Creation and Its Records Part 12

Such being the plain facts with regard to the _kind of accomplishment_ meant by the terms "it was so," "the earth brought forth," &c., it is quite plain that no violence is done to the text by explaining it as intended to describe what G.o.d did in heaven, with the addition, that as each command was formulated, the result on earth surely followed, the thing "was so," and the earth and water respectively no doubt _began_ to "bring forth." More than this cannot be made out on _any_ interpretation that accords with facts. It seems so clear to me that this is so, that I hardly need refer to the use of the terms the "_waters brought forth"_ and the "_earth brought forth"_ and the phrase in chapter ii. 5--the Lord made every plant _before it grew_.

If, as we have been long allowed to suppose, G.o.d spake and the water and earth were _at once_ fully and finally peopled with animals where before nothing but plants had existed, and so on, I should hardly have expected the use of words which imply a gradual process--a gestation and subsequent birth (so to speak) of life-forms.

How the _order_ in which the events are recorded stands in relation to the subsequent history of life-development on earth, and what its significance may be, I will consider later on. First I will conclude the argument for the general interpretation of the narrative.

2. _The Second Genesis Narrative._

I have only one more direct argument to offer; but I think it is a very important one. The first division of Genesis ends with the Divine commands creating man and the day of rest which followed. The narrative ending at chapter ii. verse 3 (the division of chapters here, as elsewhere, is purely arbitrary), we have at verse 4 of chapter ii, what has been loudly proclaimed as _another_ account of _the same_ Creation, which, it is added (arbitrarily enough--but _any_ argument will do if only it is against religion!) is contrary to the first.[1]

[Footnote 1: The contradiction is supposed to be in verse 19, as if then the creation of animals was for the first time effected--after the man and his helpmate. But it is quite clear that the text refers to the fact that G.o.d had created animals; the command was, "Let the earth bring forth," and the immediate act spoken of was not the formation of animals, but the bringing of them to Adam to see what he would call them.]

Now, even if there is a _second_ account of Creation, it would surely be a circ.u.mstance somewhat difficult to explain. _Contrary_ in any possible sense, the narrative (from chapter ii. 4, onward) certainly is not. But why should there be a second narrative at all? On the hitherto received supposition that chapter i. intends to tells us the _process_ of creation--what G.o.d caused to be done on earth, not merely what He did in heaven--there is apparently no room for a second narrative. Nor have I seen any completely satisfactory explanation. But if we accept the view that the first chapter explains the Divine Design, and its being published (so to speak) and commanded in heaven, then it would be very natural that that narrative should be followed by a second, which should detail not the _whole_ process of all life existence on earth, but (as the Bible is to be henceforth concerned with Man, his fall and his redemption) with an account of _just so much of the_ process as relates to the actual birth on the earth's surface of the particular man Adam, the most important (and possibly not the only) outcome of the _fiat_ recorded in chapter i. vers. 27, 28.

In this view, not only _a_ second narrative, but just the particular kind of narrative we actually have, is not only natural, but even necessary. _Before_, we had a general account of how G.o.d ordained the scheme of material-form and life-form on the earth; _now_ we have a detailed account of how He actually carried out one portion of it--that one portion we are most concerned to hear about, namely the man Adam, the progenitor of our own race, of whom came JESUS CHRIST, "the son of Adam.[1]"

The account is designed to introduce to us the scene of Adam's birthplace--the Garden of Eden.[2] The mention of a garden, and the subsequent important connection of the trees of that garden with the conduct of the man, naturally turn the writer's attention to the general subject of the vegetation on the earth's surface. He prefaces his new account accordingly with a brief summary--which I may paraphrase thus without, I trust, departing from the sense of the original: "Such was the origin of the earth (and all in it) and of the heavenly host, at the time when G.o.d made them. He had made every plant _before_ it was in the earth--every herb of the field _before_ it grew" (mark the language as confirming what I have said--G.o.d "created" everything before it actually developed and grew into being on the earth). "Rain did not then fall (in the same way as now) on the earth, but the mist that exhaled from the soil re-condensed, and fell and moistened the ground; but there was as yet no MAN to till and cultivate the soil."

