CHAPTER V.

CREATION: ITS HISTORY.

The universe had a beginning. It is not eternal either in its matter or form; it is neither self-originated nor self-sustained. The all of the finite, with its relations and laws, its adaptations and harmonies, had its origin solely and absolutely in the unconditioned will of God. This is the Christian doctrine concerning the world.

In the preceding chapters we have endeavored to show that this doctrine is in perfect agreement with the teachings of sound philosophy, and we have found that it is daily receiving fresh confirmation from the discoveries of modern science.

If the universe originated solely in the free determination of God, then we are assured there must be a sufficient and ultimate reason for its existence. This logically follows from the true conception of _Will_, for will is not unconscious force, neither is it groundless arbitrariness, but conscious, rational choice.

In the merely formal and indifferent sense of the word, an arbitrary action is one in which the agent yields to the blind impulse of caprice, and can assign no reason for his doing. An action is truly free only when the agent knows _what_ he wills, and _why_ he wills it. The self-conscious will is the only real will. Will is intrinsically something more than power, something more, even, than the power of spontaneous self-determination. Will involves precognition, deliberation, and alternative choice: it is the living synthesis of reason and power. "The mere moment of self-determination does not suffice for the notion of will, for this, in a certain sense, we must ascribe to unintelligent creatures, to the organic life of nature by virtue of its development from its own principle. Self-determination only thereby becomes will by its being a _conscious_ determination--that is, the conscious subject is able to present to its own mind that which it brings to reality by its self-determination."[176] All real volition supposes a purpose or end to be realized, an inward motive or reason which renders the end desirable, and the choice and adaptation of means to accomplish that end. Consequently, if the universe is the product of the Divine Will, it must, both in its origination and its history, be the realization of an ultimate or final purpose, must have a perfect unity of plan; and the highest law of the universe must be a _teleological_ idea to which all nature-forces and all causal connections are subordinated. This ultimate purpose forms, as it were, a complete network of higher teleological connections above the web of mere aiteological connections which pervades the universe.

This great principle that a teleological idea is the highest law of the universe has been recognized by all philosophers of the spiritualistic school from the time of Plato to the present day. Even Mr. Mill admits that "Teleology, or the Doctrine of Ends, may be termed, not improperly, a principle of the practical reason;"[177] and he advises those who would prove the existence of God "to stick to the argument from _design_." No saying of Bacon has been more often quoted or more grossly misunderstood and misapplied than his remark on final causes: "The search after final causes is barren, for like virgins consecrated to God they produce nothing." If, however, we refer to his writings ("Advancement of Learning," bk. ii. p. 142), we find him adding, "_not because these final causes are not true and worthy to be inquired, being kept within their own province_." A fair consideration of the context clearly shows that the remark was intended to apply to Physics, and not at all to Metaphysics. All that he intends to say is that in purely physical inquiries the search after final causes can have no practical application; and the error he would guard against is the assumption that what appears to man a final cause must be the ultimate final cause to the Infinite One.

The belief that a principle of adaptation to special ends pervades all existence, and that it must be assumed as the ground of the scientific explanation of the facts and phenomena of the universe, is avowed by the first scientists of the age. "We can not be content," says Dr. Laycock, "with simply determining the mere relations of things or events--an existence, a co-existence, a succession, or a resemblance--and not inquire into the _ends_ thereof. Such a doctrine applied to physiology would, in fact, arrest all scientific research into the phenomena of life; for the investigation of the so-called functions of organs is nothing more than a _teleological_ investigation."[178] "_A law of design is the higher generalization of the great uniformities of nature._"[179] In his inaugural address at the meeting of the British Association of Science at Edinburgh, Sir William Thomson said: "I feel profoundly convinced that the argument from design has been greatly lost sight of in recent speculations.... Overwhelmingly strong proofs of Intelligence and Benevolent Design lie all around us; and if ever perplexities, whether of a metaphysical or scientific character, turn us away for a time, they will come back upon us with irresistible force, showing us through nature the influence of a _Free Will_, and teaching us that all living beings depend upon one ever-acting _Creator_ and _Ruler_."[180]

Every enlargement of our knowledge of organic nature is an addition to the already numberless instances of recognized special adaptation which crowd us on every hand; and all scientific discovery is but an illustration and a verification of the _à priori_ intuition of the reason that a principle of design is co-extensive with and the highest law of the universe. Not merely of each individual existence, but of the grand totality of existence, are we constrained to believe that it exists for a purpose. Above all special ends there is a great ultimate design of creation--a last or final end to which all intermediate ends are means; and though physical science can not fully compass that final purpose, yet in the light of its present knowledge of special ends it has abundant reason for assuming that there _must_ be a final purpose, and that that final purpose is at once beneficent and wise.[181]

But while the final purpose of creation may not be discoverable by human science, we know that it has been revealed in the Christian Scriptures.

The most fundamental doctrine of Christianity is that _God is Love_ (1 John iv. 8, 16), and that Love is the highest determining principle of the Divine efficiency. Creation, Providence, and Redemption are grounded in Love as the final cause (Gen. i. 31; Isa. lxiii. 9; John iii. 16).

The gravitating point of the Christian doctrine of "God the Creator" is not Omnipotence, nor yet Wisdom, but always Love. Omnipotence, in itself considered, possesses no moving or determining principle. God does not create the world to reveal his infinite power. Infinite Wisdom devises the best means and methods for the Divine efficiency, but it does not supply the ultimate reason why the world exists. The Love of God is the moving principle of his wisdom and power in that it appoints the _end_ to which omnipotence is related as the efficient, and wisdom as the formal cause. Whatever displays of power or of wisdom may be made in the created universe, they are all subordinated and made subservient to the purpose of Love. The highest law of the universe is Love. "The conservation of Love is the loftiest conservation of Force."

The world, then, was created to be a revelation of God, and especially to be a revelation of the perfections of the Divine nature which are grounded in and deducible from Love; and it exists as the self-manifestation and self-communication of God to personal creatures who can know Him and love Him in return. "That which can determine God, absolutely sufficient in Himself, in the production of beings distinct from Himself, is _Love alone_; consequently the creation is nothing else than the free self-communication of God Himself, who could be exclusively in Himself, but wills that others may have being and, in fellowship with Him, eternal life."[182] The world-creating, world-preserving Love of God has this for its ultimate purpose, _that there shall be beings who, in the completeness and perfection of personal existence, shall know and love and resemble God, and have fellowship in his blessedness and joy_ (Matt. v. 8; 1 Cor. xiii. 12; 2 Peter i. 4; 1 John iii. 2).

The realization of a perfected humanity in fellowship with God is, then, the final end of creation. We find some intimations of this grand purpose in the sublime record of creation which is given by Moses. We there learn that every thing was created with a view to man--to "man in the image of God." The inorganic world exists for the vegetable kingdom, the vegetable exists for the animal kingdom, and all exists for man (ch. i. 26-30). All its successive changes were a preparation for the appearance of man.[183] The more comprehensive revelation of the New Testament teaches that man exists for the realization of that perfected humanity of which Christ is the model, and which is attained in and through Christianity. The idea of man is the teleological principle of the world, the idea of Christ is the teleological principle of humanity. All things were created _by_ Christ and for Christ. "The good pleasure (εὐδοκία = the benevolent purpose) of the Divine Will" is, in the fullness of time, to gather together in one all things both which are in heaven and which are on earth, even in Christ, that in the final consummation _God may be all in all_ (Eph. i. 9, 10; 1 Cor. xv. 28).

