THE CREATION
A few years ago a great eclipse of the sun, seen as total along a broad
belt of country right across India, drew thither astronomers from the
very ends of the earth. Not only did many English observers travel
thither, but the United States of America in the far west, and Japan in
the far east sent their contingents, and the entire length of country
covered by the path of the shadow was dotted with the temporary
observatories set up by the men of science.
It was a wonderful sight that was vouchsafed to these travellers in
pursuit of knowledge. In a sky of unbroken purity, undimmed even for a
moment by haze or cloud, there shone down the fierce Indian sun.
Gradually a dark mysterious circle invaded its lower edge, and covered
its brightness; coolness replaced the burning heat; slowly the dark
covering crept on; slowly the sunlight diminished until at length the
whole of the sun's disc was hidden. Then in a moment a wonderful
starlike form flashed out, a noble form of glowing silver light on the
deep purple-coloured sky.
There was, however, no time for the astronomers to devote to admiration
of the beauty of the scene, or indulgence in rhapsodies. Two short
minutes alone were allotted them to note all that was happening, to take
all their photographs, to ask all the questions, and obtain all the
answers for which this strange veiling of the sun, and still stranger
unveiling of his halo-like surroundings, gave opportunity. It was two
minutes of intensest strain, of hurried though orderly work; and then a
sudden rush of sunlight put an end to all. The mysterious vision had
withdrawn itself; the colour rushed back to the landscape, so
corpse-like whilst in the shadow; the black veil slid rapidly from off
the sun; the heat returned to the air; the eclipse was over.
But the astronomers from distant lands were not the only people engaged
in watching the eclipse. At their work, they could hear the sound of a
great multitude, a sound of weeping and wailing, a people dismayed at
the distress of their god.
It was so at every point along the shadow track, but especially where
that track met the course of the sacred river. Along a hundred roads the
pilgrims had poured in unceasing streams towards Holy Mother Gunga;
towards Benares, the sacred city; towards Buxar, where the eclipse was
central at the river bank. It is always meritorious--so the Hindoo
holds--to bathe in that sacred river, but such a time as this, when the
sun is in eclipse, is the most propitious moment of all for such
lustration.
Could there be a greater contrast than that offered between the millions
trembling and dismayed at the signs of heaven, and the little companies
who had come for thousands of miles over land and sea, rejoicing in the
brief chance that was given them for learning a little more of the
secrets of the wonders of Nature?
The contrast between the heathen and the scientists was in both their
spiritual and their intellectual standpoint, and, as we shall see later,
the intellectual contrast is a result of the spiritual. The heathen idea
is that the orbs of heaven are divine, or at least that each expresses a
divinity. This does not in itself seem an unnatural idea when we
consider the great benefits that come to us through the instrumentality
of the sun and moon. It is the sun that morning by morning rolls back
the darkness, and brings light and warmth and returning life to men; it
is the sun that rouses the earth after her winter sleep and quickens
vegetation. It is the moon that has power over the great world of
waters, whose pulse beats in some kind of mysterious obedience to her
will.
Natural, then, has it been for men to go further, and to suppose that
not only is power lodged in these, and in the other members of the
heavenly host, but that it is living, intelligent, personal power; that
these shining orbs are beings, or the manifestations of beings; exalted,
mighty, immortal;--that they are gods.
But if these are gods, then it is sacrilegious, it is profane, to treat
them as mere "things"; to observe them minutely in the microscope or
telescope; to dissect them, as it were, in the spectroscope; to identify
their elements in the laboratory; to be curious about their properties,
influences, relations, and actions on each other.
And if these are gods, there are many gods, not One God. And if there
are many gods, there are many laws, not one law. Thus scientific
observations cannot be reconciled with polytheism, for scientific
observations demand the assumption of one universal law. The wise king
expressed this law thus:--
"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be." The actual
language of science, as expressed by Professor Thiele, a leading
Continental astronomer, states that--
"Everything that exists, and everything that happens, exists
or happens as a necessary consequence of a previous state of
things. If a state of things is repeated in every detail, it
must lead to exactly the same consequences. Any difference
between the results of causes that are in part the same, must
be explainable by some difference in the other part of the
causes."[15:1]
The law stated in the above words has been called the Law of
Causality. It "cannot be proved, but must be believed; in the
same way as we believe the fundamental assumptions of
religion, with which it is closely and intimately connected.
The law of causality forces itself upon our belief. It may be
denied in theory, but not in practice. Any person who denies
it, will, if he is watchful enough, catch himself constantly
asking himself, if no one else, why _this_ has happened, and
not _that_. But in that very question he bears witness to the
law of causality. If we are consistently to deny the law of
causality, we must repudiate all observation, and particularly
all prediction based on past experience, as useless and
misleading.
