1. The Mammalia.
"And God said, Let the earth cause to go forth the soul of life,
cattle, and creeping thing, and the beast of the earth (wild
animals) after his kind; and it was so.
"And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle
after their kind, and every creeping thing of the ground after his
kind; and God saw that it was good."
In these two verses there are one or two points which call for
notice. In the first place, the creatures mentioned are divided
into three classes, of which two, cattle and the beast of the
earth, are tolerably clear in their general significance, though
their extent is not determined. The third is denoted by a word
which had already been employed to describe the work of the fifth
day, and is translated in our version "creeping thing." The
probability seems to be that it has reference to such classes of
animals as the smaller rodentia, and the mustelidas, whose motions
may be appropriately described by the word "creeping." That it
denotes four-footed creatures has already been pointed out. The
next point is, that in each case the singular is used; in the case
of the domestic animals this fact is lost to the English reader by
the use of the collective noun "cattle." Of course it is a common
usage, to denote a class of animals by a singular noun used
generically, but the statements of the passage would also be
justified if one pair only of each of the three types specified
were called into existence at first. It is also to be noticed that
while the word [Hebrew script], the earth is used to define the
wild beast; another word, [Hebrew script] the ground, is applied
to the "creeping thing." There is probably a reason for this,
though it may not at present be apparent.
When we turn to the Geological record, we find that the period of
the chalk was followed by the deposition of the tertiary strata.
During the upheaval of the chalk these strata seem to have been
gradually laid down in its hollows, and around its edges. They
extend from the London clay upward to the crag formations which
appear on the Eastern coast of England at intervals from
Bridlington to Suffolk. In these strata we see signs of an
approach to the existing state of things. As we ascend through
them, a gradually increasing number of the fossil shells are found
to be specifically identical with those which at present inhabit
the ocean.
Another characteristic of this period is the abundance of fossil
remains of mammalia; but in this case, although the remains are
evidently, in many cases, those of creatures nearly allied to
those now existing, they are not identical, very great
modifications both of bulk and of minor structural details having
taken place. One very important point of difference is the vastly
superior bulk of these ancient animals: a good illustration of
which may be seen in the skeletons of the mammoth and of the
modern elephant, which are placed near each other in the British
Museum. Many of these animals appear not to have become extinct
till long after the appearance of man.
The first appearance of mammalia, as has been already noticed,
must have been long before this, as the earliest fossils yet found
are at the lower limit of the Lias. They belong, however, to the
genus Marsupialia, of which, as far as we know, no representatives
were in existence in any part of the world known to Moses, so that
even on the supposition that he intended to give an account of the
first appearance of the classes of animals which he mentions, the
omission of these would have been inevitable. His words, however,
appear to point to a time when the mammalia occupied the leading
place, just as the reptiles had occupied the leading place at a
previous epoch. And his words are fully borne out by the records
of the rocks.
At the close of the tertiary period great changes once more took
place in the Northern hemisphere. There was a great and extensive
subsidence, in consequence of which a large portion of Northern
and Middle Europe must have been under water, the mountain summits
only appearing as detached islands. At the same time, from causes
utterly unknown to us, there was a great depression of
temperature, the result of which was, that all, or nearly all the
land, in those regions which were not submerged, was covered with
glaciers, much as Greenland is now, and from these glaciers vast
icebergs must from time to time have been detached by the sea and
floated off, carrying with them fragments of rock, some freshly
broken, some rounded by long attrition, which were deposited on
the then submerged lands as the ice melted, and are now found as
boulders, sometimes lying on the surface, at others dispersed
through beds of clay and sand formed under water from the debris
worn down by the glaciers. A subsequent movement of elevation
ushered in the state of things which exists on the earth at the
present time.
2. Man.
"And God said, Let Us make man (Adam) in Our image after Our
likeness; and he shall have dominion over the fish of the sea, and
over the fowl of the heaven, and over the cattle, and over all the
earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
"And God created man (the Adam) in His image, in the image of God
created He him; male and female He created them.
"And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and
multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and rule over the fish
of the sea, and the fowl of the heaven, and over every animal that
creepeth upon the earth.
"And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb seeding seed,
which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree which has
in it the fruit of a tree seeding seed; to you it shall be for
food.
"And to every animal of the earth, and to every fowl of the
heaven, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, in which
is the soul of life, every green herb is for meat; and it was so.
"And God saw every thing--which He had made, and behold it was
good exceedingly.
"And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day."
The terms in which the Creation of man is spoken of are such as to
challenge particular attention and to induce us to expect
something very different from what occurred on any previous
occasion. In the first place, more agents than one are introduced
by the use of the plural form of the verb, and thus at the very
commencement of man's career there is an intimation of that
mysterious fact of the Trinity in Unity which was to have so
important an influence upon his future destiny. Then we are told
that man was to be formed in the Image of God, a statement which
probably is of very wide import. It has been variously interpreted
as having reference to the spiritual, moral, and intellectual
nature of man; to the fact that the nature of man was afterwards
to be assumed by the Second Person of the Trinity; to the
delegated empire of this world which man was to hold. There are
two expressions of St. Paul: that "man is the image and glory of
God" (1 Cor. xi. 7), and that "the invisible things of Him from
the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by
the things that are made, even His eternal Power and Godhead"
(Rom. i. 20), which seem to indicate that this record has a
significance which as yet we can only partially understand. Then
the story of man's creation is repeated in the second chapter, and
while the other events recorded in the first chapter are very
briefly summarized, that of man is very much amplified. This does
riot necessarily indicate an independent account, as is sometimes
asserted; at the fourth verse of the second chapter a distinct
portion of revelation commences--the special dealing of God with
man, and this could not be intelligible without an amount of
detail with reference to man's origin, which would have been out
of place in the short account of the origin of the world by which
it is preceded. In this account the creation of Adam and Eve is
recorded as two separate events, the latter of which is described
in terms of deep mystery, of which all that we can say is that
they point to that still deeper mystery--the birth of the Bride--
the Lamb's Wife from the pierced side of the Lamb. But in the case
of Adam there is a remarkable difference from anything that has
gone before. Two distinct acts of creation are recorded; one of
which places man before us in his physical relation to the lower
animals, while the other treats of him in his spiritual relation
to his Maker. "The Lord God formed man (the Adam) dust from the
ground (adamah), and breathed into his nostrils the breath of
lives; and man became a soul of life." The inspiration of the
"breath of lives" distinguishes the creation of man from that of
all other creatures.
The Geological records harmonize exactly with the Bible as to the
date of man's appearance on the earth. It is towards the close of
the age of gigantic mammalia, that the earliest remains of man's
workmanship make their appearance in the shape of tools and
weapons rudely fashioned from stone. Parts of human skeletons have
also been occasionally found, but they are exceedingly rare.
Weapons and bones are alike confined to superficial, and
comparatively very recent formations. From such traces as have
been found there is no reason to believe that any physical changes
of importance have taken place in man's body since his first
appearance on the earth. The differences which do exist are of the
same kind as, and not greater than, the differences which exist
between individuals at present.
The gift of dominion over the lower animals seems to indicate
something different from that which gives one animal superiority
over another, and accordingly we find that it is not by physical
power that that dominion is exercised; but that in most of his
physical faculties man is inferior to the very animals which he
holds in subjection. It is partly in virtue of his intellectual
superiority, and partly perhaps by means of an instinctive
recognition on the part of the animals of man's higher nature
(Gen. ix. 2) that that supremacy is maintained.