The Origin of the World According to Revelation and Science Part 4

Marvellous are thy works, And that my soul knoweth right well.

My substance was not hid from Thee, When I was made in secret, And curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth: Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being imperfect; And in thy book all my members were written, Which in continuance were fas.h.i.+oned when as yet there was none of them."

It would too much tax the faith of many to ask them to believe that the writer of the above pa.s.sage, or the Spirit that inspired him, actually meant to teach--what we now know so well from geology--that the prototypes of all the parts of the archetypal human structure may be found in those fossil remains of extinct animals which may, in nearly every country, be dug up from the rocks of the earth. No objection need, however, be taken to our reading in it the doctrine of embryonic development according to a systematic type.

Science, it is true, or rather I should perhaps say philosophical speculation, has sometimes pushed this idea of plan into that of a spontaneous genetic evolution of things in time, without any creative superintendence or definite purpose. This way of viewing the matter is, however, as we shall have occasion to see, both bald and irrational, and wants the symmetry and completeness of that style of thought which grasps at once progress and plan and adaptation, as emanating from a Supreme Will. The question of how the plan has been worked out will come up for detailed consideration farther on. In the mean time we have before us the fact that the Bible represents the cosmos as not the product of a blind conflict of self-existent forces, but as the result of the production and guidance of these forces by infinite wisdom.

It is more than curious that this idea of type, so long existing in an isolated and often depised form, as a theological thought in the imagery of Scripture, should now be a leading idea of natural science; and that while comparative anatomy teaches us that the structures of all past and present lower animals point to man, who, as Professor Owen expresses it, has had all his parts and organs "sketched out in antic.i.p.ation in the inferior animals," the Bible points still farther forward to an exaltation of the human type itself into what even the comparative anatomist might perhaps regard as among the "possible modifications of it beyond those realized in this little orb of ours,"

could he but learn its real nature.

Under the foregoing heads, of the object, the structure, the authority, and the general cosmical views of the Scripture, I have endeavored to group certain leading thoughts important as preliminary to the study of the subject; and, in now entering on the details of the Old Testament cosmogony, I trust the reader will pardon me for a.s.suming, as a working hypothesis, that we are studying an inspired book, revealing the origin of nature, and presenting accurate pictures of natural facts and broad general views of the cosmos, at least until in the progress of our inquiry we find reason to adopt lower views; and that he will, in the mean time, be content to follow me in that careful and systematic a.n.a.lysis which a work claiming such a character surely demands.

CHAPTER IV.

THE BEGINNING.

"In the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the earth."--Genesis i., 1.

It is a remarkable and instructive fact that the first verse of the Hebrew sacred writings speaks of the material universe--speaks of it as a whole, and as originating in a power outside of itself. The universe, then, in the conception of this ancient writer, is not eternal. It had a beginning, but that beginning in the indefinite and by us unmeasured past. It did not originate fortuitously, or by any merely accidental conflict of self-existent material atoms, but by an act--an act of will on the part of a Being designated by that name which among all the Semitic peoples represented the ultimate, eternal, inscrutable source of power and object of awe and veneration. With the simplicity and child-like faith of an archaic age, the writer makes no attempt to combat any objections or difficulties with which this great fundamental truth may be a.s.sailed. He feels its axiomatic force as the basis of all true religion and sound philosophy, and the ultimate fact which must ever bar our further progress in the investigation of the origin of things--the production from non-existence of the material universe by the eternal self-existent G.o.d.

It did not concern him to know what might be the nature of that unconditioned self-existence; for though, like our ideas of s.p.a.ce and time, incomprehensible, it must be a.s.sumed. It did not concern him to know how matter and force subsist, or what may be the difference between a material universe cognizable by our senses and the absolute want of all the phenomena of such a universe or of whatever may be their basis and essence. Such questions can never be answered, yet the succession of these phenomena must have had a commencement somewhere in time. How simple and how grand is his statement! How plain and yet how profound its teachings!

It is evident that the writer grasps firmly the essence of the question as to the beginning of things, and covers the whole ground which advanced scientific or philosophical speculation can yet traverse. That the universe must have had a beginning no one now needs to be told. If any philosophical speculator ever truly held that there has been an endless succession of phenomena, science has now completely negatived the idea by showing us the beginning of all things that we know in the present universe, and by establis.h.i.+ng the strongest probabilities that even its ultimate atoms could not have been eternal. But the question remains--If there was a beginning, what existed in that beginning? To this question many partial and imperfect answers have been given, but our ancient record includes them all.