[Footnote 1: St. Luke iii. 38.]

[Footnote 2: Which had a real historic existence. _Vide_ Appendix A.]

Then G.o.d actually formed or fas.h.i.+oned _a man_. It is not now that He created the ideal form to be produced in due time, but that He actually formed the individual Adam, and placed him in a garden which He had prepared for the purpose. All the words used now imply actual production. The Divine ideal was ready, and the earth-elements (of which we know man's body to consist) were ready at the Divine word to a.s.sume the human shape. And that done, G.o.d "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life" (mark the direct _act_ on the man himself), and the man became a "living soul." There is nothing here of the "earth bringing forth" as in the former narrative. We have the direct act of G.o.d, not in the design only, but in the production of the thing itself.

If this is not a complete explanation and justification of the second narrative, I do not know what, in common fairness, is ent.i.tled to be so called.

The language may be rigorously examined, and it will fully bear out the position taken up.

I conceive, then, that the c.u.mulation of proof need go no further. The true explanation of Genesis i. also supplies the place for Genesis ii.

4, _et seq._, and overcomes all the difficulty that has. .h.i.therto existed on the subject.

It will now, I trust, be clear that by such an interpretation of Genesis we at once give (1) a full and natural meaning to all the terms; we reconcile it with other Scripture, and we enhance all the sublime attributes which we have been reverentially accustomed to connect with this ancient pa.s.sage. (2) We obviate the difficulty regarding the second narrative in chapter ii. 4. And (3) we place the whole above any possible conflict with science, and above any need for "reconciliation."

Here, too, is a purpose and meaning a.s.signed to the _whole_ narrative, without being driven into the difficult position of supposing the verses to be the literary outcome of an ignorant imagination which gave expression to its crude ideas only--though enshrining among utterly false details a sublime truth, regarding which one can only wonder why it could not have been stated without the enc.u.mbrance of the surroundings.

The naturalist and the biologist may continue, unquestioned, to work out more and more of the wondrous story of Life on the globe. They can never disprove, or on any of their own grounds deny, that G.o.d is the Author of all things--matter, force, and mind alike; that He designed the form and relations of the earth; that He organized its light, its seasons, and its changes; that He has furnished the types and patterns of all life-forms which matter and force are conformably thereto, developing on the earth. In short, REVELATION tells us that G.o.d did all this "in the beginning," how His form-designs were thought out and declared in six days, and how He rested on the seventh day.

SCIENCE will tell us how, when, and where the Creative fiats and the designs of heaven were realized and worked out on earth.

Here is the separate province of each, without fear of clas.h.i.+ng, or room for controversy.

CHAPTER XVI.

_THE DETAILS OF THE CREATION NARRATIVE._

--1. _The Explanation of the Verses._

It remains only now to go over the narrative, the _general_ bearing of which I have thus endeavoured to vindicate, so that minor matters of detail, in which it is supposed (1) that some contradiction to known physical fact may still lurk, and (2) something that negatives the explanation suggested, may be cleared up.

Let us take it seriatim:--

"In the beginning G.o.d created the heaven (plural in the original) and the earth."

As I have before remarked, we have no real need to discuss whether "bara" means originated (created where nothing previously existed), or whether we should render it "fas.h.i.+oned," i.e., moulded material (thus a.s.sumed in terms to be) already in existence.

Either will yield perfectly good and consistent sense; but, as a matter of fact, there is a virtual consensus of the best scholars that the word is here used to denote original production of the material.

It is also clear that the text is intended to embrace the whole system of planets, suns, stars, and whatever else is in s.p.a.ce. So the Psalmist understood it: "By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and _all_ the host of them by the breath of his mouth.[1]" Nor is there any reasonable doubt, exegetically, that the subsequent allusion to the sun, moon, and stars, refers (as the sense of the text itself obviously requires) to their _appointment_ or adjustment to certain relations with the earth, and a.s.sumes their original material production in s.p.a.ce, to have been already stated or understood.

