CHAPTER IV.

The Phenomena to which allusions are so freely made in the “Six Days of Moses,” suggest certain scientific necessities, replete with geological information, which demonstrate the progressive work of God, for matter, in matter, by and through matter, and above matter, to the end of time.

Two books give a revelation of God, Nature and the Bible. Except for purposes of intelligent connection, as a rule, the revelations of one are not repeated in the other. Revelation on the subject of cosmos is evidently intended to supply parts, which nature is not adapted to unfold. Each stands as a part of a great whole; that the true student of nature may be thoroughly furnished with proper text books, which, when rightly understood, are conjointly harmonious, connected, and exhaustive. If man would attain even the faintest ability to measure the “footprints of God” in nature, or fathom the relation of first causes in creation, he can ill afford unacquaintance with either book. The Bible is given as a supplement to God’s voice in nature. Creation, shown in harmony with the testimony of the rocks, confirms the testimony of Moses. The unsupported hypotheses of men have led some to deplore the “mistakes of Moses.” A better acquaintance with both books will lead them, it is thought, at least to respect his great prophetic knowledge, in outlining creation’s origin and forces.

Section 1. The Work of the First Day.

1. The account, given in Genesis, of creation is in the form of an Epic Poem. As a treatise on any subject, it would be incomplete. Its design seems to be to give, in the form of poetic suggestions, the connecting links to unite creation with creation’s God. For such a purpose, it is the grandest and most complete of all productions of the pen. Six of these days are marked by contrasts, “called evening and morning” but the seventh is peculiar, having neither. The sixth is said to close God’s labor with matter. Unmeasured duration is, doubtless, the seventh.

2. The “deep,” when used in reference to the heavens, means immensity of space; as: “darkness was upon the face of the deep.” Darkness is the normal state of space. Not dependent on matter, it is eternal. Moses saw all matter created at once. God’s work, as revealed here for matter, is in harmony with correlation of matter in science.

3. By a beautiful figure of metonymy, poets speak of a part implying the whole. Such is the word “Earth,” as first introduced in this production. “And the earth (all matter) was without form.” Inertia holds all in rest. An act, fiat, or work of God, above matter, is requisite, to set it in motion. “And the Spirit of the Lord moved upon the face of the deep.” A system formed with a center of light is noted. All systems are members of this choir.

4. Science would suggest, that, if a ponderous globe, as our sun, should gather in a field of gases, though trillions of miles in diameter, all gases, within its drawing sphere, must either go toward the sun, or be thrown around it in a circle. Such was the ring of waters, or fluids, first called a firmament. A most minute directing of Providence is here suggested. It extended to each molecule of gas, and its appropriate place was determined. Before that grand movement of the Spirit of God, there was nothing with which to measure duration, and time had not commenced. No centers—no gravitation. No motion—no light or force. All this is suggested in matter “without form.” Suns only had form at the close of the first day. As systems revolved, measured duration might have commenced at the revolutions of suns about a grand center. One day at the sun would be twenty-seven of ours; one year, eighteen thousand of ours. This first day of creation may have been one hundred million of years. It included the length of these contrasts to a climax, darkness—light. The one reigning over all matter, the other forming from matter, under the direction of God.

5. If the first is a literal day, so are the seven. If the first is poetic, so are the seven. That the first was not literal, is evident in that the “Earth was without form” as yet. Hence there was no twenty-four hour measurement. Day is also used to signify a nation’s history. It is not that. It is also used to signify the life of an individual. It could not be that. “A day with the Lord is as a thousand years.” It is evident that Peter was merely hinting at the indefiniteness, as to time, of the Mosaic days. It remains, then, that it is a cosmological day, without exact measurement of time. It certainly includes all that period of chaotic darkness before time commenced. Should these gases move across the radii of our system with the speed of light, it would take thirty-five days; but should the gases move like an atmosphere in space, it would take more than ninety million of years to gather the sun. The greater probability is that these contrasted conditions of the first day, poetically described without any exact measurement, if measured, would extend through more than one hundred million of our years.

