Читать книгу The Pentateuch, in Its Progressive Revelations of God to Men - Henry Cowles - Страница 5

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FITLY the written word of God to the race begins with the creation. In every reflecting mind the first inquiry must be this: Whence am I? Whence came my being—this wonderful existence; these active powers? It must be that I am indebted for all these gifts to some higher Being; how earnestly then do I ask—To whom?——No other question can claim priority to this. Every thing in its nature and relations gives it precedence above all other questions. Inasmuch as my reason affirms to me that I owe my existence to some great Maker, I feel that I must know Him and must know my responsibilities to Him. I need to learn also how the further question—my future destiny—may link itself with my relations to Him who brought me into being.

Of secondary yet similar interest are the corresponding questions as to the world we live in. Who made it? Does its Maker hold it under his own control? Does He still operate its forces and wield its agencies? Have I any obligations and duties toward Him who made the earth and all that is therein? Verily I must assume that if there be a God, at once Creator and Upholder of the earth and Father of his rational offspring, his written word will hasten to throw light on the otherwise dark minds of his children—will let them know that “in the beginning God made the heavens and the earth” and man.

The moral lessons of this great fact—God our Creator—are forcibly brought out in later scriptures. Listen to the Psalmist: “O come, let us sing unto the Lord ... for he is a great God and a great King above all gods. In his hands are the deep places of the earth; the strength of the hills is his also. The sea is his and he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. O come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker, for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.” (Ps. 95:1–7.) Note also the blended sublimity and beauty of David’s appeal: “Praise the Lord; sing unto him a new song, for the earth is full of the goodness of the Lord. By the word of the Lord were the heavens made and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. He gathereth the waters of the sea together as an heap; he layeth up the depth in store-houses. Let all the earth fear the Lord; let the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him, for he spake and it was: he commanded, and it stood fast.” (Ps. 33:1–9.) Still higher if possible rises the lofty strain of Isaiah when he would set forth the unequalled power of the great Creator as the Refuge and Salvation of his trustful children:—“Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and meted out heaven with a span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance? To whom then will ye liken God”? etc. (Isa. 40:12,18).——So when Job had indulged himself too far in questioning the ways of God in providence, the Lord replied out of the whirlwind, demanding of him—“Where wert thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof if thou knowest—who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon were the foundations thereof fastened, or who laid the corner-stone thereof when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy”?... “Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds that abundance of waters may cover thee? Canst thou send lightnings that they may go and say unto thee, Here are we”? (Job 38:4–7, 34, 35.)

In that great conflict of ages against idolatry, the one final appeal was wont to be made to this great fact of God’s Creatorship. We have examples in Ps. 115:2–8 and Jer. 10:1–16 and elsewhere.——Thus throughout the sacred word this great fact that God is our Creator, involving the whole sphere of God in nature, stands as the first witness to his true divinity, the first proof that in him we live and have our being—the ground of the first claim upon us for supreme homage, worship, trust, love and obedience. The first lessons taught in Eden were taken from this great and open volume of natural religion. The first lessons which God’s people were to place before the heathen in their mission work of the early ages were drawn from the visible worlds and from their testimony to the Great Creator. These manifestations are the alphabet of God; the point therefore from which progressive revelations begin.

Noticeably the record of the creation (Gen. 1 and 2) rests not with simply giving the general statement that God made all things, but enters somewhat into the particulars, reciting in certain points the steps of the process and the order of its details. First the heavens and the earth had a beginning and this beginning was from God. At some stage in the process, perhaps the next in order after the heavens and the earth could be said to be, the earth was chaotic, i.e. formless and desolate; then God brought forth light; then to clear the atmosphere somewhat of mists and vapors, he caused some of its waters to rise into the expanse, and some to descend to the earth below; then gathered waters below into seas, leaving portions of the earth’s surface dry land. Then he brought forth grass and herbage; next, the light-bearers in the heavens appeared—the sun, moon and stars; then came into being fish, reptiles and fowl; and on the sixth day land, animals and man. Thus in six successive periods of time, through steps of gradation easily traced by the witnessing “sons of God” (Job 38:7), the processes of this creative work were finished. The Great Father would have his first-born unfallen “sons” as well as his later-born and redeemed children enjoy these works of his creative hand, and therefore he developed them slowly and in the order of naturally successive steps that they might see that all was truly “good,” “very good.”

Partly because of advances made within recent times in physical science, partly because of speculations not always friendly in tone to the inspired record, and partly because of the intrinsic interest and importance of the subject, some special points in this narrative demand very particular attention.

1. The origin of the written record and the manner of its revelation to men.

The entire book of Genesis is ascribed to Moses on most valid grounds; whether as compiler only or as original author, is, therefore, the first question.——I do not see how this point can be determined with absolute certainty. The probabilities in my view favor the supposition of previously written documents, these probabilities arising, not to any considerable extent from manifest differences of style in its various portions, and not at all from diversities in the use of the names of God, Jehovah and Elohim; but mainly from the strong presumption that such genealogical records as abound in Genesis, coupled so largely with numbers, would be put in writing before the age of Moses. Men who had the knowledge of writing would certainly appreciate its utility for the preservation of such facts as these.——And further; the very use of the word “generations”1 (Gen. 2:4) in the sense of history, and much more still the statement (Gen. 5:1), “This is the book of the generations of Adam,” raise this presumption nearly or quite to a certainty.——In making up the historical portions of the Scriptures it seems rational to assume that the Lord moved “holy men of old” to put in writing such facts falling under their personal observation and immediate knowledge as he deemed useful for these sacred records. In some cases the writer might be (as was Luke) just one remove from the original eye-witnesses, yet in a position to learn the facts with “perfect understanding” and “certainty.” We should not doubt the power of God to give to holy men these historic facts by immediate revelation; but the question is not one of power, but of wisdom, of divine policy, and of fact. The divine policy seems to have been (in this case as in miracles) never to introduce the supernatural, the miraculous, to do what the natural might accomplish equally well. On this principle inspired men were moved of God to use their own eyes and minds in writing Scripture history in all cases when the facts came within their certain knowledge. There were facts, like these of the creation, which fell under no human eye, and which therefore do not come under this principle. Some form of direct revelation from God is, therefore, to be assumed here. Though the supposition of a revealing angel might find some support from subsequent prophetic Scriptures, yet a direct revelation from God to some inspired writer is the more obvious supposition.——It has been asked—Was this creation in its processes and announcements shown in a manner analogous to prophetic vision—the writer then recording in his own phrase what he saw and heard?——There being no testimony on this point from either of the two parties—the divine Revealer or the human writer—we must leave it undecided. Fortunately it is of no particular importance to us.——It is, however, of some importance that we consider the question whether in this account of the creation we are to look for statements adjusted to science—not merely to the stage of its progress in this present year of the nineteenth century, but to the perfect science of ultimate fact; or, on the other hand, for statements adapted to the average mind of Hebrew readers in the age of Moses, written for their comprehension, instruction and spiritual culture. I answer unhesitatingly, the latter. “All Scripture, given by inspiration of God, is profitable for doctrine ... and for instruction in righteousness” (2Tim. 3:16), and was of God designed and shaped for these ends.——Yet let it be borne in mind; these statements respecting the processes of creation, being in the sense intended, actually true, will not conflict with any true science. They may omit processes which human analysis and research may render probable, passing them as not germain to the scope of a moral revelation and as not likely to be intelligible to the masses of mankind.——Finally—that the assumed stand-point of view from which these processes of creation are contemplated is on this earth and not elsewhere in the universe is certain from the fact that it was written to be read and understood by men and not by angels. Hence we must expect the facts to be presented as they would have appeared to a supposed observer upon our globe.

