and yields only forty-four per
cent. carbon. The best coal had its origin before the flowers. In Moses’
prophetic vision of the work of the sun, he grasped certain points in
the future of astronomy.
4. He noticed the use an enlightened civilization would make of the
motions of the heavens. He noticed the Zodiac divided into signs, and
time measured by three clocks of nature, called “days, years, and
seasons.” The season clock is by the precession of the equinoxes,
consuming 25,000 years in a circle. Michael, the archangel, used this
term in explanation of the “long time” that would elapse before the
final end. With the clear sunlight, the climax of vegetation was
reached. Two inorganic mornings and two vegetable mornings have been
noted; two animal mornings remain to finish the work of God with matter.
“And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.”