This purpose of Divine Love is an "_eternal purpose_," ordained before the foundation of the world, and progressively unfolded in the creation, government, and redemption of the world. Thus the world, as an actual, temporal world, reposes on an eternal ideal world which has always been present to the Divine cognition. The visible creation is but the realization of the Divine ideal in such modes and under such conditions as shall constitute it a manifestation of God to finite intelligences--the external expression of the mind and character of God, the language of the Deity.

Assuming this as a fundamental principle of Christian theology that Creation is the self-manifestation of God, and that the final cause of this manifestation is the communication of the Divine blessedness to intelligent, personal being, we may logically infer the following intermediate principles as _Laws of this Manifestation_.

1. _This manifestation must be_ GRADUAL, _not instantaneous. In other words, it must be unfolded in successive steps or phases, so as to be adapted to the nature and capabilities of the being to whom it is made. The determinations of nature, like those of consciousness, must conform to the law of progressive development._

Divine omnipotence was, no doubt, adequate to the production of new beings without any pre-existing materials or any prearranged conditions; but creation is not mainly or primarily a revelation of omnipotence. The Deity might have brought the phenomena of the universe into instant being without any succession and independent of all means, but a universe thus instantaneously produced and simultaneously presented would reveal no purpose to, and could not be understood by, a finite mind. Finite consciousness can be developed only under conditions of plurality, difference, and succession, and therefore the objects of cognition must be successively presented. We may be sensible of the external reality by immediate intuition, but we can _understand_ only through experience; and experience supposes a gradual process--a succession not simply in our mental states, but a succession of external phenomena. This experience of succession constitutes our consciousness of _time_. Therefore, in order that the Divine manifestation may be understood, it must have a _history_.[184]

2. _This manifestation must be_ CUMULATIVE--_that is, it must afford an increase of knowledge through successive additions; it must be an advancing revelation of new principles and laws in an ascending line of creative acts._

An evolution which is absolutely continuous, and in which the present is the necessary outcome of the past, and that by degrees infinitely small, may be a manifestation of unconscious force, but can not be a manifestation of living Will. If nature be a manifestation of God--the unfolding of an eternal purpose of Love--this manifestation must ever be open to receive _new_ additions, the intercalation of new principles, and the superinduction of new laws working for a nobler end. All limitations from the scientific stand-point are illogical and absurd. This law would determine our conception of the universe as an aggregation of combined evolutions from several intermediate principles or beginnings, rather than an evolution from a single first matter or first force. _The creation of the new_, whether as primordial element, or primary force, or principle of life, or rational soul, is the fundamental idea of the _supernatural_--that is, the production of something which is not a necessary out-birth from pre-existing conditions and laws.[185] Therefore what is commonly, though perhaps incorrectly, styled "miraculous interposition," must itself be a law of the Divine manifestation, and the law of uniformity must be subordinated to the more general law of progressive development, which subordinates the inorganic to the organic, the physical to the moral world.

3. _This manifestation must be_ CONSECUTIVE. _Not only must it be a succession of steps or phases, but the entire series must be so related and concatenated as to present an Order of Thought--an ascending development toward a foreseen and predetermined end._

If it were not so, every thing would be _isolated_ and _disconnected_, and consequently unintelligible. There would be a succession of phenomena, but no manifestation of thought; a series of dissolving views presented to the sense, but no revelation to the understanding. Isolated phenomenal changes might be continued through untold ages, but the past would have no connection with the present, and would be unknown and lost to all the future. A revelation of the Infinite Mind to finite intelligences, made through the manifold and diversified phenomena of nature, must be a connected and related whole, so that from phenomena actually observed we may infer antecedent conditions, and anticipate future evolutions; otherwise it could not be understood. To be intelligible, a process of development must be the product of thought, and it must reveal thought--that is, it must be _consecutive_.[186]

4. _This manifestation must be_ HARMONIOUS. _Notwithstanding its multiplicity of parts and manifold stages, it must be a unity--a Cosmos._

Beings the most varied in endowment, things the most diversified in form and function, events the most remote from each other in time and space, must all be related and connected in virtue of the ultimate and all-embracing purpose for which the universe exists. An external purpose revealed under time-relations must be an _all-harmonious evolution_ and an _orderly totality_--a Cosmos.

Let us now turn to the record of creation as given in the Sacred Scriptures--the Mosaic Cosmogony--and see how that account conforms to the laws which on logical grounds we have deduced as the Laws of the Divine Manifestation.

The fundamental prerequisite for a right interpretation of the sacred narrative is a clear apprehension, first, of its general purpose, and, secondly, of its special literary characteristics. On these two points, therefore, we offer the following preliminary considerations:

1. _The design of the sacred narrative is to teach Theology and not Science._ A cursory reading of the narrative will convince any one that its purpose is not to enlarge men's views of nature, but to teach them something concerning nature's God. It says nothing about the forces of nature, the laws of nature, the classifications of natural history, or the size, positions, distances, and motions of the heavenly bodies. From first to last, every phenomenon and every law is linked immediately to some act or command of God. It is God who creates, God who commands, God who names, God who approves, and God who blesses. Strike out the allusions to God, and the narrative is meaningless. Clearly, it was never intended to teach science. It has obviously one purpose, to reveal and keep before the minds of men the grand truth _that Jehovah is the sole Creator and Lord of the heavens and the earth_; and it leaves the scientific comprehension of nature to the natural powers with which God has endowed man for that end.

All this is what we might legitimately expect. The narrative was designed primarily and mainly for the instruction of the masses of men who knew nothing or scarcely any thing of science; and if designed for their instruction, it must be couched in language which they could comprehend. A revelation made in the language of science would have been unintelligible to the race for nearly six thousand years of its history, and, practically, would have been no revelation at all. Scientific language, moreover, is subject to modification and change as science advances; but the narrative of Genesis was intended for all time, and therefore needed to be couched in language not liable to change. "The only language which possesses these two requisites of general intelligibility and non-liability to change is the _language of appearances_. The facts set forth must be described as they would have seemed to the eye of man; that is, in a word, phenomenally, or the cosmogony would fail of its purpose. All scrutiny or objection in the matter of unscientific, or scientifically inaccurate language, then, must be put aside as irrelevant."[187]

While earnestly maintaining that the inspired history of creation was given for the instruction of unscientific persons, and is therefore theological and not scientific, we also believe that all truth is one, and that all revelation, whether in Scripture or in nature, must be ultimately harmonious. Science in its last generalization must be Theology. Theology in its proper development must be Science. They are twin children of heaven, vestal virgins which can not be wedded to error. We are, therefore, justified in the expectation that the revelation in Scripture, when rightly interpreted, will contain nothing that is inconsistent with the scientific interpretation of nature. While we hold that there are no untimely anticipations of scientific discovery in Genesis, yet we expect that when the scientific discoveries are made, the congruity and dignity of the moral and religious lesson shall not be defeated and marred. Nay, more, we maintain that the Mosaic cosmogony presents the great principles which really lie at the basis of a truly scientific interpretation of nature. It teaches that God is before all things and the Creator of all things--that He alone is unbeginning, and that all things had a beginning in his creative word and will. It presents the universe as one harmonious whole, the product of one designing Mind, the project of his thought, the transcript of his plan--a plan evolved through successive stages toward a foreseen terminus or goal. And, finally, it teaches that man is the end toward which creation was tending, that he is the last and crowning work of God, and that he is the child and charge, not of a blind, impersonal force, but of a living, loving God.