2. What is the true idea of nature, and what the line between nature and the supernatural?

A reference to familiar facts will best set forth the case. Thus; it is in and by nature that at a certain temperature water becomes vapor; at another temperature, ice; that vapor rises in the atmosphere, water runs downward, and ice abides under the laws of solids. On the other hand it is not in nature that water in any of its forms creates itself. Its elements can not begin to be, save by some power above nature.——Again, by nature plants and animals reproduce their kind, but never can of themselves begin their own existence. Hence some of the processes brought before us in this record of creation come under the head of nature; others are as obviously supernatural—from the immediate hand of God. The work of the second day—the mists of the atmosphere, in part ascending in vapor, in part precipitated upon the earth in water—seems to have followed natural law. In the work of the third, the waters on higher portions of the earth’s surface subsiding into the seas, follow the law of flowing water. But the original creation of matter and the beginnings of life, both vegetable and animal, must have been supernatural—from the immediate fiat of the Almighty.

This point would scarcely need special definition had not extreme views been put forth in our times; as (e.g.) that nature is virtually a second-rate deity—indebted to God, indeed, for the original gift of its powers, but thenceforward working those powers independently of God—made to run without God after he has once wound it up as the mechanic makes and winds up his watch. But the Scriptures recognize no such semi-deification of nature. According to their teaching, God still “upholds all things by the word of his power” (Heb. 1:3); “By him all things consist” (Col. 1:17)—i.e., are maintained in their existence—are held to system and order under natural law. It is precisely God himself who gives or withholds the rain; who calls to the lightnings and they answer, “Here we are”—​(Job 38:35); and it is none the less God who wields these agencies because he does it in harmony with principles which are just as fixed as he pleases to have them. Therefore true science will take no exception to the doctrine that nature is nothing more or less than God’s established mode of operation. We may call these modes of operations “laws” or “powers,” and may think and speak of them as constituting “Nature;” but if we come to regard Nature as a maker and a doer, working independently of God, we have (inadvertently perhaps, but none the less really) ruled God out of his own universe. Both Scripture and reason hold that “in him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28.) The broad fact that God’s intelligent creatures must live in this material world and be constantly acting upon matter and acted upon by matter, suggests abundant reasons why God should ordain fixed laws for the changes and states of all material things. But why should we think of God’s hand as any the less present in all these changes of material states and forms because they follow fixed and ascertainable laws? In truth the divine wisdom is only the more abundantly manifested by means of this reliable uniformity.

Another doctrine yet more extreme severs all connection between nature and an intelligent Power above and over her, and thus makes her supreme in her domain. This is so far Atheism—ruling God out from at least the entire material universe.——Yet, again; to make nature herself intelligent—to ascribe to nature whatever traces of design appear in her operations, and to hold that nature is herself the universe, undistinguishable from any higher spiritual power, is Pantheism.——It is therefore important to define nature so that her true relations to the Supreme Intelligence—the very God—Creator and Lord of the universe—shall be distinctly seen and reverently recognized.

The advocates of extreme naturalism have labored faithfully to verify their doctrine by experiment. They have put Nature to task—not to say torture—to compel her to originate life. Pushing their chemical analysis of those forms of matter in which life is thought specially to reside, they flatter themselves that they have at last got their hands on the very elements which, brought together, make life, viz. carbonic acid, ammonia, and water, chemically combined. To this compound they give the name, “protoplasm.” They have found, they say, that where life is there is protoplasm, its home and dwelling-place at least; and that life never appears lodging in any other home. They can not see that the presence of life adds any thing to this compound, or that its absence takes any thing away. Therefore they are sure they have found what makes life.

Now the skillful chemist in his laboratory has not the least difficulty in providing himself with carbonic acid, ammonia, and water. Why then does he not evolve the long-sought-for life-force and prove his doctrine, past all doubt? Let him bring out new beings, new forms of life, vegetable or animal or both, in ample diversity, for the range is unlimited. Let his laboratory push forth into being such troops of offspring as will forever confound gainsayers and prove that Nature, properly manipulated, is equal to the production of life-forces in endless variety and abundance.

Have any modern scientists done this? Not yet. Have they made any approximation toward it? Mr.Huxley thinks he has come so near to it that if he could only have at his service the favorable conditions of the very earliest state of matter, he should succeed. “If it were given me (says he) to look beyond the abyss of geologically-recorded time to the still more remote period when the earth was passing through physical and chemical conditions which it can no more see again than a man can recall his infancy, I should expect to be a witness of the evolution of living protoplasm from not living matter. That is the expectation to which analogical reasoning leads me.”2——“Not living matter evolving living protoplasm” means that matter itself, dead matter, begets real life. Nature would thus become herself a creator, exercising the most decisive functions of the Infinite God. Mr.Huxley can not make Nature do this exploit in the present state of this world or of the universe; but he fully believes there was a time when he should have seen it if he had been there! This is his proof of the new doctrine. He will not presume to “call it any thing but an act of philosophic faith.”

3. The sense of the word “day” as used in Gen. I. of the six days of creation.

To simplify the subject I make the single issue—Is it a period of twenty-four hours, or a period of special character, indefinitely long? The latter theory supposes the word to refer here not so much to duration as to special character—the sort of work done and the changes produced during the period contemplated.

Turning our attention to this latter theory, we raise three leading inquiries:

(1.) Do the laws of language and, specially, does the usage of the word “day” permit it?

(2.) Apart from the bearing of geological facts, are there points in the narrative itself which demand or even favor this sense of the word?

(3.) What are the geological facts bearing on this question, and what weight may legitimately be accorded to them?

(1.) Beyond all question the word “day” is used abundantly, (and therefore admits of being used) to denote a period of special character, with no particular reference to its duration. We have a case in this immediate connection (Gen. 2:4), where it is used of the whole creative period: “In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.” Under the same usage we have “the day of the Lord” (1Thess. 5:2) for the day of judgment; “the day of God,” in the same sense (2Pet. 3:12); “the day of salvation” (2Cor. 6:2); “day of redemption” (Eph. 4:30); a “day of darkness and of gloominess; a day of clouds and of thick darkness” (Joel 2:2). “In the day of prosperity, be joyful; but in the day of adversity, consider” (Eccl. 7:14). “If thou hadst known in this thy day the things,” etc. (Luke 19:42). So also Job 19:25, and John 8:56, etc.

To set aside this testimony from usage as being inapplicable to the present case, it has been said—​(a.)That here is a succession of days, “first day,” “second day,” “third day,” etc., and that this requires the usual sense of days of the week.——To which the answer is that here are six special periods succeeding each other—a sufficient reason for using the word in the peculiar sense of a period of special character. Each of these periods is distinct from any and all the rest in the character of the work wrought in it.——The reason for dividing the creative work into six periods—“days”—rather than into more or fewer lies in the divine wisdom as to the best proportion of days of man’s labor to the one day of his rest, the Sabbath. God’s plan for his creative work contemplated his own example as suggestive of man’s Sabbath and was shaped accordingly. This accounts for dividing the work of creation into six special periods, correlated to God’s day of rest from creative work.——​(b.) It will also be urged that each of these days is said to be made up of evening and of morning—“The evening and the morning were the first day,” etc. But the strength of this objection comes mainly from mistranslation and consequent misconception of the original. The precise thought is not that evening and morning composed or made up one full day; but rather this: There was evening and there was morning—day one, i.e., day number one. There was darkness and then there was light, indicating one of the great creative periods.3

It is one thing to say—There were alternations of evening and morning—i.e. dark scenes and bright scenes—marking the successive periods of creation, first, second, third, etc.; and another thing to affirm that each of these evenings and mornings made up a day. The point specially affirmed in the two cases, though somewhat analogous, is not by any means identical.——Let it be considered moreover, that while in Hebrew as in English, night and day are often used for the average twelve-hour duration of darkness and of light respectively in each twenty-four hours, yet in neither language are the words evening and morning used in this sense, as synonymous with night and day. Indeed “evening” and “morning” are rather points than periods of time; certainly do not indicate any definite amount of time—any precise number of hours; but are used to denote the two great changes—i.e. from light to darkness and from darkness to light; in other words, from day to night and from night to day. Therefore to make evening and morning added together constitute one day is entirely without warrant in either Hebrew or English usage and can not be the meaning of these passages in Genesis.4

(2.) The showing of the narrative itself, considered apart from the bearing of geological facts.

