"
St. Augustine, who showed signs of a belief in a pre-existence of
matter, made his peace with the prevailing belief by the simple
reasoning that, "although the world has been made of some material,
that very same material must have been made out of nothing."
In the wake of these great men the universal Church steadily
followed. The Fourth Lateran Council declared that God created
everything out of nothing; and at the present hour the vast
majority of the faithful--whether Catholic or Protestant--are
taught the same doctrine; on this point the syllabus of Pius IX and
the Westminster Catechism fully agree.[5]
Having thus disposed of the manner and matter of creation, the next
subject taken up by theologians was the _time_ required for the
great work.
Here came a difficulty. The first of the two accounts given in
Genesis extended the creative operation through six days, each of
an evening and a morning, with much explicit detail regarding the
progress made in each. But the second account spoke of "_the day_"
in which "the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.
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