6. The Fifth Day

I. The fifth day of Moses introduces us into new and almost unexplored realms of wonder. Animal life is here mentioned for the first time. This however was not its first commencement. Scripture indicates the infusion of the primitive germs of life on the first day; and in accordance with this, we find fossil evidence of marine life from a very early date. It would appear that the sea was amply peopled as far back as the Devonian era, many hundred thousand years before the fifth day. This is not mentioned by Moses. He speaks only of the more striking and distinct features of creation, such as would have come under the notice of a contemporary observer, such as he felt himself to be during the series of his visions. Notwithstanding the shoals of fish hidden beneath the ocean surface, and a few insects and air-breathing reptiles, this globe was still, to the eye, an unpeopled waste. Now the bright sunshine and limpid atmosphere made the earth rejoice; there was a great outburst of life, and strange new species of creatures suited to the changed conditions sprang into existence. Until a few years ago the passage in Genesis was the only record existing of a most wonderful and quite hidden episode of creation. Geology has now brought to light the skeletons of the animals that Moses saw in vision, and has corroborated every detail of his narrative. Men change, and their ideas, and their science; but the word of the Lord abides for ever. Events always justify those who walk by faith in that word. Have patience, and in due course God will give you light.

II. Our translations do not give the full force of the description of the fifth day. In the Hebrew it runs thus: “God said, Let the waters swarm with swarms of the reptile that hath the breath of life, and the fowl, etc. . . . And God created the great sea-monsters and every soul of the creature that creepeth, which the waters swarmed out after their kind, and all flying of wing after its kind” (Gen. i. 20, 21). Here, for the only time in describing so many wonders, Moses seems to express astonishment at the enormous abundance and enormous size of the day’s productions. They must be of some very unusual kinds. It used to be supposed that they were the fish and birds of our present geological epoch. But the words, taken precisely, imply something more than that; and further, it is unlikely that birds and fishes should be placed apart in the scriptural classification from the animals belonging to the same creative epoch. It is more reasonable to suppose that the works of the fifth day are widely separated in character and in their date from those of the sixth day. There are more mysteries in God’s words and works than you can fathom. You see only the surface. Pray God for full intelligence. You cannot attain to it by your natural powers.

III. The modern revelation made by God in science has developed for us the brief revelation in Genesis. After the appearance of the sun, the Permian era began, followed by the Trias and Oolite. This was emphatically a period of great amphibious monsters and creeping things, of gigantic birds and strange flying creatures. The Megalosaurus was a carnivorous land animal, fifty feet long. There was a giant frog, the Labyrinthodon, tortoises twenty feet across, lizards or crocodiles with a length of sixty and seventy feet. There were birds that stood ten feet in height, and flying serpents and lizards, the pterosaurus and pterodactyl. This is the era, naturally unknown in his time, which Moses describes on his fifth day. It is totally different from ours. No species of that creation survive now; none of the mammals of our epoch existed then. That era fell at the end of the Primary and the beginning of the Secondary system. Our present fauna began in later Tertiary times and continue in the Quaternary. How wonderful is the harmony of revelation and nature, of God’s words and His works! Let there be a similar harmony between your words and works, between your faith and your life.