Section 2. The Work of the Second Day.

1. Creation includes not only the bringing into existence of matter, but all its undeveloped forces and changes. Revelation, upon this subject, is suggestive, rather than exhaustive, of what we need above what Nature shows, to trace creation back to God. The greatest difficulty in reading this poem understandingly, is in rightly rendering the phenomena noticed upon the second day. Figures of metonymy abound. As a rule, figures once used in prophecy are not changed when used by another prophet. Hence, we may derive benefit by seeing how other prophets have used them. Job had made the gathering of suns at the creation of light a morning in figure. Moses is about to use the same figure, and beholding the darkness of chaos preceding, he extended the figure to an evening preceding. This is the only day that pertains to light and darkness. The second day will be analogous in contrast. Whatever be the one, the other will contrast. The evening of Earth is given. “And the Earth was without form.” The contrast will be the Earth in form, for morning.

2. To read these allusions understandingly, every sentence must be cosmologically analyzed in the light of our present knowledge of astronomy, chemistry, philosophy, geology, and rhetoric. There is a grand suggestion of progress, couched in the figure of morning succeeding evening. The morning of each day is a complete contrast to its own evening; and yet the morning of that day is only the evening of the day following. The morning of the sun, with hosts of God’s angels rejoicing, is only the evening of the prospective globe, upon whose disk shall be perfected, in knowledge and true holiness, beings in God’s own image. The sun has perfected his day, in which Moses beholds the evening of the second.

3. He is looking at our system, as from the voids of space, as a whole; with its gathered sun and its immense ring of prospective planets. It is now shown him that a change is to take place in the ring, which will result in the form of a globe. To that part of the ring he draws near. The first phenomenon noticed was a separation in the ring between the “waters above, and those below.” The gases thus uniting in one substance, soon left this firmament ring of the sun, and had a firmament of its own, called heaven, or visible expanse. The Hebrew word translated “firmament” implies something tangible, and yet it was used to denote the visible expanse.

4. The first firmament was composed of tangible gases or waters, so called; the second is the expanse of heaven. The cause of the separated waters is seen in what follows. These fluids that evolved out, leaving the ring separated, are now in a condition that they only have to be gathered together into one place to be a sea. It was then steam. The suggestion is that an immense field of oxygen and hydrogen had united by the spark which separated the ring, and as the union was superheated steam, it evolved out into the voids of space as a globe. It is plain then “And God made a firmament in the midst of the waters,” means he made a globe, from which the visible expanse is seen. The vision now places the prophet upon this globe, the changes of which will occupy his attention to the end.

5. Whether any or all the planets were formed at the same time, we are not told. No allusion is made to them except an incidental one, on the fourth day, so that all things should be traced back to God as their Maker. If the union of two gases took out a segment of the ring, leaving it “separated,” it would only be temporary, as the ring would close up again. Whether our planet was the first, third, or last formed, no mention is made. The vision is designed henceforth to unfold what we need to know of Earth, not found in nature. Our globe in chaos of gases, sweeping around the sun in the form of a ring, is evening, being “without form.” Our globe in steam, having a firmament of its own, is in shape, and this is “morning.” Solomon must have given such an interpretation to the account of the second day. Prov. 8:27. Tracing the unmeasured age of wisdom, “Before the mountains were settled, before the hills, while as yet he had not made the Earth, when he prepared the heavens, I was there; when he set a compass (or circle) upon the face of the depth.” A globe of steam, possibly highly charged with electricity, revolving in an orbit outside the ring of planetary gases, was all that constituted Earth at this time. “And the evening and the morning were the second day.”

Section 3. The Work of the Third Day.