(a.) Here vs. 3–5 demand special attention, this first day being the model one.——I understand “evening” to be the chaotic state of v.2, when “darkness was on the face of the deep,” and “morning” to be that first “light” which God spake into being. The reason for using these words—“evening and morning”—in this sense I find in the universal sentiment of mankind that light is pleasant and darkness is not. This sentiment is indicated here; “God saw the light that it was good.” The state of chaos was in contrast with this—dismal, dreary, awakening no sense of beauty or order; no emotions of joy. The light of day brings joy, and the freshest and best sensation of it comes with the morning. Hence these words were fitly and beautifully appropriate to the two great creative states—first chaos; secondly, light—which together marked off the first of the six creative days.——But we can not for a moment think of this chaotic state as being only twelve hours. We can not rationally think of the word “evening” applied to it as having any reference to time, duration. It was an evening only in the sense of being dark, desolate, any thing but joyous like the morning. The word “evening” may be chosen rather than night for the sake of a more perfect antithesis with “morning.”

(b.) Throughout at least the first three of these creative epochs there was no sun-rising and setting to mark off the ordinary day. These therefore were not the common human day; but, as Augustine long ago said, these are the days of God—divine days—measuring off his great creative periods. God moved through these six great periods by successive stages of labor and of rest. Beginning with the long evening of chaos; then advancing to a glorious day of light; then, after a cessation analogous to man’s rest by night, he proceeded to the work of the second day—the joyous and beautiful development of the firmament in the heavens. So onward by stages of repose and of activity, these figurative evenings and mornings continued through the six successive epochs of creation.

(c.) In some at least of these creative epochs, the work done demands more time than twenty-four hours. For example, the gathering of the waters from under the heavens into one place to constitute the seas or oceans and leave portions of the earth’s surface dry land. Nothing short of absolute miracle could effect this in one human day. But miracle should not be assumed here, the rule of reason and the normal law of God’s operations being never to work a miracle in a case where the ordinary course of nature will accomplish the same results equally well. We must the more surely exclude miracle and assume the action of natural law only throughout these processes of the creative work because the very purpose of a protracted rather than an instantaneous creation looked manifestly to the enlightenment, instruction, interest, and joy of those “morning stars,” the “sons of God” who beheld the scene, then “sang together and shouted for joy” (Job 38:7).——

The greatness of the work assigned to the fourth day stringently forbids our compressing it within the limits of one ordinary human day. Especially is this the case if we understand the verse to speak of the original creation of these light-bearers—the sun and the moon and the stars also, and of their adjustment in their spheres for their assigned work. Think of the vastness of the sun and of the numbers, magnitude, and immense distances of the stars; and ask how it is possible that the creation of these bodies could be either instructive or joyful to the beholding angels if it had been all rushed through within twenty-four hours of human time.——This difficulty is in a measure relieved if we suppose the fourth day’s work to have been, not the original creation of these heavenly bodies, but only the bringing of them into the view of a supposed spectator upon the earth—i.e. by clearing the atmosphere so as to make these heavenly bodies visible. The question at issue between these two constructions of the fourth day’s work must be examined in its place.——The amount of creative and other work brought within the sixth day should be noticed. First, God created all the land animals; then Adam; then he brought “every beast of the field and every fowl of the air” to Adam to see what he would call them—which at least must assume that Adam had attained a somewhat full knowledge of language, and that he had time enough to study the special character of each animal so as to give each one its appropriate name, and time enough also to ascertain that there was not one among them all adapted to be a “helpmeet” for himself. Then the “deep sleep” of Adam—how long protracted, the record saith not; and finally the creation of Eve from one of his ribs—all to come within the sixth day; for the creation of Eve certainly falls within this day, being a part of the creative work, and accomplished, therefore, before God’s seventh day of rest from all his work began. These labors of the sixth day, moreover, were precisely such as should not be rushed through in haste. The importance, not to say solemnity, of these transactions and the special interest they must be supposed to awaken in the first-born “sons of God” most stringently preclude precipitate haste. It is not easy to see how Moses or his intelligent readers of the early time could have supposed all this to have transpired within the twelve hours of light in a human day.——We may say, moreover, in regard to each and all of these six creative periods that if the holy angels were indeed spectators of these scenes and if God adjusted his methods of creation to the capacities of these pupils—these admiring students of his glorious works—then surely we must not think of his compressing them within the period of six human days. Divine days they certainly must have been, sufficiently protracted to afford finite minds scope for intelligent study, adoring contemplation, and as the Bible indicates, most rapturous shouts of joy.

Against the theory of indefinitely long periods, it is objected that the law of the Sabbath demands the usual sense of the word “day.” The record in Gen. 2:2,3, is—“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 he had created and made.” The words of the fourth command are—“Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God, etc.—for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.”——The real argument here rests on the analogy between God’s working and resting, and man’s labor and rest. In each case the period of labor is six out of seven; of rest, one in seven. This argument does not require that God’s six working days and one resting day should be of twenty-four hours each. If it did, we should be hard pressed to show that God’s seventh day of rest from creation’s work was a merely human day from sun to sun. No; it suffices if we make God’s days of creative energy and of creative rest each and all divine days—all alike periods of indefinite length—all of the same sort; and on the other hand man’s days of labor and his day of rest, all human days, of the same sort with each other, from sun to sun. As God’s resting day is plainly of indefinite length—a period known by its character and not by its duration, so should his days of creative labor be: not only so may they be, but so they ought to be according to the analogy and argument in the case.——We come therefore to the conclusion that entirely apart from the demands of geological science, the creative days must be periods of indefinite length, called “days” with reference to the peculiar work done in them and to their peculiar character, and not as being the ordinary human day of twenty-four hours. It may be admitted, moreover, that the phraseology and the whole shaping of the narrative in respect to days may have contemplated the institution of the Sabbath—to be founded as shown above upon the analogy of God’s labor and rest with man’s permitted labor and enjoined rest in commemoration of God’s work of creation.

(3.) We are to consider the geological facts bearing on this point and the weight legitimately due to them.

If the point last put has been sustained, it will be seen at the outset that even should geology make large demands for time, far beyond the ordinary human day, we shall have no occasion to strain the laws of interpretation to bring the record into harmony with such demands.——We open this inquiry therefore into the facts of geology, not so much to make out if possible a harmony between them and Genesis by toning down the facts of science or by toning up the inspired record, as to show how readily and how beautifully the facts just as they are (so far as known) accord with the legitimate sense of the sacred record.

Preliminary to the main inquiry before us is the question as to the primary original state of matter. Was it brought into existence in its primordial elements—those molecules which not only defy all human effort at analysis, but which seem to be in their nature the simplest forms of matter?——Chemistry has shown that many of the most familiar substances, long supposed to be simple, are really compound. Were they brought into existence in the state in which we commonly see them, or in their ultimate, most simple elements? For example, did God originally create water, or the two gases (hydrogen and oxygen) of which it is composed, which were subsequently combined chemically into water?——On this point the Scriptures are silent. If Science has any thing to reveal about it, the field is open to her and she may proceed, nothing in the sacred Scriptures dissenting or restricting. If she succeeds in proving or half proving that the first state of matter was nebulous—a “fire-mist”—gaseous in form, very well. I do not see that the record of Moses contests this theory. It passes this point with no dogmatic statements whatever, not even a fact which necessarily implies either the affirmative or the negative. The record in Genesis does assume that at the point where the second day’s work begins, the atmosphere was heavily charged with vapor, and that a part of this was precipitated upon the earth in water and a part borne upward into the higher strata of the atmosphere. The third day’s work gathered the waters then upon the earth’s surface into the ocean beds and left portions of the land dry. Consequently the state of the atmosphere, and in general the condition of the waters of our globe were not arranged at first just as we have them now. So much we are told.

There are yet other preliminary questions.

On the shores of lakes, seas, oceans, we find pebbles rounded and smooth, mineralogically of the same elements which are found in rock formations. Were they created in this rounded and worn state, or were they once portions of these rock strata, but subsequently broken up by natural agencies and worn by the action of flowing water?

