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.