2. _The sacred narrative is poetic, symbolical, and unchronological._ It is a noteworthy fact that the early literature of the most ancient nations was poetic--the natural, spontaneous product of that earliest stage of mental development in which the conceptions of God and of nature were determined by subjective feeling and native sentiment, and not by reflective thought. The "Vedas" of the Hindus, the "Iliad" of the Greeks, the "Eddas" of the ancient Germans, were each the product of an age in which "prose was unknown, as well as the distinction between prose and poetry." The earliest Hebrew compositions are of the same character; and it is reasonable to assume that a primitive revelation to the progenitors of our race would be accommodated to this earliest phase in the development of mind.

The Book of Genesis opens with a _Psalm_--"the inspired Psalm of Creation"[188]--"a grand symbolical Hymn of Creation." "The rhythmical character of the passage, its stately style, its parallelisms, its refrains, its unity within itself, all combine to show that it is a _poem_."[189] Here is the same organic unity which marks the 104th Psalm, or the Lord's Prayer, or the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. Or, if we go out of the Bible for illustration, it combines with lyric breadth of treatment and stateliness of movement all the compactness of a "solemn sonnet freighted with a single thought from beginning to end." Analysis of its interior structure exhibits a most artificial synthesis, founded upon well-known sacred numbers. It has, first, an _Exordium_, the proemial part. Then it is articulated into six _Strophes_. Finally there is the _Epode_, or peroration. The six strophes separate naturally into two groups, in which there is a balance and correlation of parts celebrating the first three and the last three concordant steps in the creative movement--the _Strophe_ and the _Antistrophe_.

The exordium states briefly the subject of the poem: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

The first three strophes unfold the creative development of the receptacles:

1. A. The luminiferous ether. } "The heavens 2. B. Waters and the firmament between the waters. } and the earth." 3. C. Dry land above the waters, with plants. }

The second three strophes (or, more correctly, antistrophes) unfold the creative development of the occupants:

4. A. The light-bearers: sun, moon, and stars. } "And all the hosts 5. B. Water-animals and birds. } of them" (Gen. ii. 1). 6. C. Land-animals and man. }

The epode, or peroration, fills up the sacred number 7--the symbol always of permanence and repose. "Thus the heavens and the earth (the receptacles) were finished, and all the host of them (the occupants); and on the seventh day God put period to the work which he created by fashioning," etc.[190]

_THE SYMBOLICAL HYMN OF CREATION._

EXORDIUM.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

FIRST STROPHE.

And the earth was formless and empty; And darkness was upon the face of the abyss. And the Spirit of God brooded upon the face of the vapors.[191] And God said, Let there be light: And there was light.

REFRAIN--_And God saw the light that it was good._

And God called the light Day: And the darkness He called Night. And there was evening and there was morning: one day.

SECOND STROPHE.

And God said, Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, And let it be a division of waters from vapors. And God made the expanse, And divided the waters which were below the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse:[192] And it was so. And God called the expanse Heavens. And there was evening and there was morning: a second day.

THIRD STROPHE.

And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered into one place, And let the dry ground appear: And it was so.

And God called the dry ground Land; And the gathering of the waters He called Seas.

REFRAIN--_And God saw that it was good._

And God said, Let the land shoot forth shoots: Herbs yielding seed, fruit-trees yielding seed-inclosing fruit after their kind upon the land; And it was so. And the land brought forth shoots; Herbs yielding seed after their kind, and trees yielding seed-inclosing fruit after their kind.

REFRAIN--_And God saw that it was good._

And there was evening and there was morning: a third day.

FOURTH STROPHE.

And God said, Let there be luminaries in the expanse of the heavens to divide the day from the night; And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years; And let them be for light-bearers in the expanse of the heavens, to give light upon the earth: And it was so. And God made the two great luminaries; The greater luminary to rule the day; The lesser luminary to rule the night. He made the stars lights also; And God appointed them in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth, And to rule over the day and night, And to divide the light from the darkness.

REFRAIN--_And God saw that it was good._

And there was evening and there was morning: a fourth day.

FIFTH STROPHE.

And God said, Let the waters swarm forth swarming things, living souls;[193] And let birds fly upon the land upon the face of the expanse of the heavens. And God created great leviathans, And all living souls that creep, which the waters swarmed forth after their kind; And all birds of wing after their kind.

REFRAIN--_And God saw that it was good._

And God blessed them, saying: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters of the sea; And let the birds multiply in the land. And there was evening and there was morning: a fifth day.

SIXTH STROPHE.

And God said, Let the land bring forth living souls after their kind: Cattle, and creeping things, and land-animals after their kind: And it was so. And God made land-animals after their kind, And cattle after their kind, And all creeping things after their kind.

REFRAIN--_And God saw that it was good._

And God said, Let us make MAN in our image, after our likeness; And let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, And over the birds of the heavens, And over the cattle, And over the land, And over all the creeping things that creep upon the land. And God created MAN in his own image; In the image of God created He him: Male and female created He them. And God blessed them; and God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the Earth, and subdue it; And have dominion over the fishes of the sea, And over the birds of the heavens, And over all the animals that creep upon the land. And God said, Behold, I have given you all herbs seeding seed which are upon the face of all the land, And every tree which has seed-inclosed fruit: They shall be unto you for food. And to all land-animals, And to all the birds of the heavens, And to all creeping things upon the land wherein is a living soul, I have given every green herb for food: And it was so.

REFRAIN--_And God saw every thing that He had made, and behold it was very good._

And there was evening and there was morning: the sixth day.

EPODE.

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, And all the hosts of them. And on the seventh day God put period to the work which He had made; And He rested on the seventh day from all his work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it: Because that in it He rested from all his works which God by making created.

Who can read this sublime composition without feeling that it is "a solemn sonnet freighted with a single thought from beginning to end?" In our English Bible, broken up into verses, and split across into two chapters, it is like an image reflected in a shattered mirror; all its real beauty is concealed. But he who can look upon it with a clear eye, and grasp its real unity, must recognize it as a Sacred Hymn composed probably by Adam, and chanted in the tents of the patriarchs at their morning and evening devotions for more than two thousand years, to commemorate the fact and keep alive the faith that _the world is the work of the triune God_.

Besides being poetic, the sacred narrative is pre-eminently _symbolical_--must be symbolical, because the Divine reality could never be intuitively known. The facts transcend all the possibilities of human experience. Whatever knowledge the writer had in regard to the creative process must have been obtained in a preternatural way--that is, it must have been revealed by Divine Omniscience. But such a revelation could not have been communicated in mere vocables. Words are themselves but signs--mere arbitrary signs of images and ideas--and can convey no meaning unless the image or the idea be already before the mind. The only natural hypothesis is that the knowledge was conveyed in a symbolic representation--a vision of the past in a succession of scenic representations with accompanying verbal announcements, like the visions of the future in the prophecies of Ezekiel and the apocalypse of John. The original formless nebula--the primeval darkness--the brooding Spirit producing motion--the consequent luminosity--the separation of the aeriform fluid into atmosphere and water--the emergence of the solid land--the shooting forth of grass and plants--the appearance of the heavenly luminaries--the swarming of the waters with living things, and the appearance of birds of wing in the expanse of heaven--the bringing forth of land-animals--and, finally, the creation of man--all pass before his mind in a succession of pictorial representations of the actual progress of creation. "The sights seen, the voices heard, the emotions aroused, are just those adapted to bring out the very words the _seer_ actually uses, and in both cases the very best words that could have been used for such a purpose. The description being given from the barely optical rather than from any reflective scientific stand-point more or less advanced, is on this very account the more vivid as well as the more universal. It is a language read and understood by all." The words of the inspired writer are descriptive of the "vision pictures," and these were symbolic representations of the Divine realities.