Another case. Coal beds often contain what seem to be whole trees and huge vegetables (ferns, etc.) apparently charred and converted into coal. Were they created just as we find them, or were they indeed trees and vegetables before they became coal?——Yet another case. The rocks nearest the surface contain almost universally more or less of what seem like fossilized plants and animals. They have the form of the plant or animal in wonderful perfection. Were these fossiliferous rocks, containing apparent fossils, created as we see them, or were these fossils once real plants and animals?——I see no reason whatever to hesitate over these questions. We can not suppose that God created these worn and rounded pebbles, these charred trees and ferns, these prints of animal footsteps—these fac-similes of his creative work in the vegetable and animal kingdom, for the sake of puzzling or misleading, or, in plainest words, deceiving his intelligent offspring. He never could have meant to baffle all scientific inquiry into his works of creation. Rather we must assume that he lays his works open to such inquiries, and invites men to study and learn his ways. If this be admitted, it follows that these stratified and fossil-bearing rocks open to us a great volume of Pre-Adamic history of our globe, revealing its processes of rock-formation; to some extent its climatic and various conditions for the support of life, vegetable and animal, and for its successive populations of plants and animals.

Grouping comprehensively some geological facts bearing on the duration of the great creative periods, I note (1.)Vast strata of rock-formations, widely diverse from each other, too diverse to have been formed under the same circumstances and conditions of our globe. Some—the lowest in relative position—appear to have been once in a state of fusion under intense heat, while others—in general all the higher rocks—seem to have been deposited under water. Mineralogically, these rocks differ from each other very widely and also from the fused rocks.——​(2.)Again, some are manifestly composed of fragments of pre-existing rocks, broken off and worn by long-continued attrition and then compacted—known as pudding-stone—the breccias.——​(3.)Yet again; immense strata of these intermediate and higher rocks contain fossil organic remains, some of vegetables, others of animals or of both, and also in very great variety. More marvelous still; they are found occurring in groups, bearing a well defined relation to each other, so that one strata of rock contains species of vegetables and also of animals in a measure adapted to each other, and adjusted to the condition of the earth’s surface and climate at one and the same time. Another strata shall contain a different group, to some extent new and yet not altogether so, but lapping on with some of the earth’s old inhabitants reproduced, and omitting other species.——​(4.)Again, immense beds of coal are found, undoubtedly of vegetable origin, differing somewhat widely from each other as having been formed from diverse vegetable and forest material, and under various degrees of heat and pressure. No small amount of time must be given for the growth and deposition of these mountain piles of tree and fern.——The charring of these coal-pits of nature was provided for in the “fervent heat” of the earth just below the surface, coupled with pressure brought upon them it would seem by convulsions and upbreakings, to which the earth’s crust has been many times subjected.——​(5.)Limestone, largely of animal origin, demands in like manner time for the growth of the animals whose shelly incasements, accumulating age after age, have made such ample provision of limestone and of lime for the use of man.

This list of nature’s facts as the practiced eye reads them from the crust of our earth does not claim to be exhaustive. If it were all, however, it would still be amply sufficient to sustain the demand for long creative periods as opposed to ordinary human days. It should not be forgotten that this demand, coming forth from the facts developed in the crust of the earth, falls in most fully with what we have seen to be the legitimate construction of the Mosaic record.

Prominent points of harmony between Genesis and Geology.

(1.) Creation was a gradual process, spanning from beginning to end long periods of time. I use the word “creation” to comprehend not only the original production of matter, but its subsequent changes and transformations till the earth was fully prepared for the abode of man.

(2.) The earth was for a considerable time under water. The record of Moses is decisive to this point. The current theory in respect to the formation of most if not all the rocky strata of the earth’s crust is equally so.

(3.) There was light on the earth before the appearance of the sun. Genesis dates the light from the first day; the appearance of the sun, from the fourth.——The theory that the primitive state of created matter was gaseous (or nebulous) provides for this, since it is well known that the chemical combination of the two gases that form water (for instance)—a combination produced by electricity, evolves light. But we are not restricted to this hypothesis to account for light before the sun was visible. The state of the atmosphere may furnish all the causes needed. See below, page 32.

(4.) Vegetables were created before animals. So Moses, for he locates the former on the third day; the latter on the fifth and sixth. This is of course the order of nature since the animals are to subsist on vegetables. Geology finds vegetables in fossil state below the earliest animals.

(5.) Among the animal tribes, those of the water are before those of the land. Genesis gives us fish and reptiles and even fowl before the mammals—land animals—the former on the fifth day; the latter with man on the sixth. Geology indorses this order, showing that fish and reptiles lie in rocks lower and older than quadrupeds.

(6.) Man is last of all. The testimony of the rocks is here at one with that of Genesis—other animals and the vegetables also, long ages before man.

Now how has it happened that this record, coming to us through Moses, harmonizes so wonderfully with the main results of a science yet in its infancy—almost utterly unknown until the present century? Is it due to the scientific attainments of Moses? Is it not rather due to inspiration—“holy men of old”—Moses himself or the fathers before him—being taught by the same Being who “in the beginning created the heavens and the earth?” The marvel is that this record should be so constructed as to present a very intelligible view of the processes of the six days’ work to the average mind of the race before geological science was born, and yet when this science begins to develop the constitution and composition of the earth’s surface, the inspired record is found to harmonize with these developments in all important features. So it is wont to happen. Truth rejoices in the light. A truthful Bible and all true science meet in loving communion, evincing their common parentage—offspring of the same Infinite Father.

4. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Was this the original production of matter; or was it only the modification of pre-existent matter into new forms? (1.)That this was the original production of matter is probable a priori because it is true, and because it is a truth very important to affirm in this first revelation. Matter is not eternal and self-existent. Those who intelligently believe in one Supreme God—an Infinite, Intelligent Spirit, will need no words wasted to disprove the assumption that matter existed from eternity, the Author of itself; for this assumption ascribes to matter the distinctive qualities of God himself.——It is moreover important that God should declare himself to be the author of all existing matter in the universe. This is one of his great and distinctive works—one which human speculation has been prone to deny him, and which therefore it is of the utmost consequence that he should affirm. (2.)The passage (Ps. 90:2) ascribed to Moses, expressly declares that God existed “before the mountains.” “Before the mountains were brought forth, even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God.” Moses did not think matter to be eternal. He knew and taught that God existed from eternity and that matter did not. The obvious sense of his words is that God “brought forth” (i.e. into existence) the mountains of this earthly globe.

(3.) The writer to the Hebrews affirms that this doctrine—God the original Creator of matter—is accepted by faith, i.e. upon the credit of God’s own testimony. “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God so that things which are seen were not made of things that do appear” (Heb. 11:3). Not being constructed out of matter previously apparent, they must have been made by the direct production of matter not before existing.

(4.) This is the natural and obvious sense of the words and this the place to affirm this first fact in the work of creation. This is the point to start with. How came the matter of the universe into being at all? Whence came this material substance composing the heavens and the earth? In the beginning God created it.——It may be said truthfully that if God had purposed to reveal himself as the Author of matter—the real Maker of it all—he could have found no words more fitted to his purpose than these. Hence to deny that this is their sense is the next thing to denying to God the right or the power to reveal this fact at all.

(5.) It is objected that the primary sense of the word bara5 (used here) is not to bring into existence what had no existence before, but “to cut, to cut out, to carve” (Gesenius); “to cut, form, fashion” (Fuerst). But this objection, though plausible to a merely superficial view, is really of very little force. Usage, not etymological relation, gives law to language. The etymological, primary sense of barak, the common Hebrew word for bless, is to break; then to bend as the knee, to kneel and to cause one to kneel; and then, perhaps from the custom of kneeling to receive the patriarchal benediction, or to implore blessings from God, comes the ultimate and by far the most common significance—to bless. Usage in every case must determine the most common and therefore most probable sense; then the context and the known opinions of the writer come in to aid toward the true sense in any given instance.

