Creation and Its Records

CHAPTER XIII.

_THE GEN­ESIS NAR­RA­TIVE CON­SID­ERED GEN­ER­AL­LY._

I.--THE FIRST PART OF THE NAR­RA­TIVE.

§ 1. _Ob­jec­tions to the Re­ceived In­ter­pre­ta­tions_.

Tak­ing the nar­ra­tive as it stands, we find it to con­sist of two parts. First, a gen­er­al state­ment, of which no di­vi­sion of time is pred­icat­ed, and which is un­ac­com­pa­nied by any de­tail. Sec­ond, there is an ac­count se­ri­atim of cer­tain op­er­ations which are stat­ed to have been sev­er­al­ly per­formed one on each of six days.

As re­gards the first por­tion, we have no def­inite knowl­edge of sci­en­tif­ic truth with which to com­pare the nar­ra­tive. It is ob­vi­ous­ly nec­es­sary for some Di­vine teach­er to tell us au­thor­ita­tive­ly that God orig­inat­ed and caused the ma­te­ri­al earth, and the sys­tems of suns and stars which men on the earth's sur­face are able to dis­cern in the “heav­ens.”

We are con­se­quent­ly in­formed that in the be­gin­ning--there is no prac­ti­cal need for defin­ing fur­ther--“God cre­at­ed the heav­ens and the earth.” Here the ques­tion aris­es whether the He­brew “bara,” which is a gen­er­al term, al­ludes to the first pro­duc­tion of ma­te­ri­al, or to the mould­ing or fash­ion­ing of ma­te­ri­al al­ready (in terms) as­sumed to ex­ist. I think that the con­clu­sion must be that the best au­thor­ity is in favour of the idea of ab­so­lute orig­ina­tion of the whole;--the bring­ing the en­tire sys­tem in­to ex­is­tence where pre­vi­ous­ly there was a per­fect blank. But even if the sec­ondary mean­ing of “fash­ioned” or “forged” be al­lowed, we have still an in­tel­li­gi­ble ren­der­ing. For in that case the first orig­ina­tion of mat­ter is tac­it­ly as­sumed by the term it­self, and the state­ment would be, that the mat­ter of the fu­ture cos­mos so ex­ist­ing, the Di­vine Ar­ti­fi­cer fash­ioned or mould­ed it in­to the or­der­ly fab­ric it has come to be.

The nar­ra­tive then at once refers to our earth, with which, and with its in­hab­itants, the whole vol­ume is to be in fu­ture di­rect­ly con­cerned. “The earth was (or be­came) with­out form and void (chaot­ic), and dark­ness was on the face of the deep (or abyss).”

We have no pos­itive knowl­edge of what the first con­di­tion of ter­res­tri­al mat­ter was, apart from Rev­ela­tion. The re­mark­able dis­cov­er­ies that the spec­tro­scope has en­abled, and the facts learned from the phys­ical his­to­ry of comets and me­te­orites, can do no more than make what is known as the “neb­ular hy­poth­esis” high­ly prob­able. But it is am­ply suf­fi­cient for our pur­pose to point out, that if it is true that mat­ter orig­inat­ed in a neb­ulous haze to the par­ti­cles of which a spi­ral ro­ta­to­ry mo­tion had been com­mu­ni­cat­ed, and if (con­fin­ing our at­ten­tion to one plan­et on­ly) that at­ten­uat­ed mat­ter grad­ual­ly ag­gre­gat­ed in a ring or rings, and then con­sol­idat­ed in­to a sol­id or part­ly sol­id globe, then the re­sults are briefly, but ad­equate­ly and sub­lime­ly, pro­vid­ed for by the form of the Mo­sa­ic state­ment.

Mat­ter thus ag­gre­gat­ing would have de­vel­oped an enor­mous amount of heat, and there would have been a seething mass of molten min­er­al mat­ters, with gas­es and oth­er ma­te­ri­als in the form of vapours, which would have grad­ual­ly cooled and con­sol­idat­ed. Vast mass­es of wa­ter would in time be formed on one hand, and sol­id min­er­al mass­es on the oth­er; the lat­ter would con­tract as cool­ing pro­gressed, caus­ing great up­heavals and de­pres­sions and con­tor­tions of stra­ta. And be­fore the ad­vent of life-​forms, it is not dif­fi­cult to con­ceive that the first state of our globe was one which is in­tel­li­gi­bly and very graph­ical­ly de­scribed as be­ing “with­out form and void.” Noth­ing more than that, can, from ac­tu­al phys­ical knowl­edge, be stat­ed.[1]

It is al­so stat­ed that this con­fused el­emen­tal state of our earth was ac­com­pa­nied at first by dark­ness. Ma­te­ri­al dark­ness that is--for the po­ten­tial­ity of light and or­der was there; the SPIR­IT OF GOD “moved” (or brood­ed) up­on the face of the abyss. This presents no dif­fi­cul­ty of in­ter­pre­ta­tion, and may there­fore be passed over for the present.

