Creation and Its Records

CHAPTER XV.

_AND SUP­PORT­ED BY THE CON­TEXT._

But a step fur­ther is nec­es­sary: if the con­clu­sion that I have come to, by ac­cept­ing “day” in its or­di­nary and nat­ural sense, and by giv­ing a hith­er­to over­looked (and so far a new) mean­ing to “cre­ation,” is sound, it must not on­ly be ren­dered prob­able by ref­er­ence to oth­er parts of Scrip­ture writ­ten when Gen­esis was much near­er its orig­inal pub­li­ca­tion than it is now; it is still (be­fore all things) nec­es­sary, that the in­ter­pre­ta­tion adopt­ed should be con­formable to the con­text.

And I have heard it ob­ject­ed that there are vers­es which im­ply not on­ly a Di­vine Act in heav­en, with the Sons of God in con­clave around the throne--sub­lime and won­der­ful pic­ture!--but al­so dis­tinct­ly in­di­cate a cor­re­spond­ing ac­tion on earth, and so re­quire us to in­clude in our ren­der­ing of “cre­ation” _both_ the ideas which (page 169 ante) I have ad­mit­ted may, on oc­ca­sion be re­quired by the terms. For ex­am­ple: af­ter the cre­ative com­mand in vers­es 7, 9, 11, 15, and 24, is de­clared, it is fol­lowed by the words of ful­fil­ment--“and it was so;” and in verse 11, when God has said “Let the earth bring forth grass, &c.”, in the next verse it is pos­itive­ly record­ed that the earth _did_ bring forth grass, &c.

I of course ad­mit all this, but it is in no way op­posed to my sug­ges­tion.

The _com­mence­ment_ of the _re­sult_ prob­ably, if not nec­es­sar­ily, fol­lowed im­me­di­ate­ly on the is­sue of the fin­ished com­mand, viz., the pro­mul­ga­tion of the forms to be ob­tained and the pro­cess­es to be fol­lowed. The _whole_ re­sult did not be­come ac­com­plished then and there, in the time men­tioned, or ex­act­ly in the or­der men­tioned: we know that for a fact. Take, for ex­am­ple, the case of _veg­eta­tion_. Here the au­thor, in terms at once pre­cise and uni­ver­sal­ly in­tel­li­gi­ble, speaks of “veg­eta­tion[1]” (grass of the A.V.), “herb yield­ing seed,” and “trees yield­ing fruit,” there­by ex­haus­tive­ly enu­mer­at­ing the mem­bers of the veg­etable king­dom.

[Foot­note 1: Noth­ing more is meant by the He­brew “_deshe_.” The true “grass­es” (_graminea_),--ce­re­als, bam­boos, &c., are cer­tain­ly not in­tend­ed, for these are all con­spic­uous­ly flow­er­ing plants, “herbs yield­ing seed,” and there­fore com­ing un­der the sec­ond plain­ly de­fined group. But the gen­er­al term “sproutage” or “veg­eta­tion” is just adapt­ed to sig­ni­fy the mass of cryp­togam­ic plant-​life, the moss­es, lichens, al­gae, and then ferns, &c., which ev­ident­ly formed the first stage of plant-​life on the globe.]

Now, as a mat­ter of fact, there was no one long (or short) pe­ri­od dur­ing which the whole of this com­mand was re­al­ized, _be­fore_ the next cre­ative act oc­curred.

At first _al­gae_ and low forms of veg­etable life ap­peared; and doubt­less we have lost myr­iads up­on myr­iads of such low­er forms of plant-​life in the ear­ly stra­ta, be­cause such forms were ill cal­cu­lat­ed for fos­sil-​preser­va­tion, ow­ing to the ab­sence of woody fi­bre, si­li­cious cas­ing, or hard fruit or seed ves­sels. But when we first have a marked ac­cu­mu­la­tion of spe­cial­ized plant-​life in the coal mea­sures (Up­per Car­bonif­er­ous), it is still on­ly of cryp­togams--ferns and great club moss­es. A be­gin­ning of true seed-​bear­ing plants (Gym­nosperm ex­ogens) had been made with the _conifers_ of the De­vo­ni­an stra­ta; but true _grass­es_, and the oth­er or­ders of phanerogam­ic plants and ar­bore­ous veg­eta­tion, do not ap­pear till the ter­tiary rocks were de­posit­ed, very long af­ter the age of fish and great rep­tiles had cul­mi­nat­ed, and the in­au­gu­ra­tion of the bird age and the mam­malian age had tak­en place.

Look­ing on­ly to the abun­dant, promi­nent, and char­ac­ter­is­tic life-​forms of the sev­er­al stra­ta, it could cer­tain­ly be said that the pe­ri­od when the _wa­ter_ ac­tu­al­ly brought forth a vast mass of its life-​forms--corals, ser­tu­lar­ias, crus­taceans, and fish of the low­er or­ders--must have _pre­ced­ed_ (not fol­lowed) the time when the earth pro­duced veg­eta­tion of all kinds, and fur­ther that it must have come af­ter the ap­pear­ance of scor­pi­ons and some land in­sects.[1]

[Foot­note 1: A sin­gle wing found lit­tle more than a year ago is the sole ev­idence of in­sects old­er than the De­vo­ni­an; and scor­pi­ons (high­ly-​or­ga­nized crus­taceans) have been found in the Up­per Sil­uri­an in some abun­dance.]

More­over, as the reg­ular suc­ces­sion in pe­ri­ods of light and dark­ness on the earth, and the se­quence of sea­sons was not or­ga­nized (but on­ly a gen­er­al­ly dif­fused light, and, prob­ably, an uni­form and moist state of cli­mate with­out sea­sons) till _af­ter_ the com­mands for the for­ma­tion of the whole of the large class­es of plants, both cryp­togams and phanerogams, it is ob­vi­ous that as many of these would re­quire the fuller de­vel­op­ment of sea­son­al in­flu­ences, the whole pro­cess could not have been worked out be­fore the fourth day's cre­ative work was be­gun.

This in­stance alone--and it would be easy to add oth­ers--shows that the nar­ra­tive can­not be meant to in­di­cate what ac­tu­al­ly hap­pened on earth, i.e., to sum­ma­rize the _en­tire re­al­iza­tion_ of the Di­vine com­mand.

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 God 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, God 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 God 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 cir­cum­stance 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 God 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 God 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 God 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--God “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 God ac­tu­al­ly formed or fash­ioned _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 as­sume the hu­man shape. And that done, God “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 God, 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 en­ti­tled 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 cu­mu­la­tion 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 hith­er­to 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 pas­sage. (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 as­signed 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 en­cum­brance 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 God 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 God 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 clash­ing, or room for con­tro­ver­sy.