The language of the sacred record must therefore be regarded as _anthropopathic_--the Divine idea being symbolized under the figure of human acts and affections; and from the analogy between the human and the Divine we may conceive not what God is in Himself, nor yet the manner of the Divine action, but the relation of God to the world. We must, however, guard against substituting the human symbol for the Divine reality, and making the human analogy a measure for the infinite Being. "The Sacred Hymn is no more a _literal_ detail of the actual process of creation than the description of the New Jerusalem in Revelation is a _literal_ picture of the heavenly state."[194] God is forever above all finite relations. Finite acts and relations may be employed as representative symbols of the Divine, but they can never be adequate representations. Divine creating and moving, commanding and naming, seeing and approving, working and resting, must not be narrowed down to the standard of our finite personality, and conceived under human limitations. The conception of the Deity as standing outside of matter, and moving and fashioning it after the manner of a human artificer, as commanding and naming in human language, as being conditioned in his action by the time-measures which He himself appointed, as expending energy and then resting after the manner of a human laborer, is the rudest anthropomorphism. God is eternal; neither his being nor his action are conditioned by finite measures of time. God is absolute immensity, essential omnipresence. He is "in all and through all" as truly as He is "above and before all." He is a Living Power immanent in all matter, as well as transcending all matter, moving it, organizing it, vitalizing it continually--a Living Power working from _within_, rather than a mechanical force acting from _without_.

If the primitive composition standing at the commencement of Genesis be "the Symbolical Hymn of Creation," we are not permitted to regard it as _chronological_--that is, we are not justified in expecting that it shall conform to time-measures which had no existence prior to the creative act, but which were consequent upon and determined by the creative act. This is obvious both from the nature of things and the character of the composition.

The 106th Psalm is an epic poem--that is, it is a narrative in poetic measure, a history in metrical form. Who will be so unreasonable as to demand that this Psalm shall furnish any chronological data, or conform to any time-measures whatever? Psalms are composed to be sung and excite emotion, not to be merely read and criticised. The poet groups his materials for the best moral effect, and arranges his numbers to secure rhythm and harmony. It is simply absurd to demand that there shall be any chronology--nay, it spoils the grand effect to think of chronology in reading the "Symbolical Hymn of Creation." In fact, we are forbidden to think of time at all by the first word of the exordium, which states the subject of the poem. The Hebrew _bereshith_, the Greek ἐν ἀρχῆ = in Beginning (not in _the_ Beginning, for the article is not used), has _no relation to succession in time_. It denotes _pretemporality_, and is rendered by Meyer, Keil, and others--"before time or in eternity." It is the same thought which is presented in John i. 1: "In the beginning was the Word;" and Tholuck and Dean Alford both read the text, "_Before the world was, or before time was_." Indeed, the whole poem represents an ideal conception, and not a time-march of phenomena. So assured are we on this point that we confidently affirm that no one who endeavors to think of the creation in its relation to God can ever fall into the anthropomorphic error of saying that "God's ways are like unto our ways," "God's speaking is like unto our speaking," "God's working and resting are like unto our working and resting," and "God's days are like unto our days of twenty-four hours." As Dr. Whedon remarks, "Our traditional unscientific scientific constructions of this chapter are Japhetic interpretations of a Semitic text."

The men who persist in regarding "the day of God" as a natural day of twenty-four hours are involved in numberless inconsistencies when they attempt to carry their rigid preconception throughout the whole Bible. Human or finite measures of time, when applied to any thing God does, can only be accommodated representations to meet our feeble comprehension, and we are constantly guarded, in the Bible itself, against a literal and anthropomorphic conception. "Hast thou eyes of flesh, or seest thou as man seeth? Are thy days as man's days?" (Job x. 4, 5.) To say that God's days of working are like our days is just as absurd and as degrading a conception as to say that God's eyes are "eyes of flesh," like ours. Our time-measures can not condition the Divine action. "One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day" (2 Peter iii. 8); which means that time is as nothing with God, that time does not condition the Divine life or the Divine action, but that it is the Divine action which makes and conditions all time. _The beginning of the world is the beginning of time_, and time is the duration of the world measured into equal parts by the equable motion of bodies in space.[195] The attempt to measure the creating work of God by days of twenty-four hours is just as absurd as the attempt to measure immensity by a three-foot rule, or to estimate omnipotence by horse-power.

Let any one test the twenty-four-hour measure on such texts as the following: "Your father Abraham desired to see my _day_." "The _day_ of the Son of Man." "I must work the works of him that sent me while it is _day_." "If thou hadst known in this thy _day_." "He shall rise again in the resurrection at the last _day_." "The _day_ of salvation." "The _day_ of judgment." "The terrible _day_ of the Lord." It would be a wholesome and profitable exercise to take up the Concordance and refer to all the texts in which the word "day" stands in any relation to the determinations or doings of God, and it will be found that it is always an indefinite period of longer or shorter duration, and may be twenty-four hundred years, or twenty-four thousand years, just as well as twenty-four hours.

The Hebrew יום (yom), first occurring in Gen. i. 5, is the name of an indefinite period, a cycle of time radically grounded on the primitive conception of division or separation. Light is the first _separation_. It is "divided from the darkness." "And God called the light _day_, and the darkness He called _night_." This is God's own naming, and we must take it as our guide in the interpretation of the subsequent "days." Obviously, it is not the duration, but the phenomenon, the appearing itself which is for the first time called day. Then the term is used for a period, or the whole first cycle of events, with its two great antithetical parts--"And there was an evening, and there was a morning, _one day_." We look into the sacred narrative to see what corresponds to this naming. What was the night? Certainly the _darkness_ on the face of the waters. What was the day? Certainly the _light_ consequent on the brooding of the Spirit and the commanding word. How long was the day? How long was the night or the darkness? The account tells us nothing about it. There is something on the face of it which seems to forbid such questions. Where are we to get twelve hours for this first night? Where is the point of commencement when darkness began to be on the face of the deep? All is vast, sublime, immeasurable. The time is as formless as the material. It has, indeed, a chronology of some kind, but on a scale vastly different from that afterward appointed (ver. 14) to regulate the history of a completed and habitable world. Whoever thinks seriously on the impossibility of accommodating this first day to the measure of twenty-four hours needs no other argument. The first day is, in this respect, the model of all the rest.[196]

It is equally impossible to reduce the "seventh day" to a chronological standard of twenty-four hours. "And God rested on the seventh day from all his works which He had made." Are we to presume that God "rested" as we rest, because He was weary, and that He needed to rest just twenty-four hours? Is not God "resting" still in the sense in which the word "rest" is here used, viz., _to cease doing_ a particular work? Is not all time since the Creation God's grand Sabbath, in which he is not doing works of Origination, but works of Love and Mercy to our race?

It is obvious that the first and the seventh days can not be days of twenty-four hours; and, furthermore, a clear apprehension of the nature of the first day must open to us the true conception of all the rest. The days are _new appearances, new manifestations, new developments_ in the Creative Week--the great _day_ of God (Gen. ii. 4). According to the analogy of the first day, the evening is the time of a peculiar or partially chaotic condition, like the glacial epoch which closed the Cenozoic and opened the Phrenozoic day. The morning is a _new evolution of a new order of things_, which carries the world-formation to a higher stage. With each creative morning there comes a higher, fairer, richer state of the earth, until it reaches the Sabbath of the world, the day on which God rested or ceased from his world-creating work, that He might educate and recreate and redeem and glorify the human race.

In these antithetical movements of each creative day we are not necessitated to assume a sudden catastrophe, or any return to the chaos of the first day, any more than we now conceive of night as a sudden return to darkness, or of day as the sudden return of light. There is a steady progression, an orderly movement in the history of each creative day, just as there is in the history of a single solar day. The light does not break suddenly upon the world--the sun rises gradually upon the earth. And so the creative day was a slow development, a gradual evolution out of a prior order of things, by the direct efficiency of God.