In the Hebrew verb regard must be had to its form, technically called its “conjugation,” since the sense of the several conjugations from the same root may vary widely. In this verb (bara) the sense of Hiphil conjugation is to fatten—which is very remote from the sense of “Kal” and of its passive “Niphal.” In Piel only do we find the etymological sense to cut, to carve out (five times only) and these spoken of human operations exclusively (Josh. 17:15,18 and Ezek. 23:47 and 21:19). But in Kal and its passive Niphal, we find the word used forty-eight times, and always of divine operations—always of some form of creative work wrought by God himself and never by man.6

The testimony therefore from usage is entirely conclusive to the point that this word in this form of it was specially appropriated to signify God’s creative acts—the exertion of his creative power.——There are two other Hebrew words having the sense to make, to form, [asah and yatsar], which are sometimes used of God as creating but by far most often of man’s work in forming and molding material things. Now note the argument. The Hebrews had these three words for making, out of which one only is used exclusively of God—never of man—as a maker. Now there is one special sense in which God can make and man can not, viz. that of bringing into existence what had no existence before. Over against this, place the fact that their word “bara” is used of God’s making forty-eight times and of man’s making never, and we must conclude that they expressed by this word that distinctive power of God which man never can even approach—viz. the power to give existence to matter, to mind and to life. In passages where this sense of “bara” is appropriate, there can be no question that it is the real meaning.

5. The relation of v.1 to v.2 and to the rest of the chapter.

Some have maintained that v.1 is only a statement in general terms of the contents of the chapter, a heading, stating no particular fact distinct from what follows.——Others take it to be one fact in the series—the first step in the process of the creative work—the successive steps then following in due order. This latter construction I accept; and urge in its support,

(1.) That this is the most obvious sense of the words. The word “And” (v.2) “And the earth was without form,” etc., must be taken as continuing the subject—not as commencing it. It should give us another and succeeding fact, and not be taken to begin a detailed history.

(2.) This is the natural order of the facts. First, matter must be brought into existence. Nothing can be done with it, nothing can be said about it, until it is. The first verse therefore is the natural beginning of the narrative—the first fact to be stated. The second verse gives naturally the next fact, viz. the condition of this matter immediately prior to the six days’ creative work upon it. Deferring the little he has to say upon the “heavens,” he calls our attention to the earth as being of chief interest to man, and makes this the main theme of the chapter.——An observer would have seen the earth mantled in darkness, its atmosphere laden with murky vapors and dense mists; the surface (if indeed the waters below could be distinguished from the waters above) one wide waste of waters, all formless, vast, dismal; with nothing of order or beauty on which the eye could rest. Above and upon this shapeless mass the Spirit of God was hovering, or shall we say incubating, for such may be the figure involved in the Hebrew verb. Moreover it seems to be implied that this action of the creative Spirit was protracted. The Hebrew participle (used here) expresses continued action—was brooding over, incubating, this wild, waste, desolate mass.

Some scientific men suppose they find in this second verse, not water, but the gaseous matter which ultimately became water and solid earth. This construction originates in a theory in regard to the primal form in which the matter of our world came from the Creator’s hand, which theory may or may not be true, but if true is too remote from the common mind and too foreign from the scope of divine revelation to allow us to suppose that God would refer to it in his revelation.——Carrying out this scientific theory, some have held7 that not only the “waters” of v.2 but those of vs.6,7, were gases, not waters. The fatal objections to this theory are—that these “waters” are the same which in vs.9,10, are “gathered into one place” and “called seas;” also that the common people for several thousand years could not have understood Moses if he had spoken of gases—certainly could not have understood their common word for waters to mean gases.——It is not well to strain and force this simple narrative to speak so scientifically as to be unintelligible to those for whom it was primarily written.——The first state of created matter may have been gaseous. The record in Genesis has said nothing to forbid this. It certainly could not come within its province to teach it. Suffice it that time enough may be found between verses1 and2 for a portion of this gaseous matter to form water—not to say also to form the more solid portions of this globe.

The connection of v.2 with v.1 is such that an indefinitely long period may have intervened. The first verb of v.2 implies no close connection with v.1. But in v.3 the form of the first verb—“And then God said”—does make a close historical connection with v.2.

6. The work of the fourth day. Were the light-bearers (“lights” in the sense of luminaries) in the heavens, viz. the sun, moon, and stars also, “made,” created, on this day, or simply brought forth to the view of a supposed observer upon the earth?——The latter theory that they were not first brought into being then, but only brought into view from the earth—seems to me most probable, because—​(1.)To suppose them created then would be out of all proportion for one day’s work among the six. Throughout the other five days’ work a beautiful proportion obtains: it should therefore be expected in this.——If it be said that this consideration draws its great strength from our astronomical knowledge of those heavenly bodies—much more enlarged than those of the age of Moses, I answer (a.)Moses, “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,” was not altogether a novice in astronomy—​(b.)Modern astronomy is essentially true, not overrating the relative magnitude of the heavenly bodies; and this record in Genesis comes from one who knew all the truth.

(2.) If these verses be understood to speak of their original creation, it would seem to be out of place here between the creation of vegetables (third day) and of the earliest born animals (the fifth). But in the sense of bringing these heavenly bodies to view and the sun into its normal action upon vegetables and upon animal comfort, it is precisely in place.

(3.) According to the interpretation given to v.1 (above) the matter composing these heavenly bodies was brought into existence “in the beginning” when “God created the heavens” as well as “the earth” and before the six days’ work began. If so, then the intervening processes of modification must naturally have been going on from that time until this fourth day.

(4.) Some expositors and scientists account for the light on the first day without the sun by means of electricity or other chemical agents; but it is scarcely possible that Moses and his first readers could have thought of any thing but the sun as the source of that light, especially because “God called it Day,” and the darkness alternating with it then (as ever since the earth began its diurnal revolutions) “he called Night.” This reference to day and night must naturally carry every Hebrew mind to the sun as the source of that light and to its well-known withdrawal at evening as the reason for the darkness and the night.——It need not be supposed that the body of the sun was then visible. The state of the atmosphere might have admitted a portion of his light and yet not have disclosed his face. In our times we have seen cloudy, dark days, with no sun visible, yet with a manifest distinction between day and night.

7. The true sense of the record as to the origin (1)of vegetable life (vs. 11,12), and (2)of animal life (vs. 20, 21, 24,25.)——The important words are, “Let the earth bring forth grass” (v.11); “and the earth brought forth grass” (v.12). “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature,” etc. (v.20); “and God created every living creature that moveth which the waters brought forth abundantly” (v.21). “Let the earth bring forth the living creature” (v.24); “and God made the beast of the earth,” etc. (v.25).——Here note that the historical statements give the true sense of the imperatives, and show plainly that the earth and the waters are not creative but only sustaining powers, and that they bring forth and sustain only under the fiat of the Almighty—only when and as God said, Do it. For the whole tenor of these chapters (Gen. 1 and2) presents to us God himself as sole and supreme Creator. In the closest connection with the earth’s bringing forth the living creature, we are told that God made the beast of the field. Though the waters brought forth abundantly, yet it was still God himself who created “every living creature that moveth.” The agency of the earth in producing grass is presented in a popular way—the precise, fundamental thought being, that God made the earth his instrument in bringing forth all things that grow; and in like manner in sustaining animal life.

If we will, we are at liberty to push our queries and ask not only who gave life, vegetable and animal, but how? In just what way did he impart that something—be it quality or power or substance—which we call life? and deeper still—What is life? Is it some subtle form of matter, or only some indefinable force given to matter; and if this be it, To what special form of matter is it given? If it be matter, did God sow the tiny germs thereof in the waters and on the land and leave them to be developed under auspicious circumstances? Or did he breathe forth from his own infinite life these life-forces into material things to make plants or animals?——And yet again; What was the status of that lump of dead matter (small or great) at the point when God put into it the life-force and it became living matter, vegetable or animal? Was the first form of the living animal the egg, or its microscopic cell; or was it the fully developed animal, prepared for all life’s functions, and ready to furnish other life-bearing cells for reproduction? On these points what says the record? Not much at the utmost. It does seem to assume that Adam began existence, not an infant in the normally helpless condition of human birth, but with fully developed powers. Beyond this we look in vain to the record for light. We only know that the life-force—that subtle entity which always eludes the most vigilant search—which distances all the strides of scientific scrutiny—which mocks at chemical analysis and never comes to our call;—this life-force we simply know is from God himself and from God alone. The original gift of it is his prerogative and the secret thereof is for evermore with him.

