The Third Day or Epoch

"And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land of the Earth appear; and it was so. And God called the dry land earth; and the gathering together of the waters called He seas. And the evening and the morning were the Third Day."

The beautiful simplicity of this statement might mislead us into thinking that the gathering together of the oceans and the erection of mountains were works of magic. While Divine operations are all great and wonderful, they are usually accomplished by reasonable methods, called the "course of Nature." And Nature's course must be marked out by Nature's God.

The ring theory of Cosmogony is that several rings had precipitated themselves upon the Earth during this Third Epoch-Day. These, according to the Divine intention, so increased the pressure on the crust of the Earth as to cause it to buckle or wrinkle. These depressions became ocean beds, and the upheavals became mountain ranges. Thus was the work of the Third Day accomplished. The waters were gathered into seas and oceans, the dry land was upheaved and began gradually to drain off in preparation for vegetation. This draining must have required a long time.--Genesis 1:9,10.

We need not assume that all the continents as we now know them were thrown up on the Third Epoch-Day. In all probability the American continent was thrown up much later than were Europe, Asia and Africa. Earthquake disturbances in our day have changed the surface of the land. They give us a reasonable conception of how the Divine command was executed on the Third Day, preparatory to Earth's vegetation.

Appropriately we next read: "And the Earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit." That is to say, vegetation began on the Third, or Carboniferous Day, though it did not reach its perfection until after the light of the Sun penetrated. There are grasses and other vegetation which prosper best in darksome shades.