PRINCETON, N. J. BS 651 .L48 1855 Lewis, Tayler, 1802-1877 The six days of creation Shelf. THE r / ^SIX DAYS OF CREATION OR, THE SCIUPTURAL COSMOLOGY, WITH THE ANCIENT IDEA OF r I M E - W O R 1. D 8. IN DISTINCTION FPidr.I WOKLDS IN SPACE, By TAYLEii LEWIS, PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN UNION* COLLEGE. BatfiXsia '^ro.vrwv TOJV a/:^VWV. —Psalms, cxlv, 13-— l Tim. i, 17. Fide intelligimiis aptata osse secula Verbo Dei, ut ex invisibilibus visibilia fiereut. By faith we understand that the ages were framed by the Word of God, so that from things unsekn came forth the things that do appear.— Hebrews, xi, 3. Old Greek, Syriac, and Latin Versions. SCHENECTADY : PUBLISHED ll\ G. Y. VAN DEBOGEKT, LONDON : JOHN CHAPMAN. 1855. V, yw i^nterecl according to Act of Congi'ess, in tlic year 1855, BY GILES Y. VAN DEBOGEKT, ill the Clerk's Office of the District Ccur'i for the Northern District of New-York. Tijpo^rdpliii and PrinltJi^ I- SLcrcotypcd hy RlGGa, SCHENECTADY. VAN BENTHUYSEX, ALBANY TO GREEK PKOFESSOR IN THE NKW-Y PRESIDENT Of THE YOUNG MEn's CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION OF THS CITY OF NEVV-YORIC. PREFACE. Creation in its six timed aspect has lately called forth several able and valuable works. Almost all of these may be said to view the subject from what may be called the scientific side. Their object is to reconcile, in some way, the statements in Genesis with an assumed scien- tific scheme. Hence even the theologians among them are content with what may be deemed a possible inter- pretation. Their argument runs thus : The Bible mai/ have this sense ; it must have this sense to be consistent with acknowledged science ; and, therefore, on the prin- ciple that all truth must be consistent with other truth, it actually has this sense. The reasoning is correct ; the conclusion comes logically from the premises ; but it is not satisfactory because it is felt to rest, not primarily, but only subordinately, on the Bible itself The author thinks that he can truly claim that this is the first attempt to discuss the whole question, at any length, from the Scriptural or philological side. Such an assertion might seem unjust towards the pious and able men who have of late defended the twenty-four hour hypothesis, but mth. them too, the exegetical is far from bemg the predominant element, especially as regards II PREFACE. the numerous other passages that have a bearing on the account in Genesis. These writers also have their assumption, and their reasoning from it is simply an inversion of the method of argument pursued by their scientific antagonists. They take as indisputable a cer- tain interpretation which they choose to call the literal. Modern science does not agree with this ; therefore, sci- ence, they say, is false in its deductions, and infidel in its spirit. We greatly honor these latter writers for their devotion to the Scriptures ; we are heartily with them on that higher and all-superseding question of the absolute infallibility of the Divine Word ; but we cannot endorse their interpretation. The leading design of the present book is so fully stated in the introductory chapter, that we need only, in this place, refer very briefly to a few queries that might be supposed to arise in the mind of the reader. If the work is philological, it might be said, why is there so much of what might be called metaphysical reasoning ? What need of such a labored disquisition on language ? We reply : The object, as is frequently said in the work itself, is to get the right hermeneutical stand-^oint. When this has been lost or obscured, through change in the mode of thinking or conceiving, it may require much and close discussion to regain it, although the old position may once have been plain to the plainest minds. How labored must have been the effort to give to one in the days PREFACE. in of Abraham the views of modern science in regard to the space aspect of the kosmos ! How equaUy, if not more difficult to divest our minds of the prejudices as well as enlargement that science brings with it, and get back to the primitive conception, in which, as we think is shown in this work, the time idea was so predominant over that of space magnitude ! And yet this is the only position for a fair and unwarped interpretation. We must get back into the early time, the early feeling, the early phe- nomenal conceptions then living powers in words whose roots have, indeed, come down to us, but withered, sap- less, obsolete, their freshness gone, their young pictorial bloom long since departed. And here we would espe- cially ask the reader's attention to the argument in the first chapters on the difference between the fact and its phenomenal representation in language. Abstract as it may appear, we deem it vital to the whole discussion. The frequent use of Hebrew words will present no impediment to the general reader, whilst to the scholar they are deemed indispensable. In many chapters they are the very matters discussed, and could not have been avoided. To have given them in Roman letters would have been no better for the one class of readers, whilst it would have been a very imperfect mode of representa- tion for the other. Indulgence is also asked here for some few errors that escaped notice on account of the minuteness of the types. IV PREFACE. Certain Hebrew "words, such as olam, olamim, etc., have been transferred, and treated as current terms in our own lano-uasre. It was thouo-ht there was no better o o o way to take off the mind from the inadequate modern conception, and make the reader familiar with that remark- able plurality, or world-sense, which is so much covered up in oui' continual translation by an abstract picture- less adjective. It would have been far better, we think, for the growth of Biblical knowledge in the common mind, had more of these old Hebrew time-words, and along with them such terms as Sheol, and the Divine names, Elohim, El 01am, El Shaddai, El Elioun, etc., been transferred directly into our common English ver- sion. They would long ere this have become naturalized. The spirit of the word, which is ever strongly attached to its old body, would have come down with it. Instead of being broken through the use of varying representa- tives in different passages, its whole primary meaning with its one phenomenal or metaphysical image would have appeared in all its connections with other words, and thus produced an effect more forcible, as well as more truthful, than the inadequate vehicles we have employed for these very ancient and peculiar ideas. In respect to translations of Greek and Latin quotations, the principle adopted has been to give them in every case except where the substance would plainly appear, either in the context, or in the manner of introduction. PREFACE. V There are doubtless positions taken in the present work that may be regarded as assailable. Some of these the writer feels confident of being able to defend against any attack. On the strength of others he has less reli- ance. What will most startle some readers, perhaps, is the manner of connecting the Platonic ideas with the "unseen" entities mentioned by the Apostle, and from which " we understand by faith were made the things that do appear." But here we would ask the special attention of all thoughtful minds, and that too from the strongest conviction that the view presented does contain a most substantial verity. God makes types, and nature prints them. He made nature, too, and taught her to do her handy-work ; and thus it is through the Word of the Lord she is ever bringing out the " unseen" in the phenomenal, ever causmg to appear the unum in miiltis^, the one type in its many impressions as they present themselves in the manifold leaves of her varied book, the one spermatic word in its many specific utterances, the one ancient generic power in its many individual manifestations ; and so of all the original physical enti- ties that God created. In no part of the argument does the author feel more confident of maintaining himself on the soundest philosophy, the truest science, and the most unforced interpretation of Holy Scripture. One thing, however, he can truly say. The great question has not been carelessly or crudely treated. VI PREFACE, The chief study of two years has been devoted to it Every part of the Bible having any reference to creation has been carefully examined, not only in the Hebrew^ but in the three Oldest Versions. Importance has been attached to these, not so much in the light of critical helps, as for their furnishing the best medium through which to study the conceptions that ever accompanied certain words in the ancient mind. Let any one care- fully observe the force of the plural forms and world- senses of the great time-words in the Syraic, Septuagint, and Vulgate Versions, as well as in the Jewish TargumSj and he will need no other argument to convince him that the author has not overrated the aid they 'truly afford in the discussion of this question. For a similar reason has he resorted to the Apocryphal Books, to the Koran, to whatever fragments he could find of the Samaritan, or of the Coptic as evidence of the old Egyptian. I search of the same idea, too, he has gone to the remains of the Gothic translation of Ulfilas, as the oldest version in a language nearest related to our own. The work is, therefore, presented to the public with the hope, which the writer trusts it is no breach of modesty to express, that even those who may regard his main positions as yet resting in uncertainty, will concede that in other respects he has made some contribution to our Biblical literature. Union College, May 10, 1855. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. — -LEADING DESIGNS AND LEADING IDEAS. CHAPTER II. BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION. I« the Bible to be Interpreted as Other Books? — What is it Designed to teach ?^Style of the Mosaic Account of Creation CHAPTER III. PHENOMENAL LANGUAGE. Four Distinctions,— The Fact, the Concei3tion, the Emotion, the Philosophy. — God can make a Revelation to us only through our Conceptions. — All Human Speech Phenomenal.^This especially ti-ue of the Earliest Lan- guages CHAPTER IV. ILLUSTRATIONS FROM SCRIPTURE, The Expression, The Voice of the Lord. — The Heaven of Heavens. — The Third Heavens. — Hebrew Language for Eclipses of the Sun and Moon. — Anthropomorphism. — Parts of the Body, as Names for Soul CHAPTER V. ANALYSIS OF THE LEADING IDEA IN ITS APPLICATION TO THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT. Facts as distinguished from Appearances. — Divine Facts.— Divine Acts or Beginnings in Nature. — Three Kinds of Naturalism. — Blank Naturalism. — - Theistic Naturalism, or Naturalism of Science with its One First Cause. — The Religious or Supernatural Naturalism. — Six Divine Acts or Begin- nings recorded in Genesis. — Three Kinds of Phenomenal Language.^The Simply Phenomenal, as distinguished from the Scientific and Poetical. — Each has its own Grammar and Lexicon 13 20 28 36 CHAPTER VI. WORK OF THE FIRST DAY. BEGINNING OF CREATION. The Mosaic Beginning not the Absolute Pnncipium. — The First Verse not to be separated from the rest. — The First Origination of Matter. — What is Matter? — The Hebrew Bar a, — the Latin Creare. — The Heavens — Atmo- sphericaFand Astronomical. — The Hebrew Tebel. — The Glory above the . * Heavens — Dual Form of the Hebrew Word 44 CHAPTER VII. WORK OF THE FIRST DAY. THE CHAOS. The Connecting Particle between the First Verse and the Second. — Tohu and Bohu. — Was the Chaos a part of the Mosaic Creation ? — What was the Chaos ?— Milton— Ovid» — The Darkness.— The Abyss. — The Ruah Elohim. — Merachepeth, the Hebrew Word for the Spirit's Agency. — Its Primary ^ . Pulsatile or Throbbing Sense. — Ancient Myth of the Egg t)^ » 80 Vlll CONrENDS. CHAPTER VIII. WORK OF THE FIRST DAY. THE LIGHT. The Command to the Lighn— Interpretation— Was it the First Origin of Light ?— Is Light Eternal ?— God dwelling in Light— The Light his Robe. —Milton. — Longinus. — Division of the Light Irom the Darkness. — The Naming of the Light and the Darkness.— Day and Night.— The Hebrew Word Yom.— Had' Moses the Conception of a Solar Day of Twenty-Four Hours ?— No Trace of such Conception in any Subsequent Hebrew Prose /»« or PoetiT ^^ CHAPTER IX. WORK OF THE FIRST DAY. THE WORDS, DAY MORNING AND EVENING. The Night comes first.— What was the First Night?— The First Morning.— Indefinite Use of the Word Day. — Extraordinary on the very Face of the Account. — Objection Considered. — Mention of Evening and Morning. — Etymological Analysis. — The Koran. — Argument from the PecuUar Style of the Expression.— When did the First Night begin ? — Difficulties in the Way of the Twenty-Four Hour Measurement. — The First Day a Key to all the rest. — Creation a Succession of Natural Processes commenced by Supernatural Acts > CHAPTER X. WORK OF THE SECOND DAY. THE FIRMAMENT. Creation of the Firmament. — Scientific Objection. — Ignorance of Moses.— The Fact. — The Conception of the Fact. — Phenomenal Language. — Scien- tific Language. — Changes in Astronomical Language. — In Optical and Chemical Language. — Superiority of the Bible Language. — Never becomes Obsolete.^ — The Objection lies as well to many other Parts of the Scripture. —Examples from New Testament. — Language of Prophecy. — Time- Words of Prophecy. — Analogous Language in Respect to the Human Body.— Illustration from Psalm, cxxxix. — The Hebrew Word for Firma- ment. — The Physical Process it represents. — Comparison with Scientific Language. — The Latter also Phenomenal CHAPTER XI. WORK OF THE THIRD DAY. THE DIVISION OF LAND AND WATER. Does the Spirit in Creation always accompany the Word? — The Expression "Under the Whole Heaven.'" — The Dravnng oflf of the Waters. — Inter- pretation of the Hebrew Verb.— The Appearing of the Land. — The Crea- tive Energy in the Earth. — The Upheaving ot the Land. — Birth of the Mountains. — Psalm xc and civ.— Drying of the Land. — Three Hypotheses. — The Supernatural Throughout. — The Natural all in the Space of Twenty* Four Hours. — The Natural with an Indefinite Period. — Was there a Sus- pension of the Propeities of Earth and Fluids ? 102 121 CHAPTER XII. WORK OF THE FOURTH DAY. THE HEAVENLY BODIES. Creation of the Sun and Moon. — Their Appearance. — Their Appointment in the Heavens. — Objections. — Theories. — Not Incredible that their Adjust- ment should have been later than that of the Earth. — Bulk no Measure of Rank. — Our utter Ignorance of what is becoming in the Divine Work. — What is the Making of a Thing ? — The Work of the Fourth Day an Arrange- - q , ment. — Narrowness of Science. — Inteipretation of the Hebrew Words. . . i-Oi CONTENTS. IX CHAPTER XIII. SOLAR DAT AND SOLAR DIVISIONS 0¥ TIME. TIME-MEA SUREMENTS AND TIME-IDEAS. First Meution of the Solar Day. — Could tlie Previous Days have been of the same Kind.— Question Resumed. — The Word Day. — Analysis of the Essen- tial Idea. — Its Four Constituent Elements. — Words Morning and Evening compared with Spring: and Fall. — Reasons for Dwelling on this. — The Ti-u8 Conceptive Stand-point. — Must carry ourselves back into the Old Hebrew Feeling. — The Periodical Idea. — Different Kinds of Astronomical Days. — Idea of Duration. — The Day the Unit.-^-Hours derive their Measure from it. — God'a Estunate of Time. — "A Thousand Years as one Day.'" — " His Thoughts are not as our Thoughts." CHAPTER XIY. AS THE HEAVENS ARE HIGH ABOVE THE EARTH, SO ARE god's ways ABOVE OUR WAYS, AND HIS THOUGHTS ABOVE OUR THOUGHTS. Ideas of Succession and Duration. — Do they exist in the Divine Mind? — Why was not Creation Instantaneous ? — The Di\'ine Ways Unsearchable- — The Child Interrogating Newton. — Augustine's View of the Creative Days. — Dies Ineffabiles. — Probable Conception of Moses. — Objection con- sidered. — Language of Prophecy.— Mysteriousness of the Style 151 166 198 CHAPTER XV. CREATION OF TIME. Division of Time. — Rule of the Heavenly Bodies. — Regulate our Physical Life. — An Aid to our Rational Existence.— He made the Stars also. — lu what Sense made for us. — Regulators of the Seasons. — The Poet Aratus. •> q^ — Whole for the Parts. — Astrology. — Phenomenal Uses 1 oO CHAPTER XVI. WORK OF THE FIFTH DAY. Production of the Animal Races. — Production out of the Earth.— Literal Sense — Common Prejudices. — Must not be Afraid of Naturalism. — Hebrew Words of Production. — Definition of Nature. — Discrete Degi-ees can never Pass into each other. — The Supernatural. — The Connatural. — The Contra- natural. — The Unnatural. —Words for Growth and Birth imply Duration. — Theories of Animal Production. — Milton. — Old Greek Fancies. — The Oranific Word. — A Natxii-e in the Earth CHAPTER XVII. WORK OF THE FIFTH DAY. Growth from the Earth. — Was it a Growth of Individuals or of Species t — Either View may be Piously held. — The Acari Insects and Mr. Cross. — Nature a Stream — A Supernatural Seed dropped into it. — How did the First Plants Grow? — The First Animals. — Hebrew Words employed. — We must keep close to the Record. — The Great Whales. — Science can ci-to trace Footsteps but tell us nothing of Origin JtLO CHAPTER XVIII. WHAT IS MEANT BY GOd's MAKING THE PLANT BEFORE IT WAS IN THE EARTH. What was first made? Was it the Tree or the Seed? or Something before the Seed? — Interpretation of Genesis, ii, 5 — Interpretation of Hebrews, xi, 3. — Vulgate and Syriac Versions. — Greek Commentators. — Internal Evidence.— Calvin. — Whence did Paul learn his Doctrine of the Creative Word? — Colossians, i, 16. — What are meant by the Unseen Things? — nni-t Seminal Powers. — Plato. — God the Architect of Ideas ■^•^•^ 233 246 X CONTENTS. CHAPTER XIX. THE CYCLICAL LAW OF ALL NATURES. Two Contrasted States in all Natures. — Each has its Morning and its Even- ing. — Necessity for this. — Growth to a Maximum. — That whose Law of Existence is Growth must Decline. — The Tree could not live forever. — Why? — The same Law in the Largest as in the Smallest Physical Growth?. — Applies to Plants, to Animals, to Races, to Nations, to Ages or Worlds. — Hence the Necessity of Repeated Mornings, or Interpositions of the Supernatural. — Illustration from a Platonic Myth CHAPTER XX. WORK OF THE SIXTH DAY. CREATION OF MAN. Man a Special Creation. — Not Created as a Race. — Descent from a Pair. — The Expression "From the Dust of the Earth."-^The Tiiie Human Beginning dates from the Spiritual Origin. — The Primus Homo. — The Nephesh Hayijn, or Breath of Life. — The Teim is used of Animals as well as of Man. — But is applied to Ma-i in a Higher and Peculiar Sense. — Haijyim, the Word for Life, is Plural. — Why ?— Animation ot the Aniraala is from the Earth and returns to the Earth. — Virgil. — Ecclesiastes, iii, 21, — The Divine Image. — Ground of the Human Dignity and Immortality. — The Old Word Covenant. — Life an Inheritance. — Salvation a Restoration or Redemption CHAPTER XXI. THE SEVENTH DAY. ARGUMENT FROM THE SABBATH, Commencement of the Sabbath in the Evening.— Does it still Continue? — The Less a Type of the Greater.— The Solar a Type of the iEonic or Olamic Period. — Objection Stated. — Jewish Hebdomads. — Weekly, Sep- tennial, Pentecostal. — Da\ad Parens. — Augustine. — Patristic Idea of the Seven Ages of the World. — We are in the Sabbath Eve of the World. — The Sabbath Morning the Latter Day Glory ot the Church. — Objection from the Language ot the Fourth Commandment. — Answer to it CHAPTER XXII. ANTIQUITY OF THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT. Was it Derived from the Egj^ptian, Phoenician, or other Ancient Cosmogo- nies ? — Anti Biblical Spirit of Certain Commentators. — Jews not a Scientific or Philosophical People. — Other Cosmogonies exhibit a Pantheistic Philo- sophy. — Theogonies rather than Cosmogonies. — Pindar. — Which is the Original and which the Copy ? — The Pure Theism of the Mosaic Account an E vidence of its Great Antiquity. — Other Myths National. — The Account of Creation has nothing peculiarly Jewish. — Stands at the Head of all His- torJ^ — What was its^Date? — Abraham. — Enoch. — Its Style. — Its Unity. — Not a Growth like other Myths CHAPTER XXIII. HEATHEN COSMOGONIES DERIVED FROM THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT, Myths Derived from the Account of the Brooding Spirit.— Myth of Incuba- tion or the Egg. — Aristophanes. — Eros or Love. — The Chaos. — Mosaic Idea of Separation or Division.— Homer's Myths of Oceanus and Tethys.— The Sea the Mother of Animals. — Thales makes Water the Oldest Ele- ment. — Kronos Son of Uranus.— Time Son of Heaven. — Diodorus Siculus. —Remarkable Coincidences between the Language ot Ovid and that of c\f\t* Moses r.... 296 261 279 CONTENTS. XI CHAPTER XXIV. ANCIENT IDEA OF CREATION AS A GENESIS OR GROWTH. The Idea of a Genesis held by the Ancient Theists. — Consistent with the Belief in a Divine Work. — Aristotle. — Plato. — Anaxagoras. — The Fathers. — Augustine. — Genesis the Name given in the Septuagint. — The Jewish Notion of a Growth or Nature. — Hebrew Words of Generation. — The Sacred Writers fond of representing the World as a Birth. — Are these Expressions Metaphors? — If Metaphors, they would not have grown out qA'7 of Modem Ideas "" i CHAPTER XXV. ANTIQUITY OF THE LOGOS. INTERPRETATION OF PROVERBS, VIII, AND MICAH, V, 1. Creation the Grand Epic of Hebrew Poetiy. — Antiquity of Wisdom. — Pro- verbs, viii. — Is it a Personification? — Language of Paul in Colossians. — Translation of Proverbs, viii. — Interpretation.— The Design of the Passage. —To Set forth Great Antiquity.— The "Highest Part of the Dust of the World." — Wisdom rejoices in Creation. — Rejoices exceedingly in the Creation of Man. — Interpretation of Micah, v, 1. — Psalm ex. — The Word Olam. — Time in the Bible as disting-uished from Eternity. — Time Mea- qi c sures. — Difficiilt Problem. — Rashness of Science oxO CHAPTER XXVI. THE TRINE ASPECT OF THE UNIVERSE. Worlds in Space. — Worlds in Time. — Worlds in Degree or Altitude. — Like the Three Dimensions in Geometry. — The Space Aspect the Field of Modern Science. — Plurality of Worlds in Space. — Emotional View of the Greatness of the Universe. — Not Dependent on Ideas of Numerical Quan- tity. — The Space Aspect not Prominent in the Bible — Is the Exercise of Creative Power a Necessary Attribute of Deity? — Worlds in Degree, or Ascending Orders of Being, Recognized in the Scriptures. — The Epithet, . The Lord of Hosts. — Greek and Hebrew Idea Contrasted. — Physical Har- qqq mony. — Harmony of Empire OOO CHAPTER XXVII. PLURALITY OF TIME-WORLDS. A PRIORI DEDUCTION OF THE IDEA. The Time Aspect of the World just coming into Science. — How it Appears in the Scriptures. — Remarkable use of AION in the New Testament for the World itself, and of the Plural for Worlds.— Hebrews, i, 2, xi, 3.— From what Laws of Thinking came this Strange Idiom ? — How Ditferent from the Modern Idea. — Insufficient Explanations. — It denotes Time- Worlds in distinction from Worlds of Space.— How it appears in the Syriac — the Arabic — the Coptic. — Old Testament Use of Olam for World. — Ecclesiastes, iii, 11. — Other Passages. — Ecclesiastes, i, 10. — Ancient Idea of Worlds or Cycles Repeated.— 2 Peter, iii, 13.— Habakkuk, iii, 6.— "Hilla of Olam."— The "Everlasting Ways or On-goings of the World."— Psalms, cxlv, 13, "The Kingdom of all Worids."— Isaiah, xlv, 17, "The Everiast- ing Salvation." — Isaiah, Ivii, 15, " He who Inhabits Eternity." — A pi-iori Deduction of the Idea.— The Idea of Time- Worlds Older than the Enlarge- ment of the Space Conception. — It goes Back in the Past and Forward in the Future.— What Effect this should have upon our Interpretations.— Slow « - ^ March of Ages in the Moral World oOJi XII CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXVIII. OLDEST tlVINE NAMES IN GENESIS, EL OLAM, EL SHADDAI, EL ELIOUN. OXnER HEBREW WORDS OF DURATION. The Divine Names in Genesis Connected witli the Three Aspects of the World. — Space, Time, Degree. — Power, Providence, Glory. — Primitive Simplicity Favorable to Devout Elevation of Thona:ht.— Other Hebrew Words of Time.— Heled. — Toleda or^Race.— Doror Generation. — Ancient nnn Cyclical Ideas. — Aristotle and St. James OOD CHAPTER XXI K. HEBREW IDEAS OF NATURAL LAW. Idea of Law in the Old Testament. — Illustrations from Job, the Psalms, and the Prophets. — Supposed Ignorance of Bible Writers. — The '"Foundations of the Earth.'" — The Poetical as Distinguished fi-om the Phenomenal Style. — Comparison of the Mosaic Account with Job, xxxviii, and its Sublime ohf: luterrogatories. — Has Science yet answered them oJo CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. LEADING DESIGN AND LEADING IDEAS. The Leading Design of the following work is to set forth the Bibhcal Idea of Creation, philologicallj ascertained, or " Creation as JRevealed,''^ in distinction from any scientific or inductive theory of the Earth. It is impos- sible altogether to divest the mind of associations and suggestions coming from the latter source ; neither would a fair interpretation require such an ignoring of modern discoveries, whether 'real or pretended. The writer, however, can truly sa}^, that every effort has been made to prevent the mind being warped into a forced interpre- tation by the influence of any such outside ideas. In such an effort, it is possible he may have gone, or tended at least, to the other extreme, and sometimes excluded scientific suggestions where they were fairly entitled to consideration, in detcrmininsi; the true meanino; of this most mysterious account of the world's origin. But we must have an honest faith, or none at all. It. is a wretched self-deception, when wo fancy we have a behef grounded on the Scriptures, Avhich after ajl rests for its main sup- port on Bucldand, or Lyell, or Hugh Miller. The thought ever present to the writer's mind, has been — what do the iScriptures teach us of Creation ? Such teaching is for 1 2 INTRODUCTION. him as a believer the unquestionable reality, never to be surrendered but -with Revelation itself, and that whole vast field of .moral and religious truth so intimately con- nected with its literal verity. Until he is prepared to make this sacrifice, he must hold that the record in Ge- nesis is a true account of the matters and facts therein set forth. He would say, too, that there are no philo- logical views that he would not in a moment surrender, if he could feel that they led to a forced and unnatural interpretation. K the twenty-four hour hypothesis is the one, and the only one, that comes from a faithful and exact exegesis of the Sacred Words, he must accept it in spite of any difficulties of science ; he must believe, — as faith is often required to do, — against appearances however striking, or reasonings however plausible. And he would not be irrational in so doing. The one class of truths is so immensely above the other — the consequen- ces of the rejection of the one, or of any view that sheds darkness upon tlicm, are so much more momentous, that we cannot think of their being placed in one balance, or treated as of equal authority. We can get along very well without geology ; our intellectual and moral dignity would not have been impaired had no such science ever existed. But w^here are we without Revelation ; and where is Revelation, if the very initial record of Man, and of the Earth, turns out to be all false, a lying legend — a work of fancy, or of designed deception ? Whatever, therefore, the Scriptures teach, whatever h the fair meaning of those ancient writings to which Jesus the Light — the only Light of the world — gave the sanc- tion of his authority, that is, for us as believers, the truth wherever it may lead us. " The grass unifier eih, the LEADING DESIGN AND LEADING IDEAS. 8 Hower fadeth^'' — nature comes and goes, her laws are ever presenting new aspects, science is ever changing its theories and its language, its most plausible inductions have been often shown to be false — '^ hut the Word of our God shall stand forever. ^^ It is the record of salvation, with which we cannot dispense w^ithout lying down like animals in the dust, and confessing that our highest good is sensuality, our highest knowledge the profitless study of a mere material nature — of an ever changing, ever perishing world, whose beginning is in a cloud which no science can hope to penetrate, over whose end hangs thick darkness, and whose design — moral or physical — is an enigma which has baffled, and must forever baffle, all earthly or merely human philosophy. It is several years since the writer sat down to study this question solely from the light of the Divine Word, determined that no geological considerations, on the one hand, and no irrational independence of science, on the other, should deflect his enquiries from their true exege- tical course. In a very early stage of the investigation he became persuaded that we are in danger of putting modern notions on very ancient language, and that the idea of vast indefinite periods was most in accordance with the spirit of the Hebrew Scriptures. The result has been most satisfactory to his own mind, and he Avishes, therefore, to present it to the reader with the hope that it may be productive of the same conviction. Such is the Leading Design. The Leading Ideas may be briefly presented in the following epitome : 1st. (Revelation is independent of science./ It reveals natural as well as moral truth, ])ut in a manner and by a method peculiar to itself. Its object is not to state or 4 INTPtODUCTIOX. endorso any scientific theoiy. Sucli endorsement a true Revelation from its very nature can never give, for the very conclusive reason that no inductive theory ever has been, or probably ever vv'ill be, so absolutely perfect, or free from error, as to need no amendment. 2d. ^Revelation, therefore, uses its own language^ This is not the scientific, or the language of natural causality, as it is employed to set forth the relations of cause and effect in their mediate dependencies. It is not the philosophical, or the language through which there are supposed to be exhibited the reason, the neces- sity, or the occasions of the creative energy, irrespective of its particular sequences. It is not the metaphysical, liealing alone with ideas, laws and forces regarded from a higher plane than the natural. It is not the poetical, except as used for occasional illustration, and in connec- tions in which the marks of the poetic character are not <3asily mistaken. In distinction from all these, the lan- guage of the Bible, in setting forth the creative acts, or other natural or cosmical truths, is stnctlj 2yJie7iomenal^ that is, it takes as representative of the remote energy ' — remote either in time, or causal sequence, or both — those last phenomena or ajjj^earances through which these remote energies finally manifest themselves directly to the senses, aud which are, therefore, the same for all ages and all men — never varying like the language of science or philosophy, but as uniform and unchanging as God has m^ade the laws of the human senses to which they are addressed. These ultimate appearances or ''t7ie things tJtat are seen,^^ thus furnish the name to the unseen ultimate causality, or the remote creative energy they represent as its last outward result. Thus, in phe- LEADING DESIGN AND LEADING IDEAS. 5 nomenal language, to make the firmament^ is to bring into being, and into action, that system or series ot yliy%ical law, or laws, which terminates in the manifesta- tion so named, and so also used as the common phenome- nal name of its causality, however much or however little of that causaHty may be scientifically known in its chain of sequences. 3d. Although it is not the aim of the work to recon- cile revelation with science, or with any scientific lan- guage, still, on the other hand, and in opposition to- a very common view, is it maintained that(the Bible may be, in some respects, designed to teach us natural and not merely moral truth.) The Scripture professes to reveal those great facts in the natural and supernatural liistory of our world that are most intimately connected with our moral destiny, and which are of such a kind that, without Revelation, man could never know them at all. And yet in doing this, it never pretends to give the science or philosophy of such facts. In other words, — the Bible, rightly interpreted, and its meaning fairly ascertained, is of authority in whatever it professes to teach us of the natm'al w^orld, whenever that teaching is direct, or where it is the maui truth conveyed in the passage, and cannot be regarded as subordinate to some- thing else, either by way of impression or illustration. 