It has been insinuated that this is an interpretation which has been forced upon us by the progress of modern science. Theology, it is said, has been perpetually driven from her positions by science, and is now compelled to take refuge in subterfuge and equivocation. The insinuation is as false as it is foul. This mode of interpretation was propounded ages before the science of Geology was known, and was taught by Jewish doctors and Christian fathers for fifteen hundred years. St. Augustine, the father of Systematic Theology, who was born A.D. 354, asks the question, "What mean these days--these strange sunless days? Does the enumeration of days and nights avail for a distinction between the nature that is not yet formed, and those which are made, so that they shall be called morning _propter speciem_ [_i. e._, in reference to appearing, receiving form or species], and evening _propter privationem_ [_i. e._, in reference to non-appearance, formlessness, and want of sensible quality]?" ("De Genesi ad Literam," lib. ii. ch. 14.) Hence he does not hesitate to call them _naturæ_, natures, births or growths; also _moræ_, delays, or solemn pauses in the Divine work. They are _dies ineffabiles_; their true nature can not be told. Hence they are called days as the best symbol by which the idea could be expressed. They are God-divided days and nights in distinction from sun-divided. Common solar days are mere _vicissitudines cœli_, mere changes in the positions of the heavenly bodies, and not _spatia morarum_, or evolutions in nature belonging to a higher chronology, and marking their epochs by a law of inward change instead of incidental outward measurement. As to how long or how short they were he gives no opinion, but contents himself with maintaining that _day is not a name of duration_, the evenings and the mornings are to be regarded not so much as measuring the passing of time (_temporis præteritionem_) as marking the boundaries of a periodic work or evolution. This is not the metaphorical, but the real and proper sense of the word _day_, in fact the original sense, inasmuch as it contains the idea of rounded periodicity or self-completed time, without any of the mere accidents that belong to the outwardly measured solar or planetary epochs, be they longer or shorter.[197]

These are not the mere fancies of St. Augustine. This was the doctrine of the ablest Christian fathers--of Irenæus, Origen, Basil, and Gregory of Nazianzen. Nay more, it was the doctrine of many of the doctors of the old Jewish Church. In more recent times we find Calmet, Burnet, Stillingfleet, Henry More, Lord Bacon, Poole, and others, presenting similar views; and this long before Geology existed as a science, and irrespective of any supposed collision with physical induction. Their opinions and interpretations were therefore no shift for the avoidance of difficulties, but conclusions reached independently on sound principles of Biblical exegesis.

Disregarding the chronology of Archbishop Usher printed in the margin of our Bible, and the division into chapters and verses made by Hugh de St. Cher--both modern inventions which are no part of the sacred record--and purging our minds of those prepossessions which are incident to an uncritical faith, we can now contemplate the Symbolical Hymn of Creation in its simple and original form, as a record of the _self-manifestation of God_, given in such order and under such conditions that it shall be apprehensible and interpretable by the finite mind.

1. _Creation was a gradual process._ God did not create a perfect universe at once, but built it up slowly, step by step. A consistent interpretation of the record forbids us to regard "the Creative Week" as a literal week composed of days of twenty-four hours each. Creation is the work of God, and surely the Divine action can not have been conditioned by time-measures which did not exist before, but were consequent upon the act of God. The great cyclical changes in nature produced by the creative Word are the only measures of time. Therefore the "days" of the Creative Week are _new appearances, new manifestations, new developments_ in the creative purpose of God.

The first morning is the appearance of _luminosity_ in the aeriform fluid, or nebulous vapor, whatever science may finally determine that to have been. The Hebrew מַיִם (mayim), from the root ים, which denotes _tumultuous_, _tremulous_, or _undulatory_ movement, is used of the waters of the ocean, of the waters above the firmament, of vapor and clouds, because of their susceptibility of tremulous, undulatory motion. The first distinct creative formation was _heat_, or invisible molecular motion, resulting from "the Spirit of God brooding upon the face of the abyss;" and this heat reveals itself in the phenomena of _light_.[198] How closely the ideas of light and heat were united in the Hebrew mind is shown by the same word being used for both, with merely a slight difference in pronunciation, אוֹר (ōr) and אוּר (ūr).

The second morning is the appearance of an _expanse_ in the midst of the vapors, dividing the vapors which were below the expanse from the vapors which were above the expanse. The Hebrew רֳקִיֹעַ (rakai), from רֳקַע (to stretch, to spread out), means properly an extension, an expanse. This is the translation adopted by Benisch, Kalisch, Delitzsch, Keil, and Lange. After heat and light, the next creative formation is an _atmosphere_, with its auroral light and a cloudy canopy.

The third morning is the appearance of _land_ and _seas_, and the sprouting forth of _vegetation_, at first in its lowest forms--perhaps as marine plants. The Hebrew אֶרֶץ (eretz) has two significations, "earth" and "land." Whenever it is used in a restricted sense, and especially wherever it is contrasted with "water," the most appropriate rendering is "land." The third creative formation is _gross, ponderable matter_, whether aggregated by molecular attraction, or compounded by elective affinity, or selected and organized by vital force.

The fourth morning is the appearance of _luminaries_ or _light-bearers_ in the expanse of heaven, which are now "set," or, more correctly, "appointed to give light upon the earth," and to be time-measures in the future world-history. The Hebrew word employed in ver. 14 (מְארֹת), which is unfortunately rendered "lights" in the Authorized Version, is a different word from the "light" (אוֹר) of vers. 3-5. מְארֹת (meoroth) strictly means "light-bearers," or bodies giving light. This distinction is carefully observed in the LXX., DeWette, Benisch, Kalisch, Tuch, Knobel, Delitzsch, and Keil.[199] The fourth creative formation was the establishment of such cosmical conditions or relations as should enable the heavenly bodies to fulfill their light-giving function to the earth. What those conditions were we may not be able to say. The dense clouds and ceaseless showers of the "Age of Rain," which had shut out the light of the heavenly bodies for a geological age, had now passed away, the atmosphere becomes fitted for the transmission of light, and the sun, moon, and stars are visible from the earth. The conditions for a rapid development of vegetable life now exist, and this is regarded as pre-eminently "the Age of Plant-growth."

The fifth morning is the appearance of _animal life_--life moving in the waters and soaring in the air, marine animals, aquatic reptiles, and birds.

The sixth morning is the appearance of a higher order of animal life, _mammals_, chiefly designed for the use of a still higher being--for _Man_, whose appearance is the noontide splendor of the sixth day.

The seventh morning is the commencement of the _Sabbath of God_, which is devoted to the moral and religious instruction of humanity--the New Creation of the moral world.