8. In the passage—“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (v.26) there are two special points to be considered:—​(a.)In what sense is man made in the image of God? (b.)The explanation of the plural pronouns, “us” and “our”—“Let us make man in our image.”

(a.) Inasmuch as God is a spirit and never to be thought of as having a corporeal nature—material, tangible to our bodily senses, we are at once shut off from all reference to man’s physical, corporeal nature and shut up to his spiritual nature to find in it the points of this resemblance. Consequently man is made in God’s image as being gifted like his Maker with intelligence and with capacities for moral action—beyond comparison the noblest possible elements of being. He has the sense of moral obligation and the voluntary powers requisite to fulfill such obligation. He can find his supreme joy in voluntarily seeking the good of others, even of all other sentient beings, and in laboring even to the extent of self-sacrifice to promote their welfare. This is the pre-eminent perfection of God—the very point ultimately in which man is made in his image, and capable of becoming more and more Godlike, forever approximating toward his holiness and blessedness.——His intellectual powers are only the servants of these highest and noblest activities of his being.——​(b.)The use of the plural pronouns—“Let us make, in our image”—has been accounted for variously. Some would make this plural intensive, corresponding to the emphatic plural in Hebrew nouns. But there seems to be no real analogy in the two cases.——Some make it the plural of dignity (“pluralis excellentiae”), as an oriental monarch puts forth his edict, saying “we,” not I. But the great simplicity of this whole narrative goes against this explanation. Moreover, this usage, so far as it appears in literature, sacred or profane, is later by many ages than Moses. Besides, there is no apparent reason why God should assume more dignity in saying—“Let us make man,” than in saying, Let us make light, or the sun in the heavens. Indeed, the form of the divine behest—“Let there be light,” seems to our ideas the more sublime and the more expressive of God’s supreme dignity.——I see no explanation of this plural that is at all satisfactory save that which assumes a reference to the persons of the Trinity. As one reason for such reference it may be suggested as certainly not improbable—that the idea of man, God’s chief work in creation, was coupled with his future history (all present to the divine mind)—as fallen, yet also as redeemed, and specially as redeemed by means of the incarnation of the Son of God in human flesh. Supposing this incarnation present to the divine thought, the significance of this plural would be—Let us proceed to make in our own image this wonderful being whose nature the eternal Son shall one day assume—this man who is to bear relations to us so extraordinary, so wonderful before the angels, so signal before all created minds, so glorious in its results to the whole moral universe! Have not we—Father, Son and Holy Ghost—a most surpassing interest in the creation of this being, man!

9. The relation of Gen. 2: 4–25 to Gen.1.

Here are two points of some importance to be considered.

(1.) Are the two passages by the same author?

(2.) Do they both speak of the creation of the same first man, i.e. the same Adam, or is the Adam of Gen.2 another and different first man, brought into being long subsequent to him of Gen. 1: 26–28?

(1.) That the two passages are from different authors has been maintained on the following grounds.——​(a.)That v.4—“These are the generations8 of the heavens and the earth”—appears like the heading of a new and distinct portion of history.——But nothing forbids that it should be the heading of a new section or chapter of the same continuous history by the same author, resuming his subject with only a very comprehensive allusion to the great facts of creation which he had given in chap.1, as fully as his plan required. This done he may proceed to a more full account of the creation of man and the events of his early history.——​(b.)That the account here differs somewhat from that in Gen.1, e.g. as to the creation of man, and yet more especially, the creation of woman.——But these differences are not discrepancies and are fully accounted for by the scope and design of this portion, viz. to give the history of the first man and woman in much more detail.——​(c.)But especially this diversity of authors has been argued from the different names of God which appear in these two passages. In chap.1 and 2: 1–3, the name is simply and exclusively God (Elohim). In chap. 2: 4–25 and in chap.3, the name is “the Lord God” (Jehovah Elohim).——This difference is indeed a palpable fact, and has been the theme of an indefinite amount of critical speculation based for the most part on the utterly groundless assumption that the same author can not be supposed to have used both these names for God. Those critics (mostly German) who have flooded their literature with disquisitions on this subject assume in the outset that none but a “Jehovist” ever used the name Jehovah, and none but an “Elohist,” the name Elohim, it being in their view impossible or at least absurd that the same author should use sometimes one of these names and sometimes the other—which assumption seems to me supremely arbitrary, irrational, and uncritical. Authors now use at their option the various names for God, either for the mere sake of variety, or because in some connections one seems more euphonious or more significant than another. Why may not an equal license of choice be accorded to Hebrew writers? It is unquestionable that the same Hebrew author does use both of these names for God.——They made far more account than we of the various senses of the several names for the Deity. The names Jehovah and Elohim, were not precisely identical in their suggested ideas, although both are legitimately used of the one true God. Elohim suggests that he is the Exalted, Eternal One, the Infinite Creator of all. This name is therefore specially appropriate in chap.1. “Jehovah” conceives of him as the Immutable and ever faithful One, coming into covenant relation with his people as the Maker and the Fulfiller of promise. (See remarks on this as God’s memorial name in my Notes on Hos. 12:5). Hence as the narrative in Gen.2 and3 brings God before the mind in these special relations to the first human pair and to the race, this name is here specially appropriate. But lest some might suppose that this Jehovah is thought of as another God than the Elohim of chap.1—the writer uses both names—the Elohim who is also Jehovah to his rational creature man and especially to all his obedient trustful people.

(2.) That Gen. 2:7 relates to the creation of the same first man as Gen. 1: 26–28, and not of another man ages later, seems to me to admit of no rational doubt. The inducements to make out two distinct creations, i.e. of two different first men, come from the supposed proof of the existence of man on the earth ages before the Adam of antediluvian history. I propose to treat below this question of the antiquity of man. Let it suffice here to say that we must not mutilate the record or disregard the laws of philology for the sake of making the sacred narrative conform to theories which are yet rather assumptions than scientifically proven facts.——As to the correspondences and variations in the two narratives of the creation of man, the first makes prominent his being created in the image of God: the second assumes this in the fact that God gave him law in Eden; in the knowledge of the lower animals which his naming them assumes; in the superior dignity which the Lord’s bringing them before him for names implies; and in the fact that among them all no helpmeet for him could be found. His nature ranked far above theirs.——The earlier narrative says briefly that God “created them male and female.” The later one expands this fact much more fully and makes it the foundation for the law of marriage. The later record treats with the utmost brevity the main part of the six days’ work and must have been written with the previous record before the mind, to be a supplementary and continuative history, designed to bring out prominently the creation of woman and the scenes of the garden, its moral trial and ultimately its results.——The supposition of a different Adam from that of the former record could never have occurred to the Hebrew mind, and therefore can not be accepted as the sense of the passage.

10. Invariability of “kind” in the vegetable and animal kingdoms.

The record in Genesis sets forth that God created grass, herb, and then fruit tree; “each after his kind;” also reptiles, fish, fowl and land-animals, each “after his kind;” and finally man “in the image of God.” Over against this the modern theory which bears the name of Darwin holds that all the animals of our globe “have descended from at most only four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number;”9 and moreover, that man has in this respect no pre-eminence above the beasts, but has descended in the same line with them from some one of the four or five progenitors of the great animal kingdom. More still he says in the same connection—“Analogy would lead me one step further, viz. to the belief that all animals and plants have descended from some one prototype.”——These four or five progenitors of the whole animal kingdom correspond substantially with what Webster calls the five sub-kingdoms, viz. Vertebrates, Articulates, Mollusks, Radiates, and Protozoans. The technical classification under these sub-kingdoms into Classes, Orders, Families, Genera, and Species becomes of little or no account in any discussion of Darwin’s system, for his theory of “descent with modifications” is reckless of all these lines of demarkation, traveling over and through them all without finding the least obstruction.——Let it be distinctly understood therefore that though Mr.Darwin makes frequent use of the word “species,” and entitles one of his volumes—“The Origin of Species,” yet his theory takes a far wider range than the question whether “species are variable.” In his view not only are species variable, intermixing at will and passing from one into another, but genera also and families and orders and classes—not to say also each of the great sub-kingdoms of the animal world;10 even the distinction between animals and vegetables fades away under his analogical argument. Hence the issue between Darwin and Moses is relieved of whatever uncertainty hangs over the dividing line between species and varieties, and may fitly be limited to these two points; the invariability of “kind” in the sense of Moses in Genesis; and the distinct origination of man.