4th. Creation is an alternating series of growths or (^ ^, natures — both words meaning the same thing, and enter- ( ing radically, or in their etymological conception, into the main terms employed in the early languages to denote origin, or the genesis of actual being. These growths, or natures, have each a supernatural beginning, without which the first could never have commenced, or the 1* 6 INTRODUCTION. second have ever developed the third, or, in general, any previous one could ever, by any law given to it, have risen above a fixed maximum, although without such divine interposition, it might, and would, in time, degenerate, or fall below its original measure. These supernatural beginnings, followed by natural growths, constitute the chronological periods of the divuie work- ing, of which there are six mentioned by Moses as having a direct relation to the birth or genesis of our own world, in its present formation. 5th. These creative periods are indefinite, or of a duration not measurable by any subordinate divisions of time derived from the present settled constitution of things. They are called days for three reasons : 1st. Because this is the best language the Hebrew or any other ancient tongue could furnish — any other word by which we should attempt to denote period or cycle being resolvable ultimately into the same idea that lies at the root of this first and simplest term of revolution : 2d. Because of its cyclical or periodical character : and, od. Because this periodical character is marked by two con- trasted states which could not be so well expressed in any way as by those images that in all the early tongues enter into the terms for evening and morning. . 6th. This, it is contended, is not mere fanciful con- jecture, or a philological resort to escape a difficulty of science, but is forced upon us by considerations which lie upon the very face of the account, especially in the description of the first four periods which preceded the regular division of days by the sun. By representing 'them as ante-solar, the writer, whatever may have been his science, gives us a clear intimation that the days of LEADING DESIGN AND LEADING IDEAS. 7 which he is speaking are not the common diurnal revolu- tions measured by the rismg and setting of the heavenly bodies. It is certainly not the commmi day in its more essential as well as striking characteristic of the solar division. There is, therefore, much more reason, and .i more consistent license in regarding it as not a common day in the less essential and less striking characteristic of a twenty-four hours duration. The reader's attention is specially requested to this part of the argument, and the philological investigations connected with it. The days were anomalous ; the first night was utterly indefi- nite ; the first morning, at least, was unlike any that is now made by the sun. This admitted, — and it is forced upon us by the whole aspect of the account, — the whole narration is anomalous, and a sufficient intimation is given that the times and periods are to be interpreted in consistent analogy with the extraordinary acts. In other words, the extraordinary in duration^ as well as in other aspects of these wondrous days, is rather to be expected a' priori than regarded as a forced resort to avoid a scientific difiiculty. 7th. The key-note, or the suggestive thought that pervades the whole argument, comes from the distinc- tion which is believed to exist, between the language of Paul, Hebrews xi. 3, and that of the Mosaic account in (xenesis ; — the one referring to the essential, the other to the |j>7ie?w»ie?iaZ, — the one addressed to the faith apprehending directly, without sense and witliout induc- tion, the invisible divine powers or the unseen forces from which are made the things that are seen, the other addressed to the sense, or rather to the faith through the sense, and making use of the things that are seen 8 INTRODUCTION. as the names or representatives of the primal invisible entities that are not only far removed from the senses, but awaj back of science itself and its most interior dis- coveries, — ab omni scientia, tum sensus tum mentis cum ratione cognitionis, quam longissime remota. 8th. An important aid in interpreting the days in Genesis, or the creative times, is derived from a right \dew of the Hebrew olam^ and the Greek alwv, as they so frequently occur in the Old and New Testaments. A chapter is devoted to their thorough examination. These terms show that there existed in the earliest use of lan- guage, a conception of durations transcending any of the ordinary divisions of time as measured by the heavenly phenomena. They indicate a view of the universe as extending indefinitely back and forward in time, how- ever limited may have been the knowledge or notion of its magnitude in space. The manner in which they are often employed suggests the idea of immense ages in the past as well as in the future, and that, too, not as mere blank conceptions of the mind, but as being as much a part of God's eternal kingdom as our own secular period or world-duration. Hence the present world, too, is called an olani, or seen, regarded as one of the series among these mighty epochs, and as measured by its out- ^v^ard relation to them, instead of the subdivisions of time that fall within its temporal limits. From this Hebrew notion of olam comes, in the New Testament, the common, yet remarkable, use of aV^.v (gevum) as a name even for the material world viewed in its time instead of its space aspect, or as chronological instead of extended being, — ft usage of the word which is never met with in classical Greek. Hence in the epistle to the Hebrews, i. 2, and COLLATERAL TOPICS. U xi. 3, as well as in other passages, the very objects of the creative acts are thus set forth hj words of duration — '* Bi/ ivlioiu aho he made the icorlds,^^ to'-s a)C^vo'.g — the roons, the ages, as denoting a higher a323ect of the Avork and more truly the essence of its result than any words of space. This Hebrew conception of olams, or of worlds under that name, is in striking contrast with the modern notion that live or six thousand- years carries us back, not only to the beginning of the human race, but to the absolute beginning of all created substance with nothing before it — if we except the solitary divine existence — but an eternal blank. The views here brought out may strike some readers as new, and the writer might be tempted to make a claim for them of originality. This, however, he would regard as rather an equivocal merit in the interpretation of the Bible. It is hoped that they will commend them- selves more by their philological correctness, and by their sober analogy with the whole spirit of the Hebrew Scrip- tures. Among Collateral Topics the following may be men- tioned as most worthy of introductory notice : 1st. The institution of the solar Sahhath as a stand- ing memorial of the termination of the creative ivork^ or that Great Rest of God which commenced in the evening, at the close of the sixth day, and yet continues uninter- rupted and unbroken. The Sabbatical institution is thought to furnish an argument against the doctrine o: indefinite days. It is maintained, on the other hand, that there is a sublime fitness in the less being thus made the type or memorial of the greater, the transient of the 10 INTRODUCTION". permanent, and the diurnal of the olamic or ceonian periods. It is thus in analogy ^vidi the general spirit of the Hebrew typical institutions, and especially as mani- fested in the -widening and ascending series of Jewisli hebdomads. 2d. The question, whether the first vegetahle and ani- mal productions were made i^crfect^ or grew from a seed; and whether the seed itself was created in its finished material form, or came from a seminal force, or principle, divinely originated, and then developed by the already existing nature of the previous period. The language of Scripture is here carefully examined, and special attention is given to the enquiries — What is meant when it is said " God created the plant before it was in the earth?" — Can there be a real creation of a force or principle, antecedent to, and independent of, the material form in which it is to be manifested to the senses ? In other words, what is meant, or is anything meant, when we say with Plato, that " God is the maker or architect of laics and ideas. 3d. The cyclical law of nature, or the nature of all natures, great or small — the flower, the tree, the world, the individual, the species, the genus, — or that law of maxima and minima, of growth and decay, which makes it impossible that there should be anj^ uninterrupted or unlimited progress in nature without a continual series of supernatural interpositions, originating higher and higher stages — thus causing the creative ongoings to consist of periods with their contrasted morning and eve- ning, their torpid and energising, their quiescent and reviving states. COLLATERAL TOPICS. 11 4th. The Physical Origm of Man, and what is meant hj his being formed from the dust of the earth. 5th. The manner in which the Mosaic account appears in the Greek cosmogonies. 6th. The Hebrew Idea of the great antiquity of the world, as shown by a particular examination of Proverbs viii, 22-32, together with parallel passages in Job and the Psalms. 7th. The Hebrew or Bible Ideas of Law and Nature. 8th. The Poetical Language of the Bible and the dif- ference between it and what may be called the narrative phenomenal style, as illustrated by a comparison of Genesis i, with the thirty-eighth chapter of Job. It may be remarked generally in conclusion, that as the writer has aimed to be wholly philological in the examination of these great questions, he has not been much concerned with, or anxious about, the enquiry, whether the results at which he has arrived would square with any geological theory or not. There may be a general or a partial harmony. The great suc- ceeding periods of light, atmosphere, separation of land and water, vegetable, animal, and rational life, may cor- respond in their general outlines to what science is sup- posed to teach, whilst, as far as her very defective evi- dence goes, there may be an apparent overlapping in the minor details or filling up of the great scheme. If our earth is a groivth^ oj^Vj^c, natiira^ /svsirjr, toleda, or (/ene- ration, — the Greek, Latin, Anglo-Saxon, and Hebrew words, meaning radically the same thing — then the mind could almost determine a' priori, from general analogy, that it would be by ascending steps from the 12 INTRODUCTION. lower degrees of organic existence to the higher orders of life ; and that notwithstanding some appearances of intermingling, such would be the general chronological outhne. Hence, too we might expect that the number of the great creative acts, each with its tvfo contrasted times, its supernatural aivaJcening and its sequence of natural repose^ or, in short, order of succession, instead of extent of duration, would constitute the essential fea- ture of the facts revealed. The chief, and as we think the strong position is, that the Bible does not teach that the creative da3's v.'ere twenty-four hours long ; but leaves a great latitude in this respect, determining nothing about their duration, except that they must be in some kind of conceived har- mony with the grovfths and processes assigned to each. Hence this view of indefinite periods may be applied in various ways. It may be supposed to embrace the whole physical history of our earth from its earliest condition of being, or it may refer merely to the successive steps by which an old chaotic earth was renewed, and a nevr divi- sion of land and wnter, a new vegetation, a new animal life, etc., were made to succeed older growths and older creations, which had long before run through their cycles. The writer would confess his partiahty for the first supposition, as the second burdens the conceptive faculty with the idea of a series of great creations, as well as of great periods in each creation : but on cither view there is no need to disjoin the introductory verse in the first of Genesis from the rest, or to suppose any disconnected interval between them. There is. how- ever, nothing in a sound philology that would interfere with such a view if any choose to entertain it. CHAPTER II. BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION. Is THE Bible to be interpreted as other books ? — What is it designed TO teach? — Style of the Mosaic account of Creation. _^ The Bible, it is often said, must be interpreted on the ^^ame principles that we apply to other books. The pro- position doubtless contains a truth, and yet great care is required in its application, or we shall violate the very canon we profess to employ. We do not interpret the Bible as we would other books, unless we keep in view those very peculiarities in which it differs from other books, — unless we are affected, and greatly affected, by what we beheve in respect to its author, its subject, and its end. We judge, indeed, of the style by what is appa- rent on the face. There are certain principles by which \\Q determine what is poetical, what is plain narrative, what is rhetorical, what is argumentative, what is allego- rical, what is mythical ; but in doing so we must draw out conclusions from the record itself. We have no right to turn plain prose into poetry, or poetry into prose, oi sober narrative into myth, or a parable into a mystical allegory, just to remove some real or fancied difficulty arising from extrinsic considerations. So far the rule holds good of the Bible as of other books ; and yet who could deny that the mere thought of God being its author, human destiny its subject, and salvation its end^ 2 14 BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION. must greatlj modify our conceptions not only of the Im- portance, but of the very meaning of what it reveals. In this sense we cannot interpret a book of which we believe God to be the author, as we would interpret Shakspeare, Byron, or Homer. A similar remark may be made in respect to the subject and design. In the case of other books, this may often be known from with- out ; the design of the Bible can only be determined from itself. How often do we hear it laid down, with an assurance that seems to admit of no doubt, that the Scriptures were not given to teach us this, or that ? They were intended, it is said, to inculcate religion and mo- rality, and we must not, therefore, look into them for any satisfaction in respect to the kingdom of nature. The boundaries of religion and morality, too, are narrowed or enlarged, so as to include or exclude just what such a declaimer would find convenient or inconvenient for his hypothesis. Now, without saying anything on the im- mense difficulty of making the distinction which some regard as so easy, or of drawing the fair line between the moral and the physical, the philosophical and the religious, — without dwelling on the absurdities into which many have run in attempting to dra^v this line, and the arbitrary manner in which the}^ would place a prmciple on this side or that, according to their ovvn fancy, — without showing here, as it might be shown, that some of the gravest moral truths have a physical root, or rather a physical ground, and that the highest natural truths have inseparable moral affinities, as is so fully exempli- fied in the great question of the unity of the race in its connection with the doctrines of the /(if Z/, of the incarna- tion^ and the redemption, — without dwelling here on any BIBLICAL IXTERPRETATIOX. 16 of these points, it is sufficient to say, that even -when judged by those ordinary rules of hermeneutics to which the appeal is made, this boasted canon of the modem lecturer is nothing but sheer impertinence, a violation of all logic, and of all sound rhetoric too, in so complacently taking for granted the very matter to be investigated. What is the Bible designed to teach us ? Just tvliat it does teach us, is the simple, yet only rational answer, — unless we have some extrinsic evidence, (and this, of course, could be nothing else than some other assumed revelation,) informing us more expressly what that design is, and pointing out to us what parts may be rejected, or modified, or referred to some lower collateral purpose, without aflfecting or changing the great object. Assuming for our readers that the first chapters of Genesis are divine Scripture, the question arises — Did its Divme Author intend by it to give some instruction, be it more or less limited, in respect to the fact and man- ner of the origin of our earth ? Was it meant to teach us its direct and sudden formation, or its gradual growth into its present state, or the combination of both kinds of causality in producing the grand result ? Was it in- tended for any reasons, whether we can discover them or not, to give us a lesson in respect to the natural as well as the moral world ? Now, we can only determine this from the record itself. What does it teach ? That ascertained, we have just what it was designed to teach. But in getting at it, we must, of course, use all the laws of interpretation, ordinary or extraordinary, which the case demands. We must not suffer any outward diffi- culties, which modern science may have suggested, to deflect us from the fair meaning, or refract its direct 16 BIBLICAL INTEIIPIIETATIOX. light ; and yet we must allow those difficulties their full and proper effect in causing us to examine more carefully whether some other prepossessions, scientific or unscien- tific, may not have drawn us as much away into errors lying in a different or even opposite direction. May it not be that we are judging a record made for all ages, by certain scholastic notions of comparatively modern centuries, — notions which, although at their first intro- duction lying as much out of the common track as those scientific views that now arouse our jealousy, have become, in time, so much the property of the common mind as to make it now very difficult for us to think, or reason, or interpret language out of them. We had better lock up our Bibles at once, than be haunted with the uneasy and tormenting conviction that our belief is the untenable result of any forced or compromising accommodation. And yet, on the other hand, we must not be too certain that our prima facie impressions are the only ones that will bear the test of close examination. Our ideas of sudden creations out of nothing, whether true or false, would have been very strange to many Gentile Christians of the first centuries. The doctrine of rapid c?iusalities crowded into brief periods measured by our common hours, would have been more out of their way of thinking, and even of interpreting the Scriptures, than that of instantaneous production from pre\aous non- entity ; it would have seemed to them neither nature, nor miracle, nor a credible combination of both. The very name O-enesis, given in the Greek version of the Old Testament, contains the conception of {/roivth, of genera- tion, of the hecoming of one thing from another through physical forces operating through certain traceable me- BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION. 17 tliods tliat may be called physical laws, and is not only in harmony with, but would demand the long periods, which geology is supposed to suggest. In proof of this, we may say that some early Christian Fathers embraced this idea of the indefinite times, as the true and most natural interpretation, ages before geology, as a science, was even dreamed of. This was their view of the dies eternitatls, as they are called by some one of them, and which is the most literal rendering of the Hebrew ex- pression, as it is employed by the Prophet Micah, v, 1, to denote the " outgoings^^ of the Logos, or The Everlast- ing Creative Wisdom, But what is the fair meaning of the record? This ascertained to his satisfaction, the Christian believer in revelation can have no farther question. This ascer- tained, and he has what God meant to teach, and which is reverently to be received as his teaching, whatever other issues science or philosophy may seem to present. We need not dwell on the propositions now become so trite, that all truth must be consistent with other truth — that is only saying that all truth must be true, — or that one of God's books must not contradict the other, — all that is so, of course. These positions which once seemed to embody so much wisdom, are now too stale to be either formally defended or opposed. The question still remains, and a very important one it is — Which book is of the most value to us ? Which book most needs the aid of the other as the interpreter, not of its pheno- mena, but of its ultimate meaning ? Which book contains the truths with which we can least dispense, or that have the most important bearing upon our most serious destiny ? Let all confidence in a present revelation be 18 BIBLICAL INTERPRETATIOK. destroyed, and with it, as an inevitable consequence, all hope of any future revelation of God to man, and how long would sciencQ or philosophy continue to give us any moral or religious light ? How long before the one would become but '• a valley of dry bones," and the other, as it has always been in itself and away from the influence of the Bible, a terra uynhrarum^ a region of the shadow of death? Of course, God's books will not contradict each other ; but this should not be an excuse for ever making the Bible yield to anything we may choose to call an interpretation of nature. In place of these modern truisms, it is far more important for us to re- member a saying as old as the experience of mankind, that truth lies beneath the surface, — a surface often of apparently perplexing difficulties down through which we must dig as for hid treasures, whether we are exam- ining the strata of geology, or seeking to explore the deposits of revealed wisdom amid the obscurities insepar- able from the necessary medium through which they are laid open to the human mind. In respect to this account in Genesis, we cannot re- solve it into poetry or mythus. There need be no objection to any such view had there been proof on the face of the writing. There is certainly poetry in other parts of the Bible, and the opening account might have been in the same style, designed like all other poetry, to excite strong emotion — to impress us feelingly with the thought of the wisdom and goodness and greatness of the First Cause, without claiming exact credence for the literal prosaic truth of the representations employed for such an emotional purpose. But the opening narrative of the ]5ible ha>s not the air and style of poetry, although the BIBLICAL IXTERPRETATION". 19 subsequent Hebrew poets have draAvn largely upon this old store house of grand conceptions, and thereby thrown back upon it something of a poetical tinge. Neither ia it mythical or parabolical. We have no difficulty in detecting these styles in the Scriptures, wherever they may occur. When we meet with such a passage as this — " The trees once said to the bramble, rule thou over us," — or, " Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt and planted it," — or, ''My beloved had a vineyard in a very fruitful hill," — or, "A sower went forth to sow, and as he sowed some seed fell by the way-side" — we have no trouble in determining its character. Every intelligent reader, whether learned in the original lan- guages or not, says at once, if he understands the terms, this is myth, — this is parable, — this is allegory, — this is poetical or figurative language. We fail to detect any of these well-known marks of style in the account of the creation. It professes to narrate the order of facts, or the chronological steps, in the production of our present earth. It is found in scriptures well known to have existed in our Saviour's day, -— scriptures v/ith which He Avas familiar, which He styled holy, and to which He, the Light of the world, appealed as of divine, and there- fore, unerring authority. Whatever, then, be its fair meaning, that meaning, we say again, is for the believer the actual truth, the actual fact or facts, the actually intended teaching ; and is to be received as such in spite of all impertinent distinctions between the natural and the moral, or any arbitrary fancies in respect to what does or does not fall within the design of a divine revelation. CHAPTER III PHENOMEJ^AL LANGUAGE. FOUK BISTINCTIONS,— THE FACT, THE CONCEPTIOX, THE EMOTION, THE PHILOSO' PHY. — God can make a revelation to us only through our conceptions. — All human speech phenomenal. — This especially true of the earli- est languages. As actual fact, we have said, — But liere come in dis- tinctions on which we must be allowed to dwell at some length, even at the hazard of being thought to indulge in abstract and irrelevant theorising, or in what may seem to some, unnecessary repetitions. The course taken, however, is deemed vital to the whole discussion. The analysis here attempted wiU give the key to all subsequent interpretations, and if well understood by the reader, will, it is hoped, make those interpretations not only easy but convincing. We commence then with four distinctions, although they may be afterwards mainly reduced to two. Matter of fact is one thing; the conception, or mind's image accompanying that fact, and which may be taken as di- rectly representative of it, is another thing ; the emotion to which it may give rise is a third ; and the philosophy or science of that fact still another and a fourth thing. There might, perhaps, be made a farther distinction be- tween the science and the philosophy — the one having respect to the mutual relations of the phenomena by which the fact may be represented, the other its relations to the whole of being — but the above is sufficient for our present PHENOMENAL LANGUAGE. 21 argument. For example — the smi rises. The fact or ultimate act, which the phenomenon or appearance repre- sents, is the same for the ordinary observer, the man of science and the poet. But the second has a philoso- phy of the matter to which the first and third may be strangers ; the third has an emotion of vy'hich the others perhaps know little or nothing. Now both the philoso- phy and the appearance, or mode of conception, be it more or less vivid, will affect the verbal language in which the fact is presented, unless the philosopher chooses for the sake of convenience to rest in the common lan- guage, although correcting for himself its etj^nological conceptions, and the poet thinks it already sufficiently possessed, as it may be, of the figurative element. And this to some extent it will always doubtless have ; for in reality the thought of the fact, as a fact, is never wholly separate from some true or false scientific view, or from some emotion, be it strong or feeble, accompanying the manner in which such fact is conceived, or represen- tatively imaged to the mind. Now this conception, or mind's image of the fact, in distinction from and as representative of the fact itself, is what language, especially early or primitive language, ever aims to express ; and if God reveals facts to us, or the order of facts, through language, it is no irreverence to say that he employs the instrument as he finds it. We can imagine no other way. Even were the revela- tion intuitional, as some demand it should be, it would still be only by awakening in the soul, v>'ithout verbal lan- guage, that same conceptional image which had given liirth to the language. For language is a medium to the soul only as the soul hath generated it either by its ordi- 22 PHENOMENAL LANGUAGE. narj powers, or as quickened by an early divine influ- ence operating through them and upon them. Thus all thoughts, all feelings, all facts have gone through its imaging process, and thus alone become capable of any outward representation. Away from such direct or re- flex images, the soul could not read her own intuitions, whether regarded as innate or inspired ; and should there be in either way (that is by our own thinking or by insph-ation) an attempt to create within us new concep- tions, it could only be by beginning with those older ones that lie nearest the direct action of the senses. It will be borne in mind that we are now speaking of phy- sical facts, and not at all of moral truth. Such facts, in their ultimate state inefiable and inconceivable, can only come to us as represented by phenomena, and if God would talk to us either by articulate speech, or through emotions and conceptions directly inspired, he must come, with all reverence be it said, where we are ; unless he would take us up as Paul was taken, to the Third Heaven, and then the language employed would be not only unintelligible but unutterable in the world below. Let us suppose that the Deity designed to reveal to a human mind, and through that human mind to other hu- man minds, that on a certain occasion there was a pre- ternatural lengthening of the day. The phenomenon or appearance connected with the physical agency or su- pernatural act, (whichever it was,) and representative of such act or agency, is that of the sun's standing immov- able in the firmament. This is that appearance to the senses, in which the act or agency terminates, and aside from which the one to whom it is revealed cannot conceive it. It stands for the fact and is in this sense to him, the Ian- PHENOMENAL LANGUAGE. 23 guage of the fact, just as the articulate descriptive words represent, or are to other minds the language of, the phenomenon itself. If God speaks to him it must be in his own language, or if he inspires the thought of the fact in his mind, it must be through his own modes of conceiving. Is it said that Deity might correct the human conceptions of phenomena and bring them nearer to the actual truth ? Two answers at once suggest them- selves : One is that it would be useless, as the great object is to communicate the fact, and any way through which that is done sufl&ces. Secondly, any new language would still be phenomenal, and any new phenomenal conception, or conceptions, would still have more or less of that disagreement between them and the remote phy- sical or divine agency represented, which, it could be shown, exists, and must ever exist, even in our most scientific dialect. It imght, perhaps, be objected that this is simply treat- ing the account as poetical. But there is a wide differ- ence between what is ordinarily called poetry, (in which the design is to connect strong emotion with the concep- tion^') and that phenomenal expression, or innate sponta- neous metaphor which is in the very roots of language, and is employed simply to create a vivid thought of the fact which the conception represents. This important difference we hope to present more clearly in a subse- quent examination of the numerous references of the Hebrew poets to the i\Iosaic account of the creation. We might say that all human speech is more or less phenomenal. It is only in the latest or worn out stages of language that words come to stand for thoughts, or facts, or physical agencies, directly without this middle 24 PHENOMENAL LANGUAaS. process of a representative conception, — just as x^y and z in algebra stand directly for certain abstract quantities and relations. In this state it may, in some respects, be better adapted to science, whose symbols are the more con- renient just in proportion to their abstractedness from all sensible conceptions ; but its life is gone ; its power of creating vivid images to stand as representatives of the remoter fact or truth, no longer exists. No language is wholly in such a condition of conceptional barrenness, although the later ones are ever tending towards it except so far as they are recoined from time to time by being sent to the etymological mint, or preserved fresh and bright by those writers w^ho happily combine philological accuracy with a vivid power of imagination. Even yet our speech, old and worn out as it is, abounds in hidden metaphors. We cannot well talk without a figure. Even our most scientific and philosophical vocabularies are full of words, which, when traced to their roots, present some- thing pictorial, some sensible image^ or sensible action, as the representative basis of all more interior thought. The very sentences with which the reader is now occu- pied, abstract as they may seem, contain such pictures in almost every word. We acknowledge their existence more readily in terms that have come to us from the Greek and Latin sources ; but a careful examination shows that even those Anglo-Saxon words whose primi- tive images are in a great measure lost from common use, present the same phenomenal character. But we need not dAvell on this. What is mainly had in view is the phenomenal language of Scripture, and here our formulas have their strictest application. Let- ters, or elements of speech, represent words or articulate PHENOMENAL LANGUAGE. 