1. A globe of vapor in contact with the cold voids of space must condense or liquify. The beginning would be upon the outside; constantly growing heavier according to bulk, it would work its way nearer to the sun. Having become a center of attraction, and coming back to the now closed-up ring, it would claim a portion of the same as an atmosphere. Increasing now its centrifugal force, it gained an orbit inside the ring, still drawing nearer the sun. Job’s attention had been called to the earth’s appearance in this “gathering” process. “When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddling band for it.” Moses began the third day as the globe began to condense. “And he gathered the waters together into one place; and he called the gathering together of the waters, seas.” While the globe was in a condition of vapor, the waters were firmament waters; and the word firmament answered very well for both globe and visible expanse. Hence, “God made a firmament” by figure; covered both. But as soon as gathered, there was a distinction. Now only the expanse, holding yet a cloudy vapor, could be called firmament, or heaven; and the gathered waters he called seas.

2. Science claims that the present pointing of the pole of the Earth, and its inclination to the ecliptic, could not produce such a warm climate as the Earth once enjoyed. This fact, in connection with the Earth covered with ice, at a remote period of the past, confounds the mere seeker of cause in nature’s laws. The ancient pole-pointing is sung by Job. According to his description of light and darkness, one pole of the Earth must have pointed directly to the sun throughout the year. And as that warm climate was uniform, it must have turned on its axis not only daily, but as does our moon in reference to Earth, once over in its entire orbicular journey. Its enlightened hemisphere was never in darkness; its dark hemisphere was never in light. According to Job’s statement, both light and darkness were stationary. “Where is the place where light dwelleth? And as for darkness, where is the place thereof, that thou shouldst take it to the bound thereof, and that thou shouldst know the paths to the house thereof?” All our deposits then hung as gases in the air; one-half of which science proclaims to have been oxygen. In the language of Solomon, the mountains before rising must have first “settled” in the sea. The psalmist saw that God spread out the earth upon the waters, that he founded it upon the sea, and established it upon the floods. Job saw that the very corner foundation stone was made to sink. Moses rushes the deposits all into the evening of the third day, to the appearance of dry land. “And God said, Let the waters under the heaven (the new firmament) be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear.” Here are eighty miles deposit made in the sea, all of which came out of the air and water. During this time Moses says, “The Lord God had not caused it to rain on the Earth.” “The plant and the herb of the field had not yet been made.”

3. With such a pole-pointing, only one end of the Earth could receive deposits, and the sun could take hold only of that end. Job alludes to a convulsion in which “The proud were shaken out of it, that the sun might take hold of both ends of it.” 38:13. Before this change, “The waters were covered as with a stone, and the deep was frozen.” Deposits are now made from the air at the rate of four hundredths of an inch in a year. At this rate it would take, possibly, eighty million of years to reach the surface. Our globe was never a rain-less planet.

4. The allusion to its not having rained on the earth, is an allusion that the deposits were yet beneath the waters, until the “dry land appeared.” Following the changes of organic life up to the time of the deposits of the “Old Red Sand Stone,” where God spread out the waving forests of the Devonian plain, he had found the fit contrast to the inorganic deposit of the evening.

5. The climate of the first part of the third clay was chilled to the temperature of melting ice. The latter part was torrid. The equator marked the bound between perpetual sunlight and perpetual darkness. Along this equator a line of open sea would beat against a line of perpetual ice. The spray and vapor from the open sea, going south, would be rapidly converted into snow and ice, increasing the thickness and gravity of the ice. At length, breaking by its own weight, it would drift into the open sea. During the first part of this day, there was nothing to prevent this drift-ice finding its way to the very north pole. The sea, therefore, would be at a temperature of 32 degrees Fahr.

6. After the deposits neared the top, and before dry land appeared, the larger bergs were kept back, and tropical waters resulted, followed by the same climate upon the dry land, as it appeared. At the close of this day there existed many kinds of water animals, but they did not form a suitable contrast with what Moses had to start with, as evening. These were inorganic deposits from the air. The organic deposits of the Devonian forests are the morning. “And the earth brought forth the tree, yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself (cryptogams) after his kind.” “And the evening and the morning were the third day.”

Section 4. The Work of the Fourth Day.