If any one should say, "In the beginning was nothing." Yes, says Genesis, there was, it is true, nothing of the present matter and arrangements of nature. Yet all was present potentially in the will of the Creator.

"In the beginning were atoms," says another. Yes, says Genesis, but they were created; and so says modern science, and must say of ultimate particles determined by weight and measure, and incapable of modification in their essential properties--"They have the properties of a manufactured article."[29]

"In the beginning were forces," says yet another. True, says Genesis; but all forces are one in origin--they represent merely the fiat of the eternal and self-existent. So says science, that force must in the ultimate resort be an "expression of Will."[30]

"In the beginning was Elohim," adds our old Semitic authority, and in him are the absolute and eternal thought and will, the Creator from whom and by whom and in whom are all things.

Thus the simple familiar words, "In the beginning G.o.d created the heaven and the earth," answer all possible questions as to the origin of things, and include all under the conception of theism. Let us now look at these pregnant words more particularly as to their precise import and significance.

The divine personality expressed by the Hebrew Elohim may be fairly said to include all that can be claimed for the pantheistic conception of "dynamis," or universal material power. Lange gives this as included in the term Elohim, in his discussion of this term in his book on Genesis. It has been aptly said that if, physically speaking, the fall of a sparrow produces a gravitative effect that extends throughout the universe, there can be no reason why it should be unknown to G.o.d. G.o.d is thus everywhere, and always. Yet he is everywhere and always present as a personality knowing and willing.

From his thought and will in the beginning proceeded the universe. By him it was created.

What, then, is creation in the sense of the Hebrew writer. The act is expressed by the verb _bara_, a word of comparatively rare occurrence in the Scriptures, and employed to denote absolute creation, though its primary sense is to cut or carve, and it is indeed a near relative of our own English word "pare." If, says Professor Stuart, of Andover, this word "does not mean to create in the highest sense, then the Hebrews had no word by which they could designate this idea." Yet, like our English "create," the word is used in secondary and figurative senses, which in no degree detract from its force when strictly and literally used. Since, however, these secondary senses may often appear to obscure the primitive meaning, we must examine them in detail.

In the first chapter of Genesis, after the general statement in verse 1, other verbs signifying to _form_ or _make_ are used to denote the elaboration of the separate parts of the universe, and the word "create" is found in only two places, when it refers to the introduction of "great whales" (reptiles) and of man. These uses of the word have been cited to disprove its sense of absolute creation.

It must be observed, however, that in the first of these cases we have the earliest appearance of animal life, and in the second the introduction of a rational and spiritual nature. Nothing but pure materialism can suppose that the elements of vital and spiritual being were included in the matter of the heavens and the earth as produced in the beginning; and as the Scripture writers were not materialists, we may infer that they recognized, in the introduction of life and reason, acts of absolute creation, just as in the origin of matter itself. In Genesis ii. and iii. we have a form of expression which well marks the distinction between creation and making. G.o.d is there said to have rested from all his works which he "created and made"--literally, created "for or in reference to making," the word for making being one of those already referred to.[31] The force of this expression consists in its intimating that G.o.d had not only finished the work of _creation_, properly so called, but also the elaboration of the various details of the universe, as formed or fas.h.i.+oned out of the original materials. Of a similar character is the expression in Isaiah xlii., 5, "Jehovah, he that _created_ the heavens and spread them out;" and that in Psalm cxlviii., 5, "He commanded and they were _created_, he hath also established them for ever and ever."

In as far as I am aware, the word _bara_ in all the remaining instances of its occurrence in the Pentateuch refers to the creation of man, with the following exceptions: Exodus x.x.xiv., 10, "I will do (create) marvels, such as have not been seen in all the earth;"

Numbers xvi., 30, "If the Lord make a new thing (create a creation), and the earth open her mouth and swallow them up." These verses are types of a cla.s.s of expressions in which the proper term for creation is applied to the production of something new, strange, and marvellous; for instance, "Create in me a clean heart, O Lord;"

"Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth." It is, however, evidently an inversion of sound exposition to say that these secondary or figurative meanings should determine the primary and literal sense in Genesis i. On the contrary, we should rather infer that the sacred writers in these cases selected the proper word for creation, to express in the most forcible manner the novel and thorough character of the changes to which they refer, and their direct dependence on the Divine will. By such expressions we are in effect referred back to the original use of the word, as denoting the actual creation of matter by the command of G.o.d, in contradistinction from those arrangements which have been effected by the gradual operation of secondary agents, or of laws attached to matter at its creation. It has been farther observed[32] that in the Hebrew Scriptures this word _bara_ is applied to G.o.d only as an agent, not to any human artificer; a fact which is very important with reference to its true significance. Viewing creation in this light, we need not perplex ourselves with the question whether we should consider Genesis i., 1, to refer to the essence of matter as distinguished from its qualities. We may content ourselves with the explanation given by Paul in the eleventh of Hebrews: "By faith we are certain that the worlds[33] were created by the decree of G.o.d, so that that which _is seen_ was made of that which _appears not_." Or, with reference to the other uses of the word, if the first introduction of animal life was a creation, and if the introduction of the rational nature of man was a creation, we may suppose that the original creation was in like manner the introduction or first production of those ent.i.ties which we call matter and force, and which to science now are as much ultimate facts as they were to Moses.

