done; he commanded, and it stood fast"--or, as it appears in
the Vulgate and in most translations, "He spake, and they were made; he
commanded, and they were created."

As a result, it began to be held that the safe and proper course was to
believe literally BOTH statements; that in some mysterious manner God
created the universe in six days, and yet brought it all into existence
in a moment. In spite of the outcries of sundry great theologians,
like Ephrem Syrus, that the universe was created in exactly six days of
twenty-four hours each, this compromise was promoted by St. Athanasius
and St. Basil in the East, and by St. Augustine and St. Hilary in the
West.

Serious difficulties were found in reconciling these two views, which
to the natural mind seem absolutely contradictory; but by ingenious
manipulation of texts, by dexterous play upon phrases, and by the
abundant use of metaphysics to dissolve away facts, a reconciliation
was effected, and men came at least to believe that they believed in
a creation of the universe instantaneous and at the same time extended
through six days.(4)

(4) For Origen, see his Contra Celsum, cap xxxvi, xxxvii; also his
De Principibus, cap. v; for St. Augustine, see his De Genesi conta
Manichaeos and De Genesi ad Litteram, passim; for Athanasius, see his
Discourses against the Arians, ii, 48,49.

Some of the efforts to reconcile these two accounts were so fruitful as
to deserve especial record. The fathers, Eastern and Western, developed
out of the double account in Genesis, and the indications in the Psalms,
the Proverbs, and the book of Job, a vast mass of sacred science bearing
upon this point. As regards the whole work of creation, stress was laid
upon certain occult powers in numerals. Philo Judaeus, while believing
in an instantaneous creation, had also declared that the world was
created in six days because "of all numbers six is the most productive";
he had explained the creation of the heavenly bodies on the fourth day
by "the harmony of the number four"; of the animals on the fifth day
by the five senses; of man on the sixth day by the same virtues in the
number six which had caused it to be set as a limit to the creative
work; and, greatest of all, the rest on the seventh day by the vast mass
of mysterious virtues in the number seven.

St. Jerome held that the reason why God did not pronounce the work of
the second day "good" is to be found in the fact that ther