25 sounds; — articulate sounds represent a sensible concep- tion or mind's image, — this sensible conception repre- sents a fact or facts, either near, or remote, or ultimate, standing behind it. The ultimate fact is in itself ineffa- ble, because inconceivable under any of the forms of sense. The various conceptional representations of it may be more or less simple, or more or less scientific, but all falling short of that unutterable reahty which no language can by any other means express. The earliest conception, although the most vivid and therefore the most representative, may be scientifically the most erro- neous. And yet nothing would be gained by substitut- ing other words and other images, because the most phi- losophical language, when examined in its roots, contains as much of this phenomenal character as that in most ordinary use. Some superficial naturalist might make himself merry with the expressions, — the sun fails — or goes out — or faints away, — and yet, it may be, in total ignorance of the fact that his own scientific word eclipse does phenomenally and etymologically present precisely that conception. Does he say that he disregards the etymology, or the phenomenal conception, or has a new phenomenal conception associated with the word, or has in his mind directly (if that were possible) the absolute fact or physical agency, without any representative sen- sible image ? — the enlightened reader of the Scriptures can say the same thing. He, too, may. thus correct his conceptions if he deems it worth while ; or he may go right to the ultimate fact they represent, as far as his science may have shown him the way. Our superficial naturalist scofis at Joshua's command to the sun to stand still, but even in talking about it he is using language 3 26 PHENOMENAL LANGUAGE. alike, if not equally, erroneous. Should he resolve to make an artificial word, that should have no phenomenal conceptions associated with it, or standing between it and the ultimate philosophical fact, he would not be able to find the materials of such a word, or phrase, in any dialect spoken bj man. He might arbitrarily employ for that pur- pose some articulate sound, but it would not be strictly lan- guage. An essential stage in the process that consti- tutes language, has been left out, and thus it would be only a scientific symbol of the same character with the X, y and z of the algebraist. Even should we suppose it to represent to himself his own conception, or his own notion, to use a term more applicable to the present case, still it would be only to himself. In explaining the meaning of his new term to others, he must inevitably fall right back into the phenomenal terms and concep- tions he had discarded. What has been said is especially true of primitive lan- guage. There everything lives, and breathes, and acts. Natural phenomena appear as the acts of Hving agents. Yivid images are not merely things of rhetorical choice, to be selected for purposes of ornament, or for the exciting of particular emotions, but are forced upon the writer in almost every expression he uses. His language furnishes him with no other materials. It is thus we find, when we carry ourselves back into its old life, that what is a great advantage in calling out vivid conception becomes a seeming disadvantage — but only a seeming one — in a scientific apphcation. We sometimes blunder, too, in respect to the real force the ancient writer may have intended to give to the term he employs. We see the image in the etymology, and it becomes the main PHENOMENAL LANGIUAGB. 27 sense to us, although it may have been already obsolete to him, notwithstanding he still employs the estabhshed language ; or else we mistake the conception for the fact itself, or what may be a still worse error, we treat it as we would an express metaphor in modern poetry. CHAPTER lY. ILLUSTRATIONS FROM SCRIPTURE. The expression, the voice of the Lord. — The heaven of heavens. — The THIRD heavens.— Hebrew language for eclipses of the sun and moon. — Anthropomorphism. — Parts of the body, as names for soul. The nature of phenomenal language and the distinctions on which it is grounded, — especially as presented in the primitive tongues, — may receive illustration from some of the most familiar examples to be found in the Sacred Writings. We read Genesis iii, 8, of the " Voice of the Lord walking in the garden in the cool of the day." Here is a coneeptional term. '^)'^^^'^\>, Kol-Yehovah is the Hebrew word, or rather phrase, for thunder. Through use it may come to be employed as a single compound, and to represent the original fact with little or nothing remaining of the original conception. In Job and the Psalms it is of frequent occurrence, still retaining its primitive force, but coming to stand for the phenomenon very much as our single word, or the Greek /3povT*j, or the Latin tonitru. The reader is referred for some of the most striking examples to Psalm xxxix, 3, etc. : " The voice of the Lord is upon the waters ; the God of glory thunder eth ; the Lord is upon the mighty waters. The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars, even the cedars of Lebanon. The voice of the Lord calleth out the flames of fire. The voice of the Lord maketh the wilderness to tremble, and layeth bare the forests, whilst in His temple ILLUSTEATIONS FROM SCRIPTURE. 29 men speak of His glory." Compare also Job xxxvii, 2 : " Hearken to the trembling (or rolling) of bis voice, and the roaring (Ji?.^) or deep loud sound, that proceedeth out of his mouth." The translators in Genesis have given the phenomenal rendering ; and this is best, because the most vivid, and most true to the ancient conception. To our English ear, however, it may make the word Lo7'd the subject of the participle ivalking ; whereas, if taken in analogy with other places, it might be truly rendered, — " They heard the thunder going forth in the cool, (or towards the evening,) of the day." The word sjVritite, (translated walking) may refer, as every Hebrew scho- lar knows, to impersonal as well as to personal agents. It is appHed to the waters of the flood. Gen. viii, 5, and to the going forth and increasing brightness of the light, Prov. iv, 18. It admirably presents the phenomenal con- ception attending one of those long rolls or peals of thun- der that seem to traverse the whole horizon. As in Job, xxxvii, 3 : " Under the whole heaven He directeth it ; After it a sound roareth when He thundereth with His glorious voice." It Avas like the long peal which -^s- chylus represents as breaking on the ear of the daring Prometheus— (1081) It was the first thunder-storm the sinning pair had ever seen or heard, and their impious transgression gave it an awful significance. They were frightened at a pheno- menon from which the guilty soul has ever since shrunk, in all ages of the world. It is the voice of the Lord yet, through however many undulating series of second causes it may reach us. Science can never completely oblite- 30 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM SCRIPTURE. rate this early phenomenal conception of the human soul, and no amount of Epicurean boasting can do away the impression, that God is indeed near to us in the thunder- storm, however distant he may seem to be in other ope- rations of nature. It is not, however, alone to the more outward phenomena that the term (or a kindred one) is applied in the sacred language. In the description of the sublime scenes presented to the Prophet's vision -in the Mount of Horeb, it is used to denote that more inte- rior divine power which lies back of the wind, the earth- quake, and even the fire. The Lord, it is said, was in no one of these directly ; but after them all comes the " still small voice ;" or the subtile voice, (as rif^"^ literally means) — the attenuated, silent voice, or voice of silence. And when Elijah heard it, he "wrapped his face in his mantle and went forth and stood at the door of the cave." As another example, we may take the sublime Hebrew declaration as presented to us in the prayer of Solomon, " The Heaven and Heaven of Heavens cannot contain Thee." tiere the Divine immensity is the fact, or truth, — in itself the ineffable truth. The conception, on the other hand, by which the truth is represented, is that of a higher Heaven or empyrean, embracing a lower Heaven, or Heavens, which is the old Hebrew as well as (rreek image of the universe. The image is itself a language. If we wish for terms more scientific or philo- sophical, we must either cheat ourselves with such as appear more abstract, simply because the pictures that were once in their roots have faded away, or we are com- pelled to take up with mere conceptionless negations, «?uch as immensity, infinity, etc. ILLUSTRATIONS FROM SCRIPTURE. 31 In the same manner may we treat the expression, the Tliird Heavens^ as denoting the most transcendent state of being. The glorious ineffable fact is one thing ; the language and mode of conception — itself an inner speech — form quite another thing. To make the process com- plete, then, there must be a double transfer. Just as we translate the Greek and Hebrew words into Enghsh words, so must we likewise translate the Hebrew image or conception into the modern conception, if we have one, whether it be furnished by science or come from the pro- gress of the common mind. One translation is just as proper as the other, unless for the sake of its greater vividness we prefer to read the great ultimate facts of nature and God's power therein, through the old imagery, as well as in the old words themselves. Whoever thus reads, we may say, will find his account in it. The con- ceptions of Solomon and Paul will be found, to say the least, as favorable to elevation of thought and grandeur of emotion as any of the scientific formulas of Herschell and La Place. Had Paul undertaken to tell us scientifically or nume- rically about this third Heaven, — as for example to give us the distance between it and the second, as the impos- tor Mohammed has done — he would have turned the conception into a fact, and made himself and the writings of which he was the inspired medium responsible for its absolute truth or falsity. But the Bible never does any thing of the kind. And here is one great difference between it and other writings with which the infidel would sometimes compare the Sacred Book. The close student cannot help being struck by it, and revering it as one of the marks of its divine origin. Our Holy 82 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM SCRIPTURE. ScriiDture shrinks not from the boldest supernatural ; but then it is ever the supernatural in all its ineffable gran- deur. It never commits itself by any such change of image or conception into fact, as to stamp upon it that legendary appearance -which no intelligent reader can mistake in the wild Talmudic and Mohammedan absurdi- ties. We may affirm, too, that it was only by such a transmutation of old imagery into actual fact, there arose a great part of the Greek and Scandinavian, as well as Hindoo, mythologies. Again : " The sun shall be darkened and the moon turned to blood." We are not quite certain whether this is poetry, strictly, or phenomenal prose, — that is, the ordinary conceptional expression for the fact in nature it represents. But taking it, as we well may, for the common Hebrew language to denote an eclipse, the one of the sun, and the other of the moon, and we have again the clear distinction on which we have before insisted. The expression may be used even after the primary image has ceased to be prominently suggested by it. It may even enter in the scientific language of a later date. A turning to blood, or some word which has that conception at its root, might even get into books of astronomy as the name for a lunar eclipse, just as has been the case in respect to this very word eclipse^ (or a failing, or going out,') which, though now scientific was once as strictly phenomenal as the old Hebrew phrases. We might cite here all those expressions in the Bible which have furnished infidels an opportunity foi* expati- ating on what they would style the gross anthropomor- phism of the Scriptures, — such as the ascribing to God, hands and eyes and other members of the human body. ILLUSTRATIONS FROM SCRIPTURE. 66 But there is no need of dwelling upon them. The youngest Sabbath scholar is familiar with their natural and easy explanation. They are conceptional names for the divine strength, the divine omniscience, the divine providence. When pure spirituality, away from all images and all forms of space, is to be expressed, no science, and no philosophy, can approach the majestic style of the Old Testament — "Am I a God at hand and not afar off? Do not I fill heaven and earth, saith the Lord ?" — Jer. xxiii, 24. " Take ye good heed unto yourselves, for ye saw no matter of similitude when the Lord spake unto you in Horeb out of the fire. Take heed lest ye lift up your eyes unto heaven, and when ye see the sun and the moon and the stars, even all the host of heaven, should be led to worship them ; Take heed to yourselves lest ye make you any Hkeness of any thing on the earth, or anything in the air, or anything in the waters beneath the earth." — Deut. vi, 15, 19, 23. Other illustrations, if they were needed, might be derived from the use the Bible makes of the names of certain parts of the body to denote the soul, and different faculties of the soul. We refer to such words as liem^t, reins, hoivels, the " inward parts." There might also be remarked, in passing, the almost entire absence of that analogous conception which is so frequent and so striking in modern phraseology. Allusion is had to the notion of the head or brain as the mind, or the seat of the mind, — a mode of conception to which we have become so accustomed as to regard it almost as a matter of direct consciousness. There is but one book in the Bible, in which such reference is to be found ; we have it in the Chaldee of Daniel, (iv, 2,) where Nebuchadnezzar savs, '84 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM SCRIPTURE. — "The visions of my head troubled me." No where else can there be discovered the least trace of it. So is it, also, in the Greek and Latin. The opinion as a specu- lative tenet may be sometimes found among the philoso- phers, but nowhere does it enter into the ordinary language. No word, or phrase, or metaphor, in common use has its ground in any such conception. Various other parts of the body are employed in the Scripture for this purpose, but it never commits itself by turning the conception into a fact, as our modern phrenology does when it ignorantly denotes its science of the skull by a word denoting originally a very different part of the body. The Greek (pf^jv, from whence is manufactured the modern word phrenology, comes the nearest to what is expressed by the frequent Hebrew fii^'^s, the reins (Latin renes, Greek (p^s'vss), the conceived seat of the inmost thoughts and affections of the soul. "Thou hast tried my heart and my reins." The distinction between matter of fact and matter of language arising from the mode of conceiving the fact, seems so plain that we may well wonder that any should have stumbled at declarations of which it offers so prompt a solution. The one we take as absolute verity, if we beheve the record, and for this we hold it responsible. The other belongs to the form of outward expression, which even the medium who employs it may not regard as exact, or may use as the current and best understood language of his day. It is a matter of wonder, too, that objections drawn from this source should have been so strenuously pressed against certain passages of the Bible when the difficulty, if difficulty it be, pervades every part of the present revelation, and must appear in any ILLUSTRATIONS FROM SCRIPTURE. 35 linguistic or written communication from the infinite to the finite mind, however advanced the science or philo- sophy by which its phenomenal language may be sup- posed to be corrected and improved. CHAPTER V. ANALYSIS OP THE LEADING IDEA IN ITS APPLICATION TO THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT. Facts as distinguished from appearances. — Divine facts. — Divine acts OR BEGINNINGS IN NATURE. — ThREE KINDS OF NATURALISM.— BlANK NATU' BALISM. — ThEISTIC NATURALISM, OR NATURALISM OF SCIENCE WITH ITS ONE FIRST CAUSE. — ThE RELIGIOUS OR SUPERNATURAL NATURALISM. — SiX DIVINE ACTS OR BEGINNINGS RECORDED IN GENESIS. — ThBEE KINDS OF PHENOMENAL LANGUAGE.— The SIMPLY PHENOMENAL, AS DISTINGUISHED FROM THE SCIEN- TIFIC, AND POETICAL. — EACH HAS ITS OWN GRAMMAR AND LEXICON. As in the examples cited, so also in the account of crea- tion, must we distinguish between the fact or facts (it may be in their essential agency the ineflfable facts) revealed, and the phenomenal language in which, or through which, they are thus revealed. This is a very different thing from that arbitrary process of rejecting as poetical or mythical, whatever displeases our science, or, it may be, our ignorance. One method proceeds by no rules whatever. The other is grounded on laws of lan- guage, themselves possessing the most scientific beauty, and easy to be applied. We have God's eterndl facts of creation, revealed to Moses in their chronological order through conceptions familiar to Moses (or it may be some one much older than Moses) and expressed by him in articulate Hebrew words which give birth to the same conceptions in the minds of others. Moses may have been scientifically very ignorant. His readers may have been equally so for many ages. So, too, our highest science may fall, and doubtless does fall, immensely short ANALYSIS OF THE LEADING IDEA. 37 of the ineffable truth, and may be m this respect as defi- cient a medium as the Bible account, whilst its dry for- mulas would be far below it in vividness of imagery and corresponding power of impression on the readers mind. All tliis may be so, and yet the record not only immu- tably true, but also the best possible mode that Infinite Wisdom could have devised to convey that truth, in its m^ost important elements, to the finite human soul. It is time to relieve our readers from these dry discus- sions ^nd proceed to direct exegesis, but before doing so it may be well, by way of recapitulation, to state more formally the leading features of our main position in its application to the Mosaic account, and as such position may be referred to in our interpretations of other parts of the Scriptures having a bearing upon that ancient record. By the ievm facts or acts, which we have so frequently employed, (and which in this connection is preferred to the word truth) may be denoted any physical agency as represented in the most outward phenomena, that is, those ajjpearances which terminate in the individual world of each man's own sensorium. The appearance is not the fact, but representative of it. That, however, which may seem to occupy the place of a physical agency, when viewed in relation to those last or most outward phenomena in which it appears, may be itself phenomenal (or a mode of appearing^ in respect to other seeming agencies lying back of it, and so on until we come to some principium, ol^x^, principle, or begin- ning. The words facts, or acts, therefore, may better be taken, at once, of those divine acts which may be supposed to make a beginning, or beginnings, in nature, 4 38 ANALYSIS OF THE LEADING IDEA IN ITS and of which all other steps in the outgoing series are but appearances, or manifestations.* Now, in respect *We may present the idea in something resembling a mathe- matical formula. Let X, then, represent the remote initial act, fact, or energy ; let P represent the ultimate phenomenon, or last appearance to the senses; and jl>, with its functions, the intermediate causalities. The formula, or series, then would stand thus — P, P-i^ P2^ P3> P4, P5 Pn X. Here each intermediate term though apparently causative of the one that follows, is really itself a phenornenon, th^t is a manifestation of the j^receding, and so on. The n^^ term is ever at a remote distance from X, and only stands for the causal energy, as long as no one is discovered behind it. The mind a' priori divines causalities as standing behind all mani- festations ; science goes to work and discovers them, but only to become, in this manner, phenomenal in their turn. The initial act or energy X, is, in itself, ineffable, and is only named from some of its phenomena or manifestations. In taking, however, for such naming, any but the ultimate P, we run the risk of its being superseded, on equally good grounds, by some other, whilst in every such case there is an endorsment of it as a scientific finality. Nothing is. therefore, gained in one way, whilst much is lost in another. Once depart from the ultimate or most outward manifestation, and there is no catholic name the same for all men and for all ages. Take for example, a solar eclipse. Here, in the series of phenomenal causalities, P is the ultimate phenomenon, that is, the failing or groing out of the sun. p^ — The first step in scientific discovery; or, the moon's appearing to come between the sun and the eye of the spectator. p2 — The motion of the earth bringing the eye of the spec- tator into that relation. P3 — The position of the nodes of the moon's orbit, and which is as essential to the final phenomena as any of the second- ary links. p^ — The law of the earth's annual revolution determinative of the times of nodal conjunction, along with which may APPLICATION TO THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT. 39 to such divine acts there may be three views. The first is that of sheer naturalism, as it may be called, which admits nothing strictly divine, — which has, in fact, no principium, but regards nature as an eternal ab ipso development, either cyclical, or rectilineally progressive. If it has a God at all, it is the God of Epicurus, not supra mundane, but extra mundane, — one who, if not a product be taken the relative magnitudes and distances of the two bodies in producing the actual result. Pit, — That unknown law which modern science has not yet reached, or that disposition of things with which is con- nected the cause of the earth's motion on its axes, and stiU more remotely, its revolution round the sun, or, with the sun, round some still more distant centre. We are aware of scientific defects in the above scheme ; some of the terms may not seem to fall in the same category ; yet it suffices well for a general illustration. Now from each one of these may be taken a name represen- tative of the remote, or the whole, causality. We may name it from P, and call it an eclijjse (h'ksi-^.ig') , that is, a failing or going out ; or we may name it from p -^ and call it an occulta- tion, that is a hiding, or we may name it from 2^2 ^^^ ^^^^ i*- a nodal conjunction, and so on. But, for the reasons before given, the fii'st naming is the best, because the most catholic as well as the most significant. Making an application of such view to science generally, we might say that the n''* terms at the present stage of discovery are to be found in such words as gravitation, magnetism, crystallization, elasticity, etc. — These do yet stand for energies, or causalities, because there has not yet been discovered that still rjore remote energy of which they are manifestations, and which, when discovered, will con- vert them all into phenomena, that is, make them appear. When this is done, then instead of being simply vooJfxsva, or notions of the mind, they become (pajvo'/j.sva ; in other words, they come out, and take their places among ''the things that are seen'^ — whether by the eye or the telescope — or which are so known that their movements and dispositions can be conceiv- ed, or represented to the imaging faculty of the mind. 40 ANALYSIS OF THE LEADING IDEA IN ITS of nature herself, has nothing to do either with nature or the universe. The second may be called the theistic naturalism, which brings in a Deity, or first cause (as a deus ex macldna) to start the machinery of the world, and then admits of no subsequent interference. It has one divine act away back in some remote eternity as far off as may be found convenient, but never repeated, — all things proceeding from it by an eternal and uninter- rupted development. The third may be styled the reli- gious, or supernatural naturalism, such as is taught in the Bible. This, besides the great principium, allows of many divine acts, or beginnings in nature, by which a new hfe is imparted that did not exist before and which the previous nature never could have developed, — or, a new series of forces is originated, — or, a change is made in old forces, so as to produce results that would not otherwise by any merely natural process have taken place. It is, in other words, the mixture throughout God's kingdom of the natural and supernatural as exhi- bited both in the creation of worlds and in the providen- tial government of worlds, — in which combination the supernatural is not determined by any developments of the natural, nor is it arbitrary or lawlessly sovereign in its proceedings, but governed by laws of its own having their reason and their ground in its own divine and supra-mundane sphere. A series of such divine acts, or beginnings, are pre- sented to us in the first chapter of Genesis. They are six m number. There may have been subordinate ones under each grand operation (as for example the great generic beginning of animal hfe may have had many specific beginnmgs accompanying and following it) but APPLICATION TO THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT. 41 these six constitute the great outlmes, and are presented to us in their chronological order. But in what language shall this chronological order of facts be given to us so as to be a universal revelation for all men and for all ages. The question is answered bj saying that language is of two kinds, or rather, has two stages in the process of communication. Words present images, or conceptions. Images or conceptions (or in other words phenomena) re-present the ultimate facts that stand away behind them. Thus all language is mainly if not wholly phenomenal. But here again arise three distinctions. There is the simipij phenomenal^ — the scientific — and the poetical. All these are pheno- menal, but in a different way. The first employs only those appearances which present themselves directly and primarily, or as we might say, spontaneously, to the sense, — that are alike in all men, and thus directly represent for all men the ineffable fact standing behind them at however remote a distance. The second, or scientific, takes more interior phenomena, either as dis- covered by closer examination of the prima facie appear- ances, or as suggested to the mind's conception by some hypothesis in respect to theu' relations. The third selects its phenomena, or makes them, as the name poetry impHes, or borrows them from other objects, or makes out of them analogies or comparisions for poetical effect. Again — they differ in their end or design. The object of the first is simply to give the more vivid thought of the ineffable fact, as a fact without reference to its philosophy. The object of the second is to explain the relation of phenomena to each other, and if possible (a thing, however, which science has never done and 42 ANALYSIS OF THE LEADING IDEA IN ITS never will do) to trace their connection all the way up to the great ultimate truth or agency they represent. The design of the third is not only to give a clear thought, hke the first j but to connect with it some strong emotion. Now in reference to these three kinds of language we may say, that the Bible can employ, and does employ most copiously, the fa^st and the third; but it cannot make use of the second. The reason is that the adop- tion of scientific language, as above defined, would be an endorsement of its absolute correctness, whilst the responsibihty of no such indorsement could be ever imphed in the use of the others. Revelation could not so endorse the language of science because it is continu- ally changmg. Subsequent discoveries are ever showing its incorrectness and deficiency even in respect to the relations of phenomena themselves (which is its peculiar province), whilst from the great ultimate agencies it is ever at a distance which no formula can measure. Thus, to illustrate our leading thought by examples and terms suggested by the work of the second period, we may say that the words and conceptions firmament ^ shy^ water above, and water below the firmament, mean the same in simple phenomenal language, that atmospheres^ rarefac- tions^ condensations^ reflections and refractions represent in scientific, — the same too that the treasures or store- houses of the rain, the "molten looking glass," the out- spread tent, the celestial curtaiiis, and the cloudy canvas image to us in the poetical. Each represents, in its own way, the same remote facts, or apparatus of physical agencies. Each, however, gives a distinct version ; and each is to be interpreted by its own grammar and lexicon.' APPLICATION TO THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT. 43 Our object, then, is not that which is commonly attri- buted to similar efforts, namely, to reconcile science and the written revelation, or to assume any real or apparent controversy between them. They are to be regarded as belonging to two distinct spheres, as having, in fact, nothing to do with each other. And yet in showing this there is another inference that is equally to be avoided. We mean the very common view that the Bible is given solely to teach reUgion or morality in their narrowest definitions, and has nothing to do with any forms of phy- sical truth. In opposition to this it may be maintained to be the highest authority in the physical as well as in the moral world — especially in those great problems that are connected with the origin and destiny of man, and of man's abode, — in other words, those ultimate physical facts that are inseparable from the most important moral bearings. ''The grass withereth, the flower fadeth" — nature comes and goes, whether at longer or shorter periods — "but the Word of our God shall stand for- ever." Its grand subject, it is true, is redemption, or the Kingdom of Grace, but its infallibihty may be also regarded as embracing whatever in the world of matter or of spirit may have any connection with this its highest and peculiar theme. CHAPTEK VI. WORK OF THE FIRST DAY. BEGINNING OF CREATION. The Mosaic BEGiNNixa not the absolute fbincifium. — The first verse NOT TO be separated FROM THE REST. — THE FIRST ORIGINATION OF MATTER. What is matter?— The Hebrew Bara, — the Latin Creare. — The hea- vens—atmospherical AND astronomical.— The Hebrew tebel. — The glory above the heavens— dual form of the Hebrew word. In the heginning Qod created the heavens and the earth. The word heginning here may be taken in a relative as well as in an absolute sense ; and the context together with extrinsic considerations can alone decide which is the true interpretation. It certainly is not the absolute begin- ning of aU being. It cannot be the beginning mentioned in the first chapter of the Gospel by John, when the Logos was with God, — the ';i'^wTOTO/toff, the First Born before all creation. It could not have been the beginning of all lower spiritual existence, such as the angeUc, or the arch- angelic, or in general, the superhuman spiritual creations. There are not the least intimations in the Scriptures that angels were created at the same time with our present world ; but, on the other hand, not a few passages from which we might fairly infer the contrary. It could not, therefore, have been the absolute beginning of material substance ; for we have no right to suppose that any being below the rank of Deity, or, in other words, any created being, is purely spiritual, that is, immaterial, or without a corporeal vehicle of some kind possessing not only extent in space but dynamical properties which we cannot separate in our minds from the idea of the mate- BEGINNING OF CREATION. 