The _nature_ of the act of creation being thus settled, its _extent_ may be ascertained by an examination of the terms heaven and earth.

The word "heavens" (_shamayim_) has in Hebrew as in English a variety of significations. Of material heavens there are, in the quaint language of Poole, "_tres regiones, ubi aves, ubi nubes, ubi sidera_;"

or (1) the atmosphere or firmament;[34] (2) the region of clouds in the upper part of the atmosphere;[35] (3) the depths of s.p.a.ce comprehending the starry orbs.[36] Besides these we have the "heaven of heavens," the abode of G.o.d and spiritual beings.[37] The application of the term "heaven" to the atmosphere will be considered when we reach the 6th and 7th verses. In the mean time we may accept the word in this place as including the material heavens in the widest sense: (1.) Because it is not here, as in verse 8th, restricted to the atmosphere by the terms of the narrative; this restriction in verse 8th in fact implying the wider sense of the word in preceding verses.

(2.) Because the atmospheric firmament, elsewhere called heaven, divides the waters above from those below, whereas it is evident that all these waters, and of consequence the materials of the atmosphere itself, are included in the earth of the following verse. (3.) Because in verse 14th the sidereal heavens are spoken of as arranged from pre-existing materials, which refers their actual creation back to this pa.s.sage.

In the words now under consideration we therefore regard the heavens as including the whole material universe beyond the limits of our earth. That this sense of the word is not unknown to the writers of Scripture, and that they had enlarged and rational views of the star-spangled abysses of s.p.a.ce, will appear from the terms employed by Moses in his solemn warning against the Sabaean idolatry, in Deuteronomy iv.: "And lest thou lift up thine eyes to the heavens, and when thou seest the sun and the moon and the stars, even all the host of the heavens, shouldest be incited to wors.h.i.+p them and serve them which Jehovah thy G.o.d hath appointed to all nations under the whole heavens." To the same effect is the expression of the awe and wonder of the poet king of Israel in Psalm viii.:

"When I consider the heavens, the work of thy fingers, The moon and the stars which thou hast ordained; What is man that thou art mindful of him?"

I may observe, however, that throughout the Scriptures the word in question is much more frequently applied to the atmospheric than to the sidereal heavens. The reason of this appears in the terms of verse 8th.

If we have correctly referred the term "heavens" to the whole of extramundane s.p.a.ce, then the word "earth" must denote our globe as a distinct world, with all the liquid and aeriform substances on its surface. The arrangement of the whole universe under the heads "heaven" and "earth" has been derided as a division into "infinity and an atom;" but when we consider the relative importance of the earth to us, and that it const.i.tutes the princ.i.p.al object of the whole revelation to which this is introductory, the absurdity disappears, and we recognize the cla.s.sification as in the circ.u.mstances natural and rational. The word "earth" (_aretz_) is, however, generally used to denote the dry land, or even a region or district of country. It is indeed expressly restricted to the dry land in verse 10th; but as in the case of the parallel limitation of the word "heaven," we may consider this as a hint that its previous meaning is more extended.

That it is really so, appears from the following considerations: (1.) It includes the deep, or the material from which the sea and atmosphere were afterwards formed. (2.) The subsequent verses show that at the period in question no dry land existed. If instances of a similar meaning from other parts of Scripture are required, I give the following: Genesis ii., 1 to 4, "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them;" "these are the generations of the heavens and the earth." In this general summary of the creative work, the earth evidently includes the seas and all that is in them, as well as the dry land; and the whole expression denotes the universe. The well-known and striking remark of Job, "Who hangeth the earth upon nothing," is also a case in point, and must refer to the whole world, since in other parts of the same book the dry land or continental ma.s.ses of the earth are said, and with great truth and propriety, to be supported above the waters on pillars or foundations.