[Foot­note 1: It would be hard­ly nec­es­sary (but for some re­marks in the course of the Glad­stone-​Hux­ley con­tro­ver­sy) to ob­serve that the term “void” does not im­ply vacu­ity or empti­ness, as of _sub­stance,_ but ab­sence of de­fined form such as sub­se­quent­ly was evolved.]

Prac­ti­cal­ly, in­deed, there has been no grave dif­fi­cul­ty raised over this first por­tion. And if it is ar­gued (on the ground of what I have al­ready in gen­er­al terms in­di­cat­ed) that the term “cre­at­ed” will, on my own in­ter­pre­ta­tion, get us in­to dif­fi­cul­ties, I re­ply that here, in its po­si­tion and with the con­text, there is no room for doubt, for clear­ly the word im­plies _both_ the great pri­ma­ry idea of the Di­vine de­sign or plan for­mu­lat­ed in heav­en, _and_ the sub­se­quent re­sult in time and space.[1] This will be­come more clear when I have fur­ther ex­plained the sub­ject.

[Foot­note 1: And of course if the true sense be “fash­ioned” or “mould­ed,” the ques­tion does not arise.]

II.--THE SEC­OND PART OF THE NAR­RA­TIVE.

But from this point the nar­ra­tive com­mences to be more pre­cise, and to ex­hib­it a very sin­gu­lar and al­to­geth­er un­prece­dent­ed di­vi­sion of cre­ative work in­to “days.”

Now I have al­ready in­di­cat­ed my doubt whether we ought to im­port any un­usu­al mean­ing to ex­plain this term.

In the first place, the ob­jec­tion that till the move­ments and re­la­tions of the sun to the earth were or­dained there would be no _mea­sure of a day_ will not stand a mo­ment's ex­am­ina­tion. Nor will the fur­ther ob­jec­tion some­times made, that even with the sun, a day is a very un­cer­tain thing: for ex­am­ple, a day and a night in the north po­lar re­gions are pe­ri­ods of month-​long du­ra­tion, quite dif­fer­ent from what they are in Eng­land, or at Mount Sinai. Ob­vi­ous­ly, a “day” with ref­er­ence to the plan­et for which the term is used, means the pe­ri­od oc­cu­pied by one ro­ta­tion of the plan­et on its own ax­is. The ro­ta­tion of the earth is an­tecedent to any­thing men­tioned in the nar­ra­tive we are con­sid­er­ing. In the na­ture of things, it would have been co­eval with the in­tro­duc­tion of the _pri­ma ma­ter­ies_--at least if any neb­ular hy­poth­esis can be re­lied on. The “day” would be there whether it were ob­scured by vapours or not, and whether spe­cial­ly made count­able and rec­og­niz­able by what we call the ris­ing and set­ting of the sun, or not, and whether we were stand­ing in No­va Zem­bla or in Aus­tralia.

Nor is it of much use to re­fer to the gen­er­al use of “day” for in­def­inite pe­ri­ods, which is just as com­mon in the En­glish of to-​day as it was in the He­brew of the Old Tes­ta­ment. But the dou­ble use of the term in dif­fer­ent sens­es has be­come gen­er­al, just be­cause it was found in prac­tice that no con­fu­sion or­di­nar­ily re­sult­ed; and sure­ly such a prac­tice would not have been com­mon, or at any rate would have been spe­cial­ly avoid­ed in the sa­cred vol­ume, wher­ev­er any mis­take or con­fu­sion was like­ly or even pos­si­ble.

No one can mis­take what is meant when al­lu­sion is made to “the day in which God made the heav­en and the earth.” No one falls in­to doubt when the “days” of the prophets are spo­ken of--any more than they do now when a man says, “Such a thing will not hap­pen in my _day_.”