45 rial. Was it, then, the absolute beginning of the organ- ized worlds, or of the matter of which they are composed ; or does it refer simply to our own world with its immedi- ate celestial system ; or, finally, does it denote only the fashioning or forming of our world into its present state, without its being intended to give us any information respecting its more ancient elimination from absolute nonentity ? Now in respect to all these questions, there is only one that can be answered from the record with perfect confidence. It most surely does teach us the fashioning or forming, in some way, of our present world into its present state. All else is left uncertain and undeter- mined. Those who think that there is taught here an absolute origination of the earth's matter out of nothing, would regard the first verse as severed from the others, and as having special reference to the primordial act. But high as are the authorities who have defended this view, we cannot agree with them. Whatever may be believed in respect to this first origination of matter, whether of the earth or of all worlds, there is good rea- son for doubting whether it is actually meant to be set forth either in the beginning, or in any other part of this account. It is not, we think, the easy and natural im- pression one would get from the simphcity of the narra- tive. It would not readily occur to the reader that there was such a chasm between the first and subsequent verses. The language seems not to denote a separate primordial act, but to cover the whole process that fol- lows. It suggests to us the fashioning of something which, as far as the material is concerned, is already in existence as the subject of the operation, or series of 46 WORK OF THE FIRST DAY. operations, afterwards described. The beginning, then, is the leginn'mg of this fasJdoning. According to this view, the first verse, instead of standing separate, may rather be taken as the introductory title, or caption, to the account, describing generally, or in the briefest terms, the same work which is stated more in detail below. In the heginning Crod created the heavens and the earthy — and this, as we may paraphrase it, was the manner, and these the steps, or chronological order, in which this creation of the heavens and the earth was accomplished. If this view be right, the beginning mentioned was not the metaphysical iDrincipium, but the beginning of our present mundane state of things ; and this, we think will the more clearly appear from what may be said respect- ing the true meaning of the Hebrew n'^^, and our word create. In truth, we know not what matter is. When we attempt to trace it to its ultimate principle (or begin- ning), we find remaining in our minds only that notion of force or power which belongs to the understanding. This is all that is left when we go back, or attempt to go back, of all such images or conceptions of the sense as are connected with the motion, and changing, or fashion- ing of matter understood in some way to exist. Hence its origin could not be conveyed to us under any such images or conceptions. It is, indeed, to be taken as the great physical fact, embracing the ground of every sub- sequent fact, that the matter (be it what it may) from which the heavens and earth subsist is not eternal, for then it would be included in the idea of Deity ; neither did it come from chance, or any blind law or develop- ment, but must have had its orimi in time, and from the BEGINNING OF CREATION. 47 wisdom and word of God. We do not, however, think that this, true as it must be in itself, is meant to be taught directly in Genesis, because that whole account is j^resented to the sense, or rather to our faith through the sense. But this great fact is offered to our faith directly, or without any such intervening media,- — it being impossible for the human mind to receive it in any other way. Thus the Apostle says, Hebrews xi, 3 — *' Through faith we understand that the worlds were made by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. '^^ NooCixsv, says the inspired writer, — that is, we do not pe7'ceive it, nor conceive it, but take it directly by faith as an ulti- mate fact or truth involved in the soul's idea of God, and which no image addressed to, or derived from, the con- ceiving faculty can represent. All the primal forces from which come the tilings seen lie entirely out of the field of the sense, either as perceived or conceived under any of the forms of the sense, and this must be especially true of the great primal originating force of all. "We must be careful, however, not to regard it as simply the divine power continually energizing in space. Such a thought is full of peril as making matter but an emanation of deity, or a part of deity, and thus involving us in a mere physical pantheism. It is a real entity distinct from God, which God has originated, and to which he has given an immanent existence of its own in space and time, — how, we know not, and, perhaps, have no faculty for knowing ; yet still we can believe it as the great ulti- mate fact of facts in the physical world. We but use the very words of the Apostle, when we say, it is not cpajyoix?vov. but vov|j.=vov, not a phenomenon, not a thing that 48 WORK OF THE FIRST DAY, appears^ not a thing seen, not capable of being known bj any of the senses, not imagined, or conceivable, but understood* The account in Genesis, on the other hand, is entirely for the sense, or, we may rather say, addressed to the mind, and the faith, through the sense and the concep- tions of the sense. It is this thought that furnishes the key to its true interpretation. And hence -we may say, in the first place, that the Hebrew word isna, rendered create, has nothing abstract or metaphysical about it. It is as clearly phenomenal as any word in the language. Its primary meaning is to cut, hence to shave, shape, form, or fashion. So, also, the German word sehaffen, by which Luther translates it, and which is of the same root with schahen, and the Belgic schaeven, means to shave, cut, and hence to make, or fabricate. It is that idea of making, which consists in cuttings, separations, and arrangements by division of what previously exists in a confused and disorderly state, rather than a combin- ing or a constructing of new and scattered elements. No reader can avoid seeing how applicable this is to the greater part of the process ; especially the work of the first five days, or until we come to the creation of man. Almost everything before is a division, an elimination, *Neander has admirably expressed it in his exposition of the Gnostic opinions on creation. " In the important passage, Hebrews xi, 3, that act of the spirit denoted under the name of faith — whereby the spirit rises above the whole linked chain of causes and effects in the phenomenal world to an almighty creative word as the ground of all existence — is opposed to the contemplation of the world by the sense acknowledging no- thing higher than the connected chain of things in the world of appearance. ^^ BEGINNING OF CREATION. 49 a bringing of one thing from, or out of, another. K'ja, seems also to borrow some shades of its meaning from the kindred root "i:?a, which has its sense of cleansing^ or purification, from the same primary ideas of separat- ing^ divid{7ig, 2^u7'ifging, etc. So creation is a clearing up, a cleansing, a purifying, a bringing into order. We may call that a key-passage to the best under- standing of the radical nature of any word, where both the larger and the more specific applications seem to unite in the same general image. For such a passage we would direct the reader to Joshua, xvii, 18 ; where, m dividing the promised land among the tribes, it is said to the sons of Joseph — " The mountain shall be thine, for it is a forest, fi^Nnai, and thou shalt clear it" — literally cut it, hew it, separate it, clear it up. The reference is to the operation of bringing into order waste forest land, or turning the chaos, the tohu and bohu of the wilderness, into a well arranged, cultivated, and life-supporting terri- tory. The primary sense of the Latin creare, whence our word create, is somewhat different, though still pre- senting the same general idea of gradual process (that is process by steps or degrees), or that production of one thing from another which we call natural in distinc- tion from sudden and unconnected operations. This primary sense of o-eare is growth, as is more clearly seen in the derivative cresco, and as it manifests itself in our words increase, increment, etc. The generative sense is still more plainly exhibited in the compounds, whence our words procreate, recreate, concreate, etc. To go still farther back into the very elements of the primitive language, there cannot be a doubt but that the Latin and the Anglo-Saxon words have each the same cognate 50 WORK OF THE HRST DAY. radicals CR, and GR, and that, therefore, CBqo and GRow present originallj the same conception, being, in this respect also idential, at the root, with ^vdig, the Greek word for nature.* There will be a better place for dwell- ing on this in another part of the argument. But some attention is given to it here, to show how much we may be misled bj carrying back into an ancient word a purely modern conception. The modern metaphysical sense of create — that is, of making sometldng out of nothing, comes entirely from later use in which the primitive image has fallen away. We do not, at all, deny the fact of such creation out of nothing, but it is a metaphysical tenet to which we are driven by the demands of the rea- son. There is, too, an expression of it in other parts of the Bible, but even then by means of imagery, that is by translating it into a phenomenal conception,— as it is most sublimel}' said, Isaiah xlvii, 13 — ■"' I call them, they stand up togethery But it is not taught here, we think, nor meant to be taught here in these simple yet grand phenomenal modes of speech. The etymological concep- tions vary in different languages, but the fact they repre- sent remains the same for all. It is the fashiomng, con- structing, forming, or making of something which already exists to be formed, fashioned, etc., and is brought into order through steps or degrees following each other in a regular methodical series. In the Hebrew and German it is imaged to the mind as a cutting, separating, divid- ing process. In the English and Latin (creo, create, *For the primary significance of the Latin creo, compare such passages as Yirgil, Georg. II, 9, Principio arboribus varia est natura crcandis. BEGINNING OF CREATION. 51 creseo, recreo^^rocreo)^ it is to groiv^ or cau%e to grow, to renew, to generate, to increase. In the Greek of the New Testament, it is to build (xrl^w xnVj^) ; as in Mark, xiii, 19 — " From the beginning of the creation wMcli (rod created — jctiVsw^ — -hri(fsv — the building which God built:' The heavens and the earth. No words can be more strictly phenomenal than these, not only in the Hebrew but in every other ancient tongue. They denote not essence, nor power, nor cause, nor philosophical idea, nor scientific hypothesis, but simply appearances, " things that are seen,'' the visible mundus just as it presents itself to the eye. Gesenius derives 0:^-^ from an Arabic root, fi)3», unused in the Hebrew and signifying to be high. TVe cannot resist the impression that it has some connection with the common verb b^w, signifying to be astonished, to be filled with wonder, awe, or admiration. A kindred connection of etymological ideas gave rise, perhaps, to that beautiful portion of the Greek mytho- logy that made Iris, or the rainbow, the daughter of Thaumas, or Wonder, as we read in the Theogonia of Hesiod, 266. The wondrous height would combine the two ideas, and this is elsewhere expressed by another word, taih, as in that sublime personification, Habakkuk, iii, 10, where, instead of the common rendering, " the deep uttered his voice and lifted up his hajids on high," it should be, as Luther has it, die Hohe hob die Hande auf , — the height (or heavens) lift up its hands, in evident contrast with the abyss that utters its deep-toned voice below, like the solemn bass in the universal chorus. So also. Job, XXV, "Z, — '' He maketh peace in his high places — in his highest heavens." 52 WORK OF THE FIRST DAY. The primitive image suggested by tlie word, or which gave birth to the word, was doubtless that of the atmo- spherical heavens, or the sky, expressed more directly to the vision, but with less of wondering emotion, by tho Latin coelum from the Greek xorxov, and the Saxon heaven (from heave^ lieafen^ heoferi) signifying the rising sivell, and hence the hoUozv, the vault, or arch. Cotem- porary with this, or early following it, must have been the same conception expanded to the astronomical heav- ens, and giving rise afterwards to the notion of a second heaven, or heaven of heavens, as the phrase is employed by Solomon, 1 Kings, viii, and other writers of the Old Testament, to express the divine immensity. A still farther widening of the conception brings in the thought of a "third heaven," above the astronomical heavens, and viewed as the peculiar residence of the divine glory. The earliest Scripture allusion to this is probably that in Psalms, viii, 2, where the writer, though contemplating the divine greatness in the moon and stars, would seem to have a thought transcending them, when he says — " Thou hast set thy glory, ^^ not in (a sense which the Hebrew preposition cannot have) but " above the heav- ens.^^ It suggests to us the To-Tro^ vits^ov^oiMiog, of which Plato speaks in the Phaedrus, or the super-celestial region. It is that transcendent altitude of glory men- tioned in Psalms, cxiii, 6, whence God is said to stoop down to see the heavens, as well the earth — " ITe hum- bleth himself to behold the things that are in heaven and in the earth. '^^ In this verse in Genesis, however, the easiest suppo- sition is, that the writer has mainly in view the sky, or atmospherical heavens, the creation of which is more fully BEGINNING OF CREATION. 53 given in the work of the second day. In the account of the fourth period there might seem to be some reference to the astronomical heavens, but even there, we think, the things described are rather the appearanees of the heavenly bodies in our own shy^ their disposition in the firmament, their relation to our earth, and the manifest- ing of that relation. In other words, it is not their crea- tion in themselves, which is thus set forth, neither is it their nature, their scientific entities, but their coming out and taking their places in the visible heaven among the " things that are seen^^ or ''-that do appear^'' to our world. Both the earth and visible heavens thus regarded may be denoted, and frequently are denoted, by the single Hebrew word Vari. This corresponds very nearly to the earliest sense of the Latin mundus, as denoting the visi- ble sphere, or hemisphere, made apparently by the earth and the enclosing sky, although it is often used of the earth, just as we employ the Saxon ivorld in the same limited manner — our word, too, having a similar pheno- menal meaning in its etymological derivation from roll or ivhirl. The larger sense of V^n is shown in its being generally used, in the Hebrew poetry, in the closing or amplifying part of the parallelism. Thus, in Psalms, xxiv, 1, — " The earth and its fullness-^ the world (the tehel) and all that dwell therein." Psalms, xcvi, 13, — " For He cometh to judge the earth; He will judge the tvorld in righteousness." See, also. Psalms, xxxiii, 8 ; xcviii, 9. In the Episcopal Psalter version of Psalms, xcviii, 7, it is very appropriately rendered '' the round world.^' It is sometimes joined with v^n, as in Prov. 54 WOKK OF THE FIRST DAY. viii, 31, Job, xxxvii, 12, — " the world of the earth"— that is, the world which encloses the earth, like the Latin orhis tcrrarum, except that the Hebrew expresssion is to be taken more in a meridional or superterrene, than in a horizontal aspect. Compare with this, also. Psalms, xc, 2, Varii p.5<, — or, " ever thou hadst formed the earth and the worUy where the conception evidently requires it to mean something beyond or more extended than the earth. This is, too, the image, 1 Samuel, ii, 8, — "For the Lord's are the foundations of the earthy and He hath set the ^vorld (or tehel) over them." We would only remark farther, on the word heavens, that its dual number in the Hebrew seems to present a remarkable feature. It would mean literally the two heavens, or the double heavens ; and might, perhaps, be regarded as primarily denoting a higher and lower sphere. But this would be too abstract, or rather, not enough phenomenal for a first conception. It more probably arose from the idea of a heaven above and a heaven beneath us, or of one double heaven partly above and partly beneath us. To a thoughtful mind, (and in this earliest gazing of the soul upon nature, all humanity must have been thoughtful, serious, full of meditative wonder), such would have been a very natural and prompt reflection from the phenomena of the rising and disappearance of the sun. This is probably the image, Psalms, xix, 4, — " In all the earth hath gone out their line, and their speech even to the end of the ivorW (or tebel). '''For there^^ — that is in the ending of the tebel, or where it appears to end — " hath He set a tent or tahernacle for the sun.^^ The conception is the most // BEGINNING OF CREATION. 55 natural that can be imagined whether, for the earlier or the later men — The sua that sets upon the sea We follow in his flight. The tent, or tabernacle, of the Psalmist would be the heavens, or tebel, or ivorld below, in which the sun seems to retire, as it were, to spend the night, and from whence he comes forth in the new morning of the east like a ; bridegroom from his curtained chambers, or as a refreshed hero to run his daily race. The reader may think that these illustrations are taking us out of the regular track of the argument ; but we cannot avoid referring also to Ecclesiastes, i, 5 ; where there is the same thought of a complete solar revolution, and the consequent conception of a subterranean or antipodal vault, arch, sky, or heaven^ in which the sun's real or apparent track must lie. We give it in the vivid conciseness of the Hebrew, — " Rises the sun, and sets the sun, and to his place again, panting, rising, there is he." The reader will have no difficulty here in separating the poetical from the purely pheno- menal. We cannot, however, help remarking that in the Hebrew tiJ^vi (panting) we have suggested the later classical image of the quick-breathing, though unwearied steeds of Phoebus. No scholar can avoid calling to mind the lines of Virgil, v, 738, Torquet medio s nox humida cursua Et me esevus equis Oriens aflia\ it anhelis. CHAPTER YIL WORK OP THE FIRST DAY. THE CHAOS. The connecting particle between the first verse and the second. — ToHU AND BOHU.— Was the chaos a part of the Mosaic creation ? — What was the chaos ? — Milton — Ovid. — The darkness.— The abyss. — The ruah elohim. — Merachepeth, the Hebrew word for the spirit's agency. — Its primary pulsatile or throbbing sense. — Ancient myth of the egg, "For the earth was without form and void, and dark- ness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of Crod moved upon the face of the waters.^^ Our common version has "and" instead of /or, as the connecting particle. The difference may seem slight, and yet there may be connected with it quite an important modification of the general sense. The Hebrew is very scanty in its conjunctions, and therefore the particle (Van) is often employed, not only to denote sequence or connection in order of time, but to show the ground, reason, or motive, for what is said. In one view of the passage, the first verse contains an action separate from those that follow ; in another, it only expresses the same events in a con- densed titular form. According to this latter interpre- tation, the conjunction shows the ground or reason of the proceeding. In the beginning God created, that is, fash- ioned, formed, reduced to order. And why ? Because the earth which was to be created was then without form and void. It was a fit subject for such a process. On the other supposition, the conjunction would seem quite THE WORK OF THE FIRST DAY. THE CHAOS. 57 unnatural, and could only be defended on the general ground that these particles m Hebrew may often denote the slightest transitions — in the style of the narrative as well as in the order of the events. ''' Was without form.''^ We cannot lay much stress on the scanty Hebrew tenses, but unless the context forbids, it may just as well be understood in the praeter past; — " and the earth had been without form and void." How long, no one can know ; for the account does not deign to give us any information. Even, however, as commonly rendered, the substantive verb certainly seems to imply the existence, in some elemental way, of the mass or matter on which this creative work was then beginning to take place. And the earth, at that time, or that beginning, was without form and void. It was tohit and bohu, confusion and emptiness, or as Luther admirably renders it, wUste und leer, ivaste and desola- tio7i. The Vulgate translates it, inanis et vacua. In this state, it was not a creation, if we can place any reli- ance on the clearest primitive sense of words ; for the Hebrew, as well as the Latin and English radicals, pre- sents, as we have shown, the very opposite ideas. How it came in such a condition, no one can say. Whether it was the result of a progress, or a deterioration, we have no means of knowing, either from nature or from revelation. It may have been, at some time, a direct work of God, or it may have been produced by him through a causality which may well be described by the word natural. If, however, we are right in our philolo- gical view, it was not, in either way, a creation. The ideas associated with this word belong wholly to the subsequent process. The tohu and bohu may have been 68 THE WORK OF THE FIRST DAY. THE CHAOS. a rudimentary chaos which had never yet assumed order — such as we may suppose to have been the condition of perhaps many an elemental world — or it may have been a chaos to which some world or system had been reduced from some previously better state. It may have lain long in ruins ; it may have gone through an immense number of older cycles ; or it may be that it was now for the first time made the subject of a a^eation, that is, according to the Latin word, an orderly growing through harmonious laws, or, according to the Hebrew conception, a seijarating^ a dividing^ a clearing up, a brmging into order, an arrangmg of outward relations, by which it comes in harmony with the exact measure- ments of universal, objective time, and is thus prepared for the abode of life, happiness and rationality. But what, then, was this ancient chaotic condition of our planet ? We know only as Holy Scripture informs us. Science can tell us nothing about it. The chasms that part us, whether wide or brief, can never be securely traversed by her slow moving steps. From the other side of the wild abyss, and across the intervening periods, comes wafted to us by the breath of inspiration our only image, and that human mind to which it was first revealed, has represented this image, or conception, to other human minds, by those two Hebrew words in which is pictured all that can be thought or imagined, or understood, of this primeval mystery. It was tohu and hohu. These terms do not often occur in the Hebrew Scriptures, and yet the places in which they are found are such as to give their meaning beyond all reasonable doubt. In Deuteronomy, xxxii, 10, the first is used of the waste, wilderness, or deserty THE WORK OF THE FIRST DAY. THE CHAOS. 59 through which the children of Israel were so long wan- dering. In Job, vi, 18, it denotes the condition of the streams that disappear in the summer's drought, — '''They go up (that is, they evaporate,) into tohu^ — they perish.''^ So, also. Job, xii, 24, "They ivander in tohu tvhere there is no path y In Isaiah, xxiv, 10, it is applied to a ru- ined city. In Isaiah, xl, 17, 23, xli, 29, xlix, 4, lix, 4, 1 Samuel, xii, 21, it is used to denote what is utterly vain, formless, worthless, or of no account. Besides Gen., i, 2, there are two other places in which both words occur together. They thus appear in a most remarkable passage, (Jeremiah, iv, 24,) in which there seems to be pictured to the prophet's vision a scene that is almost the reverse of the creative process. In this strange diorama the world would appear to be going back again into the void and formless period. The mountains are unsetthng • the hills move to and fro ; man is gone ; bird and beast have fled, and are to be seen no more. The representa- tion strongly suggests Campbell's and Byron's vision of the Last Man, some features of which might seem to have been drawn from this very passage. The verse we have cliiefly in view may be looked upon as a sort of back ground to the whole picture, — "/ loohed upon the earth and it ivas tohu and hohu; 2 looked to the heavens and they no more gave their light. ''^ " 'Tvvas chaos come again, Where nature ends, — his dark pavilion spread Wide on the wasteful deep ; mth whom enthroned Sat sable- vested Night, eldest of things, The consort of his reign." The other passage, Isaiah, xxx, 11, is of more account, from its etymological suggestions. Speaking of the deso» lation of Idumea, the Prophet says,— " From generation 60 THE WORE OF THE FIRST DAY. THE CHAOS, to generation shall it be waste ; for ever and ever shall no one pass through it ; for He will stretch upon it the line of confusion and the stones of emptiness'^ — the line of tohu and the stones of hohu. Line is the well-known term of measurement ; stones denote the weights of the balance ; as in Proverbs, xvi, 11, — ^' A just balance and weight are the Lord's ; and his work are all the stones of the cup." See, also, Deuteronomy, xxv, 13. We have, then, the two essential ideas which are so well given in our common version of Genesis, i, 2, — without form and void, — one expression referring to utter irreg- ularity of dimension and outward extent, the other to the deficiency of gravity, denoting not so much an absolute as a relative want of weight — in other words, a fluid or rarified condition with an absence of all solidity and cohe- sion, or it may be, a huge nebulosity that had been float- ing through space for milHons and millions of years, if any such term can be employed of that which has no inward or outward measures of time. Its extent may have been vastly greater than that which the earth afterwards occupied when created, that is, reduced to order. But aside from any such thought of absolute extent, there is a natural connection between the conception of vastness and that of desolation and dis- order. Hence the Latin vastus, vasto, vastare, (whence our waste,) presents both images as alike primary. The same appears, also, in the Latin immanis, the vast, the immeasurable, as well as the savage, the wild, the deso- late. The force of such a conception does not depend merely on irregularity or unmeasurableness of outward bound, but upon the w^ant of inward order and creative division. Everything appears more immense, and is THE WORK OF THE FIRST DAY. THE CHAOS. 61 conceived of as more immense, which presents to the eye or the imagination no internal arrangements or partitions on vfhich they can rest and find rehef. Hence the vast- ness of the wilderness, and the still more desolate vast- ness of the ocean and the desert — "inimitable, without bound. Without division — where length, breadth, and height, And time, and place are lost." But the chaos, whatever may have been its origin and history, was not creation, or any part of the creation. Milton, with more of philosophic truth than epic fancy, speaks of it as " Tho womb of nature and perhaps her grave — The dark materials to create more worlds, ^ By God ordained." Such an authority may be esteemed as of little value in questions of science or theology, and yet, on the clos- est examination of the Mosaic account, we cannot help thinking that our great bard made not merely a poetical, but a true and Scriptural, distinction, when he separated the chaos, both in name and idea, from the well-ordered world that afterward arose, — " As yet the world was not, and chaos wild Reigned where these Heavens now roll, where earth now rests." There are the same ideas connected with the Greek word Xao^c. Its derivation from x^?" (x"^"' X'^-'v"' X^^l^^) presents a like conception of a gloomy vastness. There is also in it, as used both by poets and philosophers, a similar idea of formlessness, but with more of a meta- physical reference to inward law or organization than to mere outward shape. ^'In the beginning," says Hesiod, *• was chaos" — the immense unformed mass in which 6 62 THE WORK OF THE FIRST DAY. THE CHAO&'. everything lay commingled ; earth, air, fire and water^ light and darkness, cold and heat, not yet parted from each other — Rudis indigestaque moles — a rude unorganized bulk — as Ovid describes it to us^ in terms so nearly corresponding to those of the Bible, that we can hardly help regarding his account as but the echo of the old tradition. Umur ought ^ invisible (^dy.ara(^xsva(jTog do^aros') is the Septuagint version; — invisible, because as yet possessed of none of that distinction and partition of feature which are as essential to perfect vision as light itself, — or invisible, because yet enveloped in that prime- val darkness which Hesiod represents as the oldest daughter of chaos, 'Axarao'xsuao'ro^ is but the negative of the Hebrew word; — unwrougJd, that is, — uncreated. ^^And darkness ivas tipofi the face of the deep.''^ Creation had not yet commenced. Darkness still rested upon the vast abyss. There was no light upon it from abroad, and none had been eliminated from within, because it was as yet undisturbed by the quickening or creative power. The tehom, (b^nn), or deep is evidently the same with the tohu Qir\v\^ mentioned before. It is, indeed, etymologically different, and yet the word, as here used, can only be another name for the chaos, although afterwards employed to denote other objects which the imagination might regard as presenting some pictorial resemblance to the primeval waste. Thus it is applied to any great tumultuous waters, as in Exodus, XV, 5, 8; Psalms, xxxiii, 7, Ixxviii, 15, — to the great sea. Psalms, xxxvi, T; Amos, vii, 7, — -and more espe- cially to the supposed or real abyss inside the earth, as THE DARKNESS. THE ABYSS. 63 being nearer to the original image, and on the ground, perhaps, of its being regarded as the confined remains of the old watery chaos. We have this sense, Psalms, Ixxi, 20 ; Job, xxviii, 14, and in the account of the flood, Genesis, vii, 2, where it is said " the foimtains of the great deep were broken wp." In the Septuagint it is well rendered, in this place, by the word a.-SuCCoj, the ahi/ss, from (a) privative, and (3v(f (fog (3v^6^, or (Sa&og (Saxon bottoni), presenting, in this way, the same conception as tohu, the lyieasureless^ the unfathoyndble. Before this, as we have said, or for ages before this, it may have been an immense floating nebu- losity, or part of some still larger nebulosity, but at this period it is a wide fluid mass, or waste of water, without a shore, without a bottom, without a sky above, or any terminating solid bound. And the spirit of Grod brooded upon the face of the waters. Here then we have the principium, the begin- ning of the creation,— of that creation, we mean, which is recorded in the opening chapter of our Bibles. This moving or brooding of the spirit was the primeval act. Hardly any reader, we would think, could mistake the force of the expression thus standing by itself. But, when we compare such passages as Psalms, xxxiii, 6 ; Job, xxxiii, 4 ; Genesis, vi, 3 ; Job, xxvi, 13 ; Isaiah, xxxiv, 16, there would seem to be hardly room for a doubt, that this Ruah Elohim, or Breath of God, is truly the going forth of the divine power energizing in nature, and the source of the vegetable and animal, as well as the rational and moral life. It is called 7'uah (wind or breath} not on account of its supposed materiality, but because this substance (the air) would be to the early 64 THE RUAH ELOHIM. THE BROODING SPIRIT. mind the best conceptional representative of the immate- rial power, whether regarded as the divine or human spirit. Nothing in nature would be more mysterious. Although belonging to the world of sense, nothing would be more suggestive of something beyond it. It is felt, but not seen. It is all-pervading, and yet is known only in its effects. Men " hear the sound thereof, but cannot tell whence it cometh nor whither it goeth." So is it with the immaterial spirit, only in a higher degree, and hence the analogy which has led to the use of this or a corre- sponding term to express the same conception in all the primitive languages. Some interpreters, however, have been inclined to take riiah here in the sense alone of wind, and the divine name as a magnifying epithet, or as used hyperbo- lically, of whatever is highest or greatest of its kind. It was a wind, they say, a wind of God, meaning a mighty wind, just as the expression, ^lountain of Crod, Psalms, Ixviii, 16, or, river of Crod, Psalms, Ixv, 10, means a most lofty mountain, or a most glorious stream. In the same way the earliest Greek poets seem to have used the epithets dsTog, 61o^, &s(firs(fios, etc., of anything vast or wonderful, — as in the IHad, 1, s)g aXu d7av, to the divine sea. But, hoAvever, such poetical or hyperbolical use may have come in, in later times, we cannot well suppose it to have obtained in so early a . stage of language, or in respect to so early an event. In the cases referred to, it is simply the natural poetically amplified by epithets derived from the supernatural. But here, if we may look any where, is the divine power per se. It was an act above nature, a beginning of nature, or a beginning in nature of a new order of events, — a new energy that THE RUAH ELOHIM. THE BROODING SPIRIT. 