"If we could imagine for an instant that the same complete
combination of causes could have a definite number of
different consequences, however small that number might be,
and that among these the occurrence of the actual consequence
was, in the old sense of the word, accidental, no observation
would ever be of any particular value."[16:1]
So long as men hold, as a practical faith, that the results which attend
their efforts depend upon whether Jupiter is awake and active, or
Neptune is taking an unfair advantage of his brother's sleep; upon
whether Diana is bending her silver bow for the battle, or flying
weeping and discomfited because Juno has boxed her ears--so long is it
useless for them to make or consult observations.
But, as Professor Thiele goes on to say--
"If the law of causality is acknowledged to be an assumption
which always holds good, then every observation gives us a
revelation which, when correctly appraised and compared with
others, teaches us the laws by which God rules the world."
By what means have the modern scientists arrived at a position so
different from that of the heathen? It cannot have been by any process
of natural evolution that the intellectual standpoint which has made
scientific observation possible should be derived from the spiritual
standpoint of polytheism which rendered all scientific observation not
only profane but useless.
In the old days the heathen in general regarded the heavenly host and
the heavenly bodies as the heathen do to-day. But by one nation, the
Hebrews, the truth that--
"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth"
was preserved in the first words of their Sacred Book. That nation
declared--
"All the gods of the people are idols: but the Lord made the
heavens."
For that same nation the watchword was--
"Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord."
From these words the Hebrews not only learned a great spiritual truth,
but derived intellectual freedom. For by these words they were taught
that all the host of heaven and of earth were created things--merely
"things," not divinities--and not only that, but that the Creator was
One God, not many gods; that there was but one law-giver; and that
therefore there could be no conflict of laws. These first words of
Genesis, then, may be called the charter of all the physical sciences,
for by them is conferred freedom from all the bonds of unscientific
superstition, and by them also do men know that consistent law holds
throughout the whole universe. It is the intellectual freedom of the
Hebrew that the scientist of to-day inherits. He may not indeed be able
to rise to the spiritual standpoint of the Hebrew, and consciously
acknowledge that--
"Thou, even Thou, art Lord alone; Thou hast made heaven, the
heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth, and all
things that are therein, the seas, and all that is therein,
and Thou preservest them all; and the host of heaven
worshippeth Thee."
But he must at least unconsciously assent to it, for it is on the first
great fundamental assumption of religion as stated in the first words of
Genesis, that the fundamental assumption of all his scientific reasoning
depends.
Scientific reasoning and scientific observation can only hold good so
long and in so far as the Law of Causality holds good. We must assume a
pre-existing state of affairs which has given rise to the observed
effect; we must assume that this observed effect is itself antecedent to
a subsequent state of affairs. Science therefore cannot go back to the
absolute beginnings of things, or forward to the absolute ends of
things. It cannot reason about the way matter and energy came into
existence, or how they might cease to exist; it cannot reason about time
or space, as such, but only in the relations of these to phenomena that
can be observed. It does not deal with things themselves, but only with
the relations between things. Science indeed can only consider the
universe as a great machine which is in "going order," and it concerns
itself with the relations which some parts of the machine bear to other
parts, and with the laws and manner of the "going" of the machine in
those parts. The relations of the various parts, one to the other, and
the way in which they work together, may afford some idea of the design
and purpose of the machine, but it can give no information as to how the
material of which it is composed came into existence, nor as to the
method by which it was originally constructed. Once started, the
machine comes under the scrutiny of science, but the actual starting
lies outside its scope.
Men therefore cannot find out for themselves how the worlds were
originally made, how the worlds were first moved, or how the spirit of
man was first formed within him; and this, not merely because these
beginnings of things were of necessity outside his experience, but also
because beginnings, as such, must lie outside the law by which he
reasons.
By no process of research, therefore, could man find out for himself the
facts that are stated in the first chapter of Genesis. They must have
been revealed. Science cannot inquire into them for the purpose of
checking their accuracy; it must accept them, as it accepts the
fundamental law that governs its own working, without the possibility of
proof.
And this is what has been revealed to man:--that the heaven and the
earth were not self-existent from all eternity, but were in their first
beginning created by God. As the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews
expresses it: "Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed
by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of
things which do appear." And a further fact was revealed that man could
not have found out for himself; viz. that this creation was made and
finished in six Divine actings, comprised in what the narrative
denominates "days." It has not been revealed whether the duration of
these "days" can be expressed in any astronomical units of time.
Since under these conditions science can afford no information, it is
not to be wondered at that the hypotheses that have been framed from
time to time to "explain" the first chapter of Genesis, or to express it
in scientific terms, are not wholly satisfactory. At one time the
chapter was interpreted to mean that the entire universe was called into
existence about 6,000 years ago, in six days of twenty-four hours each.
