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.”