65 never could have been developed out of the antecedent chaos. If it was a wind in the usual sense, still it must have been a wind employed by God as his agent. But why take this process to avoid that more obvious spiritual interpretation, which connects itself so easily with the most common and familiar use of the phrase Ruah Elohim in so many passages of the Old Testament ? If it ever means the Divine Spirit, the Divine Life, in the higher sense, (and who can read the Scriptures and have any doubt on that point ?) certainly this, of all others, is the place where we should expect such a significance of the terms. If the Divine Spirit is not occupied in crea- tion, where could we reasonably look for any manifesta- tion of its action ? Before this, there had only been, in the chaotic mass, what might be called the dead force of cohesion — and that, too, of the feeblest kind — or the mere outivard force of a gravitating tendency towards some other bodies; but now thgre is an imvard power — a separating, arrang- ing, selecting, organic power — which may be regarded as the beginning of life, although, as yet exhibiting itself in the chemical aspect, rather than the higher modes in which it afterwards energized. The first efiect of the new life is the elimination of light. This, it is true, is said to be by the divine command ; and yet the language clearly suggests the thought that the agitation, or brood- ing, of the Ruah Elohim upon the waters was directly concerned in its production. An exegetical reason why ruah cannot be interpreted of the winds, is derived from the use of the word fisiiti^ (merahepheth.) The verb never means to bloWy and has 66 THE RUAH ELOHIM. THE BROODINa SPIRIT. no connection, either in its primary or secondary sense, with any of the well known phenomena of wind, or the direct onward motion, such as might seem to be expressed by our translation, moved upon. We have rendered it brooded ; or it might be translated, hovered. Either of these words would present the primary image, or con- ception, better than the term in our common version. Any one may be as certain of its meaning as the best Hebrew scholar, by just turning to Deuteronomy, xxxii, 11, — " As the eagle hovers^ or broods, over its young.^'' It is the same word and the same conception. Hence Milton's idea, which, although in poetry, is more accu- rate than our prose translation, — "Dove-like sat brooding o'er the vast abyss." Hence, too, the idea of incubation which we find in almost all mythological cosmogonies. But of that, in another part of the argument. We get the general image from Deuteronomy, xxxii, 11 ; but by comparing it with Jeremiah, xxiii, 9, we arrive at the more inward or radi- cal conception of the word — " My heart is broken within me ; all my bones quivered^'' ("JSh^i). It denotes, prima- rily , a /w^^mw^ — a tremulous motion, acting and react- ing — a vibrating] — an undulating— a communicating by pulsation or throbbing — in other words, that concep- tion of life we find in the earliest languages, and from which the highest physiological and physical science is ever deriving its most expressive technical terms. It is the same elemental process on the great scale of the earth's commencing organism, that is exhibited in the types and processes of all lesser vivification. So far, we have only followed the most literal exegesis. If permitted, however, to indulge in that sober specular THE RUAH ELOHIIM. THE BROODING SPIRIT. 67 tion which it so readily suggests, we might say, that before this, the chaos was a mere mass acting, and acted upon, mechmiiccdly ; now it is beginning to be a nature strictly, with an inward law and life, or whatever else is implied in the word nature. As far as our earth is con- cerned, this new energising power is the first heating of nature's pulse, the first throhUng of her mighty heart. Or, to change the metaphor, yet keep as its ground the same primary image, the tremulous pulsations denoted by the uatensive piel significance of the Hebrew verb, are the first note in the grand diapason, the first low trembhng barytones in that ascending scale of harmonies that were to terminate at last m Eden and humanity. CHAPTER VIII. WORK OF THE PIRST DAY. THE LIGHT. The command to the light.— Inteepeetation. — Was it the first origin . OF light ?— Is light eternal ?— God dwelling in light.— The light HIS robe. — Milton. — Longinus. — Division of the light from the dark- NESS. — The naming of the light and the darkness.— Day and night.— The Hebrew word Yom. — Had Moses the conception of a solar day - OF, twenty-four hours ? — No trace op such conception in any subse- quent Hebrew prose or poetry. '''And G-od said — Let there he light ^ and there was lights It will be at once inferred from what has been said before, that we do not regard this as denoting the creation of light for the first time as an absolute substance. The mention of the previous darkness of the chaos sug- gests a simpler, and yet a no less interesting and sublime meaning. And God said, Let there he light ^ and light ivas there. — Let there he light on that dark chaos. Or it may be used, as the word light is sometimes employed in EngUsh, for an adjective — Be it light^ and light it was. This was the first separation of the blended ele- ments. The most etherial form of matter was parted from the dark watery mass. Light was the first born. The language would indeed suit either conception, — that of a first creation, or of an evolving or manifestation, — and either might stand as a representative of the ineffa- ble truth. In fact of the essence, or primal force, or fount of light, we know nothing. All that science has done falls WORK OF THE FIRST DAY. THE LIGHT. 69 infinitely short of this. All that it has to say of rays, or fluids, or vibrations, or undulations, gives us only the phenomenal conditions under which this mysterious sub- stance may be supposed to manifest itself. However paradoxical it may sound, yet it may be affirmed that light itself, per se, is invisible. Its primal force, or entity, is one of the things " that are unseen^^ — " that do not appear ;" although by it other things are made ) phenomenal, or manifest to our senses. -" Knowest thou ' the place ivhere light divelleth, that thou shoiildst take it to its bound, or understand the path to its house'^ ? It is the challenge which the Almighty makes to Job out of the thundercloud ; and the intelligent child, who first sits down to the sacred volume, knows as much about the true answer as the most scientific man of the age. What is light ? We know it as an effect, as a sensation ; we analyse the phenomena through which this " unseen" entity manifests itself, or " appears^^ in the world of sense ; thus far has science travelled towards the far distant " place of its abode." But the Bible tells us more than this. With a sublimity which immear surablj^ transcends all science, it represents light as the raiment of God. " Thou clothest thyself with light, as with a garment. ^^ Psalms, civ. 2. " Who dwelleth in light — in light unapproachahle and full of glory.'''' 1 Timothy, vi. 16. This is merely a figure, it may be said, but then it is a figure which must represent some unut- terable reality. Other things are invisible, or obscure, because of the darkness that is in them, or in the perci- pient, but God is invisible because of his transcendent brightness. Or, to express the thought in another form, in comparison with " the glory that exceedeth" the very 70 WORK OF THE FIRST DAY. THE LIGHT. "light is as darkness." Tiiere would seem to be some- tking of this thought in that difficult yet remarkable declaration, Job, xxxvi, 30, which should be rendered, ''He spreadetli His light about Him^^ and then what fol- lows may be taken as a comparison, — " even as He hath covered the roots (or hottoni) of the sea.^^ In contrast with the Divine splendor, even light itself is dark as the shadow that rests upon the depths of the ocean. "His robe is the. light." Was it eternal, then ? Did it thus ever form the Divine abode, the " secret place of the Most High," the iner- most Shekinah in which God dwells ? On such a ques- tion we would not turn over a leaf to get the answer of science or philosophy. If the Scriptures had declared in any way the absolute eternity of that substance whose motions are the cause of vision in sentient beings, we should have had no hesitation in believing it, and no fears on the ground of any supposed pantheistic ten- dency. But they tell us nothing on the subject. From the glorious similes, however, which revelation employs, as well as from the rank which science assigns to light, we should not be rash in regarding it as, at least, among the first things that came out of nonentity. If we shrink from declaring it to be absolutely eternal, still may we view it as of all physical entities the nearest related unto Deity— " Offspring of Heaven, first born, Bright effluence of bright escence increate ; Whose fountain who shall tell! Before the sun, Before the Heavens thou vs^ert, and at the voice Of God as with a mantle didst invest The rising world of waters dark and deep. Won from the void and formless infinite." WORK OF THE FIRST DAY. THE LIGHT. 71 But whatever may have been the primal origination of Hght, the ^Yhole view we have taken of this account of our world's creation is in the way of that exegesis which would regard this primal origin as being here set forth. By God's command it slioyie out of the darkness, h Tou tfxoVou^c, (as the Apostle* paraphrases the passage in Genesis), and shed its splendor on the darkness ; but there is nothing which gives us a right to infer, that this was the first time of its ever sJiinmg out, or being mani- fested, in the universe. Neither is such a view neces- sary for preserving the sublimity of the passage. Be light, or, he it ligJit on that dark chaos, and light ivas there. Such a rendering will still be worthy of all that admiration with which it was regarded by one of the noblest of heathen critics. We refer to Longinus, in his treatise De Sublimitate, who calls Moses " no common man," and quotes this as among the very highest exam- ples of what he calls greatness of style. And Crod divided the light froyn the da7'7cness. Here, too, is the sense of the Hebrew words sufiiciently satisfied by referring them directly to the particular shining of the light upon the chaos. "'^^'J^v! is only a more specific apphcation of the general sense of ^i^a. Here is the first separation, the first cidting, or cutting out, if we would ever keep before our minds the primary force of the cre- ative word. The work is no longer formless. The as yet remaining unorganized mass, and the hght which envelopes and shines upon it, now form two distinct departments. Or the division may be one of time, and may refer to the point or period on one side of which was the light and on the other the darkness ; or it may * 2 Corinthianf, iv. 6. 72 WORK OF THE FIRST DAY. THE LIGHT. represent the separating effect of light itself, like an act of creation, giving form and outline and feature to that which before possessed neither division nor boundary, and which is so graphically compared (Job, xxxviii, 14,) to the effect of the seal upon the clay. There is a remarkable passage in the Koran (Chap. 113,) which we cannot help regarding as ha\dng been originally suggested by this language, and as thus pre- senting a Mohammedan or Arabic interpretation of its meaning, — '-^ I fly for refuge to the Lord of the day hrectky God is so called in reference to the first morn- ing of creation. The original Arabic word preserves the analogy of the idea. Like n'^s and V^-:ari, it signifies a cleaving^ a cutting out, and denotes, says Al Bedawi, ''the proceeding to fight from the darkness of privation." — See Note in Sales'' s Koran, Qhaio. 113. I And Grod called the light day, and the darkness He ' called night. No one supposes that this means an audible calling. The Fathers understood the matter as well as : the best modern critic. It was not, says Gregory of Nyssa, an articulate sound, but an expression of the Divine will. In Scripture, to name is to distinguish. It denotes here a continuation of what is expressed in the first clause, or the original division therein indicated. The word n^j^, He called, is also used in the Bible to denote that transcendent act by which divine power is exerted in nature, or upon nature. " I called to them, (Isaiah, xlviii, 13,) they stood up together.'''' He called aloud to the light, or the day, and it awoke from its latent state among the slumbering elements of chaos. Both senses may be here united, — the calling into being, essentially, or the calling out phenomenally those charac- WORK OF THE FIRST DAY. THE LIGHT. 73 teristics which are the ground of all denominational lan- guage, — which, in every tongue, enter into the radical conceptions denoted by the representative word, and may therefore be most appropriately called its naming. There is no difficulty in regarding these expressions, day, light, etc., as borrowed from their applications at a much later period, and carried back to denote the ineffable things they most resemble. It is, however, a better view, as we shall attempt to show, that we have here the primary idea of the word, in respect to its nature or quaUty, in dis- tinction from its quantity. A day is not so much that fixed duration which is afterwards determined by settled modes of measurement, as a periodical time, be it longer or shorter, marked by the opposite successions of light and darkness, or what may be supposed to be analogous to them. And there teas an evening and there was a morning, — one day, or first day. This is the most simple and literal rendering of the Hebrew, and in the right view of it we think we have the key to the great bibUcal question, whether these are indefinite unmeasured peri- ods, or what we call natural days of twenty-four hours. In favor of the former opinion there has been drawn an argument from the Hebrew use of the word t^y-^ (yom) for any period of time presenting a completed course or unity of events irrespective of precise duration. There can be no doubt at all of such usage. It belongs to the| Hebrew, as it does to most other languages. The word for day is much more frequently used in this manner, than year or month. But this is by no means the strongest proof of the position. It makes it 'possible that the word may be so employed here. It makes it even 74 WORK OP THE FIRST DAY. THE LIGHT. highly p7vhable, when we take into view the pecuHar nature of the events recorded. Still there is another, and a better, and we think unanswerable, argument to be derived from the fact that in this stage of the creative process there were no regular phenomenal measures of time. We must interpret the writer in consistency Avith himself, whether we suppose him inspired or not. The revelation is made to us through the conceptions of Moses, and although such conceptions are not binding on us as the absolute truth, yet they are the medium, or one stage in the medium, through which it is conveyed, and by whose aid, therefore, it must be exegetically studied. On either view, then, we must look for a har- mony of representation in the writer's own mind. He certainly could not have had in his thought a common day, in the sense of one measured by an earthly revolu- tion, or by the a.pparent circuit of the sun. Of the first, or the revolution of the earth, it is evident he had no conception; and it was not until the fourth period, according to his own statement, that the great lumina- ries were either actually created, or optically lit up in the heavens to be signs or measures of seasons, and days, and years, — one to rule, or measure, the day, and the other the night. This unmeasured period, then, what- ever its length, could not have been a common or natural day, as we call it, unless arbitrarily divided without any reference to measuring celestial phenomena. Not only are there wanting the most important elements of the thought, as connected with such celestial phenomena, but what is left of the conception of a common day in its mere length, is of such a kind that it can hardly be pre- sented on the canvas of the imaging faculty. For WORK OF THE FIRST DAY. THE LIGHT. 75 nothing is more difficult to conceive of than simple determined duration in the absence of all the common measures bj which it is determined. From this consideration alone we may saj, with a good degree of confidence, that Moses had not in his mind, in his thought, in his conceptive faculty, any such image. He had just what he has given to us, the idea of a period commencing in darkness and ending in light, a bounded period, measured by chaos on the one hand and the birth of a higher organization on the other, a period to which for these reasons there is given that name, yom^ which is afterwards used of the cychcal solar succession of light and darkness. But of the dura- tion of this day he has not told us, because there was no revealed conception of it present to his own mind ; for so we must judge, in the absence of all opposing proof. Here, then, beyond all question, the easy and unforced interpretation is on the side of the indefinite periods. We must say that we never saw an answer to it that did not appear far-fetched and unnatural. What, too, would seem to add strong confirmation, is the fact that in the beginning of the next chapter, the whole time of crea- tion, including all the periods in one completed round or course of events, is, on this account, also called a day — In the day ivlien the Lord made the heavens and the earth. Of this great day of days^ it might also have been said, there was an evening and a morning. It began when darkness was upon the face of the waters ; it ended in the glorious morning of Paradise. Such a use of yom, or day, in the Bible, may be shown in many other passages, but this is the more remarkable and the 76 WORK OF THE FIRST DAY. THE LIGHT. more valuable from its direct comiection with the Mosaic account. There is another argument to which we cannot help attaching much weight. The Hebrew poets abound in allusions to the stupendous phenomena of creation. The grandeur of the narration breathes its spirit into their sublimest poetry ; and yet there is in no one of them the least reference to such diurnal periods of dura- tion equivalent to our ordinary sun-measured days of twenty-four hours. Now, if these are supposed to be ordinary days, while yet the sun's diurnal measurements do not commence until the fourth period, then is there a difficulty which is patent upon the very face of the account. It forces itself upon our attention. The He- brew writers must have seen this difficulty as clearly as we see it. They must have been struck by the strange omission of all explanatory statements ; and yet in their case, the imagination is never driven to such expedients for making a night and morning, or alternate transitions of light and darkness, as have suggested themselves to modern defenders of the twenty-four hour theory. There is no allusion to any alternating hemispheres, whether made by a revolution of the earth or the heavens ; no conception of the darkness coming back and the light going out, or of any apparatus for that purpose, although some image of the kind would be, on such a supposition, indispensable to any pictorial representation the mind could make to itself of the facts narrated. It is obvious that they did not see the difficulty, or the necessity of any sijecial exercise of divine power in relation to it. Had it been otherwise, such conceived expedients would have formed no unimportant part of the poetical imagery, WORK OF THE FIRST DAY. THE LIGHT. 77 whether supposed to come from inward or outward inspi- ration. The conclusion, then, is irresistible. If they saw and felt no such difficulty, they could not have held the view from which it inevitably arises. If they had had in their minds the thought of the short days, and of an ante-solar apparatus for making such semi-diurnal successions of light and darkness as afterwards existed, it would seem impossible for them not to have occasionally dwelt upon it as one of the most marvellous features in the whole history. But nothing of the kind do we find in David, Solomon, Job, or any of the Prophets, although / there were so many connections of thought that might j have called it forth.* They expatiate, at times, upon! everything else that is wonderful in the first chapter of \ Genesis— the birth of the light, the stretching out the ' firmament, the division of the waters from the waters, the separation of the dry land from the former umversal ocean, the bounding of the wild waves, the breathmg into man of the spirit of life. But instead of the most * One of the most distinct references to the creation is to be found in Nehemiah, ix, 6. It was at that period in Jewish history and the Jewish literature, when the raention of the days in their natural or solar sense would have been likely to come in, if it had been prominent in the writer's thoughts, or had had any place in his mind among the wondrous facts of their old books. There can be but little doubt, too, of there being here a reference to the Mosaic account, as it is an epitome of God's great manifestations connected with the Jew- ish history from the beginning of the Hebrew records. And yet there is no mention of the days, as we now regard them. '' Thou, God, alone hast made the heavens, yea, the heaven of heavens and all their host, the earth and all which is upon it, the seas and all which is in them. Thou gavest life to them all, (or thou didst quicken them all,) and the hosts of heaven worship thee. Thou art Jehovah, God, who 78 WORK OP THE FIRST DAY. THE LIGHT. remote allusion to these marvellously short days, such as would have had the most tempting charm for them had they possessed the Talmudic or Rabbinical spirit, there is evidently a laboring, as in Job, and Proverbs, viii, to set forth the immensely prolonged antiquities of the proceed- ing. May we not regard the fact, too, that they were kept from any such puerilities and vain imaginations as a striking evidence of their being truly inspired by that creative Spirit, who employed their poetical conceptions and emotions as the best medium through which His own great thoughts could find their most vivid utterance to the human soul. If this first day, or period, then, was an indefinite, un- measured one, so were all the rest. If it was a yom olam, or dai/ of eternity^ to use the expression we find, Micah, V, 1, that is belonging to the ante-time, or ante-measured- time period — the same character must be possessed by all the other cyclical periods into which this great work was divided. This, we think, must be the feeling of every didst choose Abraham and bring him out from Ur of the Chaldees." This omission has been strangely overlooked by commen- iators, or, more strangely still, the contrary has been assumed without evidence. Says Dr. Turner, in his Commentary on Genesis, — " It is evident that all subsequent sacred writers who take notice of the creation, as a work of six days, do, inva- riably, assume a literal sense of the word day." The declar- ation of so truly learned a man as Dr. Turner, and what is still higher merit, of so careful and truthful a commentator, certainly carries with it great weight, and that is the very reason why we specially cite it. But we may well ask him, Where are any such notices to be found in the Hebrew Scrip- tures? The fourth commandment is but a repetition, and nowhere else is there any allusion to such days, or their lite- ral, that is, in the common sense, their short duration. WORK OF THE FIRST DAY. THE LIGHT. 79 one who just lets the sublime narrative, in all its original simplicity, make its natural impression on a mind unin- fluenced by geology, on the one hand, or any prepos» sessions of a different kind, on the other. CHAPTER IX. i WORK OF THE FIRST DAY. THE WORDS DAY, MORNING AND EVENING. The night comes first. — What was the fihst night ?— The first MOENiNe. Indefinite use of the word day. — Extraordinary on the very face of the account. — Objection considered. — Mention of evening and morn- ing. — Etymological analysis. — The Koran. — Argument from the pecu- liar style of the expression. — When did the first night begin ? — Dif- ficulties IN the way of the twenty-four hour measurement. — The ; first day a key to all the rest.— Creation a succession of natural PROCESSEC commenced BY SUPERNATtJBAL ACTS. And there loas an evening and there was a morning^ one day. We must observe here that the night comes first, as in all the traditional mythology of the Greeks, Egyptians and Hindoos, that has evidently been derived from this old account. "From chaos," says Hesiod, " was born black Night, and then from Night was born ^ther (or the Light) and the Day." 'Ex Xolsoff ^' E^s/So's re, (jisXaiva rs Nu^ sygvovro, On this account Aratus calls her primeval Night, as the mother of all things, and still representative of those hidden parts of the world that are near the southern pole of the mundus. So, also, the author of the Orphic Hymn — NvxTct 0SWV ysverffi^av aeitfo/Jtoci t^Ss xa< (xv5^wv. It would seem difficult to avoid here the obvious inter- pretation which is, as it were, forced upon us, and so THE WORDS DAY, MORNING AND EVENING. 81 strongly favors the idea of indefinite periods. Wliat was this evening but the darkness of the chaos over which the Spirit hovered, and what was this first morning, but the first beams of that separating light which broke in upon it, when God said. Let it he light and light ivas there. This was the evening and this was the morning — one day. Very much depends upon the mental or concep- tive position from which such a declaration is viewed, or upon our apprehension of the design for which it is made. Some would think it conclusive against all the unscrip- tural fancies, as they would style them, of those who hold to the indefinite periods. This mention of the eve- ning and the morning, say they, settles the matter. It was meant to guard us against these very notions into which men would, perhaps, be led by the indefinite and unfixed sense of the word day ; and therefore its evening and morning are distinctly specified — thus putting it beyond all question that a common natural day was intended, or just such a duration as we at present call by that name. But now let us take another look, and from a different stand-point. In so doing, the natural and the unnatural at once assume a different aspect. In the first place, if the mention of the morning and the eve- ning, or the calling attention to the fact that there was a morning and an evening to this remarkable period, was for the purpose of keeping the mind from any conceptions different from that of the common solar day, or the present day, as we may better call it, the question then arises, why should we not take in the whole of the thought, or syntagma of imagined appearances, that belongs to this later name as now employed ? Why should we not think of a sun-rise, of a sun-set, of a noon, of a midnight ? But this we can- 82 WOKK OF THE FIRST DAY. not do. All such conceptions are expressly excluded hj the account itself. And this furnishes a sufficient answer to the very common, and at first view, very plau- sible objection which we put in the words of a very late writer, as representative of the best that is generally said on the subject. " When Moses wrote the book of Genesis, the terms ' day,' ' morning' and ' evening,' con- veyed to the Israelites as distinct and positive an idea of a certain duration of time, twenty-four hours, (or its equivalent he might have said,) as did the words ^ man,' ^ woman,' ' earth,' or ' sky,' of the things which they denote ; hence, for the sacred historian to have used them in a different sense, as implying ages of time with- out the slightest intimation that he did so, would have been sheer deception." Now, of this, we say, in the first place, that the term dai/ did not always convey to the Israehtes a distinct and positive idea of a certain duration of time equivalent to twenty-four hours. In Scriptural passages, too numerous for citation, it is ap- plied to an indefinite moral, political, or physical period far exceeding that duration. There is the day of the Lord, the day of justice or of mercy, the day of particu- lar nations, the day of Israel, the day of Jezreel, the day of salvation, the day of Jerusalem, the day in which the Lord created the heavens and the earth, mentioned in Genesis, ii, 2, or the day of days, which the succeeding context clearly shows was meant to include all the periods, whether long or short. But not to dwell on this, which has occupied our attention before, and which must be so familiar to every reader of the Bible, we proceed to take up the objection in its own style, and to turn upon it its own battery. Let MORNING AND EVENING. 83 US introduce a slight change, which, whilst it does not alter in the least its argumentative force, sets in a strik- ing Hght its utter insufficiency. It will then read after this manner — " When Moses wrote the book of Genesis, the terms ' day,' ' morning,' and ' evening,' conveyed to the Israehtes as distinct and positive an idea of the regular phenomenal rising and setting of the sun, as did the words man, woman, earth, etc., of the things which they denote ; hence for the sacred historian to have used them in a sense which excluded these essential accompaniments of the later idea would have been sheer deception." The conclusion in the one case is just as good as in the other. But nothing can be more certain than that, according to the account, there could have been no visible sun, no visible sun-rise, or visible sun-set, or sun-made morning or evening, or optical meridian, or optical solar phenomenon of any kind, on that remarka- ble day. " Not the slightest intimation that he did so use them.'''' Such is the language of the common objec- tion, and it seems, at first view, to present a strong and plausible front. But is it true ? In the non-creation of the phenomenal sun until the fourth period, and the express declaration that it is then, for the first, appointed to be a measurer of days and years, is there not the " sHghtest intimation," is there not an all-sufficient inti- mation to the reader, in the very outset, that there is something very strange, very unusual, very much out of the ordinary modes of conception -in this first period, — something which, although it might have had laws of its own, was very anomalous when compared with subsequent solar days, and was only called by this name because agreeing with them in those general cyclical or periodical 84 WORK OF THE FIRST DAT. resemblances of succession and vicissitude which are just as much independent of a particular duration as they are ofj^those regular optical phenomena that we find it now so difficult to dissociate from the sun-measured idea. Had the writer given us, in the outset, a splendid de- scription of the heavenly bodies, — as probably would have been the case in an uninspired account, — had he brought the sun, and moon, and stars, in the foreground of the picture, instead of a solitary chaotic earth, or waste of waters enveloped in a dense darkness, the ob- jection might have been well taken. Had he used the word day^ under such circumstances it might have been said with some truth, that there was no intimation to the contrary of its being a common, or, in other words, a solar day. Such an account too would have been very consistent in its own narrow exactness. It would have excluded all hermeneutical obscurities arising from the difficulty of presenting in human language primary facts through the necessary medium of human conceptions. It might have been very perspicuous, very easily seen through^ very intelligible. But then it would lack, not only the mysterious grandeur of the Bible, but that higher consistency, that truthful accordance which all discovery, whether exegetical or scientific, is slowly yet surely unfolding in the old Scriptural cosmology. ''As implying ages of time^'' says the objection. Now this is a gratuitous assumption. It might be true as alleged against the geologist; but our argument, which is wholly bibhcal, does not at all need to employ it, or to answer it. All that is contended for is that the Bible narration, easily and naturally interpreted, is not only silent about duration, but shuts out the idea of any THE WORDS DAY, MORNING AND EVENING. 