The following scheme, furnished by Dr. Winchell, presents at one view the order of the Mosaic record, and at the same time sets forth the harmony between the _Mosaic_ and _Geologic_ records:[200]

+----+------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | Genesis, | Brief announcement of chief events in the history: | | | ch. i. | | |----+-------------+----------------------------------------------------| | | | I. God the Creator of the Substance and Form | | | Vers. 1, 2. | of the Universe. | | | EXORDIUM. | II. Terrestrial Chaos. | | | | III. Darkness on the face of the Deep. | | | | IV. Vivification of the Waters. | |----+-------------+----------------+----------------+------------------| |DAYS| | GEOLOGY | GEOLOGICAL AGES| | |----+-------------+----------------+----------------+--------------+---| |I. | Vers. 3-5. | Igneous Vapor | Age of |} | | | | Creation of | condensing. | FIRE. |} | | | | LIGHT. | | |} | | |----+-------------+----------------+----------------|} | | | | Vers. 6-8. | Gathering of | |} ABIOTIC. | | | | Creation of | Clouds. | Age of |} | | |II. | FIRMAMENT |Descent of Rain.| RAIN. |} | | | | or EXPANSE. | Earliest | |} | A | | | | Sediments. | |} | Z | |----+-------------+----------------+----------------+--------------| O | | | Vers. 9-13. | Uplift | |} | I | | | Creation of | of Continents. | Age of |} | C | |III.| DRY LAND and| Appearance | LAND and |} | . | | | of PLANTS. | of Marine | PLANT-MAKING. |} | | | | | Vegetation. | |} | | |----+-------------+----------------+----------------|} PROTOPHYTIC.| | | | Vers. 14-18.| Dispersion | |} | | | | Creation (or| of Clouds. | |} | | | | appointment)| Appearance | Age of |} | | | | of | of Sun, | |} | | |IV. | LUMINARIES: | Moon, and | PLANT-GROWTH. |} | | | | sun, moon, | Stars. | |} | | | | and stars. | | |} | | |----+-------------+----------------+----------------+--------------+---| | | | Appearance of | Age of | | | | Vers. 20-23.| Marine Animals | MOLLUSKS, | PALÆOZOIC. | |V. | Creation of | (mollusks, | FISHES, | | | | AQUATIC | fishes, etc.), |................|..................| | | ANIMALS and | and Aquatic | REPTILES, | | | | BIRDS. | Reptiles and | BIRDS. | MESOZOIC. | | | | Birds. | | | |----+-------------+----------------+----------------+------------------| | | Vers. 24-31.| Appearance of | Age of | | |VI. | Creation of | Mammals and | MAMMALS. | CÆNOZOIC. | | | LAND-ANIMALS| MAN. | | | | | and MAN. | | | | |----+-------------+----------------+----------------+------------------| | |Gen. ii. 2,3.| Reign of Man. | Age of | | |VII.| Sabbath | The Sabbath of | MAN. | PHRENOZOIC. | | | of GOD. | Creation. | | | +----+-------------+----------------+----------------+------------------+

2. Creation was _cumulative_--that is, it was a succession of beginnings or creative epochs, in which new entities or new forces were inserted into the already existing sphere of nature, carrying it forward toward a nobler end.

This, we think, is the natural impression which the reading of Gen. i. makes on the unbiased mind. Each creative word appears as the dynamical basis of a real _principium_--a beginning of something intrinsically new, and which can not be conceived as the physical result of any pre-existing condition of things.[201] A new entity or a new force was, as it were, inserted in the order of nature; a new impulse was given to matter, or a new direction to existing forces, and from that initial point a new series of developments, which go on in accordance with law--a new succession of births and growths--flows on as a part of the grand totality of effects we call "nature." This is, obviously, the Biblical conception. Here creation does not present itself as a necessary evolution from a first matter or a first force in unbroken continuity, and without any supernatural interposition. Here are clearly defined creative epochs, new beginnings, which have their origin in the creative will and word of God. What these beginnings were is a question of the deepest interest.

A careful study of Gen. i. and ii. has led us to the conclusion that there is something fundamental and radical in the distinction between the creative words with _bara_ (בָרָא) and those with _yetsar_ (יָצַר) and _aysah_ (עָשָׂה). It is, in reality, the distinction between Origination _de novo_ and Formation out of pre-existing materials. There are three instances in which _bara_ occurs in Gen. i. We are fully convinced that in each case it denotes the origination of a new entity--a real addition to the sum of existence.

FIRST ORIGINATION (Gen. i. 1): "_In the beginning God created_ [אה = _the substance or essence of_] _the heavens and the earth._" This is the reading of Parkhurst's Hebrew Grammar (1813), which has since that time been approved by able lexicographers and commentators. Some of these authorities have been already presented to the reader.[202] But even aside from philological considerations, the context forbids us to regard _bara_ here as denoting "formation," for the product of that creative act was "_formless_ and _matter-less_;"[203] that is, it was homogeneous, non-differentiated, structureless, and destitute of all sensible quality--an abyss of darkness and death, exhibiting that sole condition of matter, "perhaps its only true indication, namely, _inertia_."[204] The first created element was the single omnipresent fluid _Ether_, out of which all gross matter was built by the action of force. As we advance in this discussion we shall find that this is an opinion which is entertained by the first physicists of the age, as, for example, Thomson, Tait, Maxwell, Challis, in England, and Norton and Hinrich in America.

SECOND ORIGINATION (Gen. i. 21): "_And God created the great monsters, and every living soul_ [נֶפֶשׁ הַיָּה = _soul of life_] _that moveth._"

The first created animals are here most carefully denoted as "living souls," evidently to distinguish the life now first manifested in nature from the molecular, "bioplasmic" life which organizes the vegetable cell, and builds up the tissues of the animal body. The life here indicated has an _individuality_ which separates it from the universal life of nature. There is now an immaterial entity--a soul, which is an individualized and indivisible centre of force, a soul which has sensation, feeling, perception, and memory, none of which are properties of matter or products of organization. The animal soul is not material, neither is it a function or phenomenon of organized matter; it is a creation, and therefore _bara_ is here significantly employed to denote the origination of something new; a new power or principle is here inserted into the sphere of existing nature.

The second created entity is animal life--_Soul_--somatic life as distinct and distinguishable from vegetable, molecular, bioplasmic life.

THIRD ORIGINATION (Gen. i. 27): "_And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created He him._"

The entire paragraph (vers. 26-29) is obviously the record of a supernatural origination. There is a significance even in the change of the _creative_ word. In regard to prior and inferior existences the language is, "Let the earth bring forth!" "Let the waters bring forth!" as though there were some parturient power in nature, or as though nature co-operated with and furnished the conditions and means of the Divine efficiency. But when man is to be created the language is, "Let us make man;" thus placing the origin of man outside the chain of physical causation, and ascribing it to the immediate agency of God. Besides, the creation here spoken of is the production of a _spiritual_, not a material entity. "God created man in _his own image_." This creation can not be a formation out of a pre-existent matter, for no form of matter can possibly bear any resemblance to God (Acts xvii. 29). "God is _spirit_" and man can be like God only in so far as he is endowed with a spiritual nature. Spirit alone can bear the image of God. Whatever may be the teaching of Genesis as to the origin of the human body, be it a formation or a development, there is no uncertainty in its language as to the origin of the human spirit. It is an inbreathing from God. It proceeded directly from Him. By no mere figure of speech, but by a Divine reality God is "the Father of spirits," and man is the offspring and the image of God. This likeness of God lifts man out of the sphere of mere nature--it sets him apart in the essential characteristics and endowments of his being as _above_ nature, and in some sense _divine_.

The third created entity is _Spirit_; spirit with its reason, its liberty, its conscience, its susceptibility of Divine inspiration, its capacity for endless progression in knowledge and love.

Here, then, are three entities, _matter_, _life_, and _mind_ (= body, soul, and spirit), which had their beginning in an act of absolute creation, and are therefore to be regarded as primordial things.[205] Their existence is the necessary condition of all subsequent formative and developing production, inasmuch as all formation supposes a something to be formed, and all evolution a something involved. These primordial entities are the substratum, or ground, of all the mediate architectonic creation which is effected by the moving and informing presence and agency of the Spirit of God.

This leads us to the consideration of those creative words which are _formative_, and which always presuppose the existence of real entities as the condition of their efficiency; as, for example, "Let there be light;" "Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters;" "Let the dry land appear;" "Let there be luminaries in the expanse of heaven." All the dividings, the gatherings, the organizings, the ordainings, and collocations suppose the prior existence of matter.