When­ev­er in Daniel, or in sim­ilar prophet­ic writ­ings, the term “day” is used in a pe­cu­liar sense as in­di­cat­ing a term of years, we have no dif­fi­cul­ty in rec­og­niz­ing the fact from the con­text and cir­cum­stances of the nar­ra­tive; nor am I aware that any con­tro­ver­sy has ev­er arisen re­gard­ing the use of the term “day” _in any pas­sage of Scrip­ture ex­cept­ing in this_.

This fact alone is sus­pi­cious; the more so, be­cause there is ab­so­lute­ly noth­ing in the con­text to in­di­cate that any­thing but an or­di­nary day is in­tend­ed. Not on­ly so, but there _is_ in the con­text some­thing that does very clear­ly in­di­cate (and I think Dr. Réville is per­fect­ly jus­ti­fied in in­sist­ing on this) that an or­di­nary ter­res­tri­al day is meant. One of the primeval in­sti­tu­tions of Di­vine Prov­idence for men, my read­ers will not need to be re­mind­ed, was that of a “Sab­bath,” which any one read­ing the text would un­der­stand to mean a day, and which the Jews--the ear­li­est for­mal or le­gal rec­og­niz­ers of it--_did_ so un­der­stand, and that un­der di­rect Di­vine sanc­tion.

If the _days_ of Gen­esis mean in­def­inite pe­ri­ods of aeo­ni­an du­ra­tion, how is the sev­enth _day_ of rest to be un­der­stood?

But even if these dif­fi­cul­ties are over­come, ab­so­lute­ly noth­ing is gained by tak­ing the day to be a pe­ri­od.

I pre­sume that the ob­ject of gain­ing long pe­ri­ods of time in­stead of days in read­ing the Mo­sa­ic record, is to as­sume that the nar­ra­tive means to de­scribe the ac­tu­al pro­duc­tion on the earth of all that was cre­at­ed; in oth­er words, to as­sume a par­tic­ular mean­ing for the words “cre­at­ed,” “brought forth,” &c and then to make out that if a whole age is grant­ed, Sci­ence will al­low us a se­quence of a “plant age” a “fish and sauri­an age,” a “bird age,” and a “mam­malian age”;--that is, in gen­er­al terms and ne­glect­ing mi­nor forms of life. But then _to make any sense at all with the vers­es_ we are bound to show that each age pre­ced­ed the next--that one was more than part­ly, if not quite com­plete­ly, es­tab­lished _be­fore_ any ap­pear­ance of the next.

It is to this in­ter­pre­ta­tion that Pro­fes­sor Hux­ley al­ludes when he says, in his first ar­ti­cle,[1] “There must be some po­si­tion from which the rec­on­cil­ers of Sci­ence and Gen­esis will not re­treat--some cen­tral idea the main­te­nance of which is vi­tal, and its refu­ta­tion fa­tal.... It is that the an­imal species which com­pose the wa­ter pop­ula­tion, the air pop­ula­tion, and the land pop­ula­tion,[2] re­spec­tive­ly, orig­inat­ed dur­ing three suc­ces­sive pe­ri­ods of time, and on­ly dur­ing those pe­ri­ods of time.”

[Foot­note 1: “Nine­teenth Cen­tu­ry,” De­cem­ber, 1885, pp. 856-7.]

[Foot­note 2: These (un­for­tu­nate) terms are Mr. Glad­stone's.]

For my own part, I has­ten to say that, as one of the de­spised race of “rec­on­cil­ers,” not on­ly is this idea no cen­tral po­si­tion from which I will not re­treat, but one which I should nev­er think of oc­cu­py­ing for one mo­ment.

But on the view of the _pe­ri­ods_, some such po­si­tion must be tak­en up. And if so, I must main­tain that Pro­fes­sor Hux­ley has shown--if in­deed it was not ob­vi­ous al­ready--that the idea of a se­ries of pe­ri­ods, and in each of which a cer­tain kind of life be­gan and cul­mi­nat­ed (if it was not ful­ly com­plet­ed) _be­fore_ an­oth­er be­gan, is un­true to na­ture. This, there­fore, can­not have been in­tend­ed by the au­thor of Gen­esis.