85 particular extent, be it longer or shorter. Not that the day had no certain duration, but that this is not of the essence of the conception. In this respect the writer hunself may have had some particular view of his own, by which, however, we are not at all bound. His read- ers, too, in different ages, and in different circumstances of knowledge, may have had very varyuig conceptions as to extent, yet all agreeing in that essence which belongs to the absolute verity of the account. It may have been a very long time, or a very short time ; or a very long time by one standard of measurement, and a very short time by another. All that we say is, that the account does not tell us how long the day was ; while it gives us sufficient intimation that we must not attempt to confine the conception by limits that could only be assigned to it through the phenomena of subsequent measured time. We think we have answered the objection derived from the mention of the evening and the morning. As these, whatever they were, must be independent of an actual sun-rising and sun-setting, or a solar day in its most essential phenomena, so, a fortm^i, do they leave us unbound by the conception of a solar day in respect to the less important element, or rather the accident we might say, of a certain duration. But may not the mention have been made for a reason the very opposite of that which the objection supposes. Let us take a look at it from this side. Why is it said, " there was an eveniyig^ and there ivas a morning*'' ? To keep us, we may answer, from regarding duration, or a certain duration as the main, or even any essential element of the idea. It was not this that made it a day, or justified the name, but the fact of its having two marked and contrasted 8 86 WORK OF THE FIRST DAi". seasons to wliicli the names evening and morning could be given, (especially is this said etymologicallj of the Hebrew words,) with as much propriety as to those that were made bj the setting and rising of the sun. This was the evening, and this the morning — one day. As though the writer had said, it was this that made that day, — and had brought in the expression to guard agamst any misconception that might come from connect- ing it with any subsecjuent measures of time, after measured time began. These views are strengthened by an etymological examination of the terms employed. Day and night, or the Hebrew ta*)^ and nV^V a,re general terms, and may be taken of the times occupied by certain phenomena, as well as of the i^henomena themselves. The words evening and morning (:i'iy and "i^'a) are confined mainly to the latter use. They denote, not duration of any extent, so much as the optical or ph^^sical appearances by which they are marked, or in which they commence and terminate. It is rational, therefore, to lay a stress on their phenomenal or etymological significations which might not be justified in other cases ; especially when we bear in mind that they are explanatory of this word yom. They are used to show why it is called a day, — because divided by two contrasted states that could be characterized by no words so well as by those which are afterwards used to denote the corresponding parts of that lesser and more distinctly marked cj^cle, the common solar day. What makes them the more appropriate for this purpose is the fact, that when etymologically exam- ined, they present that same primary conception to be found in the general words n^h and H^-sh, and which MORNING AND EVENING. 87 underlies our view of almost every great development in the physical worid. It is called a day, because there ■^as an ereh (^y^ and a hoher (^^vS) — that is a wing- Img, a hlendmg, a confusion of elements, such as is pre- viously called "j'lph (choshek) or the darkness that was upon the face of the deep, and this followed by a sepa- rating, a CLEAVING, a parting of elements, issuing in the first light, whether regarded optically, or in reference to its pictorial effect in marking the outlines and divisions of things ; or with still more primary reference to that first action w^hich constitutes the very potentiality of light, and makes it the great representative of the corre- sponding development in each of the creative periods. And all this, we say, is confirmed by the etymological analysis of these remarkable words, — an analysis pre- senting no afterthought of science and philosophy, but the first fresh conceptions which the earliest mind w^ould entertain of the primary ongoings and outgoings of nature. The word ereb (=i^?) which is undoubtedly the mother of the Greek spsLdog, comes evidently from an:^ to mingle, hence appHed to the evening, the blending of the light, or that absence of the light whefher conceived of as a covering, a shadow, or an absolute privation, in which all things are phenomenally mingled in one dark, undistinguished, undivided mass. The thought is to be traced in the derivations. From this root comes the name for .the raven^ (or the dark bird,) still preserving in our own tongue the two main radical consonants, also the name for the desert, (araba or arava,) presenting the same negative image consisting in the absence ot all distinction of parts and features. The radical concep- tion appears still more strongly in some of the cognates ; 88 WORK OF THE FIRST DAY. as In t)'D?, Isaiah, v, 30, from whence the noun i\^y^ a dense cloud, and that sublime word "^s";!?? employed in some of the most impressive descriptions of the Bible for the thick dm-hiess, and evidentlj^ allied in its root to the Greek o^^v?) denoting the very blackness of darkness. Our Saxon evening like the Greek and Latin hesper, has not so strong a sense, yet still preserves the same pri- mary thought ; and the same may be said of the German ahende. It is the evening, the blending, the assimilating period ; just as hli^td or hle7id denotes the obliterating of all distinction, a reducing of all things to the same dark vmdefinable condition. Directly opposed to this, pheno- menally, is the word "ij^'a (boker). The primary sense of the verb, still existing in the Arabic, and clearly to be seen in its derivatives, is the same with that of the kindred word sj^a, namely, to cleave, to divide, to sepa- rate, and thus to distinguish both optically and mentally. It is the same image that is used in the Arabic of the passage we have already cited from the Koran, (p. 72,) where God is called the Lord of the day-dawning, the dag-cleaving, the day parting, or the dag-hrealung, as we most familiarly and graphically express it in our own tongue. Hence the optical and intellectual sense of the piel conjugation, to hole keenly, to discriminate, to ana- lyze. The same primary idea is found in the closely allied root "i5^ denoting to j? art, to cleave, to break forth, and hence giving rise to that very common noun signify- ing the/?'s-^ born, the first fruits, the first going forth of anything in the physical world, whether vegetable or animal. Thus ereb and baker are etymologically opposed, not merely as two different t'mes, not merely as light and THE WORDS DAY, MORNING AND EVENING. 89 darkness even, but as presenting those antithetical ideas of blending and separation^ into which expressions for the phenomena of light and darkness are ultimately, and, perhaps, in all languages, capable of being resolved. Ordinarily it would not be proper to insist so much on primary etymological senses, and run the risk, by so doing, of carrying an obsolete conception into some sub- sequent well understood meaning of a term. But in cases like this, where everything depends upon getting the right conceptive stand point, and where, too, the mat- ters treated of are so entirely out of the ordinary track, it becomes the part of sober hermeneutics to make use of all elements that enter, in any manner, into the radical ideas of the words. The force of these remarks would be more strongly felt, had we been accustomed in our translation to some other words, built, indeed, on the very same idea, yet presenting more of the phenomenal conception, or in which it had become less obsolete in subsequent usage. Had it been written for us in our Bibles, and thus become familiar to us from our infancy, " there was a hlending and a parting^ there was a darkness and a day hreak. a dush and a dauming, a covering and a de-velop- ment — all of which have a similar etymological meaning, — there would have been less thought of the fixed time of a common solar day ; and the mind would more easily and naturally have received the notion of indefinite periods, as not only meeting the hermeneutical exigen- cies, but as being in harmony with what would be deeply felt to be the ruling spirit of the passage. Take ano- ther kindred set of expressions. There was a gloom, and there was a gleam, or gleaming. No two words 8* W WOKK OF THE FIRST DAT. would have answered better than these, not only as denoting the most direct contrast, but as both springing out of one root which may be regarded as presenting the synthesis of the two ideas, or the beginning of that motion in nature, on one side of which lies the involving dark- ness, and on the other the evolving light — on the one side the dense covering, and on the other the first glimpse of development. There is a pecuharity, too, in the style, or order of the expression, on which it may be worth our while to dwell. There was an evening, and there was a morning. It may strike others very differently, but in our own mind we must confess to a strong impression of intended inde- finiteness, arising, as it seems to us, from the very strangeness of the language. The expressions are very peculiar ; in fact, sui generis. The morning and the evening of a common solar day would not have been thus set forth. It is never thus set forth in any other part of the Old Testament. The emphasis and order of the language seem to have respect to the query that might be supposed to arise most naturally in the reader's mind, — How could this strange sunless day have any analogy with the other periods now called by that name ? Neither the question nor the answer would have been suggested had there been no doubt of its being the common diurnal time. But they have a sublime propriety when used in comiection with the other idea. And then the asserting substantive verbs are so formally repeated — '''there ivas an evening, and there was a morning" — as though it were intended to make succession of events, independent of any particular duration, the essential and prominent thought. There had been pictui-ed to us the 91 chaos ; there Is then presented the gomg forth of the brooding, vivifying spirit upon the dark waters of the abyss ; this is followed by its first-born, the Light ; and then, to prevent all misconception, we have what follows, as though the writer would answer the silent query — " This was the evening, and this was the morning," or " thus there was an evening, and thus there was a morning — one day." The expression "ihi< £='!">, day one, is generally explain- ed as equivalent to first day, on the ground of a Hebrew idiom which sometimes employs the first cardinal number for an ordinal. And yet there would seem to be some- thing peculiar about it, which such explanation does not fully meet. In the case of the other days, the common ordinals are employed ; and, corresponding to them, we should have had, in this place, iin-^-i instead of "^hN, had it not been intended to convey the idea of something anomalous in the first period, as an intimation, perhaps, that such character belonged to them all. In regard to this thought, there is a very suggestive passage, Zachariah, xiv, 6, 7. '' And it shall come to pass in that day that the light shall not be clear nor dark." It is not necessary for the present argument to dwell on the many interpretations that have been given of this verse. But the one that follows, besides being very remarkable in itself, strikingly suggests the passage before us in Genesis — " And it shall be one day, which shall be known to the Lord, not day nor night, but it shall come to pass that in the evening time there shall be light." Various views have been taken of this strange language. The words, not day nor night, have been well supposed to denote a period which shall not be 92 WORK OP THE FIRST DAY. marked by these vicissitudes as tliey are now made by the sun. . The expression, " in the evening there shall be light," calls also to mind the great first day of creation in which the evening was the forerunner of the dawn. But the main resemblance is in the words ih!< t=3 =■.■>, which are precisely the same, and in a similar connec- tion, in Zachariah and Genesis. In the Prophecy it most evidently denotes a peculiar day, a day differing much from common days ; and we are strongly inclined to the same interpretation here, instead of the usual one which would take the cardinal number simply as an ordi- nal. Some of the Fathers were struck by this language in Genesis, and were led, on account of it, to regard the first day as somehow including all the rest, — being, in fact, the day of days mentioned in the beginning of the second chapter, or the "day in which God made the heavens and the earth." Their interpretation is of httle value philologically, for they were poor Hebraists ; but it is of importance to show how much these early com- mentators were led to regard these days as anomalous, and how little they were inclined to be limited by any narrow twenty-four hour hypothesis. In connection v/ith this it is important also to bear in mind the interpretation of Josephus (Antiq. Book I. Ch. 1,) — "And this was the first day ; but Moses called it one day^ the cause of which I am able to give even now, but shall put off its exposition until another time." The promised explanation is nowhere else furnished to us ; but this is sufficient to show that he regarded the account as anomalous. There must have been something in the style, something on the face of the narration which led him to this ; since in this case, as well as in that of the THE WORDS DAY, MORNING AND EVENING. 93 Fathers, there were no questions of science to affect his mind. The ordinal interpretation of the first numeral, which is required in certain examples, must have been known to him as an accurate Hebraist ; but he evidently does not regard it as sufficient to satisfy that feeling of mysteriousness that comes to the mind from the whole air and aspect of this wondrous pictorial representation of ineffable facts. We do not wish to cheat ourselves, or bewilder our readers, with mere etymological distinctions ; but the primary images, as we have given them, are certainly in the roots of the Hebrew words for evening and morning. These words do doubtless come to be used afterward without much reference to the first conceptions. Such is the case with all pictorial language. But, then, these conceptive images must once have been fresh in the mind; they must, at some date, have been vivid elements in human speech ; or we cannot account for their origin, or the remarkable tenacity with which they still hold their place in almost all known languages. If there ever was a case in which the writer would have them in his own thought, or would desire that they might be in the thought of the reader, this certainly would have its claim to be regarded as one of the kind. The nature of the morning and the evening give character to the day, instead of being themselves determined by a jDreviously assumed hypothesis of its being a common day, or hav- ing a certain duration. i^ But why, then, use the word day at all ? On this question we hope to satisfy our readers in another part of the argument, when we come to speak of the solar day itself as brought out in the work of the fourth period. 94 WORK OF THE FIRST DAY. To proceed, however, with the examination in its pre- sent order, — the preceding, or primeval night, when darkness was upon the face of the abyss, has certainly every appearance of indefiniteness. The whole aspect, too, of the account seems designed to fix that impres- sion on the mind. It was a starless, moonless night, unmarked in its commencement, and unmeasured by any periods or cycles known to modern science, or noAV pre- sented in any phenomena of the natural world. There were no hours, no minutes, no divisions that could be connected with any terrestrial or cosmical standard. There were no "watches of that night," unless it be such as the Psalmist speaks of, in wdiich a millenium of our current solar years may have been no more than the seemingly fleeting moment that just precedes the dawn. Such was this unmeasured night, and the morning spoken of was its termination. That morning, be it remem- bered, was not the beginning but the close of the first day, or, at all events, the commencement of its latter period. And so it was in each successive creative day until the end of the sixth, and the commencement of the seventh, when God rested from his ' ivorh of creation ^^ and the great hebdomad, or fullness of days^ winds up in that blessed ' work of providence ' Avhich He hath worked and worketh hitherto in the present Sabbath of the world. And here is the place for the examination of a ques- tion which has been for some time pressing upon us, and must have suggested itself to the mind of almost every reader. What ivas the commencement of this first day? Most evidently the night constitutes the earlier portion, because mentioned first in the order of succession. But THE WORDS DAY, MOKNING AND EVENING. 95 when did this night begin ? From what point are its hours, its watches, its midnight, its ante-meridian and post-meridian divisions to be reckoned ? On the hypo- thesis of the common solar day, or its equivalent in dura- tion, this beginning must have been just twelve hours before the light which constitutes the morning. But now three questions force themselves upon the mind, — Was there light before this twelve hours ? or was there darkness ? or was there nothing at all ? If we say the first, then must there have been a preceding day ; if the second, then the night did not then begin, or we have a commencement entirely arbitrary, assigned to a moment differing in no respect, either essential or phenomenal, from those that precede or follow it. If we give the third answer, it seems inconsistent with both the letter and spirit of the second verse — And darkness WAS (f^;fj) or had been upon the face of the ivaters — implying the previous existence of that on which the darkness then rested, and had been resting, at the moment vfhen this first night begins. If we shrink from the absurdity of a mere arbitrary commencement thus estimated from a date with nothing to distinguish it from what comes immediately before or after, there is no way to avoid it except by adopting the indefinite view, which is pressed by none of these narrow difficulties, or else by boldly taking the ground that the very matter, or dynamical entity, of the earth and the heavens came into existence just twelve hours, neither more nor less, before the shin- ing of the light which made the first morning of our world. It may be said that this nice computation of twelve hours, or of a duration exactly equivalent to twelve hours, seems hke trifling with the greatness of the 96 WORK OF THE FIRST DAY. subject, and the sublime language of the account. The writer feels it, and admits it. But then, does not all this incongruity, and apparent beUttling of the Mosaic idea, come directly from the attempt to confine our con- ceptions within the narrow limits of the twenty -four hour theory ? It is wholly at war, we say, with the natural feel- ing that arises in the mind on reading this super-humanl}' grand description of the origin of our world- — And tlie eartli was without fo7'm and void, and darkness tuas rest- ing upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of Crod was hrooding upon the tvaters. Who shall think of an exact twelve hours here, unless compelled by words or language utterly incapable of any other interpretation. But there is no such limiting language in the passage, and the sub- sequent terms that might seem to suggest our modern measurements must be controlled by those first impres- sions that are made upon the soul in the introductory statements of this wondrous narrative. Instead of limit- ation of any kind, we cannot keep out of our thoughts the conceptions of vastness every way, vastness in the trine aspect of the idea, vastness of sjmce in the image of the illimitable waters, vastness of degree in the con- ceived grandeur of the work, and along with these will come in the conception of vastness of duration. It is essential to the harmony of the idea. It is that third element of dimension without which God's work appears but as a phantom of width and altitude, instead of the fall complement of being that the divinely given law of our thinking demands. It is thus that the opening pic- ture gives character to all the rest. The feeling of the vast, the indefinite, the unmeasured, once received into the soul is carried naturally through all the other periods. THE WORDS DAY, MORNING AND EVENING. 97 It is in these first verses we should look for the key which is to guide us in the interpretation of all the rest. The day and the night, the evening and the morning, instead of being limited by the later and necessarih- inadequate conceptions, are to be taken from the larger and grander scale furnished to our survey from this primitive stand-point. Under such a guidance, the reader who vv'ill carefully study the whole account cannot fail to see that each transition is from a lower or less perfect to a higher and more perfect state. Each is marked by the introduction of some new thing, or by some separa- tion or dividing of a higher and higher element of being from the old chaos ; and this, in such a way, that each former or preparatory state is the night to the cycle, the evening or comparatively chaotic ereh to the higher con- dition which next dawns upon the world. Nor is this merely poetical. The conceptions, as we have sho^vn, are inherent in the primary images of the words, more deeply grounded in them, and in this sense older than the subordinate idea of some exactly measured duration. Each new element, too, or new division^ though grad- ual in its after working, has a sudden and preternatural beginning, Hke the first glance of the light out of chaos, or over chaos, and therefore most appropriately called a morning, a hoker, ('^J??) a separating, Sij-^cirting, a look- 171 (/forth. It is a saltus, or lea^?, in nature, when God's disturbing voice is heard calhng forth some new thing, and lo, it awakes from the long sleep of natural causa- tion ; " it stands up,^^ as the prophet most subhmely paints it, and with the same allusion, as we may think, to the primary images of the words — ^^ I call to them, they stand ujrJ' That voice was uttered in each of the 9 98 WORK OF THE FIRST DAi. creative processes, and will be uttered again when tlie declaration shall go forth, " Lo, I make all things new.'" The same voice which said, "Let there be light, and there was Hght," is repeated in each of these superna- tural mornings, and there is the same instant obedience, the same beginning of something in nature ^vhich was not in nature before, — accompanied, perhaps, by most sudden and wonderful changes, and then followed again by a long rest, sleep, or night, as we may call it, of nature's tardy grov^ih. This is the conclusion to which geology is fast coming. Although it is intended to make our argument purely exegetical, unwarped hy anything that science has dis- covered, or may yet discover, still would we acknowledge the essential aid which in this respect geology is render- ing to these most important ideas of revelation. Infidel as her spirit often is, she is driven more and more to acknowledge, as the only theory that will solve pheno- mena, and,. therefore, as the only one that can be trul}- called inductive, the mixture of the natural and the supernatural, in the production of our earth. As surel}' as there is written on the rocks the long working of reg- ular uninterrupted laws or methods, in which each step or stage seems to come out of what went before and to have given birth to what comes after, (for this is the only consistent meaning we can attach to the word natural,') so surely is there found there another record as strongly, and we may even say more unmistakeably engraved. From a higher world than the natural, there must have been from time to time a sudden flashing in of the extra- ordinary, of the supernatural, of a new morning after the long night of nature, or, in orther words, the Divine THE WORDS DAY, MORNING AND EVENING. 99 power introducing, or bringing out, if any prefer the term, a new element, a new force, a new law, a new idea, call it what you will, accompanied with new methods or laws for its subsequent growth or development, and then leaving it to their undisturbed operation. The two extreme views alike fail in explaining the appearances. We find insuperable difficulties, whether we suppose an uninterrupted nature, on the one hand, or a succession of supernatural acts following each other in direct and almost simultaneous succession, on the other. Science and Scripture do certainly present a remarkable agreement in the order of these great creative acts, or these great anomalous developments. Setting aside the question of duration, the harmony in other aspects is so striking that we might well suspect a forced accommodation if the exceeding antiquity of the record had not been placed beyond all cavil. Whilst thus strangely agreeing, however, in the wonderful steps through which creation rose from chaos to a state of life and order, they are both alike silent in respect to the actual or comparative length of the intervening chasms of duration. They do not tell us either how long they were, as measured by our solar cycles, or how short they may have been in comparison with some longer aeons or ages of the universe. The Scripture calls them days. The two contrasted times, in each, of supernatural action and natural repose, it most graphically represents as an evening and a morning. The Hebrew, or still older Syriac, had no other words so well adapted to this pur- pose, whether we regard the essential idea or the etymo- logical metaphor. But certainly they could have been no common days, no common nights, no common morn- 100 WORK OF THE FIRST DAY. ings. This, we think, must appear from the whole spirit and aspect of the strange account. They were God's days, his t=a^iy •'tt^ or dies etetmitatis. Thej were the morning and evening intervals of His creative periods, as much beyond our diarnal cycles as His ways are above our ways and His thoughts above our thoughts, — above them in all the trine aspects of greatness, — as measure- less in their duration as in their space and power. It is a proper place to remark here, in passing, that such use of day rather than year, or month, or century, to denote indefinite time, or an age, is a peculiarity of many, perhaps, we might say, of most languages. Every scholar must be familiar with it in the Latin. Dies is for tempus. Thus Livy — Dies tempusqiie Unit iram. It is employed in a still wider sense, yet preserving the same old cyclical idea, for the present life, the j^resent world, the present state of being, as one of the " days of eternity," as an olam of the great olam. Hence the phrase, venire in diem, to be horn, or come into the world. As another example from the Hebrew, we need only cite the sublime passage in which the Prophet em- ploys this same radical conception in his attempt to set forth the absolute eternity of Jehovah. N^in -^sx tzai^te. '' Before me there was no God, and after me there shall be no other. Before the day, I am HE.'''' That is, before time existed — II ^'fX^^^ — ^^ initio — as it is ren- dered by the Alexandrian translator, and in the commen- taries of Jerome. But to return to our creative divisions. There is first the parting of the light ; next the division of the lighter fluids or atmosphere ; next the elimination of the solid from the fluid : next the mornins: of vcfretable life : then THE WORDS DAY, MORNING AND EVENING. 101 the arrangements for the regular divisions of time by the celestial luminaries ; then the birth of the lower forms of reptile life which the waters are made to bring forth ; then the dawn of the higher animate existence, terminat- ing in the rational or human, and immediately following this, the Sabbath eve, whose long expected morning, although it may have begun to dawn, has not yet arisen in its full splendour upon our world. CHAPTER X. WORK OF THE SECOND DAY. THE FIRMAMENT. Creation of the firmament. — Scientific objection. — Ignorance of Moses. The fact. — The conception of the fact. — Phenomenal langi?age — Sci- entific LANGUAGE. — CHANGES IN ASTRONOMICAL LANGUAGE. — In OPTICAL AND CHEMICAL LANGUAGE. — SUPERIORITY OR THE BiBLE LANGUAGE. — NeVEK BECOMES OBSOLETE. — ThE OBJECTION LIES A8 WELL TO MANY OTHER PARTS OF THE Scripture. — Examples from New Testament. — Language of pro- phecy. — Time-words of prophecy. — Analogous language in respect t« THE HUMAN BODY. — ILLUSTRATION FROM PsALM CXXXIX. — ThE HeBREW W0R)S FOR FIRMAMENT.— The PHYSICAL PROCESS IT REPRESENTS.— COMPARISON WITH SCIENTIFIC LANGUAGE. — ThE LATTER ALSO PHENOMENAL. We have in the next verses what has seemed to many the great difficulty, the almost insuperable stumbling block of this Mosaic account. ''- And God said, Let there be a firmament between the waters, and let it divide the waters. And God made the firmament ; and he divided between the waters which were above the firmament, and the waters which were beneath the firmament, and it was so. And God called the firmament heavens ; and there was an evening and there was a morning — second day." Genesis, i, 0, 7, 8. We anticipate the anxious enquiry that has pressed, and is yet pressing, on many minds bewildered by false biblical views and the false claims of modern science. How is tbis to stand with the present state of know- ledge ? Flerc, they would say, we have most palpably THE FIRMAMENT. 103 presented the old erroneous conception of a material skj, or solid firmament, witli a reservoir of water above separated from the waters below. It is the same image we have in Job, xxxvii, 18, of the heavens being spread out as a " molten looking-glass," or in Isaiah, xl, 22, where the Prophet compares them to a pitched tent. It is, says the objector, the child's conception of the phenomena ; it might do for the childhood of the world, but it will not do for men of science, or a scientific age. Now, we may say, in the language of Job to one of his vaunting comforters, — -" Who knoweth not all this ?" The amount of it is, that the language presents appear- ances, and not the interior truths or facts, whatever thej may be. Certain facts in the process and order of crea- tion are to be narrated, and these facts are named, in the only way they could be named, from the phenomena they outwardly present ; and these phenomena, again, are named in the use of the articulate language, whether direct or metaphorical, which custom, or accident, or knowledge, or imagination, or any other cause, had attached to them. '- Who knoweth not all this ?" we, too, may say it to the objector who parades his little science against the Scriptures. Perhaps we may also venture the opinion that Moses knew it too ; that is, he may have known that his words were phenomenal. He may have used the language of his day very much as we use it, or as we use our own, without feeling himself called upon to enter a caveat against mistakes of its concep- tional meaning. Or he may have been partially ignor- ant, knowing less than we do about the matter and more than the primitive men, from whom came down the lan- guage he was compelled to employ. Or he may have 104 WORK OF THE SECOND DAY. been wholly ignorant, and known no difference between the absolute fact or truth he was made the medium of setting forth, and the phenomenal conception by which it was represented in his own mind, or the mind of his age. The f)rinciple is still the same, whether there be a wide difierence between the fact and the conception of the fact, or a less difference ; for difference there will be even to the highest science ; and it cannot be a mat- ter of degree. ThQfact, which God's wisdom deemed it necessary to reveal to mankind, was this, — that in the period after the first division or separation of the light, or fire, the next supernatural or creative step in the series, was the evolving, from the yet semi-chaotic world, of what we now call the atmosphere, but which Moses describes by language less scientifically correct, although, in fact, no more phenomenal than that which we are still compelled to use. The chronological order of the fact was the great truth, and to the knowledge of this no science ever has attained, or would have attained, without revelation. The event itself was the origination and completion of that apparatus of physical law, or that physical state of things, be it scientifically whatever it may — for we do not yet know in all respects what it is — by which were produced the combined appearances of the clouds, the rain, the blue heavens, together with other outward revealing phenomena connected with, and representative of, such interior causality. The beginning of this was the second supernatural act in the series of creations, or divisions. No working or development of any previously organized nature would ever have produced it. Without this new creative energy, the earth would never have THE FIRMAMENT. 