It needs few words to prove that in the fifth day's work we vainly look for an exact correspondence with the Secondary or Mesozoic period. Fishes, even vertebrated fishes, had been created in abundance in Palæozoic time, and so before the Carboniferous age; also the earlier reptiles, chiefly Amphibian, preceded the age when they arrived at gigantic proportions and in every sphere, earth having its species no less than sea and air. Does this agree with the record which distinguishes its denizens, as of sea and air, from those that were only called into being on the following day—which declares that every reptile of the earth belongs to the sixth, and not the fifth? Dinosaurs (including Megalosaurs, Iguanodons, Hylmosaurs) being land reptiles stand opposed. Nor is this all. The absurdity of the periodic interpretation is that we are compelled to leave out the fishes proper, such as Adam knew and we, in order to make it fulfilled in Labyrinthodonts, Ichthyosaurs, Pterodactyls, &c. Birds had in no way their culmination, any more than Teliost Fishes, or even the higher insects, and mammals, till the Quaternary of man. The Cetacea (“the great whales”) again resist this expository violence. Expressly specified in the text as created on the fifth day, being water creatures, they according to geology ought to belong to a far later epoch, as being of a high mammalian rank, and in no way to be classed with even the small marsupials, &c., of an earlier day, though this again is not according to the record. The truth we have seen, in accordance with that of the four previous days, is that the fifth day's work contemplates the entire population of sea and air for man's world, and nothing else. Here as in every other case the ages of geology prove untenable when fairly examined. Apply the six days to Adam's time, and the balance is restored.
Exactly analogous for the land's inhabitants is the work of the sixth day. Does it really correspond with Kænozoic time before man, or the Tertiary age? The scripture gives manifestly and solely the land creatures made for man and on the same day as man; geology is obliged to confess that “all the Fishes, Reptiles, Birds, and Mammals of the Tertiary are extinct species” (Dana, 518). Take the equine tribe alone: there was the Orohippus of the Eocene, the Anchitherium of the Meiocene, and the Hipparion of the Pleiocene. All passed away before the Quaternary, when the Equus Caballus exists for man's service. Even those who contend most keenly for nothing but secondary causes operating all through cannot deny the general extermination of species that closed Mesozoic time, any more than the great disturbances that wrought repeatedly and similarly in the Tertiary age. Indeed geologists of eminence, who had nothing to do with theology and alleged prejudice, are constrained to allow that the elevation of the great mountain chains of Europe and Asia, as well as of America, only attained their full height about the close of that period, as well as the larger part of igneous eruption, with the usual destruction of systems of life in being previous to God's introducing a new one adapted to the fresh conditions. “Chaos” is not a word any Christian need favor; but there was assuredly a fearful state of disorder that intervened, however brief the interval might have been. Do not geologists seem rash to deny that of which they are and perhaps must be ignorant? But all this was antecedent to the six days. The believer absolutely subject to God's word can calmly accept every ascertained fact, assured that every work of God agrees with His word. But hypotheses are another thing and open to criticism, especially where we see plain symptoms of infidelity open or underlying.
“ And God said, Let the earth bring forth living creature (lit. soul) after its kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the field, after its kind. And it was so. And God made beast of the earth after its kind, and the cattle after its kind, and every creeping thing of the ground after its kind. And God saw that [it was] good” (ver. 24, 25).
Where is the analogy even here with the age of Mammals, as the Tertiary has been well designated? If we add according to scripture the creation of man on that same day, the system is not only different but even in contrast. The simple truth intended is that we have in these verses the land population of all kinds for the period of the human race; as before we had that of the waters and of the air, after the vegetable provision, with the due establishment not of light only but of the heavenly phenomena.
To introduce the herbivores, the reptiles, and the carnivores into the text is to strain after a scientific gloss, besides failing to represent the sense in some respects if not in all. Compare Deut. 28:2626And thy carcase shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth, and no man shall fray them away. (Deuteronomy 28:26) for the very first class. Reptiles again are too narrow, and so are the “carnivora,” where “ferae” would express the truth more exactly. Nor is there real anachronism in giving “cattle” as the first named in verse 24, the domesticable if not yet domesticated animals, appropriate to the use of man. “Creeping thing” follows in its more literal application, whereas “moving” expressed more fully the action of the creatures that peopled the waters, so as to embrace not only serpents, &c., but insect life. Animal of earth” designates the wild beast.
