A LINE has but one recognized dimension, length; a plane has two dimensions, length and breadth; a solid adds a third dimension, thickness. But to each rightly belongs another element of measurement seldom acknowledged or even indeed credited, lacking which the line fades, the surface disappears, the mass disintegrates, and once again is the earth "without form, and void." This is the element of duration, commonly called time, and quite as commonly, though erroneously, vested with the attributes of enduringness which belong only to God's creation, in which time has no part. That time is quite as material as linear, plane, of spatial measure may not be readily seen, or willingly granted, until we consider some of its aspects.
The first chapter of Genesis contains no hint of limitation. The first verse is a complete and perfect declaration of creation. The following detailed account of God's self-revelation refers indeed to days, not as a measure of limitation but as periods of ascending unfoldment, until the record culminates in the third verse of the second chapter of Genesis with the sanctifying of the seventh period as God's day of rest; and it is significant that this supreme day is not defined, as is each of the preceding six, by evening and morning. The entire record contains no measure of time, no bound of limitation, no outline of materiality in thought or thing. The day and its accomplishment are alike of God; while the descriptive ordering into evening and morning conclusively eliminates any earthly mete of time.
The first record of a day in the humanly measured sense occurs in connection with the warning given to "the man" against acquaintance with evil as well as good: "For in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." This day was later stressed by the serpent, who instilled a doubt of this result of the forbidden knowledge by suggesting instead an increase of wisdom that would insure man's divinity. The yielding to temptation not only verified the certainty of God's prohibitive mandate, but inaugurated for men the fettering restrictions of this time-world, with its limiting measures, which were to endure "all the days of thy life," and initiated its reign by operating to banish them and their progeny from the beatific state of being created "in the image of God," with its attendant fruitfulness and dominion, which God had seen and beheld as "very good."