I will here in­ter­rupt my ar­gu­ment for a mo­ment to say that there is a _cer­tain de­gree_ of _co­in­ci­dence_ be­tween the suc­ces­sion of life on the earth as far as it is ex­plained by palaeon­to­log­ical re­search, and the or­der of cre­ation stat­ed in Gen­esis; but that is not con­cerned with any forced in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the term “day.” The co­in­ci­dence is just near enough to give rise to a de­sire to iden­ti­fy cre­ative pe­ri­ods with the se­ries shown by the fos­sil-​bear­ing rocks; while it is at­tend­ed with just enough of dif­fer­ence to fur­nish mat­ter for con­tro­ver­sy, and to ex­pose the in­ter­preters to be cut up.

But to re­turn. Noth­ing, I sub­mit, is gained by get­ting _day_ to mean pe­ri­od. Let us put the mat­ter quite square­ly. Let us take day to mean pe­ri­od, and let us take all the vers­es to mean the _pro­cess_ of _pro­duc­ing_ on earth the var­ious life-​forms.

In or­der to come at once to the point, let us be­gin with the time when the dry land and the wa­ters are sep­arate. At that mo­ment, there is noth­ing said (or im­plied) about life al­ready hav­ing be­gun in ei­ther wa­ter or on dry land. God com­mand­ed plants to grow; con­se­quent­ly dur­ing that _whole pe­ri­od_ noth­ing but plants, and that of all the kinds and class­es men­tioned, should ap­pear ei­ther in wa­ter or on land. That pe­ri­od be­ing done, then came the com­mand for wa­ter an­imals, fish and great mon­sters, and al­so birds. We ought, ac­cord­ing­ly, to come next up­on a whole pe­ri­od in which no trace of any­thing but plants and these an­imals can be found; and last­ly, we ought to find the pe­ri­od of mam­malia, small­er rep­tiles, _am­phib­ia_ and in­sects (creep­ing things).

That is the fair and plain re­sult of what comes of sup­pos­ing the terms “let there be,” &c., to mean _pro­duc­tion on earth of the thing's them­selves_, and that the days are long _pe­ri­ods_.

All over­lap­ping of the pe­ri­ods is in­ad­mis­si­ble. All mean­ing is tak­en away, if we al­low of fish (e.g.) ap­pear­ing in the mid­dle of our first pe­ri­od; for God did not com­mand an­oth­er day's work till af­ter the first was com­plet­ed--“there was evening and there was morn­ing, a first day” (pe­ri­od), &c.

No; to suit the text so in­ter­pret­ed, we must have a full _pe­ri­od_ of plants with no fish; then a pe­ri­od of both but no in­sects, no creep­ing things, no an­imals; and so on. Now it is quite idle to con­tend any longer, that any such state of things ev­er ex­ist­ed.

If we pass over the long se­ries of the most an­cient stra­ta in which doubt­ful forms of ob­scure el­emen­tary plant and an­imal life ap­pear _al­most_ to­geth­er, we shall come to shell-​fish, and crus­taceans ful­ly es­tab­lished in the wa­ter, and scor­pi­ons, and some in­sects even on land, _be­fore_ plants made any great show. For the Car­bonif­er­ous--_the_ age of acro­gen plants, _par ex­cel­lence_--does not oc­cur till af­ter swarms of _Trilo­bite_ Crus­taceans had filled the sea and passed away, and af­ter the De­vo­ni­an fish-​age had near­ly passed away; and so on through­out.

The groups in na­ture over­lap each oth­er so close­ly, that though plant-​life (in el­emen­tary forms) prob­ably had the ac­tu­al start; vir­tu­al­ly the two king­doms--plant and an­imal--ap­peared al­most si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly. There is noth­ing like the ap­pear­ance of a first pe­ri­od in which one _alone_ pre­dom­inat­ed. And long be­fore the plants are es­tab­lished in all class­es, the great rep­tiles, birds, and some mam­mals, had ap­peared. The seed-​bear­ing plants--true grass­es and ex­ogens with seed cap­sules (an­giosperms) did not ap­pear till quite Ter­tiary times. That is the es­sen­tial dif­fer­ence be­tween the facts and the the­ory. If we make a di­agram, and let the squares rep­re­sent the main groups, the or­der (ac­cord­ing to the pe­ri­od in­ter­pre­ta­tion) ought to be as in A, where­as it re­al­ly more re­sem­bles B. Thus.

