all which
belongs to the work of the fourth Biblical day of creation, even {305} the
whole formation of stars and of our system of planets, _succeeded_ the work
of the third day, the formation of earthly continents and plants. And
geology in its strata, which exhibit petrifactions, shows us that the
relative Biblical days' works in reality did not succeed one another
alternately in such a way that the one began where the other ceased, but
that from the beginning of organic life the works of the third and the
fifth days from the carboniferous period, also the works of the third,
fifth, and sixth days, developed themselves perfectly by the side of each
other. It would be an excess of refinement to identify any Biblical day of
creation with any period or any complex of periods in the development of
the earth or of the world.

On the other hand, for a Christianity founded upon the Holy Scripture, it
is still not entirely without interest to compare _the results of natural
science and the extent and succession of the Biblical days' works with one
another_. For a declaration which undertakes to trace something which has
so deep a hold on human life as the Sabbath-rest, back to the prototype of
directly divine action, is certainly worthy of attention. Now if we wish to
make such a comparison, we can only do it in exact analogy with the way and
manner in which we compare the predictions of the prophetical word with
their fulfilment. For in so far as the declarations of that Biblical record
about the circumstances of creation have religious value of which we are to
take notice, they as declarations concerning events of which man certainly
cannot have historical knowledge of his own, come entirely under the point
of view of the _prophetical word_; with the exception that they do not
contain a forward-looking but a {306} _backward-looking prophecy_. This is
one of the most correct and fruitful thoughts which Johann Heinrich Kurz,
in his "Bibel und Astronomie" ("Bible and Astronomy"), Berlin, Wohlgemuth,
1st edition, 1842, has expressed, but has fantastically misused, in that
work, in general so prolific of indefensible positions; a fate which, as is
well known, the forward-looking prophecy has had also often enough to
undergo.

In the same manner as we have to explain the forward-looking prophecy from
two factors--on the one hand, from the circumstances of time, the
knowledge, the dispositions, and the characters of prophets; on t