The following pa.s.sages may also be cited as instances of the occurrence of the idea of the whole world expressed by the word "earth:" Exodus x., 29, "And Moses said unto him, As soon as I am gone out of the city, I will spread abroad my hands unto the Lord, and the thunder shall cease, neither shall there be any more hail; that thou mayest know the earth is the Lord's;" Deuteronomy x., 14, "Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the Lord's, the earth also, and all that therein is."

The material universe was brought into existence in the "beginning"--a term evidently indefinite as far as regards any known epoch, and implying merely priority to all other recorded events. It can not be the first day, for there is no expressed connection, and the work of the first day is distinct from that of the beginning. It can not be a general term for the whole six days, since these are separated from it by that chaotic or formless state to which we are next introduced. The beginning, therefore, is the threshold of creation--the line that separates the old tenantless condition of s.p.a.ce from the world-crowded galaxies of the existing universe. The only other information respecting it that we have in Scripture is in that fine descriptive poem in Proverbs viii., in which the Wisdom of G.o.d personified--who may be held to represent the Almighty Word, or Logos, introduced in the formula "G.o.d said," and afterward referred to in Scripture as the manifested or conditioned Deity, the Mediator between man and the otherwise inaccessible Divinity, the agent in the work of creation as well as in that of redemption--narrates the origin of all created things:

"Jehovah possessed[38] me, the beginning of his way, Before his work of old.

I was set up from everlasting, From the beginning, before the earth was; When there were no deeps I was brought forth, When there were no fountains abounding in water."

The beginning here precedes the creation of the earth, as well as of the deep which encompa.s.sed its surface in its earliest condition. The beginning, in this point of view, stretches back from the origin of the world into the depths of eternity. It is to us emphatically _the_ beginning, because it witnessed the birth of our material system; but to the eternal Jehovah it was but the beginning of a great series of his operations, and we have no information of its absolute duration.

From the time when G.o.d began to create the celestial orbs, until that time when it could be said that he had created the heavens and the earth, countless ages may have rolled along, and myriads of worlds may have pa.s.sed through various stages of existence, and the creation of our planetary system may have been one of the last acts of that long beginning.

The author of creation is Elohim, or G.o.d in his general aspect to nature and man, and not in that special aspect in reference to the Hebrew commonwealth and to the work of redemption indicated by the name Jehovah (_Iaveh_). We need not enter into the doubtful etymology of the word; but may content ourselves with that supported by many, perhaps the majority of authorities, which gives it the meaning of "Object of dread or adoration," or with that preferred by Gesenius, which makes it mean the "Strong or mighty one." Its plural form has also greatly tried the ingenuity of the commentators. After carefully considering the various hypotheses, such as that of the plural of majesty of the Rabbins, and the primitive polytheism supposed by certain Rationalists, I can see no better reason than an attempt to give a grammatical expression to that plurality in unity indicated by the appearance of the Spirit or breath of G.o.d and his Word, or manifested will and power, as distinct agents in the succeeding verses. This was probably always held by the Hebrews in a general form; and was by our Saviour and his apostles specialized in that trinitarian doctrine which enables both John and Paul explicitly to a.s.sert the agency of the second person of the Trinity in the creative work.

This elementary trinitarian idea of the first chapter of Genesis may be further stated thus: The name Elohim expresses the absolute unconditioned will and reason--the G.o.dhead. The manifestation of G.o.d in creative power, and in the framing and ordering of the cosmos, is represented by the formula "G.o.d said"--the equivalent of the Divine Word. The further manifestation of G.o.d in love of and sympathy with his work is represented by the Breath of G.o.d, and by the expression, "G.o.d saw that it was good"--operations these of the Divine Spirit.

The aboriginal root of the word Elohim probably lies far back of the Semitic literature, and comes from the natural exclamations "al,"

"lo," "la," which arise from the spontaneous action of the human vocal organs in the presence of any object of awe or wonder. The plural form may in like manner be simply equivalent to our terms G.o.dhead or Divinity, implying all that is essentially G.o.d without specification or distinction of personalities. As Dr. Tayler Lewis well remarks in his "Introduction to Genesis," we should not dismiss such plurals as mere _usus loquendi_. The plural form of the name of G.o.d, of the heavens (literally, the "heights"), of the _olamim_, or time-worlds, of the word for life in Genesis (lives), indicates an idea of vastness and diversity not measurable by speech, which must have been impressed on the minds of early men, otherwise these forms would not have arisen. G.o.d, heaven, time, life, were to them existences stretching outward to infinity, and not to be denoted by the bare singular form suitable to ordinary objects.