[Il­lus­tra­tion: The dot­ted ex­ten­sions of the squares in­di­cate the fore run­ners of the fam­ilies, i.e., their first in­di­ca­tions in the ages.]

[Il­lus­tra­tion: _A New In­ter­pre­ta­tion sug­gest­ed_]

But then it will be asked, if the day means on­ly an or­di­nary day--not a long pe­ri­od--what is there that ac­tu­al­ly could have hap­pened, and did hap­pen, in _three days_ (for that is the re­al point, as we shall see), such as the writ­er de­scribes as the third, fifth, and sixth days?

I an­swer that on those days, and on the pre­vi­ous ones, God did ex­act­ly what He is record­ed to have done. Af­ter the cre­ation of light (first day), and the ide­al ad­just­ment of the dis­tri­bu­tion of land and wa­ter (sec­ond day), He (_a_) “_cre­at­ed_,” on the third day, plants, from the low­est cryp­togam up­wards; then (_b_) paused for a day (the fourth) in the di­rect work of cre­at­ing life-​forms, to ad­just cer­tain mat­ters re­gard­ing times and sea­sons, and reg­ula­tion of cli­mate, which doubt­less would not be es­sen­tial dur­ing the ear­ly stages of life evo­lu­tion, but would be­come so di­rect­ly a cer­tain point was reached; then (_c_) re­sumed the di­rect cre­at­ing work (fifth day), with fish­es, great rep­tiles,[1] and birds (grouped pur­pose­ly so, as we shall see); and, last­ly (_d_), be­fore the Day of Rest, cre­at­ed the group of mam­mals (_car­nivo­ra_ and _her­bivo­ra_), the “creep­ing things” of the earth, and man (al­so grouped to­geth­er).

[Foot­note 1: This term may be here ac­cept­ed for the mo­ment--not to in­ter­rupt the ar­gu­ment. It will be more ful­ly dealt with in a sub­se­quent chap­ter.]

But some one will ask, You then ac­cept the ear­li­er the­ory, that the whole life-​se­ries that is now re­vealed to us by the rocks, from the Lau­ren­tian to the Re­cent, is ex­clud­ed from the nar­ra­tive; and that some spe­cial acts of cre­ation, re­gard­ing on­ly mod­ern and sur­viv­ing life-​forms, were made im­me­di­ate­ly be­fore man ap­peared? By no-​means; for such a the­ory is not on­ly in it­self im­prob­able, but is con­trary to all the ev­idence we pos­sess of life-​his­to­ry on the earth, and is so hope­less that it is re­al­ly not worth se­ri­ous ex­am­ina­tion and refu­ta­tion.

We have no ev­idence of any such gap--such sud­den change in the his­to­ry of life. Nor is it pos­si­ble to find any place in the Mo­sa­ic sto­ry at which we could rea­son­ably in­ter­po­late a _long_ pe­ri­od, such as that in­di­cat­ed by the en­tire se­ries of rock stra­ta. For a great part of such a pe­ri­od, not on­ly must there have been a reg­ular suc­ces­sion of life just the same in na­ture (though specif­ical­ly dif­fer­ent) as that now on earth, but a reg­ular dis­tri­bu­tion of land and wa­ter, and a set­tled ac­tion of the sun and the sea­sons, would be re­quired. No; we must give up all the old­er meth­ods which try to ig­nore the study of the word “cre­at­ed,” or to as­sume for it a mean­ing that it is not in­tend­ed to bear.

All de­pends, then, on what is meant by such terms as “cre­at­ed,” “let there be,” “let the earth bring forth,” &c. Per­haps it has oc­curred to but few of my read­ers se­ri­ous­ly to ex­am­ine in­to their own men­tal con­cep­tion of an “act of cre­ation.” Some will read­ily an­swer, “Of course it means on­ly that at the Di­vine _fi­at_, any giv­en species--say an ele­phant--ap­peared per­fect, trunk, tusks, and all the pe­cu­liar de­vel­op­ment of skull and skele­ton, where pre­vi­ous­ly no such crea­ture had ex­ist­ed.” But what pos­si­ble rea­son have they for this con­clu­sion? None what­ev­er. It has sim­ply been care­less­ly as­sumed from age to age, be­cause peo­ple at first knew no bet­ter; and when they be­gan to know bet­ter, they did not stop to amend their ideas ac­cord­ing­ly.