We have seen that the first act of absolute creation--the beginning of all beginnings--was the origination of that mysterious entity which is the recipient of impulse, or energy, and the physical substratum of all sensible phenomena. From this initial point, the first _formative_ act was "the moving or brooding of the Spirit of God upon the face of the abyss." All the qualities which matter presents to the senses, all physical phenomena, are the result of this action of the Deity upon matter--that is, _they are all manifestations of force_.[206] "By various motions of the nature of eddies (vortices) the qualities of cohesion, elasticity, hardness, weight, mass, or other universal properties of matter, are given to small portions of the fluid [ether] which constitute the _chemical atoms_, and these by modifications in their combination, form, and movement produce all the accidental phenomena of _gross matter_; and the primary fluid by other motions transmits light, radiant heat, magnetism, and gravitation."[207]

The first distinct creative formation was _molecular_ and _radiant energy_. "And God said, Let there be light." By this "light" we are not to understand light in its technical sense as distinguished from heat, but rather as including heat, such light, in fact, as we meet with in nature in the light of the sun, the same Hebrew word (אוֹר) being used for both.

The second distinct creative formation was that wonderful mechanical combination of chemical elements we call the _atmosphere_. "And God said, Let there be an expanse in the midst of the vapors, and let it be a division of vapors from vapors." The Creator has endowed the oxygen and nitrogen of the atmosphere with the power of retaining the aeriform condition under all circumstances, while the aqueous vapor is liable to very great fluctuation. Were there no air surrounding the globe, the quantity of vapor would adjust itself almost instantaneously to any variation of temperature, and the maximum amount possible would always be present at any given place; there could then be no clouds and no genial showers of diffusive rain. "An elevation of temperature would be attended by rapid evaporation, and the amount of water required to fill the space would suddenly flash into vapor; while, on the other hand, a corresponding depression of temperature would be accompanied by an equally sudden precipitation of the aqueous vapor, not in genial showers, but terrific torrents.... The drops, falling without resistance, would be as destructive in their effects as volleys of leaden shot."[208] The presence of a dense medium, such as the atmosphere, retards these sudden changes, and determines the formation of clouds. Thus "the expanse" is admirably adapted to the creative purposes of "_dividing_ the waters from the waters."

The third creative formation was the _chemical compounds_ and their molar aggregation in land and seas. "And God said, Let the waters below the expanse be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry ground appear." The chemical reactions, crystallizations, precipitations, and sedimentary accumulations involved in the creative formation are admirably sketched in Ch. VI. of Dr. Winchell's "Sketches of Creation." The transmutation of the primary fluid into gross matter was something more than a natural evolution--it was a "_creative_ action,"[209] and the exact numerical proportions in which the chemical elements combine must be the result of a distinct creative impulse.

The fourth creative formation was _bioplasm_, or that vitalized germinal matter which is instrumental in building up the tissues and organs of plants (and animals). "And God said, Let the land sprout forth sprouts; herbs seeding seed, fruit-trees producing fruit after their kind wherein is their seed." The vital force which is concerned in the formation of bioplasm (vitalized matter) must be regarded as distinct, on the one hand, from the physical forces which are efficient in the combinations and aggregations of non-living matter,[210] and, on the other hand, from that sentient, percipient, self-moving principle which constitutes the animal soul. "The 'life' of a man or an animal is very different from what is termed the 'life' of a white blood, or a mucus, or a pus corpuscle; inasmuch as many hundreds of white blood corpuscles, or elemental units of the tissues, might die in man without affecting the 'life' of the man; moreover the man himself might perish, and some of the corpuscles remain alive.... By the _life_ of a man (or an animal) something very different is meant from what we understand by the life of each elemental unit of the organism, _and the difference is not merely of degree but of kind_."[211] Bioplasm, or cell-life, is generic; soul-life is specific, individual, and indivisible. The former we regard as the direct effect of the Divine life, immanent in nature; the latter is an individualized centre of force, "a delegation of Divine power under limits of necessity." The physical forces are the action of God _upon_ matter, the vital force is the immanence of God _in_ matter. The first is mechanical, the second is vito-dynamical.

The fifth creative formation was the adjustment of the cosmical relations of the heavenly bodies, and the establishment of such atmospheric conditions as rendered the sun and moon the _luminaries_, or light-bearers, to the earth. "And God said, Let there be luminaries in the expanse of heaven to divide the day and night." What these adjustments and collocations were, we are not able to say. The ultimate cause of the sun's luminosity is yet an unsolved problem. No explanation thus far offered has been accepted as adequate by the majority of scientific men. The statement of Genesis, which ascribes "the appointment of the sun and moon to be light-bearers to the earth" to a distinct creative formation of some kind, is not, therefore, invalidated by science.

The sixth creative formation was the _material organisms_ of the varied species of "living souls" which people the _waters_; the seventh, of those which people the _air_; the eighth, of those which people the _land_. The final creative formation was the body of man, into which God breathed the breath of _lives_, and in consequence of which he became not merely a living soul, but a spiritual personality, a _spirit-being_.

The question whether the material organisms in which the varied species of "living souls" are embodied were each the product of a special creation, or whether later and higher organisms were derived from prior and lower organisms by "filiation," so that "new species are new births," is of little consequence to the interpretation of Genesis. The essential element of species is a _spiritual_ entity. Specific existence is a positive existence, an immaterial existence,[212] "a soul of life." "It is not," says Dr. Winchell, "a primordial organic form: _it is the life embodied within that form_--the principle which rules its existence, moulds its features, determines its instincts, and conserves its specific and individual identity. It is the principle embodied in the ovum--often a mere microscopic organism--which unfailingly holds fast to the specific type, and through all embryonic and immature existence guides the progress of development in one direction, toward one end. Here is more than matter: here is a power which controls matter, controls chemistry--manifests its superiority to body, and asserts its dignity as spirit." The establishment of a genetic connection from the lowest to the highest material organism would not decide the question as to "the origin of species." The origin of species lies back of all material organisms. The species is a "spiritual germ," which acts upon and fashions the material elements, and through them expresses its own characteristics. That therefore which constitutes man a distinct species is not to be sought in anatomical peculiarities, but in spiritual attributes. It is the image of God and the inspiration of God which lifts man out of mere animal nature and makes him a _peculiar species_--"one genus, and that genus the only one of the order."[213] Nor would this title be affected by any theory about the mode of the creation of his body. There would be nothing more derogatory to Omnipotence, or even to human nature, in the conjecture that man did not become "a living personal spirit" until he had passed through various stages of animal life, than in the doctrine that he was fashioned immediately out of the dust of the earth. There is as much dignity, or, if the reader please, as much humility of origin in the one case as in the other. The former is an extraordinary birth, consequent on some mysterious action of the Deity on the course of nature; the latter is a miraculous formation. The Hebrew text is as favorable to the one hypothesis as to the other. The preposition "of," or "out of," is not authorized by the original. Dr. Whedon reads the whole passage as follows: "And God developed [וַיִּיצֶר] the man--dust of the earth--and breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives, and the man became to a living person."[214] If the body of the second Adam, the Divine Man, was a birth (a miraculous birth), we do not see that any one need be shocked at the suggestion that the body of the first Adam was also an extraordinary or supernatural birth. Science may have free scope to settle the problem on purely inductive grounds.