"And the earth was (became) without form[2] and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of G.o.d moved upon the face of the waters."

I have, in another connection, already remarked on this verse, and so shall not repeat those remarks.

[Footnote 1: Psa. x.x.xiii. 6, and so Psa. cii. 25; _cf_. 2 Peter iii. 5.]

[Footnote 2: Waste (R.V.).]

I will only say that the elemental strife and rus.h.i.+ng together of chemical elements under the stress of various forces and the presence of enormous heat, would naturally envelop the globe in dense vapours, a large portion of which would be watery vapour, capable of condensation or of dispersion, under proper conditions, afterwards to be prescribed and realized. As it is beautifully expressed in Job x.x.xviii., "When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddling-band for it" (verse 8).

Then commences the serial order of Divine acts with reference to the _Earth_:--

(1) "AND G.o.d SAID; LET THERE BE LIGHT: AND THERE WAS LIGHT."

This verse is commonly taken as indicating a creation of light for the first time in the entire cosmos or universe. And if it be so, there is no objection, on any scientific ground, to the a.s.sertion that there was once a time when as yet the vibrations and waves which we connect with the idea of Light, had not yet begun. It is true that nebular matter, as now observed, is believed to be, partially at any rate, self-luminous.

But this fact, supposing it to be such, is not inconsistent with a still earlier time when light had not yet begun. From the "wave-theory" of light, which is one of those working hypotheses which are indispensable, and which, in a sense, may be said to be demonstrated by their indispensability, it can clearly be seen that if light is caused by rapid vibrational movement, there must have been--or at any rate there is nothing against an authoritative declaration that there was--a moment of time when the first vibrational impulse was given, when, in fact, G.o.d said "Let there be light, and there was light," _before_ which also there was "darkness upon the face of the deep.[1]"

[Footnote 1: It also needs only to be remarked, in pa.s.sing, that we are really in complete ignorance as to the light-medium, the "luminiferous-ether" outside the comparatively thin stratum of our own terrestrial atmosphere. We do not know whether there might not have been a condition of the medium in which, up to the moment of a creative _fiat_, it was incapable of transmitting light-waves.]

There is no necessary connection between the creation of light _per se_, and the existence of any particular source (or sources) of light to our planet or to other planets.

No justification is now needed for such a remark, and the almost forgotten cavils of one of the "Essays and Reviews" may still survive as a "scientific" curiosity, to warn us against too hastily concluding that (in subjects where so little is really _known_) the Bible must be wrong, and the favourite hypothesis of the day right.

But as a matter of fact, the text, especially when read in connection with Job x.x.xviii., need not be taken to refer to any original creation of light in the universe generally, but merely to the letting in of light on the hitherto dark and "waste" earth. The command "Let there be light" was followed on the next day by the formation of a firmament or expanse. So that all the verse _necessarily_ implies is, that the thick clouds and vapours which surrounded the earth were so dealt with, that light could reach the earth: the light was thus divided from the darkness, and the rotating globe would experience the alternation of day and night.

The "day" having thus been created formally (so to speak), the Divine Author proceeds to mark, by His own Procedure, the use of the "days"

which He had provided for the earth.

On this view, of course, the origin of light as a "force"--the first beginning of its pulsations--is not detailed, any more than the origin of electric force, or heat, or gravitation.

Here, too, I may remark that the idea of _creation_, which it has been one of my chief objects to develop, is ill.u.s.trated. This remark holds good, whether an original creation of light is intended, or only an arrangement whereby light was for the first time introduced to the earth's surface. The idea of creating light not only involves the Divine Conception of the thing, and the marvellous method of its production,[1]

but doubtless, also, all those wonderful laws of reflection, refraction, polarization, and a thousand others, which the science of Physical Optics investigates.