106 gone beyond the first clay's progress. It would never have had an atmosphere, or clouds, or rain, or arched firmament ; but must have continued, in these respects, in that same state in which astronomy makes it probable that some bodies in the solar and stellar systems may yet remain. That this then took place, or began to take place, and that it was the divinely caused change of the second creative period, is the fact revealed. Moses describes it, not only in the only way he could describe it, but in the only way in which he and others of his age could conceive it. This fact was represented to his mind very much as it is still represented to our minds, -with all our boasted science, namely, by the very appearances or phenomena through which he sets it forth. When we let go these phenomena, or dismiss them from our thoughts, and talk of rarefactions and condensations, and reflections and refractions, and specific gravities, we have scientific formulas, and scientific symbols, but hardly any conceptions whatever. The more scientific our state- ments, the more abstract and the more conceptionless are they, until in this respect the language becomes almost as unpictorial, as unimaginative, as that of the math- ematician, or of the analytical astronomer who regards i\\Q heavens only as furnishing convenient diagrams for his calculus of functions and forces, or abstract dynami- cal entities. Now, in the Mosaic account the phenome- nal is every where, and everj-thing. It is addressed directly to the senses, or to the intellect through the senses. It sets forth the origin, not of what is in itself. but of Avhat we see, and as we see it, — ra /SXEToVeva, laws, but genera hzations of such phenomena ever resolving themselves into some one great fact, that seems to be an original energy, whilst evermore the application of a stronger lens to our analytical telescope resolves such seeming primal force int<) an appearance^ a manifestation of something still more remote, which, in this way, and in this way alone, 108 WORK OF THE SECOND DAY. reveals its presence to our senses. Thus the course of human science has ever been the substitution of one set of conceptions for another. Firmaments have given place to concentric spheres, spheres to empja^eans, empy- reans to cycles and epicycles, epicycles to vortices, vortices to gravities and fluids ever demanding for the theoretic imagination other fluids as the only conditions on which their action could be made conceivable. And this process is still going on. In the primitive times the sun appeared.^ and was understood^ perhaps, to revolve round the earth. Very early — -we know not how early — -came the oriental theory which was after- wards held by Pythagoras. This, like the modern Coper- nican, put the sun in the centre, although it did not main- tain itself against the more common hypothesis that claimed to be grounded on observation and induction. Later astronomy, however, reversed the decision. It placed the sun again in the centre ; and now it was thought we had at last reached a fixed fact in the universe. But alas for the doctrine that would maintain that " anything stands" and that all things are not eternally moving, a science still more modern is displacing this once immovable centre for some other and immenselj^ more remote pivot of revolution. There is no end to this, — no end in theorv —and the present scientific view of some great millenial or millio-millenial period will only stand because the short- ness of human observation, even continued during the age of the race, can get no visible data for anything beyond it. Thus, also, in regard to the phenomena of light. The earliest Hebrew conception was that of Jiorns, or simple radiations diverging from a point, such as the Prophet THE FIRMA3IENT. 109 Habakkuk speaks of (iii, 4) — '' His brightness was as the light ; he had horns (tza-'ini?, Greek, xs^ara or >cs^auvoi,) coming out of his hands, and there was the hiding of his power."* Science has long been in search of this hidden power. The old phenomenal xe'^ara, or diverging pencils, gave way to the effluxes, or diaphanous fluids of the Greek physics ; they came back again in the optical radii of the Newtonians, to be again superseded by what is in substance the old Aristotelian hypothesis returning in the undulating or wave theory. There has been a similar process in the department of pneumatology. Common air was at first supposed to be the most subtile of all material substances, — if mate- rial substance it was — and was, therefore, taken as the best representative of spirit or immateriality. It fur- nished that conception — not the idea or notion, which is a very different thing — but that conception of soul or spirit which is to be found in the roots of almost every language, Next came the aether, the quintessence, or fifth element. In more modern times, electricity and magnetism are the great words of ignorance as well as of science ; and these, in turn, are yielding to that unkno^vn fluid in which it is supposed will be found the elemental unity of all force. By a like process the old element, fire, became transmuted into phlogiston, and phlogiston into the modern caloric. But we are still no nearer the remote primal fact or facts, although a vast amount of useful knowledge * We have the verb, Exodus, xxxiv, 29, xxx, 35, where it is said, " The face of Moses shone'^ — most strangely ren- dered cornutum (horned) by the Yulgate. The same sense is given by Aquila. The true renderinf^ in Habakkuk, iii, 8, should have been, " He had rays or flashes from his hands." Hence the Greek x5|ai;voi. 10 110 WORK OF THE SECOKD DAY, has been obtained in the process. Each of these con- ceptions maj embrace phenomena not conceived before^ and thus each may seem comparatively interior; but they are all yet upon the outside, and we may say, equally upon the outside, in respect to the great truth or truths they represent. They are all phenomenal, or conceptional. They are all alike the outward signs of the things unseen (Ta voo;;>£va) — of hidden powers or truths which we may receive by reason and by revela- tion, but which eye cannot see, nor any sense perceive, neither can it enter into the imagination, or imaging faculty, of man ever to conceive. If, then, absolute correctness of representation is aimed at, a revelation of God's creative acts could no more endorse one scientific theory than another. What would now have been the credit of the Scriptures, had they been written in the style of the xlristotelian or Ptolemaic science, which in its day, perhaps, was thought to be the ne plus ultra of astronomical truth ?■ — a system so far complete that if it did not contain all the facts, it was supposed, at least, to furnish the best language, and the best method, through which they could be represented. And yet this grand old Book of God still stands, and will continue to stand, though science and philosophy are ever changing their countenances and passing away. It is one of the few things in our world that never becomes obsolete. It speaks the language of all ages, and is adapted to all cHmes. Ever clear and ever young, it has the same power for the later as for the early mind ; it is as much the religious vernacular of the occidental as of the oriental races. Instead, then, of being its defect, it is its great, its divine wisdom, that it commits THE FIRMAMENT. Ill itself to no scientific system or scientific language, whilst yet it brings before the mind those primal facts which no science can ever reach, and for this purpose uses those first vivid conceptions which no changes in science and no obsoleteness in language can ever wholly impair. The wonder is that such objections should have been so pertinaciously made against one or two parts of the Bible, when they may be taken almost everywhere ; or that good men, and learned men, should condemn as un- natural a mode of interpretation in Genesis which they employ with so much ease, and without any conscious- ness of its being forced, in so many other passages of the Scriptures. This kind of phenomenal language (we use the term here in distinction from the poetical or con- fessedly figurative) pervades every part of the Bible. We can hardly read a chapter without meeting with it. " Our Father in the Heavens ^ The latter word is the antithesis of earth ; and so we all understand it, although there may have been originally accompanying this plural form of expression the conception of a heaven above the visible heavens, and which was the peculiar abode of Ood. So, also, we are told, John, xvii, 1, " Jesus lifted up his eyes to Heaven and said ;" again, Luke, ix, 16, " He took the bread and looked up to Heaven, and brake and blessed." This is not only the language of zvords, but of action, of sacred action, too, which can in no sense be regarded as an accommodation to vulgar pre- judices. It came from the same conception, and that conception still continues, and will continue, although we understand by faith of Scripture (Psalm cxxxix, 9, 10, Jeremiah, xxiii, 24) as well as by the deductions of reason^ that God is everywhere. But this had become 112 WORK OF THE SECOND DAY. the language and attitude of prayer, and what pious soul would part with its touching vividness for all that science had ever taught, or philosojDhy dreamed, in opposition to the literal image it conveyed. Thus freely and ration- ally do we deal with other parts of the Bible ; but when we come to Genesis, all is reversed. The day shall have its exact twenty-four hours of the same length as those that are measured by our modern clocks ; the morning and the evening shall be the same that are now made by our rising and setting suns ; the heavens shall mean all that astronomy would include within the term, and all the stars and stellar systems they contain shall have their creation cotemporaneous with our earth, and all finished within the period of one literal week ; or, if we cannot bring ourselves to admit a literal firmament, some Hutchinsonian theory must be brought in as much at war with the simplicity and dignity of the Bible, as it is in the face of all fair science. What is still more strange — it will in general be found that those who take the most capricious freedom in extending the prophetic symbols of the future, are the most narrow in their interpretations of this mysterious record of the equally mysterious past. The " evening and the morning" of Daniel's vision* are very readily * It does not appear in our translation of Daniel, viii, 14, that the words there rendered " days" are exactly the phrase in Genesis — " a morning and an evening." So, also, in the same chapter, v, 26, the whole prediction is called " the vision of the morning and the evening." We do not pretend to interpret the passage ; but is it extravagant to suppose, that in both cases the same strange language is used for the same purpose, — namely, to take from the reader's mind the idea of ordinary days, and suggest the thought of some unu- sual and higher cycles ? THE FIRMAMENT. 113 interpreted, as having a vastly extended or aeonian sense. There, and in the Revelations, there is no diflSculty in taking days for years, and years for ages, if need be ; whilst in Genesis the same interpreters will hear to no- thing but the ordinary clock measured times, — and that, too, notwithstanding that in the former cases the warrant for the wider meaning is far less clear than that which may be fairly drawn from the whole spirit and aspect of this mysterious history of the ante-Adamic periods. Rapid and brief as is the account, the spirit of vastness, as we may soberly call it, breathes in every part ; and yet prophecy is rolled out to millenia, whilst in opposi- tion to all analogy, creation, with its stupendous changes and grand series of developments, is shut up to a time less than that required for the germination of a plant, or the growth of the foetus in the womb. And here, although it may seem somewhat out of place in our direct argument, we may be permitted to dwell on the somewhat analogous language of the Scrip- ture in relation to the growth of the human foetus. If it be objected to the comparison, that creation is a confessedly supernatural act, while generation is a natu- ral process, we can only answer that in Scripture the same formative language is applied to the origin of the world as to the origin and growth of the body. Thus, in Jeremiah, i, 4, '^ Before I formed thee in the ivomh.^"* The word *n:|;, here employed, has more of the idea of fabrication, or direct workmanship, than either n'^? or ^"^^^ as in Psalm xciv, 9, ^y. nsi^, " He that formed the eye, shall he not see ?" It is the same word used. Genesis, ii, 19, — " And the Lord Qo^ formed man ("1^*5) from the dust of the earth," So, also, " He who formed the 10* 114 WORK OF THE SECOND DAY. mountains, and created the wind," Amos, iv, 13. "He who is the former of all," Jeremiah, x, 16, ^^n "H^sn ^2'^ God not only created our generic humanity in the begin- ning, but also originates the individual life, and in certain respects regulates and fashions the individual growth. Perhaps, if we knew all about it, we might say that in this subordinate cpv(fis, growth^ nature^ yhsdig^ generation^ nn^in — all which words present radically the same con- ception — there is also a mixture of the natural and supernatural, analogous to that which took place in the mundane work. There are the days or periods of quickeniiig, and then, supervening on them, a season or seasons of repose, in which physical law, the physical law both of the material and the sentient nature, carries on the processes thus begun, or thus renewed. As the foetus grows in this hidden tvorld, which the Psalmist compares to the *' lowest parts of the earth," there is doubtless a most important part performed by nature. She is its nursing mother, her powers are its viliment, her laws its silent fashioners. And yet, if we would avoid the grossest materialism, we must conclude that there are some things, even in this seemingly natural process, which nature never could have done, — something to which all her chemistry, and all her laws of physical life, could never have given the beginning of existence. " For thou hast possessed my reins. Thou didst overshadow* me in my mother's womb. I will praise ^Thou didst overshadoiv, Hebrew, ^ss&n. The word here is very remarkable. The Hebrew strikingly corresponds to the Greek word used (Luke, i, 35) in the announcement of the immaculate conception — h Sjvaixig T-^'k^to-o s-TrirfxiatTsi (Toi. Tt sio-nifies to overshadoiv, or to cover like an overshadoiv- ing ;°Luther renders it— Du warest iiber mir im Mutterleibe. THE FIBMAMEHT. 115 Thee, Lord, for I am fearfully and TvonderfuUy made ; marvellous are thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well. My bone was not hid from thee, — that The LXX translate it — 'AvrsXa/3ou piou sx y(x(Sr^% ps-il^r^o? M'^^ ; in which it has been followed by the Syriac and the Yulgate. The true idea, however, of the Hebrew is easily obtained from its applications in other places. It is used directly for cover- ing with a shadow, Job, xl, 22. It is the common word to express the overshadowing of the cherubim when they spread their wings over the mercy seat. It suggests here, as well as in Luke, i, 35, the Hovering or Overshadowing Spirit that brooded over the dark chaotic waters in the foetal incep- tion of our world.' Certainly it is something more than mere fancy that traces this remarkable image in all these passages where there is thus spoken of the origination of a new life, whether in nature, or out of nature, or through nature, or by a direct addition of something to which the previous nature never could have given birth. With all reverence would we tread upon this most sacred ground, and yet without profanity may it be suggested, that the immaculate conception has some resemblance, or analogy, to the human generation. The one was all divine ; the other is partially so. One is the beginning of a new humanity mys- teriously connected with the old ; the other is the repeated (Quickening of the old manhood, rec^uiring in every case the supernatural interposition of the Father of Spirits, at least, as regards the rational and moral life. As far as any danger of materialism is concerned, we might safely hold with Tertul- lian, and 'paHially with Augustine, the doctrine of spiritual traduction ; but we think the force of certain expressions in the Scriptures is against it. It may be maintained, too, that the corresponding terms, when used of the new spiritual birth, are not mere illustrative similes, but present the truest concep- tion of the absolute fact. "Behold, in iniquity was I formed, and in sin did my mother conceive me." Nature's work was spiritually marred and ruined ; but it is God who creates the clean heart, and renovates the quickened spirit. We may not understand, or be able to explain all these terms, but we are safe in calling it a new, an added life,, in distinction from a mere regulative process, whether moral or physical, regarded as going on in the old nature. 116 WORK OF THE SECOND DAY. from which I was made and curiously wrought in the lowest part of the earth*. Mj substance yet unwroughtf did thine eyes behold, and in thy book were they all written, even the daysX (the periods) in which they were formed, when as yet there was none of them," Psalms, cxxxix, 13, etc. May we not soberly think that in this wonderful passage there is a parallel presented between the embryo and the terrestrial creation ; and that in the overshadowing divinity, the unwrought substance, the curiously divided or embroidered work, and the book- recorded days of the one, we have allusilons to the hover- ing or brooding Spirit, the watery chaos, the varied arch- itectonal divisions, and the grand periods of the other ? But it is time to return to our regular interpretation. With the remarks that have been made, we do not hesi- tate to admit, to the fullest extent, the strictly phenomenal nature of the language employed in this account of the work of the second period, or the scientific error, be it *This is taken by some in the same manner as the expres- sion, ra xarc^TS^a i^s^y] rr,s 775?, Ephesians, iv, 9, for "this lower world," in distinction from the heavens ; but the simile given by the other rendering suits best the whole spirit of the passage. t Hebrew, •'5a^A, From the use of the verb, 2 Kings, ii, 8, and the related noun t=^53!)Va, Ezekiel, xxvii, 4, we might conclude that the best sense for this was involucrum. By the Rabbins it is used for mass. LXX render it axarsp^afl'Tov, almost identical in meaning with the term axaTadxsuadrov, applied to the earth. Genesis, i, 12. Vulgate — imperfectum meum, my umurought. Symmachus — a|xo^9WTov, my un- formed, or formless, or chaotic substance. t Hebrew, !:n::.;> t=^5a\ Luther — Und waren alle Tage auf dein Buch geschrieben. Vulgate — Dii,s formabantur. Rosenmliller — Non uno momento, sed progressu temporis — de die in diem — ex informe mole. THE FIRMAJVIENT. 117 more or less, contained in it. And God said, ^•'j?'^ "^^.^ — yswi&TjTu drs^iuiia. — fiat firmamentum — sit expansum^ — "let there be a firmament," etc. The Hebrew word primarily denotes something ex2:)anded^ or beaten out, like a metallic plate, (Exodus, xxxix, 3, Numbers, xvii, 4.) Such is the literal sense of the root from which it comes, and such, too, is the suggested sense of the Greek drsfcoi^M and the Latin firmamentum. They denote solidity, but this belongs only to the phenomenal conception such as is also presented in the ou^avw itok^x^'^'x-^ and ou^avw (fi6y]^i(*}, of Homer. We would, however, have no right to infer from this that Moses believed in a vaulted sohdity, although such an admission would not in the least affect our argument. This language, like all the rest, is phe- nomenal. It presents the appearance, and Moses uses the appearance as the name or representative of the fact. With him the fact and the appearance may or may not have been one and the same ; but we are not bound by his individual conception, nor is the essential truth of Scripture committed to it. To express the same pheno- mena, Luther admirably uses the German Feste ; but, perhaps, the best of all would be the Latin exp)ansum ; as the conception of solidity early becomes obsolete in the Hebrew applications, whilst this remains as the universal idea. From the same appearance came afterwards the conception of the concentric spheres, or imagined firma- ments carried farther off as crystalHne separations between the planetary and empyrean heavens, — " those flaming walls of the world," as Lucretius most poetically expresses it, flammantia moenia mundi, 118 WORK OF THE SECOND DAY. ever bounding the sense, but throwing themselves open to reason and faith, or the vivida vis animi seeking to penetrate into the " things that do not appear." These spheres, however, it should be remembered, en- tered for some time even into scientific language, and however much they may have been banished from the text-book, they still maintain their place as firmly as ever in all our pictorial imaginings of the celestial system. Here, too, it should be observed, is a modified use of the word heaven, somewhat changed from the univer- sality of its application in the first verse. In the lan- guage of science, we might say it is the atmospherical, in distinction from the astronomical heavens. In the Mosaic conception, however, the one is not yet parted from the other. There is the same sensible limit to both. It is the visible firmament, or what we call the sky, — whether this be the same with the Greek cx/a, (or shade,) so called from its blue color, or the Saxon seiene, German schbn, Danish skion, the shining, the clear, the beautiful. But why might not all this have been said in the mo- dern and more correct language ? Why might it not have been said — some one may reply — as the author has said it in his description or explanation of the fact set forth. Certainly Deity could have made it as plain as the commentator has done, or attempted to do. We answer — He has done so — He has made it far more clear, infinitely more clear. Had he employed our lan- guage, it might have answered for the nineteenth cen- tury, although very imperfectly even for that; but it would have been unintelligible to the ages that have THE FIRMAMENT. 119 preceded us, just as it will be quaint, and obsolete, and childish, perhaps, in ages to come. Divine Wisdom has adopted a better method. It has employed words and images which never can become obsolete. It has marked the fact, and the order of the fact in the sequences of creation, bj phenomena which no one can mistake, and which speak a language the same for all seeing eyes, for all conceiving minds, for all states of philosophy, ^nd all ages of the world. But whilst the explanatory and scientific style the author has adopted is not so clear, it no more escapes the charge of being phenomenal. We talk of atmo- spheres, and clouds, and refractions, and reflections of light that produce the appearance which Moses called the expanse or firmament. But what is an atmosphere ? It is aT//,ou (fcpuT^a, a sphere or ball of vapor. That is our word, but it is no less phenomenal than firmamentumy ?^n> rfrc^i-w/xa, expansum, Feste. There is, in reality, no such sphere or ball of vapor. It is not limited by a defined surface like the ocean. It is only an appearance. It is our mode of picturing or conceiving it. It may seem a little more scientific than the most ancient view, but all that we can say is, that our conception imper- fectly represents a fact or a power, or a system of facts and powers in nature, and so did the Hebrew. The same will hold true of our more common terms. The word cloud we would call literal language, with nothing metaphorical about it ; but go to the old Saxon, and we find a root related to the Latin cludo claudo, Greek xXcj(5, to shut, enclose, as well as to the derivative cloth — all presenting the same image, and the old image, of something that shuts in, holds, or contains, like a bag. 120 WORK OF THE SECOND DAY. We recognize it in Job, xxvi, 8, — He hindetli the waters in his cloud, and the cloud is not rent under them. So also, Proverbs, xxx, 4, — Who hindeth up the waters as in a garment. We talk, too, of the reflection, or bendiyig hack, and of the refraction, or breaking, of Hght. So, too, of the various intermediate phenomena, through which is produced the great phenomenon of the the visible vaulted sky. We construct our scientific representative terms out of these more interior appearances which science has given to the conception, instead of deriving them at once from that which is outward and ultimate to them all. Such is our scientific language ; and yet further science is ever showing, not only its phenomenal character, but its utter deficiency when we would make its conceptions identical with, instead of representative of, the fact or facts. Truly, had God waited until science and philoso- phy had perfected their lexicon. His subhme revelation of the order of the world's genesis, would never have been given to mankind. For it is, in truth, this order, this succession of facts, and not the philosophy of it, which is the thing made known, and which science never would have discovered. CHAPTER XL WORK OF THE THIRD DAY. THE DIVISION OF LAND AND WATER. Does the spirit in ceeation always accompany the wobd?— The Expasg- SION " UNDEK THE WHOLE HEAVEN."— ThE DRAWING OFF OF THE WATERS. — Interpretation of the Hebrew verb. — The appearing of the land. — The creative energy in the earth.— The upheaving op the land. — Birth of the mountains,— Psalm xc and civ.— Drying op the land, — Three hypotheses.— The supernatural throughout.— The natural all IN the space of twenty-four hours.— The natural with an indefinite period. — Was there a suspension of the properties of earth and pluids ? The third period is one on which we are not required to dwell at any great length. The terms employed to set forth the division of the land and water, present points of much philological interest, and demand a careful examin- ation. But the work of the second part of this creative day, or the first growth of vegetable life, would be con- sidered to most advantage in connection with the fifth period, along with the production of the animal natures. As the light first comes out of chaos, then the atmo- sphere, or the separation of the fluid from the fluid, that is, the aeriform from the liquid, so have we next the separa- tion between the liquid and the sohd. It is, however, not so much the essential as the phenomenal division that is here set forth. " And G-od said, Let the waters which are under the heaven be gathered together to one place, and let the dry land appear." It is a proper occasion here to say something farther on the language with which 11 122 WORK OF THE THIRD DAT. each division commences. We have already presented the view "which some of the earhest Fathers maintained respecting this Word of the Lord, as the divine energy going forth, the Xo/oj ^^090^1x0^, manifesting itself in the separation and distinction of what before was blended and indefinite. Hence, it is appropriately called a naming, a distinguishing. To the same view vre trace certain expressions in other parts of the Bible. As in Psalm cxlviii, 15, — '■^He sent forth Jus word — His word runneth very swiftly. ^^ Psalm xxxvi, 6, — " By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all their hosts by the spirit of his mouth." Here, as in some other passages, we have the ivord and the spirit conjoined. And this suggests the thought, whether the language of the second verse, ^' the Spirit of Grod moved upon the face of the water s,^^ should not be repeated, or regarded as repeated, in the second and third, as well as in the first going forth of the creative Word. And so through- out ; the commencement of each division, or of the morn- ing of each division, is marked by the &ame supernatural Presence, as well as the same supernatural Word; as though we had read, "And again the Ruah Elohim hovered, or brooded, over the earth, and God said, Let the waters he gatliered and the dry land appear.''^ The new energy comes ; the power of obedience is simulta- neous with the command ; the Word and the Spirit go together ; the work begins ; nature is then entrusted with it, and the history of the change is afterwards briefly expressed by the common formula 15"^!?^ — ''And it was 80.^^ As though God commended nature for her diligence and obedience. The language that follows strongly suggests the idea of a superintending Lord THE DIVISION or LAND AND WATER. 123 looking forth and approving of the work of a faithful servant — "JL^ic? Giod saiv that it ivas good^ "And God said, Let the waters under the whole heaven be gathered together, and let the dry land appear." The exjDression, '-^ under the tvhole heaven^"* is evidently used to denote universality, in universo terra- ru7n orhe; as in Job, xxxvii, 3, xli, 3. Compare, espe- cially, Job J xxviii, 24, — " He looketh under the whole heaven." " Let the waters be gathered together," — t=3':^h ill)?*; — LXX, 2uvap/^7j=rw to udu^ — Vulgate, Co7l- gregentur aquae. The most common sense of srip is to hope^ to tvait 'patiently ; but this comes from the rarer yet still distinct primary significance, to draxv out, stretch out; precisely as the Greek verb, h^zyiiLai, where the primary and secondary senses are related in a similiar manner. ''Let the waters he drawn off^ This would give us the true image, and would correspond well to the sense of the noun n.-ii^^. as in Exodus, vii, 19, Leviticus, xi, 36, where it is used of a reservoir of waters, in dis- tinction from a spring or a river, and Isaiah, xxii, 11, where the same word with a slight vowel change, is applied to a public reservoir made for the use of a city, and to which the waters from the neighboring streams are drawn. The force of the passage would also be well given by the old Syraic sense of the root, to ahide^ to remain permanently — "Let the waters abide in one place," instead of being diflfused, as heretofore, and wan- dering like a shoreless ocean under the whole heaven. In either view, the use of these old primary senses is proof of the antiquity of the language of the account. ''And let the dry land appear." In other parts of the Bible, where there is a reference to the creation aiJ.d 124 WORK OF THE THIRD DAY. the Mosaic account is evidently kept in view, the moun- tains and valley/ s, the hills and plains, form prominent parts of the picture ; as in Proverbs, viii, 25, where their settlement or foundation is placed among the earliest antiquities of the earth, — " Before the mountains were sunk, (or settled on their bases) before the hills was I born." So, also. Psalms, xc, 2, — " Before the moun- tains were born" (or generated.) Compare Psalms, civ, 5, and similar expressions. Job, xxxviii, 6. But here there is no reference to such formation, unless it is contained in this brief language. We have the strongest reasons for believing that it is so contained, and that the peculiarity of expression in this case gave rise to the fuller mention in the passages quoted. It is implied in the verb hi^-nn, which, although of the Niphal, or passive form, has a reflex active meaning, like the Greek cpaivs(f&ai, or ava(palvs(f&ai, to appear, to shoiv itself, to come into sight. As in that beautiful passage in Homer, where the island Phasacia is described by this word as looming, or rising up to the vision of the shipwrecked Ulysses. 'OxTwxaK^sxa-rr) 'EANH oPSa. tfxjoSvTa. Odyss. V. 279, x. 29. *' On the eighteenth day there rose in sight the shadowy mountains." How strongly, too, does it call to mind the language of Ovid, Metam. Lib. I, 343. Jam mare litus habet : plenos capit alveus amnes ; Flumina subsidunt : colles exire videntub ; SiiVigit humus : crescunt loca decrescentibus undis. " Now the sea has a shore ; the floods subside ; the hills appear out of the waters (or seem to mount out of the waters) ; the ground rises ; the (earthy) spaces grow as the waters decrease." According to this understanding of the words, the real action would be expressed by the THE DIVISION OF LAND AND WATER. 