Under Mr. Darwin’s system “community of descent” and not “some unknown plan of creation” is “the hidden bond” which unites together all living existences of our globe. “Looking to some unknown plan of creation” (in his own words) has prevented the truly scientific classification and history of the forms of life in our world. The Bible has stood in the way of the growth of science.——Under his system the changes by natural descent from any given parent to its offspring, taken individually, have been exceedingly small. Hence the theory requires an indefinitely long time from the point of the original creation of the four or five primordial forms to the present status of living things, vegetable and animal, in our world.——The above remarks will suffice for a very general introduction to Mr.Darwin’s system.

Wishing to bring this discussion within the narrowest possible limits and yet do justice to Darwin, to Genesis, and to the truth, I propose to state briefly his main arguments; then comprehensively my rejoinder to them severally in their order, and then subjoin some general considerations bearing upon his entire theory.

1. Darwin holds that by natural law the offspring vary, though slightly, from the parent, and hence, that, given an indefinitely long time, he has any desired amount of variation.

2. When animals multiply beyond the means of subsistence, there ensues a struggle for life in which the strongest and most favored in circumstances are the victors and survive. This law which he calls “Natural Selection” (or “the survival of the fittest”) works a gradual improvement in the race. A twin argument with this comes from “sexual selection,” the amount of which is that in the case of some at least of the animal races, there arises a struggle among the males for the possession of the females, in which struggle the most attractive in beauty or in song, or the champions in fight, being the victors, perpetuate the race and thus improve it. This law of the animal races (“sexual selection”) works precisely in the same line with the law called “natural selection.” It may serve therefore to provide a little more of the same thing, but no new or different product whatever. Hence it does not seem to call for a distinct refutation.

3. Homologous anatomical structure is found to obtain very extensively among widely diverse races, e.g. in the arm of man, the fore-leg of the monkey and indeed of all quadrupeds, in the wing of the bird and the fin of the fish. This indicates a common parentage.

4. Some animals which, fully grown, differ from each other widely, are scarcely distinguishable in the embryo. Hence he infers their common origin.

5. The fact of rudimentary organs is assumed to be historic, proving that some ancient progenitor used them, and that they have gradually passed out of use. This is held to prove that great changes of structure come of genealogical descent.

BRIEF REPLIES.

1. To Darwin’s first law, viz. that the offspring always vary though slightly from the parent, and therefore, given indefinite time, he has any desired amount of variation, I reply that this law of variation becomes practically worthless for his theory, because these variations from parent to offspring run in all conceivable directions and not in the one definite direction required for his purpose, i.e. toward a higher grade of perfection, or [which his argument requires] toward a new form of animal life. For example, there is always some change in the human countenance from parent to child. Yet who does not know that those changes run in every possible direction and not in one uniform line of progress or advance, as from monkey toward man and from man toward angel? For another example we may take the shape of the skull and of the brain—evermore differing slightly from parent to offspring yet not by any means on one given line. The skulls of Egyptian mummies entombed three thousand years ago do not differ appreciably from those of the Copts (their lineal descendants) of to-day, i.e. are no more pithecoid—ape-like. On Darwin’s theory three thousand years backward ought surely to approximate toward the ape; otherwise these variations are fruitless. This law of successive genealogical changes amounts to nothing for his argument unless the changes consent to come into line so that their results shall actually accumulate with the lapse of ages. The fatal lack in the argument is—no husbandry of these infinitesimal changes—not the least perceivable accumulation.

A second branch of my reply suggests that Mr.Darwin misinterprets this law of nature, viz. perpetual variation from parent to offspring. It is doubtless a law, but Darwin has quite missed its divinely ordained purpose—which is to indicate the relationship between parent and child on the one hand, and yet maintain individual identity on the other. The resemblances answer the former purpose; the differences, the latter. Beings constituted to bear personal responsibilities so momentous as those of man must be so organized that every one can identify his own individuality, lest one man be hung for some other man’s crime.

2. His second argument comes from the law of “natural selection”—“the survival of the fittest”—with which it is convenient to couple the precisely similar law of “sexual selection”—the ascendency of the smartest over their inferiors, to perpetuate the race. Here a specific case will suffice both to illustrate and to refute. The principle of “natural selection” has a fair chance for itself in the spawn of the shad. It is no doubt true that none but the smartest out of the many thousand spawned at once survive so as to become parents in their turn. Yet who believes that these smartest shad are becoming sturgeon or sharks or whales by this law of progress? Are they actually found to be any thing but shad after never so many hundred generations? It may seem superfluous to push the still more pertinent question—Are these smartest and most ambitious shad really found to be working up out of their watery element, I i.e. working up into ducks or geese, or into blackbirds and crows? For just this is Mr.Darwin’s theory—the line of ascent running up from fish to fowl; from fowl to mammal and so on up to man. The questions here suggested are therefore only the fair and scientific test and touchstone of his argument. A law which has not made its results even perceptible since the birth of the first shad known to human history must be regarded as scientifically worthless.

My second remark here is that Darwin errs not in finding these to be laws of nature—“natural selection,” “sexual selection”—but in interpreting them, I i.e. in detecting their divinely ordained design and their actual working and product. I suggest that these laws, apparently made for the improvement of races, may be requisite to enable them to hold their own against the ever present tendency to degeneracy. Life is a perpetual struggle against death. The life-principle finds an antagonist force in chemical law which is evermore hurrying organized matter back to its inorganic state. Still further, be it considered, races excessively prolific would rapidly lose vitality but for these laws of natural and sexual selection. We may therefore rationally assume that these laws are simply forms of the general principle of self-preservation, and not a purposed provision for lifting a lower race up to the plane of a higher.

3. As to homologous anatomical structure, e.g. of the arm, fore-leg, wing, fin, paddle—there are abundant reasons for its existence aside from the assumption of Darwin that it proves a common ancestry for man, monkey, calf, bull-dog, eagle, toad and whale. The ball and socket joint at man’s shoulder is the perfect thing for use. Equally so is the same kind of joint for the fore-leg of a horse, the wing of an eagle or the fin of a fish. God made the anatomy of man’s arm perfect. What forbids that he should make an equally perfect machinery for the motions and various uses of other animals? The reason of this uniformly perfect machinery is found in the wisdom and benevolence of the Great Maker, and proves nothing in favor of a common descent from some one parent, i.e. it proves nothing unless you may assume that God could not have made two kinds of animals with homologous anatomical structures—two kinds, each with machinery perfect for its purposes.

4. As to the similar appearance of the embryo in very dissimilar races, there may be differences in the embryo which no microscope and no human test have yet discovered. The force of this argument seems to me to come rather from ignorance than from knowledge.

5. As to rudimentary organs, their history is very obscure and their design also. I suggest that Mr.Darwin begin with the history and the reason for the rudimentary organs which appear on the bosom of the male in the species man. When he shall have mastered this problem—the history and the reason—we can afford to consider his argument therefrom in proof that man has a common ancestry with whatsoever other animal he may find having this male organ, not rudimentary but in full activity. Probably he will prove that man must have come down by descent from that class of animals which economically combine the two sexes in one and the same individual!

Some objections of a more general bearing upon Darwin’s scheme.

1. His system requires indefinite, almost infinite, ages of time back of the Silurian strata, i.e. back of the oldest known remains of life, vegetable or animal, on our globe.11 That is, he requires for the development of his system an almost infinite extension of time back beyond the earliest traces or proofs of life, vegetable or animal, on our globe. And this, he would have men believe, is the perfection of modern Science!—a science which pushes its sphere in time back indefinitely beyond all known facts upon the bare evidence of theories and assumed analogies!——But even this gives not the full force of the objection made by true Science to his system. It is not merely that he builds upon assumed facts where no known facts are—which is building upon nothing—but where no facts can be, which is building not merely upon negatives but upon impossibilities. There is no room for his assumed facts where he locates them. If Geology proves any thing it proves that vegetable and animal life commenced on our planet as soon as the planet was ready and not sooner, and that we have the remains of the earliest living organisms in the oldest fossil-bearing rocks. His scheme is therefore conditioned upon impossibilities and must be false.