Up to the Carboniferous time of deposit, the air had never been sufficiently cleared of its dark clouds of deadly gases, to admit sunshine on the earth. Vegetation had not reached a climax. No mention is to be made of animals existing, until this climax is reached. It will be reached when the sun shall have taken off the “swaddling band” of her childhood, and depositing the same, as coal, in the earth, shall give the earth a clothing of flowers. Non-flowering plants are evening, the contrast will be the flowering plant in the sunshine.

1. By figure of metonymy, again he traced the progress of deposits through the sun, which God had made, with the moon and stars. The labor of the sun to clear the atmosphere, calling for immediate help of God, was long and persevering. Poetically, the narrative is enriched by this elegant figure, in putting cause for effect. As now from the earth for the first time he beholds the clear sunlight, he doubtless is reminded, that in mentioning the creation of this center of attraction in our system, he had given a name which indicated a specific property of the sun, viz, light; whereas it also had heat and force.

Now, calling it by a generic name, and remembering also that in describing the origin of Earth no mention had been made of the rest of the heavens, he incidentally mentions that God made them all, without attempting the individual history of either. His mission is to trace in progress the contrasting changes of God’s work in the Earth. And to his text he adheres.

Since the sun is the only source of permanent natural light within our system, and since Moses had made light to contrast with the darkness of chaos in the first day, it seems strange that any intelligent reader should understand him to speak of the bringing into existence of the great orb of light the fourth day. Shining in on the earth is all that is noted.

2. Sir Charles Lyell, the great English geologist, gives us the process by which sunlight was let in on the earth during the carboniferous age. This age corresponds to the fourth day of Moses. The dark band of gases intercepted the clear rays of sunlight, so that a somber hue of gray covered the earth, as in twilight. Vegetation must slowly do the work of depositing these gases, until diminished so that fire, or flame, could be supported. Such was the resinous and oily nature of all vegetation of that period, that a stroke of lightning might set the world on fire, to burn for six months or a year. Some of the carbonated growth of the forests would be hidden away beyond the reach of flame. In this condition it would ripen into coal. But enough carbonic acid would escape, to intercept the clear rays of the sun, and another period of deposit would set in. In the Nova Scotia coal mines, alone, he had noticed one hundred of these burnings, implying a long period of deposit between each. It is thus the long ages struggled, to enable the sun to kiss the vegetation into bloom. The widely scattered coal beds of this period show that the whole earth was covered with a tropical forest. Large veins of this coal are found in Greenland, Nova Zembla Island, Tasmania, and the Melville Islands.

3. We have had subsequent periods of deposits of carbon in forests that produced coal. But the coal formed since that age is generally soft. One short coal period occurred this side the great upheavals of mountains. This coal is found on the Pacific Coast, and yields only forty-four per cent. carbon. The best coal had its origin before the flowers. In Moses’ prophetic vision of the work of the sun, he grasped certain points in the future of astronomy.

4. He noticed the use an enlightened civilization would make of the motions of the heavens. He noticed the Zodiac divided into signs, and time measured by three clocks of nature, called “days, years, and seasons.” The season clock is by the precession of the equinoxes, consuming 25,000 years in a circle. Michael, the archangel, used this term in explanation of the “long time” that would elapse before the final end. With the clear sunlight, the climax of vegetation was reached. Two inorganic mornings and two vegetable mornings have been noted; two animal mornings remain to finish the work of God with matter.

“And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.”

Section 5. The Work of the Fifth Day.

1. The contrasts of evening and morning of the fifth day are found in the sea. The contrasts of the sixth upon the land. The evening of the fifth began with the “moving things of the sea,” ending with the “whale.” With the exception of the first day, the fifth must have extended through a much longer time than all the others put together. The contrast between moving diatoms of the Gneiss rock, and the whale of the Miocene in size, is apparent. But the contrast is in a higher sense. All this long period to the Tertiary rock, gave only egg-producing animals. This was not high enough in the scale of animal existence to have the next evening, which must begin with the fifth morning, to form a contrast with man. The type of the highest of mammals must be reached, and that in the sea. This was found in the whale. Beside, the whale is intimately connected with the great geological change caused by the drift period. Here ninety-seven per cent of the previous animals of the earth became extinct. Following the drift, there came into existence nearly all the animals that now roam the Earth. This day, then, covers all the changes of the fourth, and most of the third; and of course has nothing to do with a measure of time, or order of deposits.