Of course, as Pro­fes­sor Hux­ley puts it, mil­lions of pi­ous Jews and Chris­tians[1] sup­posed _cre­ation_ to mean a “sud­den act of the De­ity”--i.e., to mean just what the knowl­edge of the time en­abled them to imag­ine. They could do noth­ing else. The state of knowl­edge fifty years ago would not have ren­dered it pos­si­ble for an ar­ti­cle like Pro­fes­sor Hux­ley's (that to which al­lu­sion has sev­er­al times been made) to have been writ­ten at all. What won­der, then, that the mul­ti­tude did not un­der­stand what _cre­ation_ meant, and that a rea­son­able in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the word has on­ly be­come pos­si­ble in quite re­cent times? Sure­ly all that is the fault of the read­er, not of the text. I do not even care that the writ­er him­self did not ful­ly ap­pre­hend the sub­ject. When a hu­man prophet is en­trust­ed with the di­vul­ga­tion of high and won­der­ful things, it is quite pos­si­ble that he may have been to greater or less ex­tent in the dark as to all or some of the com­mu­ni­ca­tion he was writ­ing.

[Foot­note 1: Ar­ti­cle quot­ed, p. 857.]

All that can be rea­son­ably re­quired is that the nar­ra­tive, as it stands, shall be con­sis­tent with ac­tu­al truth, and shall at no time come to be prov­ably at vari­ance with it.

But let us look at the word “cre­ation” more close­ly. We ac­cept what we are told, that in the be­gin­ning God called in­to ex­is­tence force and mat­ter, the ma­te­ri­al or “phys­ical ba­sis,” and all oth­er nec­es­saries of life. Sup­pose, then (even drop­ping the ques­tion of Evo­lu­tion, in or­der to sat­is­fy the “pi­ous mil­lions”), that this “mat­ter” was all ready (if I may so speak) to spring in­to or­ga­nized form and be­ing to take shape on earth--what shape should it take? Why (e.g.) an ele­phant? Why not any oth­er an­imal, or a non­de­script--a form which no zo­ol­ogist could place, rec­og­nize, or clas­si­fy? The _form_, the ide­al struc­ture, the _for­mu­la_, of the genus ele­phant must some­how have come in­to ex­is­tence _be­fore_ the obe­di­ent ma­te­ri­als and the suit­able forces of na­ture could work them­selves to­geth­er to the de­sired end.

Mr. Mi­vart has de­fined “cre­ation” at page 290 of his “Gen­esis of Species.” There is orig­inal cre­ation, deriva­tive or sec­ondary cre­ation (where the present form has de­scend­ed from an an­ces­tor that was orig­inal­ly “di­rect­ly” cre­at­ed), and con­ven­tion­al cre­ation (as when a man “cre­ates a for­tune,” mean­ing that he pro­duces a com­plex state or ar­range­ment out of sim­pler ma­te­ri­als). That is per­fect­ly true, so far; but it is on­ly a ver­bal def­ini­tion, and still does not go in­side, in­to the _idea_ in­volved. We must go far­ther.

In ev­ery act of cre­ation, two req­ui­sites can clear­ly be dis­tin­guished: (1) the mat­ter of life, and the forces, affini­ties, and lo­cal sur­round­ings nec­es­sary; and (2) the type, plan, ide­al, or for­mu­la, to re­al­ize or pro­duce which, the forces and the mat­ter are to act and re­act. This sec­ond is all-​es­sen­tial; with­out it the first would on­ly pro­duce a lim­bo of

“Un­ac­com­plisht works of Na­ture's hand, Abortive, mon­strous, or un­kind­ly mixt.[1]”

[Foot­note 1: “Par­adise Lost,” iii. 455.]

No _cre­ation_ in _any_ sense what­ev­er could come out of it.

In the same way, when we speak of the Di­vine Ar­ti­fi­cer “cre­at­ing,” or say­ing “Let there be,” there are two things im­plied: (i) the Di­vine plan or type-​form, and its ut­ter­ance or de­liv­ery (so to speak) to the builder-​forces and ma­te­ri­als; (2) the re­sult or the trans­la­tion in­to tan­gi­ble ex­is­tence of the Di­vine plan.

In ev­ery pas­sage speak­ing of cre­ation it _pos­si­ble_ that both pro­cess­es may be im­plied; it may be clear from the text (as in Gen­esis i. 1) that this is so. But it is equal­ly pos­si­ble that the first point on­ly, which in some as­pects is re­al­ly the es­sen­tial mat­ter, is alone spo­ken of.

