"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
"And the earth was desolate and void, and darkness upon the face
of the deep."
These words carry us back to a time indefinitely remote. Eternity
and Infinity are ideas which we cannot grasp, and yet we cannot
avoid them. If we stretch our imagination to conceive of the most
distant possible period of time--the farthest point of space--
still we feel that there must have been something before the one,
that there must be something beyond the other; and yet we cannot
conceive of that which has no beginning, or no boundaries. The
first verse marks out for us as it were a definite portion of this
limitless ocean. "In the beginning," is the point from which time
begins to run--"the heavens and the earth," the visible universe
beyond which our investigations cannot extend. Whether other
manifestations of God have taken place in Eternity, or other
systems of worlds now exist in infinity, we are not told.
The heavens and the earth then are to be considered as comprising
the visible universe, sun, moon, and stars, and their
concomitants, which the eye surveys, or which scientific research
brings to our knowledge. All are comprehended in this one group by
Moses, and recent spectroscopic investigations teach us that one
general character pervades the whole. Every star whose light is
powerful enough to be analyzed, is now known to comprehend in its
materials a greater or less number of those elementary substances
of which the earth and the sun are composed. Whether any of these
worlds were called into perfect existence at once, or whether they
all passed through various stages of development, we are not told,
that in some of them the process of development is only
commencing, while in others various stages of it are in progress,
is, as will be seen presently, highly probable. But the narrative
takes no farther notice of anything beyond our own group of
worlds, and proceeds to describe the condition of the earth
(probably including the whole solar system) at the time at which
it commences. Its words imply such a state of things as
corresponds to what has been said in the preceding section of
matter, apart from force. No better words could probably have been
chosen for the purpose. The only word which seems to convey any
definite idea is in the following clause, where water is
mentioned. Until force was in operation water could not exist.
Probably St. Augustine's interpretation is the correct one--the
confused mass is called alternately earth and water, because
though it was as yet neither one thing nor the other, it contained
the elements of both. And the word "water" expressed its plastic
character. ("De Genesi ad Literam" Liber Imperfectus, Section 13,
14.)
One other important point in these words is, that they negative
the eternal existence of matter. The second verse describes it as
existing, because it had been called into existence at the bidding
of an Almighty Creator, as described in the first verse.