Later it was recognized that both geology and astronomy seemed to
indicate the existence of matter for untold millions of years instead of
some six thousand. It was then pointed out that, so far as the narrative
was concerned, there might have been a period of almost unlimited
duration between its first verse and its fourth; and it was suggested
that the six days of creation were six days of twenty-four hours each,
in which, after some great cataclysm, 6,000 years ago, the face of the
earth was renewed and replenished for the habitation of man, the
preceding geological ages being left entirely unnoticed. Some writers
have confined the cataclysm and renewal to a small portion of the
earth's surface--to "Eden," and its neighbourhood. Other commentators
have laid stress on the truth revealed in Scripture that "one day is
with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day," and
have urged the argument that the six days of creation were really vast
periods of time, during which the earth's geological changes and the
evolution of its varied forms of life were running their course. Others,
again, have urged that the six days of creation were six literal days,
but instead of being consecutive were separated by long ages. And yet
again, as no man was present during the creation period, it has been
suggested that the Divine revelation of it was given to Moses or some
other inspired prophet in six successive visions or dreams, which
constituted the "six days" in which the chief facts of creation were set
forth.
All such hypotheses are based on the assumption that the opening
chapters of Genesis are intended to reveal to man certain physical
details in the material history of this planet; to be in fact a little
compendium of the geological and zoological history of the world, and so
a suitable introduction to the history of the early days of mankind
which followed it.
It is surely more reasonable to conclude that there was no purpose
whatever of teaching us anything about the physical relationships of
land and sea, of tree and plant, of bird and fish; it seems, indeed,
scarcely conceivable that it should have been the Divine intention so to
supply the ages with a condensed manual of the physical sciences. What
useful purpose could it have served? What man would have been the wiser
or better for it? Who could have understood it until the time when men,
by their own intellectual strivings, had attained sufficient knowledge
of their physical surroundings to do without such a revelation at all?
But although the opening chapters of Genesis were not designed to teach
the Hebrew certain physical facts of nature, they gave him the knowledge
that he might lawfully study nature. For he learnt from them that nature
has no power nor vitality of its own; that sun, and sea, and cloud, and
wind are not separate deities, nor the expression of deities that they
are but "things," however glorious and admirable; that they are the
handiwork of God; and--
"The works of the Lord are great,
Sought out of all them that have pleasure therein.
His work is honour and majesty;
And His righteousness endureth for ever.
He hath made His wonderful works to be remembered."
What, then, is the significance of the detailed account given us of the
works effected on the successive days of creation? Why are we told that
light was made on the first day, the firmament on the second, dry land
on the third, and so on? Probably for two reasons. First, that the
rehearsal, as in a catalogue, of the leading classes of natural objects,
might give definiteness and precision to the teaching that each and all
were creatures, things made by the word of God. The bald statement that
the heaven and the earth were made by God might still have left room for
the imagination that the powers of nature were co-eternal with God, or
were at least subordinate divinities; or that other powers than God had
worked up into the present order the materials He had created. The
detailed account makes it clear that not only was the universe in
general created by God, but that there was no part of it that was not
fashioned by Him.
The next purpose was to set a seal of sanctity upon the Sabbath. In the
second chapter of Genesis we read--
"On the seventh day God ended His 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 sanctified it:
because that in it He had rested from all His work which God
created and made."
In this we get the institution of the _week_, the first ordinance
imposed by God upon man. For in the fourth of the ten commandments which
God gave through Moses, it is said--
"The seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it
thou shalt not do any work. . . . For in six days the Lord
made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and
rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath
day, and hallowed it."
And again, when the tabernacle was being builded, it was commanded--
"The children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the
sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual
covenant. It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel
for ever: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and
on the seventh day He rested, and was refreshed."
God made the sun, moon, and stars, and appointed them "for signs, and
for seasons, and for days, and years." The sun marks out the days; the
moon by her changes makes the months; the sun and the stars mark out the
seasons and the years. These were divisions of time which man would
naturally adopt. But there is not an exact number of days in the month,
nor an exact number of days or months in the year. Still less does the
period of seven days fit precisely into month or season or year; the
week is marked out by no phase of the moon, by no fixed relation between
the sun, the moon, or the stars. It is not a division of time that man
would naturally adopt for himself; it runs across all the natural
divisions of time.
What are the six days of creative work, and the seventh day--the
Sabbath--of creative rest? They are not days of man, they are days of
God; and our days of work and rest, our week with its Sabbath, can only
be the figure and shadow of that week of God; something by which we may
gain some faint apprehension of its realities, not that by which we can
comprehend and measure it.
Our week, therefore, is God's own direct appointment to us; and His
revelation that He fulfilled the work of creation in six acts or stages,
dignifies and exalts the toil of the labouring man, with his six days of
effort and one of rest, into an emblem of the creative work of God.
FOOTNOTES:
[15:1] T. N. Thiele, Director of the Copenhagen Observatory, _Theory of
Observations_, p. 1.
[16:1] T. N. Thiele, Director of the Copenhagen Observatory, _Theory of
Observations_, p. 1.
[Illustration: MERODACH AND TIAMAT.
[_To face p. 25._
Sculpture from the Palace of Assur-nazir-pel, King of Assyria. Now in
the British Museum. Damaged by fire. Supposed to represent the defeat of
Tiamat by Merodach.]