Fairly regarding, then, this ancient form of words, we may hold it as a clear, concise, and accurate enunciation of an ultimate doctrine of the origin of things, which with all our increased knowledge of the history of the earth we are not in a position to replace with any thing better or more probable. On the other hand, this sublime dogma of creation leaves us perfectly free to interrogate nature for ourselves, as to all that it can reveal of the duration and progress of the creative work. But the positive gain which comes from this ancient formula goes far beyond these negative qualities. If received, this one word of the Old Testament is sufficient to deliver us forever from the superst.i.tious dread of nature, and to present it to us as neither self-existent nor omnipotent, but as the mere handiwork of a spiritual Creator to whom we are kin; as not a product of chance or caprice, but as the result of a definite plan of the All-wise; as not a congeries of unconnected facts and processes, but as a cosmos, a well-ordered though complex machine, designed by Him who is the Almighty and the supreme object of reverence. Had this verse alone const.i.tuted the whole Bible, this one utterance would, wherever known and received, have been an inestimable boon to mankind; proclaiming deliverance to the captives of every form of nature-wors.h.i.+p and idolatry, and fixing that idea of unity of plan in the universe which is the fruitful and stable root of all true progress in science. We owe profound thanks to the old Hebrew prophet for these words--words which have broken from the necks of once superst.i.tious Aryan races chains more galling than those of Egyptian bondage.

CHAPTER V.

THE DESOLATE VOID.

"And the earth was desolate and empty, and darkness was upon the surface of the deep; and the Spirit of G.o.d moved on the surface of the waters."--Genesis i., 2.

We have here a few bold outlines of a dark and mysterious scene--a condition of the earth of which we have no certain intimation from any other source, except the speculations based on modern discoveries in physical science. It was "unshaped and empty," formless and uninhabited. The words thus translated are sufficiently plain in their meaning. The first is used by Isaiah to denote the desolation of a ruined city, and in Job and the Psalms as characteristic of the wilderness or desert. Both in connection are employed by Isaiah to express the destruction of Idumea, and by Jeremiah in a powerful description of the ruin of nations by G.o.d's judgments. When thus united, they form the strongest expression which the Hebrew could supply for solitary, uninhabited desolation, like that of a city reduced to heaps of rubbish, and to the silence and loneliness of utter decay.

In the present connection these words inform us that the earth was in a chaotic state, and unfit for the residence of organized beings. The words themselves suggest the important question: Are they intended to represent this as the original condition of the earth? Was it a scene of desolation and confusion when it sprang from the hand of its Creator? or was this state of ruin consequent on convulsions which may have been preceded by a very different condition, not mentioned by the inspired historian? That it may have been so is rendered possible by the circ.u.mstance that the words employed are generally used to denote the ruin of places formerly inhabited, and by the want of any necessary connection in time between the first and second verses. It has even been proposed, though this does violence to the construction, to read "and the earth became" desolate and empty. Farther, it seems, _a priori_, improbable that the first act of creative power should have resulted in the production of a mere chaos. The crust of the earth also shows, in its alternations of strata and organic remains, evidence of a great series of changes extending over vast periods, and which might, in a revelation intended for moral purposes, with great propriety be omitted.

For such reasons some eminent expositors of these words are disposed to consider the first verse as a t.i.tle or introduction, and to refer to this period the whole series of geological changes; and this view has formed one of the most popular solutions of the apparent discrepancies between the geological and Scriptural histories of the world. It is evident, however, that if we continue to view the term "earth" as including the whole globe, this hypothesis becomes altogether untenable. The subsequent verses inform us that at the period in question the earth was covered by a universal ocean, possessed no atmosphere and received no light, and had not entered into its present relations with the other bodies of our system. No conceivable convulsions could have effected such changes on an earth previously possessing these arrangements; and geology a.s.sures us that the existing laws and dispositions in these respects have prevailed from the earliest periods to which it can lead us back, and that the modern state of things was not separated from those which preceded it by any such general chaos. To avoid this difficulty, which has been much more strongly felt as these facts have been more and more clearly developed by modern science, it has been held that the word earth may denote only a particular region, temporarily obscured and reduced to ruin, and about to be fitted up, by the operations of the six days, for the residence of man; and that consequently the narrative of the six days refers not to the original arrangement of the surface, relations, and inhabitants of our planet, but to the retrieval from ruin and repeopling of a limited territory, supposed to have been in Central Asia, and which had been submerged and its atmosphere obscured by aqueous or volcanic vapors. The chief support of this view is the fact, previously noticed, that the word earth is very frequently used in the signification of region, district, country; to which may be added the supposed necessity for harmonizing the Scriptures with geological discovery, and at the same time viewing the days of creation as literal solar days.