2. For aught we now know, the starting of animal life was in the time of the deposit of the Gneiss rock—here we find shells. From here onward was heard the voice of God, “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life.” This life, at first, was very simple; and small as simple. It required only the nourishment derived from water for its support. No animals of any considerable size are found until vegetables were furnished for their food. Those of the earlier period had to be protected from the carbonated waters by a bony covering or ivory scales. Scorpions, spiders, lizards and frogs might breathe the carbonic acid of the fourth day; but no warm-blooded animals are known to have existed until after the sun shone in upon the Earth, as a fixture.

3. Here Moses noticed the existence of “fowls of the air.” In the ichthyosaurus he might have found the contrast in size, but not in type.

4. He passed on down to the “whale as morning.” After the Carboniferous deposits, the tracks of birds and reptiles are found in the ancient sands of the shores of the waters. Gigantic saurians and voracious fish ruled the sea for untold ages; but as they all were oviparous, or egg-producing, they are ranked in the evening. Reaching the type of the ruling land animals of the next day, Moses pronounced the morning with the whale.

5. It remains a mystery, how any one knowing anything about geology can find fault with the order of the Mosaic record. So far as Moses has mentioned order, it is: moving animals in the sea, air animals, mammals. The order of science may be more explicit. Substantially it is protozoans, mollusks, radiates, articulates, vertebrates, mammals. There is no conflict, nor even deficiency. The term used by Moses is designedly generic; covering all moving creatures of the waters. The history of the rocks is in exact accord with the testimony of Moses; and both verify common observation, viz: each kind of animal produces its own kind.

6. The poise of the Earth to the sun was such as to give an ice-flow, whenever for any cause a great subsidence of the hemisphere took place.

The largest happened when the last and highest mountains were raised. As a consequence, the period called the Drift followed, when the reindeer made his home in the vicinity of England. Most tropical animals were destroyed. A new race of placential mammals was to be introduced; the type of which is found in the sea, able to endure the revolutions of the Drift. Hence the wisdom displayed in selecting this animal, as a representative of morning.

7. The Scripture claim of special providence is in harmony with the defence of the same in science. Providence is general, when wrought out in due course of law; special, when it is a power added to nature. Special providence is not a rule of action, but the exception. Science claims this much in nature. I refer to the admissions of such men as Huxley, Tyndal and Darwin. Prof. Huxley says: “No scientist of the present day will venture the affirmation, that matter is eternal. Should one be found, his brethren would rise up in court, and object to his testimony, as he would be incompetent to testify.” If not eternal, it was created by God’s special power. Prof. Darwin says: “Some of our brethren have tried by experiments, to prove spontaneous life from inorganic matter, but they have failed, and, from the nature of the case, they must ever fail.” “There must have been a first life, I think five forms, I know there must have been one from which life could proceed.” Special providence again is needed to start life. The same principle would apply as many times as the earth may have lost its living forms. Sir Charles Lyell would assure you that the fires of the Carboniferous period alone deprived the earth of all land and fresh water animals, plants and seeds, at least one hundred times. Yet it was supplied between each. Prof. Tyndal says, “Do you ask me 'May inert matter rise up and live?’ I answer directly, 'No, life must have been created.’” Here then in science are the Deists’ endorsements of exactly what every enlightened Christian believes in reference to the covenant of salvation. This is the doctrine of the science of today, viz: that “God made all matter at one and the same time; that by special power he put all parts in motion at one and the same time; that his eye is over all, ready to supply what is needed above what the machinery of nature can perform.” Carry out this principle, and you have the manifestations of the true God in Jesus, and every Bible theory of the New Covenant.