All of them are terms in constant usage where man lives and reigns; they do not distinctively define the age of Mammals where he was not, such as Anoplotheres, Chæropotami, Dinotheres, Paltnotheres, Lophiodons, Xiphodons, &c. Pachyderms are no doubt included, but by no means so determined as to warrant a reference to the age in which they abounded. Indeed at that time confessedly there was the almost total absence of the tribe of ruminants, which rose to prominence when man was made.
The language of the text does not really call up the period “when the brute species existed in their greatest magnificence, and brutal ferocity had full play,” but the day crowned by the creation of man where material force fell into the shade before higher powers. In man's presence the greater birds and beasts that co-existed even become extinct; as notably the Moa, of New Zealand, the Dodo of the Mauritius, and the Aepyornis of Madagascar; and again the Urus (or Bos primigenius) described in Cæsar's Comm. de Bell. Gall. vi. 26, the great Irish Elk (or Megaceros), the Megatherium, the Mastodon, and the Mammoth. For the evidence points to their co-existence with man, some for but a little while, others till recent time. The tendency has been to push man's age back on the assumption that only so could he have been coeval with them. But the facts are plain and sure enough, not only as to the first but even the last named also, that they existed with man for no inconsiderable time, and this if we accept the lowest reckoning of Biblical chronology. It seems the fashion just now to exaggerate as to time, placing the glacial season or seasons at an incredibly remote distance, and thus the gigantic creatures that perished then, and man also, judging from remains which indicate his hand. There is on the contrary strong and varied evidence, in the estimate of sober geologists, not committed to hypothesis, to show the recent date of the glacial period both in Europe and in America, and the sudden close of what is called “the drift,” and the extinction of mammoths, &c.
The second part of the sixth day's work is too momentous to be touched here. This only may be remarked, how fitting it is that for Adam's time all animal and vegetable creation should arrive at the highest organization, that the heavenly luminaries should do their regulative work in view of the race, that the seas and the land should be as a whole adequately settled, that the atmospheric conditions in supplies of water, vapor, dew, &c., should stand most favorably, with the bountiful and regular vicissitudes of night and day, for life more varied than ever before here below. Thus, if the geologic ages brought in by divine power and wisdom a constantly rising state of the earth, and of creatures suited to each new state, so the six days connected with Adam and his world express rapidly succeeding divine fiats culminating in him, and in their combination of respective goodness characterizing that period in which the human race were called not only into being but into responsibility before God. Other ages might be distinctively azoic, or the system of life might be ushered in with sea-plants, then with marine life of low type, then with fishes when the Vertebrates were made. Next, when dry land was fitted, such plants grew as would flourish and adapt it for higher ones, and, again for living creatures that live on herbage, as well as prey one on another. So in geologic ages we can talk of the age of Acrogens, of Invertebrates, of Fishes, of Reptiles, and of Mammals. But the human period is characteristically that of all, not in their utmost profusion or in their greatest physical magnitude, but as the rule in their highest forms and also together in their respective places under their appointed ruler, God's vicegerent here below. For example the Cereals attach to the human period, and depend pre-eminently on cultivation. Compare Isa. 28:23-2923Give ye ear, and hear my voice; hearken, and hear my speech. 24Doth the plowman plow all day to sow? doth he open and break the clods of his ground? 25When he hath made plain the face thereof, doth he not cast abroad the fitches, and scatter the cummin, and cast in the principal wheat and the appointed barley and the rie in their place? 26For his God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him. 27For the fitches are not threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned about upon the cummin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod. 28Bread corn is bruised; because he will not ever be threshing it, nor break it with the wheel of his cart, nor bruise it with his horsemen. 29This also cometh forth from the Lord of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working. (Isaiah 28:23‑29).
In each case we have God's word, the manifest and immediate result, and its excellence in His sight declared. Thus if the six days gave an immediate relation to Adam, the immense ages antecedent were on a vast scale preparatory; and geology, as one of its ablest exponents owns, “leaves wholly unexplained the creation of matter, life, and spirit, and that spiritual element which pervades the whole history like a prophecy, becoming more and more clearly pronounced with the progressing ages, and having its culmination and fulfillment in man.”