The following scheme will exhibit our conception of the cumulative character of the creative development:

ORIGINATIONS.|(בָּרָא) |FORMATIONS (עָשָׂה = יִצֶר). | | Primal |"The Spirit of God | Element. |MOVED _upon_ the face| | of the abyss." | | | |MECHANICAL}..........|ENERGY. |FORCE, } | | . | | . |{ Vortex } | . |{ Motion, } CHEMICAL ATOMS. | . |{ | . |{Molecular} SENSIBLE AND | . |{ Energy, } LATENT HEAT. ETHER.......|.....................|{ Radiant } | |{ Energy, } RADIANT HEAT AND LIGHT. | |{ | |{ Molar {AIR, | |{ Energy, {WATER, | | {LAND and SEAS. | | |VITAL FORCE..........|Vitality.....BIOPLASM = PLANTS. | |\_________ __________/ | | \/ | | . {MOLLUSKS, | | . {FISHES, LIVING}......|.....................|................ {REPTILES, SOUL, } | | {BIRDS, | | {MAMMALS, | | \__ __/ | | \/ | | |..} RATIONAL}....|.....................|.........................}MAN. SPIRIT, } | INSPIRATION. |

3. _Creation was consecutive._ The creative epochs follow each other in a manifest Order of Thought. The reasons for this order are obvious on the face of the sacred narrative, so that we are constrained to regard the creative process as the realization of a purpose, the development of a foreseen and predetermined plan.

This is clearly manifest from the aptly styled "pauses of contemplation" which occur in the progress of the sacred narrative. At each stage of the creative work the Deity is represented as surveying that already finished, and pronouncing it "_good_" (טוֹב = καλόν, fair and good). This may seem strange when viewed apart from the completed plan. What good, one might ask, is the light when there is no eye to see? What good the expanse of heaven, the land and seas, with none to inhabit them? What good the plants with none to use them? But the Intelligence that foresaw the end toward which the creative process was tending could recognize the fitness and the beauty of each new element of creation as contributing to that completed whole, which, when realized, is pronounced "_very good_." Thus each stage of the advancing work of creation is pronounced "good" in view of its subordination to the ultimate purpose, which is the highest "good." Each is a step upward and onward, and is "good" as a preparation and a means for a better that is yet to come. Thus the reading of the sacred Hymn of Creation leaves the decided impression that a chain of subordination and interdependence runs through the entire organic and inorganic creation, binding the whole together in an ideal unity. All the laws and results of the past are brought forward, and become a prelude and a preparation for the future developments. The earlier stages of the creation furnish the conditions for the later stages, and are in some sense a prophecy of what is to come. The successive stages of creation are thus results, in part, of a "nature"--a constitution and order of things already established, and in part of a new impulse carrying nature forward toward the predestinated goal.

The more extended our acquaintance with the actual economy of nature, the more does the subordination and interdependence of the creative epochs become manifest, and the more are we convinced that "the law of consecution" which reveals itself in the sacred narrative is a real law of the universe.

The existence of radiant energy (heat and light), is the fundamental precondition of all the subsequent creative formations. It is more universal than gravitation, and absolutely co-extensive with the universe,[215] the connecting bond between all worlds. It determines the temperature of space, of the atmosphere, and of the earth, and, in fact, most of the phenomena of meteorology. It is essential to the life and growth of the plant, and ultimately of the animal; without it, indeed, no life could exist upon the earth. Next in importance is the atmosphere, which has peculiar relations to light and heat. It softens the intensity of light, and diffuses it in every direction; it absorbs and retains heat, and, infolding the earth as with a mantle, keeps it warm. It conditions the formation of clouds, and determines the fall of genial showers. It is the medium in which combustion and change, and all the phenomena of life, take place. Its oxygen has been the chief world-builder, and its nitrogen has been aptly styled the _zoögen_ or generator of life. The gathering of the waters into lakes and seas, the phenomena of aqueous circulation, the formation of soils through its agency--these were all preconditions of vegetable life. "Reasoning deductively, it is equally presumable that vegetable life preceded animal life in order of appearance.... Vegetation is capable of drawing its sustenance from the mineral world, while animals rely exclusively upon organic food. The vegetable stands between the animal and the mineral, performing a sort of commissary function in behalf of the animal. The animal--even the carnivorous animal--implies the vegetable. All things considered, we are led to believe that plant life had a history upon our earth a full epoch before the existence of animals."[216] Finally, all geological preparations and ideas converge in man. "The beneficent provisions of the earth's crust not only prophesy man, but they reach their finality in man. It was only for human uses that the coal was treasured in the recesses of the earth; for human uses alone the mountains have lifted up their burdens of iron; for human uses only the grandest movements of geological history elaborated and distributed the soils. It is only for man that the forests yield their abundant supplies of timber and fuel. For man the edible and medicinal vegetables were provided. For man the natures of the domestic animals were moulded, and their domestic attachments are directed to no other being."[217] Thus through the long ages of geological time the earth was preparing for the dwelling-place of man, and in the earliest forms of animal life his coming was prefigured and foretold.

4. _The completed creation is a Divine harmony._ This is the abiding impression which the sublime Psalm of Creation leaves upon our minds as we close the book. It has taught us this final lesson, that the universe is the manifestation of _one grand creative thought_, as comprehensive in the diversity of its parts as it is complete in the unity of its plan. We learn, not merely that God made all the parts of the universe, but that He made each part for a specific purpose, and that all the separate and successive parts are chords in nature's music, parts of creation's anthem of perpetual praise. The Symbolical Hymn of Creation, with its striking parallelisms, its balance and correlation of parts, its harmonic numbers (3 and 7 and 10, the symbols of perfection), its pauses and refrains, its rhythm and unity symbolizes the universal prevalence of _Law_ in nature; reveals a changeless _Order_ in respect to space and time, to number and form; suggests harmonious _relations_ between terrestrial conditions and cosmical adjustments, between organic and inorganic existence, and accords with the wonderful rhythm which pervades the Cosmos.

The glorious mansion is first built, then furnished. A triad of days is devoted to its architecture, a triad to its occupants. The former describes a series of _dividings_ and _combinings_, the latter portrays a series of _formations_ and _vivifications_. "The last day of each era includes one work typical of the era, and another related to it in essential points, but also prophetic of the future. Vegetation, while, for physical reasons, a part of the creation of the third day, was also prophetic of the future Organic era, in which the progress of life was the grand characteristic. The record thus accords with the fundamental principle in history that the characteristic of an age has its beginnings within the age preceding. So, again, man, while like other mammals in structure, even to the homologies of every bone and muscle, was endowed with a spiritual nature which looked forward to another era, that of spiritual existence. The seventh "day," the day of rest from the work of creation, is man's period of preparation for that new existence, and it is to promote this special end that, in strict parallelism, the Sabbath follows man's six days of work."[218]

The following scheme will exhibit the completeness of the parallelism:

INORGANIC ERA. ORGANIC ERA.

I. Day.....LUMINOSITY. IV. Day....LUMINARIES

II. Day....{WATER, V. Day...{MARINE ANIMALS, REPTILES, {ATMOSPHERE. {BIRDS.

III. Day.....DRY LAND VI. Day....MAMMALS

VEGETATION. MAN.

* * * * *

NOTE.

_The Principle of Teleology not affected by the Theory of Evolution._--"It is necessary to remark that there is a wider teleology which is not touched by the doctrine of evolution, but is actually based upon the fundamental proposition of evolution.... The teleological and the mechanical views of nature are not necessarily mutually exclusive; on the contrary, the more purely a mechanist the speculator is, the more firmly does he assume a primordial molecular arrangement, of which all the phenomena of the universe are the consequences; and the more completely thereby is he at the mercy of the teleologist, who can always defy him to disprove that this primordial molecular arrangement was not _intended_ to evolve the phenomena of the universe."--Prof. Huxley, in _The Academy_ for October, 1869, No. 1, p. 13.