Section 6. The Work of the Sixth Day.

1. Beasts, with a perishable spirit, are the evening of the sixth day. Man without an immortal spirit is the morning. Here we shall find the grandest contrast of any of the six days. Historic man is the morning, extending to the end of God’s work, in reference to matter.

Duration ceases to be measured at the close of this day. Solomon alludes to the contrasts found in this day. “Who knoweth the spirit of the beast, that goeth downward; and the spirit of man, that goeth upward?” For a long time these animals, without a spirit to be preserved, ruled the earth as kings, “without any one to till the soil.” Jungles and forests, mountains and dales, lakes and caves, alike afford no facts inconsistent with this statement of Moses. Should science ever confirm the existence of a race prehistoric, resembling man, it will doubtless be shown that they were not a contrast with beasts, and have no connection with our race.

2. Our race undoubtedly sprang from Adam less than six thousand years ago. Prehistoric man, like evolution, rests upon the hypotheses of men, always unsafe; but in this case unsupported by a well-attested fact. The former may claim the intuitions of that class of persons ever looking up the genealogy of Cain’s wife; the latter has the common sense of the average man against him. Upon this subject, as upon every other upon which the Bible pretends to speak, “If they speak not according to what is written, it is because there is no truth in them.” By special revelation man saw that by a special providence of God, he caused the ground to become the mother of man; and from this creation proceeded, by the same special providence, a help-meet for man. She has ever proved herself the great help in the march of civilization. Facts show that man gloriously contrasts with the highest types going before.

3. It is not yet a settled question that the air, for any number of thousands of years before Adam, was sufficiently cleared of deadly gases as to admit of human breathing. On looking upon the coal veins of Pennsylvania, we need no argument to show that man could not have breathed the carbon that hung in the air of that period of deposit. The mute faces of the coal beds of Ohio forbid man’s existence then, although these succeed the former by millions of years. Geologists agree that the Pacific deposits of coal have been this side of the great upheavals of the large mountains. If man had been living then, the carbonic acid of the air would have strangled the life out of him. When we take into consideration how very slowly a continent rises out of the ocean, and that both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts had to rise over five thousand feet to expose their fruitful valleys; and also how very long a period had to elapse after, before the air would be laid into the ground by vegetation, we shall readily see the force of this proposition, viz: The very calculations which science has given us bring the deadly gases very near to the time given in Genesis for the creation of our present race.

The volcanic periods of the world’s history argue against the early habitation of the Earth by man. Every volcano is a vent for the escape of deadly gases, caused by the consumption of oils and coal in the Earth’s strata. The enormous quantity of coal consumed is but faintly indicated by the amount of ashes thrown out. The mountains give evidence of recent volcanic disturbance, greatly exceeding the present. Ancient river beds are found into whose channels the debris of the mountains had been dragged by the great ice-flow, until leveled over to the height of several thousand feet; then the volcanic era covered, in places, this drift fifty or sixty feet thick; thus preserving the silt from being dragged away, as the waters receded. The fact that we had a coal period following, shows that man in the volcanic period, and for thousands of years after, could not breathe the air. Our active volcanoes are reduced to about three hundred. Still the air is polluted in many ways. Smelting works, forges and gas plants all pollute the air. Every cesspool, every whiff of burning tobacco, adds its quota to air-corrupting. Each year contributes to deposit a portion of the remaining carbon of the air. Rich valleys of warm zones are not yet healthy. We still go to the mountains for invigorating air.

5. Evidently, we have not yet reached the climax of good breathing air. Nature discourages the thought, that man could have continued his race, in any time, much previous to that given for the creating of Adam. The morning of the sixth day is in progress. Prophecy presents the coming man greatly improved over the present. “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.”

6. This morning ends, when the angel stands one foot upon the land, his right hung over the sea, with his left hand pointing to heaven, proclaiming that time shall be no longer. “And God rested from all his labor.”

● Transcriber’s Notes: ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book. ○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).