And I sub­mit that, giv­en the gen­er­al fact that God orig­inat­ed ev­ery­thing in heav­en and earth (as first of all stat­ed gen­er­al­ly in Gen­esis i. 1-3), the es­sen­tial part of the _de­tailed_ or _spe­cif­ic_ cre­ation sub­se­quent­ly spo­ken of, was the Di­vine orig­ina­tion of the types, the ide­al forms, in­to which mat­ter en­dowed with life was to de­vel­op; _with­out_ any _nec­es­sary_ ref­er­ence to how, or in what time, the Di­vine cre­ation was ac­tu­al­ly re­al­ized or ac­com­plished on earth. It may be that the _form_ so con­ceived and drawn in Na­ture's book by the Di­vine De­sign­er is a fi­nal form, up to which de­vel­op­ment shall lead, and be­yond which (at least in a ma­te­ri­al sense) it shall not go; or it may be that it is a type in­tend­ed to be tran­si­to­ry;[1] but _both the in­ter­me­di­ate and fi­nal forms must take their ori­gin first in the Di­vine Mind, and be pre­scribed from the Heav­en­ly Throne,_ be­fore the obe­di­ent mat­ter and forces and the life-​en­dow­ment could co-​op­er­ate to re­sult in the re­al­iza­tion of the forms and the pop­ula­tion of the globe.

[Foot­note 1: The idea which I am en­deav­our­ing to make clear is well il­lus­trat­ed by an­oth­er pas­sage in one of the Mo­sa­ic books--the ac­count of the Taber­na­cle. Moses had no idea of his own of the struc­ture, its fur­ni­ture, im­ple­ments, or the forms of these. The nar­ra­tive ex­press­ly states that the Di­vine pow­er orig­inat­ed the de­signs, and caused Moses to un­der­stand them. In a hu­man work the de­sign­er would have drawn the ob­jects with mea­sures and spec­ifi­ca­tions, and giv­en the pa­pers to the work­men. With the Di­vine work, where the de­sign is in the Di­vine Thought, and the work­men and builders are forces and el­emen­tary mat­ter, the pro­cess is a mys­tery, but in its prac­ti­cal bear­ing is un­der­stood from anal­ogy. The Taber­na­cle was tru­ly God's _cre­ation_, be­cause it was all com­mand­ed in de­sign and “pat­tern” by the Almighty be­fore Moses put to­geth­er the ma­te­ri­als that re­al­ized the pat­tern in the camp of Is­rael.]

The rea­son why it is the _es­sen­tial_ part, is, that when once the Di­vine com­mand is­sued, the re­sult fol­lowed in­evitably--that will “go with­out say­ing.”

In hu­man af­fairs, al­so, we speak of the ar­chi­tect hav­ing _cre­at­ed_ the palace or cathe­dral, or the iron­clad; mean­ing there­by not the slow pro­cess of cut­ting and join­ing stone, or riv­et­ing steel plates, but the high­er an­tecedent act of mind in evok­ing the ide­al form and pro­vid­ing for all con­tin­gen­cies in the adap­ta­tion and sub­se­quent work­ing of the fin­ished struc­ture. And if we lim­it this use of the term “cre­ation” some­what in speak­ing of hu­man works, it is be­cause the con­cept of the hu­man mind so of­ten fails of re­al­iza­tion; that it is one thing to de­sign, and an­oth­er to ac­com­plish. The grand­est de­sign for a palace may fail to stand be­cause some pe­cu­liar­ity of the stone has been for­got­ten, or some char­ac­ter of foun­da­tion and sub­soil has been mis­un­der­stood. The no­blest form of tur­ret-​ship may prove use­less be­cause the strength of some ma­te­ri­al will not cor­re­spond to the ide­al, or some curve of sta­bil­ity has been mis­cal­cu­lat­ed. Not on­ly this: man may cre­ate, as a sculp­tor, the ide­al form for his to-​be stat­ue, or the drama­tist his char­ac­ter; but the per­fect re­al­iza­tion, ei­ther in mar­ble or in an ac­tu­al be­ing, may be im­pos­si­ble; the ide­al re­mains “in the air.” The ide­al, there­fore, is not the ma­jor part of “cre­ation” in a hu­man work.