2. His system requires a close succession of animal races, differing from parent to offspring by only the least possible amount, with no leaps, no gaps whatever. Thus from monkey up to man the system calls for at least a few scores not to say hundreds of intermediate links. Where are they? His suffering theory cries out for their support: there is no answer. The earth’s surface responds not to the call; even “the depths say—They are not in me!” From the original monad up to man all the way through at least the long line of the vertebrates—reptile, fish, bird, mammal—that is to say, through the serpent tribe; the fish kingdom; the swallow, blackbird and eagle, and especially through the quadruped family—the horse and camel and particularly the monkey household—through all this remarkable line of ancestry, Darwin’s system demands a very gradual upward march by the shortest possible stages of progress, so that the intermediate links must be barely less than infinite. It certainly ought to be very easy to trace a genealogical line so well represented. It is estimated that thirty thousand fossil species have been recognized. How many of these can be formed into this genealogical line from the aboriginal vertebrate—supposed to be aquatic and Ascidian—up to man? Has Mr.Darwin set himself to marshal this proof-line of witnesses to his system? No. Not only has he not done this very appropriate thing, but he has said little, quite too little on this most vital point, in the way of showing what could be done. He reiterates that the geological records are very imperfect. Doubtless they quite fail to come up to meet the demands of his system. It is the fatal weakness of his theory that just where it should find facts in animal history for its support, they are not there! He himself admits that if you believe in a tolerably full showing of animal history in the geological records of our globe, you must disbelieve his system.12 He needs quite another geological record for his proofs.

3. His argument is essentially materialistic. In his reasonings and assumptions, all there is of mind in man or any animal is of the brain and the nervous organism. All animals have wants and are moved by a sense of want to supply them. This begets self-originated activity, and this activity involves thought—yet only as a function of the material brain. Most of the animals are social by nature: hence another member in this family of wants and enjoyments, begetting another class of impulses and activities. But whether it be man or monkey, dog or kitten, these activities and these plans and thoughts underlying them, come of the nervous organism, of which the brain is the center. On his theory and in his words (Origin of Species, pp. 93,94) “the moral sense is fundamentally identical with the social instinct.” Hence it becomes the burden of his argument that the brain in man and in monkey is homologous—almost perfectly the same in shape, in quality, and in its bony incasement. He seems to be quite unaware that there may be something in the human brain that a twelve-inch rule will not measure, nor the nicest made scales weigh, nor the sharpest chemical tests discern. It seems never to have occurred to him that even if the brain of man and of monkey weighed in the same notch, fitted into the same cast, responded alike to the same chemical tests (which, however, is a good way from being the case), yet there might be material qualities in the human brain too subtle and ethereal to be appreciable under any known physical test; and much more still might be a spirit inhabiting the human brain and working through it which the monkey has not. “That the breath of the Almighty hath given to man understanding” is a fact higher than the range of Darwin’s philosophy. The prima facie probability thence arising that God would fit up a special material organism for the one only mind made in his own image seems to have entirely escaped Mr.Darwin’s notice. The record by Moses on this point—that God created man by a special act, entirely independent of all other forms of life, vegetable or animal, commends itself to the good sense of most men as more than probable, as indeed supremely rational and unquestionably true.

4. It is but a natural result of his materialistic system that he should have no adequate conception of the pre-eminent glory of man’s intellectual and moral nature. With great ingenuity he labors to make it appear that Tray feels shame and guilt and even the moral sense of oughtness—all the same in kind with those of man. He does not say in definite words that the best developed dog is capable of knowing his divine Creator and of rendering to Him the obedience, love, and homage of an adoring heart—is capable of becoming consciously a trustful child of God and a temple of the Holy Ghost. He does not quite say this; indeed he does not seem to appreciate these exalted functions of a soul made in God’s image, or to think them worthy of particular notice. It is a capital fault in his reasoning that he ignores almost entirely these highest, noblest activities of man’s nature. Thus ignoring these most vital points which lift man so high above all the lower animals, how can it be expected that his reasoning upon the material relations of man and beast should be otherwise than lame and fallacious?

5. Scientifically it is a sufficient condemnation of this system that it is compelled to fritter away the fundamental law of species which God fixed, not upon its surface but deep in its nature, viz. that hybrids shall be infertile—incapable of propagation. The crossing and consequent interblending of distinct species, genera, families, and orders, if by their nature possible, would long ages ago have thrown the animal world into inextricable confusion, effacing every line of distinction. Such a result must have been simply fatal to all scientific classification. If Mr.Darwin’s theories had been taken as the divine plan, the world would have had more grades and orders of animal life than there have been days since the first monad came into being.

6. The scheme is in many points revolting to the common sense and sober convictions of men. Some of its assumptions lie close upon the border of the ridiculous. Think of the stride upward from vegetable life to animal—the plant pulling its roots out from the soil and beginning to use them for legs! And of the very analogous aspirations and endeavors of the fish to live out of water—to push out his fins into wings; convert his superabundant fat into muscle; expand his lung and soar off in mid-heaven—the very eagle himself! The effort to tone down these absurdities within the limits of sober sense by simply taking it little by little, spreading the change over a few thousands or millions of years and subdividing the work among a vast number of generations may help to confuse some minds and blunt the edge of its absurdity; but soberly considered, the absurdity is still there. Hence we may note the fact that most writers seem to find themselves quite unable to discuss this theory to any extent without sliding, perhaps unconsciously, from sober argument into ridicule and irony.

I am well aware that, to abate if not nullify the force of this apparent absurdity, it will be said that along the actual line between plant life and animal life, the vegetable and animal kingdoms are actually brought closely side by side; that plant life shades off by almost imperceptible stages till it comes so near to the lowest forms of animal life that the dividing line is scarcely if at all perceptible. This fact no scientist disputes. The real question turns upon its purposed object or ultimate reason. Is it, as Mr.Darwin’s theory assumes, to bridge over this dividing line and facilitate the march of “genealogical descent with variations” across what else would be a bad if not an impassable gulf?

This being the claim set up by Mr.Darwin, I answer—

(a.) The proper test of this theory is simple: Is there any “march” here at all—i.e. any progressive movement from one form of vegetable life to another, from lower forms to higher, or as this case seems to demand, from higher forms to lower, for along this dividing line we have the lowest known forms of both vegetable life and animal? Is this army of the lowest vegetable species and of animal life-forms, down in this dark microscopic valley, really on the march, or is it absolutely moveless and fixed? Are the flora on the vegetable side of the line really, doffing their plant-life uniform and regalia, and emerging on the other side of the line into fauna to swell the hosts of animal-life forms? This it would seem must be the test for the proof or disproof of Darwin’s theory.

(b.) But again, I would reply in this as in other points; Mr.Darwin misses not so much the facts of nature as the ultimate reason of those facts. What is the ultimate reason for the remarkable fact that the plant kingdom crowds itself so closely upon the confines of the animal? Not, I answer, to facilitate the transit of generations from the one province to the other. Of such transit there is not the first shade of evidence. But the reason is that the Great Author of nature out of his infinite resources has filled both kingdoms perfectly full of life-forms so that no territory between their respective domains lies unoccupied. It is simply a fecundity of life-forms or species, analogous to the fecundity of living representatives under most of these species—all alike traceable to the infinite resources of the Creator’s wisdom and power.

7. Finally, this theory is reckless of the authority of revelation. It makes no effort to reconcile its doctrines with the testimony of the Scriptures. Especially on the great points of the creation of man—as to his body, independent of all other animals; as to his spirit, made in the very image of God; and as to woman, formed from man—this system stands in absolute antagonism with God’s word.——It should not surprise us, therefore, that the common sense of mankind (with rare exceptions) revolts from its absurdities. It should not surprise us that Science—the true Science which builds, not on unsupported assumptions but on ascertained and incontestable facts—should disown these theories and speculations. True Science, here as elsewhere, now and forever, is at one with Revelation; and these pillars of the great temple of Truth are in not the least danger of being shaken.