" The
explicitness of the first account and its naturalness to the minds
of the great mass of early theologians gave it at first a decided
advantage; but Jewish thinkers, like Philo, and Christian thinkers,
like Origen, forming higher conceptions of the Creator and his
work, were not content with this, and by them was launched upon the
troubled sea of Christian theology the idea that the creation was
instantaneous, this idea being strengthened not only by the second
of the Genesis legends, but by the great text, "He spake, and it
was 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.
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