But with the Di­vine work it is oth­er­wise. The Di­vine thought in Cre­ation and its re­sult are sep­arat­ed by no pos­si­bil­ity of fail­ure. Giv­en the mat­ter and the laws of force and of life, di­rect­ly the Great De­sign­er has ut­tered His thought to those that are His builders, they _must_ in­fal­li­bly and with­out dis­cord, work through the longest terms, it may be, of an evo­lu­tion­ary se­ries, till, ev­ery tran­si­tion­al con­di­tion passed, the fi­nal form emerges per­fect.

Our very ver­bal def­ini­tion, ad­mit­ting as it does “deriva­tive” cre­ation, im­plies this. We all speak of our­selves as “cre­at­ed.” How so? We are not pro­duced ready made. Nor do we whol­ly solve the mat­ter by say­ing that we are “cre­at­ed” be­cause we are born from par­ents who (if we go far enough back) orig­inat­ed in a first pro­duc­tion from the hand of Na­ture. We are re­al­ly “cre­at­ed” be­cause the _de­sign_--the _life-​form of us_, which mat­ter and force were to work to­geth­er to pro­duce--was the di­rect prod­uct of the Di­vine Mind.[1]

My ques­tion, there­fore, of the Gen­esis in­ter­preters is: Why will you in­sist on the text mean­ing on­ly the sec­ond el­ement in Cre­ation--the pro­duc­tion on earth, and not the De­sign or its is­sue in heav­en?

The for­mer we could find out some day for our­selves; we _have_ found out some of it (though on­ly some) al­ready; the lat­ter we could nev­er know un­less we were told. Sure­ly it is the “_dignus vin­dice nodus_” in this case. To tell us the earth's his­to­ry with­in a brief space would be im­pos­si­ble, and would have been for ages un­in­tel­li­gi­ble if it could have been told; to tell us of God's cre­ation is pos­si­ble--for it has been done; and the record, un­less mis­read, is in­tel­li­gi­ble for all time.

The nar­ra­tive, if it is a rev­ela­tion of Di­vine Cre­ation in heav­en, takes up ground that none can tres­pass on. None can say “it is not so,” un­less ei­ther he will show that the words will not bear the mean­ing, or that the con­text and oth­er Scrip­ture con­tra­dict it.

[Foot­note 1: “_In Thy book_ were all my mem­bers writ­ten, while _as yet there were none_ of them” (Psa. cxxxix. 16).

“How did this all first come to be you? _God thought about me_ and I grew.”--_Mac­don­ald_.]

So soon as the mat­ter of earth and heav­en (and all that is im­plied there­with) orig­inat­ed “in the be­gin­ning,” the nar­ra­tive in­tro­duces to our rev­er­ent con­tem­pla­tion the solemn con­clave in heav­en, when, in a se­ri­al or­der and on sep­arate days, God de­clared, for the guid­ance of the ev­er po­ten­tial­ly ac­tive forces, and for ma­te­ri­als ev­er (as we know) seek­ing com­bi­na­tion and res­olu­tion,[1] the _form_ which the earth sur­face is (it may be ev­er so grad­ual­ly) to take and the _life-​forms_ which are to be evolved.

That this cre­ative work was piece­meal, and on sep­arate days, we know from the nar­ra­tive. _Why_ it was so ar­ranged we do not know. Vast as was the work to be done, al­most in­fi­nite as was the com­plex­ity of the laws re­quired to be for­mu­lat­ed, it _could_ have all been done at once, in a mo­ment of time; for time does not ex­ist to the Di­vine Mind. But see­ing that the work was to be on earth, and for the ben­efit of crea­tures to whom the di­vi­sions of time were all-​im­por­tant, we can dim­ly, at least, dis­cern a cer­tain fit­ness and ap­pro­pri­ate­ness in the grad­ual and di­vid­ed work.

[Foot­note 1: The read­er will rec­og­nize that there is not the least ex­ag­ger­ation in this. It is plain mat­ter of fact, as I have en­deav­oured to show in the ear­li­er chap­ters of this book. Ev­ery­where we see _force_ ready to be evoked by the prop­er method. Ev­ery­where we see _molec­ular_ mo­tion, and a per­pet­ual com­bi­na­tion and res­olu­tion of el­ements and com­pounds, whether chem­ical or me­chan­ical.]