125 latter verb, and the latter clause of the verse. What at first seems a poetical representation, is found, when closely looked at, to be in accordance with the most pro- bable view of the real facts in the case. The real ener- gizing power was in the earth, upheaving in some places, and settling down in others. The drawing off the waters was the effect. In this way they are gathered togetlier into one immense place, instead of being diffused over all the earth, or under the whole heaven. And now the dry land affeavB. Compare Job, xxxviii, 8, 11, where the picture of confinmg, and setting bounds to, the waters corresponds in a striking manner to this coneeption. This is the way in which " the mountains ivere horn^'^* to use the very language that Moses himself employs in the old 90th Psalm. They were generated in the deep abyss ; they were " curiously fashioned in the lower parts of the earth ;" like the foetal embryo they grew beneath the dark waters, ever swelling and expanding until the period was consummated, and the natal morn had come, when they burst from the enclosing womb and rose to their birth among the things " that are seen" or ^' do appear." The conception remains in the later Hebrew writings, — " I went down to the lottom% of the mmintains ; earth with its bars was round about me," Jonah, ii, T. The Vulgate has for the rare Hebrew word in this place, " extrema montium ;^^ the Syriac ren- ders it the " depths of the mountains." These towering eminences are imaged as having ther roots deep down * The exegesis of the Hebrew word here employed is fully given in another place. ir 126 WOKE OF THE THIRD DAf. in the sea, and as thus yet resting in the lap of their ancient mother. The strongest confirmation of our exegetical view is to be derived from Psalms, civ, 6,- — " With the deep thou didst cover it as with a garment ; over the mountains (that is where the mountains now are seen) stood the waters; at thy rebuke they fled, at the voice of thy thunder they started." And then follows this remark- able language — we make the English an exact imitation of the Hebrew and the Hebrew construction — " Go up the mountains, go down the valleys unto the place thou hast estabhshed for them." These verses have been referred to the flood, but against such a supposition there are very strong reasons. In the first place, the older commentators, and some of the best among the modern, have regarded them as descriptive of creation, and espe- cially of the work of this third day. Another argument is that the preceding verses refer to the creation beyond all doubt; and in the third place, if we would understand it of the flood, there is a difficulty arising out of the very construction of the Hebrew words. Our translation makes waters the subject of the verbs, but to do so with- out any preposition following would present a construc- tion unexampled in the Hebrew language ; whereas the other sense flows directly and in the easiest manner from the words as they stand, tss^nn iVy% "The mountains go up, the valleys go down.'' With this correspond the ancient Versions. The Syriac stands precisely like the Hebrew ; the Vulgate renders it — Aseendunt monies, descendimt eampi. Luther gives it to us most graphi- cally — Die Berge gehen hoch hervor, und die Breiten setzen sich herunter. THE DIVISION OP LAND AND WATER. 127 The whole aspect of these passages, taken in connec- tion with the brief account in Genesis, gives strongly the impression that the place for the gathering and abiding of the waters was made by this upheaving action in the earth, the very action, if we say nothing now of duration, to which the geologist ascribes the growth and form of islands and continents. " And let the dry land appear." The word ntya:, it is true, is often used of land, as sohd land in distinction from water, like the Greek fii^o'v ; but the whole connec- tion of the thought goes to bring out the primary sense and make it a prominent feature in the pictured process. This primary sense of the word always impKes an actual drying from a previous state of humidity — exaruit — aridus f actus est. Thus, in Job, xiv, 2, — " The waters fail, the rivers are dried up." It brings vividly before the mind the image of wet, marshy land, such as would be left on the first emerging from the ocean, and which goes through a process of drying and hardening, the duration of which, whether longer or shorter, is to be inferred from the nature of the action, unless there is something in the account which positively forbids the application of such a rule of judging. But here is a series of events whose continuance, if not their beginning, has every appearance of a natural process, that is, a pro- cess in which one event is linked with and comes out of another. The language would seem intended to convey that idea. Although presented in the briefest terms, the great facts follow each other in just that regular order which would be the result of present established laws. The first energy, indeed, is supernatural ; but as soon as the before quiescent earth begins to hear the 128 WORK OP THE THIRD DAY. new creative voice, it feels the upheaving force ; the mountains swell ; the plains sink down ; the waters are displaced. They flow into the subsiding region; the land, with all its divisions of hill and valley, begins to appear ; evaporation commences ; a drying and solidify- ing process goes on, and is carried through its neces- sary stages and degrees until fully completed, and the new state of the earth is fully brought out. The result is, that what was before a wild waste of shoreless waters, is now a world of continents, seas and islands, with its dry land prepared for the abode of hfe, and clothed with a luxuriant vegetation. The great steps are supplied by the account and its necessary implications ; something which has the appearance of causation is revealed ; can we resist the . feehng that the numerous intermediate lesser links which are required to complete the idea of such causation are not also implied ? To give the idea more clearly, we may indulge in three suppositions, one of which alone can be true. 1st. The whole work took place instantaneously in some moment of the day allotted to it. Or, 2d. It was a process — a process of cause and effect, and therefore entitled to be called natural, (although having a supernatural beginning,) yet such that with all its antecedents and consequents, its great changes, and its lesser intermediate links, it all took place within the time of twenty-four hours, or of a portion of twenty-four hours ; since a part, and it may have been, much the largest part of this creative day was occupied with the production of vegetable existences from the earth after it had become dry. Or, THE DIVISION OF LAND AND WATER. 129 Sillj. It was a natural process supematurally com- menced, and yet, as a natural process, occupymg such duration as all the sequences of cause and effect therein implied would naturally suggest to the mind, and which would be demanded for their harmonious succession and co-ordination on the supposition that the leading proper- ties of matter, of earth, and fluids, their gravities, their resistances, their laws of cohesion, of pressure, of motion, were about the same with, or in any way analogous to what they are now, — that is, as they appear to the common mind judging from common experience, and according to the impression that would be naturally made by what seems, on the face of it, to be the common lan- guage of causation. In respect to the first of these suppositions, it may be said that there is in it no a priori incredibleness. God might have made things so, had he seen fit, and, for all that we can know, such instantaneous action without media would have been worthy of him. To our concep- tion, it might have seemed more sublime than any other mode. In a moment, from a boundless waste of waters, there is a transition such as might have come from going through all these changes and all these apparent grades of causation. In a moment, the shoreless abyss might have been converted into an earth with its continents and islands, all dry without having gone through any drying process, all finished, all with their permanent form, all clothed instantaneously with an immensely varied and luxuriant vegetation. This might have been ; but the objection comes from the very face of the account. The language forbids this first supposition. There is evi- dently conveyed by it the thought of a process of some 130 WORK OF THE THIRD DAY. kind, longer or shorter. There is that which looks like a causation, a train of sequences, — or, in other words, an energizing of natural powers producing natural results. Was this all crowded into the space of a few hours ? If so, the very supposition destroys itself. We have every reason to believe that the earth and water, as they existed at the beginning of the third day, possessed, in the main, the natural properties which they now possess, the same or a similar gravity, the same density, the same resistance, the same laws of fluidity, of pressure, of repulsion ; and that the same or similar effects would have followed from their action upon each other, according as that action was slower or more rapid, that is, took place in a longer or shorter time. And so, also, in respect to the processes of evaporation and aridification ; they must have had some analogy at least to the same processes as they now take place. This is only saying, that if there is a nature, there must be a harmony, a consis- tency in it. Other\Yise, it is only a phantom, an appear- ance of a nature, when it is all really supernatural, an appearance of causal sequences when there is really no dependence, no coherence. They are all separate links ; and the appearance of connection is only deceptive. Such an apparent process of moving waters could not have taken place throughout all the wide earth and ocean, within the time of a few hours, without utterly deranging all such causal dependence, even if we suppose the laws of nature to have been much more rapid in their action than they have been since ; of which, however, there is no intimation in the account. It would, in fact, be wholly supernatural, in the sequences, as well as in the THE DIVISION OF LAND AND WATER. 131 beginning ; as truly supernatural as in the first supposi- tion, but yet with this fallacious appearance of causation. The objection does not lie at all against the first hypo- thesis ; for there God is supposed to have suspended the previous laws of nature, or previous properties he had given to things. They are held back from coming in col- lision with each other while He performs His supernatu- ral work, and makes the wonderous transition without going through any of the stages which would seem to lie between. The world is now in this state, and then im- mediately in that, although the distance which separates the two is one which it would take nature, or any system of connected sequences, ages to travel. In such a case, God is supposed to hold nature in abeyance. If he does not destroy her, he casts her, for a season, into a deep sleep, as He did to Adam when He brought out of him a new and supernatural human creation. Thus, too, in this mighty work of the third day, if such an immense motion and commotion of the waters took place over all the earth in a few hours, their gravity, their resistance, their very inertia, must all have been changed, or held in sus- pense, to prevent that utter ruin which must otherwise have been the inevitable result. But on the other supposition there could have been, m reality, no causation, no real sequences, nor linked series of effects coming out of antecedent causes, in any part of the seeming process. The rising land, the retiring waters, the appearing, the drying, the vegetable growth, had no real connection with each other ; there was no real nature (puVij, growth^ genesis, or physical transition from one thing to another, or from one state to another. And yet the language does give us some such impres- 132 WORK OF THE THIRD DAY. sion of causality and causal sequence, whether we call il nature, or give it any other name. The third hypothesis remains ; and in respect to this the question arises — Shall we measure the sequence of events by a rapidity of duration which would surely falsify them, if judged by those common ideas of causa- tion the language would most naturally suggest, or shall we interpret the time in some conceived and conceivable analogy with the processes that would be in our minds if we did not suppose ourselves limited by the supposed measure of twenty-four hours ? In other words, shall we estimate the day by the work, or judge of the work solely by a preconceived reckoning of the day ? We content ourselves here with making the statement and presenting the difficulty which attends every hypo- thesis but the third. The first may be called the wholly supernatural ; the third may be described as the natural originated by the supernatural, and then following estab- lished laws in their established order. The second would be neither the one nor the other. It would have the appearance of a causation which is not a causation, — of a miraculous agency which is at the same time described in language adapted to a natural process. It is thus as much at war with the true and only idea of a miracle, as it is with the laws of our thinking about nature. But a more careful proof of this will find a better place in a sub- sequent chapter. The same question comes up in the description of the work of the fifth day, where the lan- guage of causation is still more prominent, and the idea of natural production out of the earth is still more strongly forced upon the mind. CHAPTER XIT. WORK OF THE FOURTH DAY. THE HEAVENLY BODIES. CREATION OF THE SU.V AND MOON. — ThEIU APPEABANCE. — ThEIR APPOINTMENT IN THE HEAVENS. — OBJECTIONS. — THEORIES.— NOT INCREDIBLE THAT THEIR ADJUSTMENT SHOULD HAVE BEEN LATER THAN THAT OF THE EARTH. — BULK NO MEASURE OF RANK. — OUR UTTER IGNORANCE OF WHAT IS BECOMING IN THE DIVINE WORK.— What is the making op a thing ?— The wobk of thr FOURTH DAY AN ARRANGEMENT. — NARROWNESS OF SCIENCE.— INTERPRETATION OF THE Hebrew words. The earth at this stage is preparing to become the sup- porter of vegetable organizations, and the abode of ani- mal and rational life. But for the perfect development of these, if not for their origination, there is needed the orderly arrangement of seasons, and the regularly adjusted light and heat of some great luminary,— in other words, an apparatus by which there might be brought out those shorter subordinate cycles of activity and repose, of production and reproduction, through which nature would be aided in consummating the work of succeeding periods. For vegetable life alone they might not be necessary, especially in its earUer stages, but for the animal and the human they became absolutely indispensable. Even for the rational they furnish an aid which in our present state of being becomes of the highest importance. Their vicissitudes are required for the reg- ularity of the physical growth ; their harmonious divisions 12 134 WORK OF THE FOURTH DAY. of times are to exert a deeply modifying influence upon the laws of thinking and upon the mental development. The creation of such seasons was to be the work of the fourth period immediately after, if not simultaneous with the first birth of vegetation, and before the production of the reptiles, the earthly animals, and man. It should be remembered that light and heat had been in being long before, and had been acting with a contin- uous energy ; but seasons, that is regulated suspensions and varieties of Hght and heat, such as are required for the higher cycles of organic life, had as yet no existence. Previous to this the earth may have been often blazing with a phosphorescent splendor, or shrouded in stygian darkness ; but those were not regular vicissitudes. They were not the long ante-solar cycles running through the appointed round of their own cyclical law ; nor were they the measured days of the celestial luminaries. The period has now arrived in which the latter must be lit up, and make their appearance in the firmament. Whoever will carefully study the passage must perceive this at least, that not the absolute creation of light or luminous worlds, but the regulation of seasons, the year, the month, the now regularly returning day and night, were the designed results to be brought about; and it is a clear view of this design that must control all our inter- pretations of the language in which the corresponding phenomena are set forth. The elements* or bodies for this time-measuring, season-producing, apparatus, had existed long before, just as the earth had been in being *Thus, in 2 Peter, iii, 10, the word droi-xfia is used to denote the elements of nature, or the component parts of the physical world. THE HEAVENLY BODIES. 135 for ages, but this was the period for bringing that appa- ratus into manifest exercise, and these verses set forth the gresitfact through the same kind of language that is employed in the other cases. The unknown, unmeasured series of space-creations which may have taken immense times for their full accomplishment are denoted bj the outward and ultimate results. The dynamical is repre- sented by the oijtieal^ the things unseen by the ^' things that do appear. '^^ And God said — "Let there be lights (rih-iN^, (pwtfT^^s^, fiant luminaria,') in the firmament, to divide between the day and the night ; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years. The word here is not the same as that for the element light, although from the same root. It more properly signifies luminaries^ or light-giving bodies. The Septuagint presents this view of the word in the Greek 9wfl'T^^sj, and Luther in his lichter. "And let them be for lights in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth ; and it was so. And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. And God so arranged them in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth, and to divide between the light and the darkness." In this passage there is, perhaps, the greatest difficulty in the whole Mosaic account. The writer would not seek to disguise it from himself or his readers. It is a difficulty, however, which must grow out of every attempt to conjecture by what process the phenomenal result is brought about. As far as regards the appearance itself, or the statement by which it is set forth, the interpreta- tion is of the simplest and ea&iest kind. But have we 136 WORK OF THE FOURTH DAY. really anything to do with such process, or with any sub- stances or causes that might have existed, or might not have existed, anterior to the phenomenal arrangement ? Did the matter of the sun have a being before the fourth period ? Was it covered with some obstructing vail which prevented its shining upon the earth? Had it yet become luminous ? Were there obstacles in the earth, or the earth's atmosphere to the reception of its light ? Had our planet been yet connected with the solar system, or commenced its revolution upon its axis ? We cannot answer any of these questions, either in the affirmative or the negative. We cannot affirm the irrationality, or deny the rationaHty of any theory grounded upon any one of them. Science is dumb, and revelation says nothing about it; while reason admits any hypothesis that does not contradict our ideas of the divine perfec- tions. Creation in. six solar days, or six millenial ages, — creation by direct exercise of the di\dne energy, or hj development through nature, or by a blending of both, — creation instantaneous or gradual, continuous or per saltum, — are all, in themselves, alike rational, alike consistent with piety, or -^ath any view we may entertain of the manner in which God may see fit to manifest His glory to an intelligent universe. It may be thought, however, with some reason, that the greatest difficulties he in the way of that hypothesis which would make the very origination of the very mat- ter of the heavenly bodies cotemporaneous with their manifestation on the fourth day. There are, also, puzz- ling obscurities that hang round the opposite view, or the one which is here maintained. Still none of these do directly touch our main argument. We may be una- THE HEAVENLY BODIES. 137 Me to clear them up ; and yet the leading ideas set forth in the introductory chapter are unaffected and unmodi- fied by any such difficulties. The long periods, the mix- ture of the supernatural and the natural in every creative work, the phenomenal nature of the language, — these are the great outlines we have attempted to trace in the Mosaic account, and these retain the same force, and the same position, whatever view we may take of the process through which were brought about the appear- ances of the fourth day. The more carefully, however, the account is examined, the more will scientific as well as hermeneutical difficul- ties vanish away, and the more clearly mil be seen that on which we have so much insisted, — the fact set forth in distinction from the conception through which the mind receives it. The main perplexity arises from blending a false view of certain words with some of the conceptions of our modern astronomy. Thus we are led to think of the sudden creation of the sun, or of the very matter of the sun, on the fourth day. This body we have been taught to regard as immensely larger than the earth, and hence the apparent absurdity. Now even if this were the right interpretation, that the sun was wholly created on the foui'th day, st;il, even in that case, the objection would be far from unanswerable. "We might be ration- ally called to reconsider such an opinion of relative importance, as being a narrow prejudice instead of the enlarged view which some might fancy it. Is it not. Indeed, a narrow view to regard greater and less simplj^ m respect to bulk ? The sun may in this vastly exceed 12* 138 WORK OF THE FOURTH DA"^, the earth, and yet be a very inferior body, of vastly less importance in the scale of God's works; just as the huge central bulb in certain machineries may be far inferior in dignity to the small extremities it is intended to support or connect, and on this account, may without any absurdity be regarded as of inferior and posterior workmanship. A priori, then, there is nothing irrational or incredible in the idea that the orderly constitution^ and even creation, of the sun should have been later than that of the earth. What is the sun but a huge mass — - at least we know nothing to the contrary — designed to hold the planets in their places, and to be their deposi-- tory of light and heat ? It is huge, just because bulk and capacity are required for these purposes, but, it may be, on no other ground of superiority, either in respect to relative rank or intrinsic excellence. We may take a similar view of the relative importance of our earth, as compared with the other bodies of the solar system. It is apparently among the smallest, but we have no right to conclude from this its inferiority, not ^ven its physical inferiority. Such a conclusion avouM be as unscientific as it is unphilosophical. The earth may be one of the smallest, because the more condensed, and, therefore, the more fitted for a world of habitation. The huge Jupiter, with his 250,000 miles of equatorial circumference, may be but a wild waste of waters, such as the earth was on the first day of creation, when it may have been far more expanded than it has ever been since. Saturn, astronomers tell us, is lighter than cork, and may be not much more dense than a bladder of gas ; or even if composed of any firmer substance, it may be yet THE HEAVENLY BODIES. 139 Without a moss, or an animalcule, or the lowest rudiments of a shell fish, within the bounds of his leviathan bulk.* Should any one hesitate to adopt such a view on the ground of its being opposed to analogy, or that it would be an impeachment of the divine wisdom and goodness to suppose such immense spaces, constituting so large a part of our solar system, to be as yet tohu and hohii in respect to living beings or even the lowest forms of ani- mation, we may well ask, how or why the mystery is any greater than that which we are compelled to admit in respect to our earth. ^ Our apologist for the Deity must be careful how he undertakes the defence of Him ^' who hath no counsellor"—" who doeth according to his will," not only " in the earth," but also " among the armies of heaven above." He must be careful how he lauds as divine wisdom what may be but his own short-sighted ignorance and folly. Why are there such immense wastes on our own planet ? Why the frozen regions of the north ? Why the thousand-leagued desert of Sahara ? Why are four-fifths of our earth a barren expanse of waters ? Why are the organized regions of the visible universe an infinitessimal portion in compari* ■5on with what may yet be regarded as empty space ? Why all this waste ? Why are there not ten thousand more worlds than there are ? One class of questions is as rational as the other. Uninhabited planets, uninha- bited systems, unorganized nebulge, or congeries of stars, occupying spaces which our highest arithmetic fails to * There are some things here which correspond, both in thought and expression, with a late remarkable work on " The Plurality of Worlds," but they were written sometime before that work appeared. 140 WORK OF THE FOURTH DAY. estimate, are no mere impeachments of divine wisdom than the everlasting snows of Siberia, or the ever barren sands of Africa, Our conviction of the divine goodness and wisdom must be an a priori idea, confirmed, it may be, by what we see in nature, but often held in opposition to the very appearances she presents. Not that simple being is therefore wise and good merely because it is, for that would be only a logical logomachy ; but the ground of our thinking is the converse of the reason of God's act- ing. He hath made all things as they are, because thus to make them was wise and good ; we believe that they are wise and good, because He made them thus. God has not left us to that poor evidence of sense whose deci- sion, when unsupported by this higher authority, must ever vary according to the small number of facts, out of innumerable facts unknown, on which it founds its induc- tive verdict. The visible universe may be filled with inhabited suns and planets ; or there may be few that have arrived, or are even destined to arrive, at that dignity. Our earth may be a pioneer among them, not only as respects the other planets of the solar system, but also the vast host of stellar bodies. We know nothing about it, and have the most scanty data for any reason- ing about it. Without the least fear of the imputation of arrogance, we hesitate not to say, that the confident views on this subject, presented in such books as ^^Nichol's Architecture of the Heavens," or by the great mass of our popular scientific lecturers, are alike baseless in their premises and their conslusions. They are simply addressed to the popular wonder, and, in this respect, are as unscientific as they are unphilosophical. THE HEAVENLY BODIES. 141 As regards the question we are now discussing, all such speculations are utterly worthless. Millions, and billions, and triUions, add nothing, whatever, to the argument. All known analogy is against these sweeping inductions. A planet, a sun, a system, may immensely exceed the earth in space, and even in mass, while yet our under- rated birth place may be as much above them in moral, intellectual, and even physical dignity, as the island of Manhattan surpasses in value the frozen wastes of the whole Antarctic continent. If, then, the Scriptures actu- ally and unmistakably taught such a supposed creation of the sun on the fourth day, we should be far from rejecting it on account of any such pretended scientific difficulty as this of some modern astronomers. But, in fact, they teach us no such thing. As we have seen, the Mosaic account does not set forth the absolute creation out of nothing, even of the earth. The word K-ia, (he created,') refers to the whole subsequent work. The writer seems to commence with the earth in its rudimentary state ; its creation is a long process, consisting in the dividing, arranging, disposing of exist- ing material, and attended, from time to time, by a superadded energy coming from a supernatural source. If such be the case in respect to the earth, can we rea- sonably suppose that there would be here so sudden a departure from the fundamental idea, and that the "making" when predicated of the celestial bodies must all at once be taken as an instantaneous, or a least, a sudden, w^ork ? We may fairly judge, then, from the analogy of the account itself, that the sun, and other bodies related to our earth, had been going through a similar process. They, too, presented a Q?-^'iig, a nature. 142 WORK OF THE FOURTH DAY. a growing up from chaos ; they, too, had been the sub- jects of successive divisions in their gradual organiza- tion, brought about, perhaps, by a like sucession of supernatural interventions. But what do we mean bv a makiyig in the most com- mon and direct use of language. It is not the origina- tion of the material, nor the preservation of the material identity, but the construction, or preparation for a cer- tain use, in reference to which the thing made not only has its name, but actually is what it is. A mass of dark matter, or of unformed matter, floating in the universe of space, is not a sun, or the sun, although it is that from which a sun may be made or constituted. And so we may say of every production. The making of it is the making it to he that which it is^ that which it does, and hence, that which it is called or named ; for a thing can only be named from that which it does, or is made to he. It is not made, in any true sense, until by a modification of its material, or some outward arrangement of its mate- rial, it is put in relation to that use, or made to manifest that particular action, or those peculiar phenomena, from which the name is derived. In this sense, the mahing and the naming of it are the same thing. Nor is this a forced metaphysical notion out of the common range of thought or speech. We would appeal to every reader's consciousness, if this is not the common idea of the word making. It is the other notion, — namely, of the origin- ation of material out of nothing, that is metaphysical and out of the ordinary use of language. It has come from a supposed logical necessity of a certain theory, and been forcibly connected with the Mosaic account, because it THE HEAVENLY BODIES. 143 was thought to be demanded bj the reason, and the con- sequent exigencies of the narrative. Adopt either theory, however, and we come to very much the same conclusion. Is the Mosaic creation a construction, an arrangement, a manifestation, a harmo- nizing, or bringing hato relation, of pre-existent materials, then, as far as interpretation is concerned, we have nothing to do with the origination, or, in that sense, the making of the sun and moon. If, on the other hand, there is truly meant to be set forth an actual creation out of nothmg, as is maintained in the opposing hypo- thesis, then, according to the same hypothesis, and the literal interpretation which it demands, the whole creation of material took place in or at the period called the beginning mentioned in the first verse, and before the commencement of the days. And so we come round to the same point in the argument ; for in this view, too, all that follows is but the arrangement, separation, connec- tion, and, in a word, disposition, of masses already origin- ated, and which, from all we know from revelation, or otherwise, may have been ages in existence. If, then, the after creation of the earth was an arrange- ment, or disposition, so, also, must have been the work of the fourth day, or the after arrangement of the long previously originated sun and moon. "We may indulge in an endless variety of suppositions as to the manner in which it was brought about. It may have been in any of the ways we have already mentioned. What might, perhaps, most stumble our man of science, would be the theory which assumes that at this period there was estab- lished, or begun to be established, the present existing relation between the sun and earth ; or that at this time 144 WORK OP THE FOURTH DAY, the revolution of the earth on its axis was adjusted, if not originated. But science cannot say anything for or against such a view. It might be objected, too, that even if we suppose the matter and mass of the sun to have been created long before, still analogy forbids the supposition that so important a development and arrangement did not take place until this comparatively late fourth period. But who shall determine for us the laws or grounds of such analogy? It all belongs to that class of questions to which, in the very nature of things and ideas, no answer can be returned except the one furnished by Scripture — - " His ways are not as our ways. His thoughts are not as our thoughts." Why was not the earth and the universe brought into being ages before it was ? Why has it not long smce been finished, or, at least, carried much farther towards its highest glory and consummation ? Surely, the moral world is of as much importance as the physi- cal ; but why, then, was there so long a delay before the "Sun of Righteousness" arose upon our earth "with healing under his wings ?" Wliy must it be the fourth millenium before Christ could be born ? and why is yet so large a part of the world a moral chaos on whose face the darkness still rests, and to which no vivifying Word has yet gone forth ? There is a far deeper mystery here than is suggested by any real or supposed arrangements of the solar system. But aside from any considerations of this kind, and even with the physical world alone in view, how unscien- tific, how very much like the spirit the man of science himself condemns, but which is so excusable in the untaught, to carry back our present conceptions of modern days and years, with the other phenomena the THE HEAVENLY BODIES. 145 ..sun now presents, and because they have been unvaried for a few brief generations of the human race, to fancy that it must have been the same at that immensely remote period cotemporarj with the first beginning of vegetable life upon the earth ! Would not all fair ana- logy suggest the thought, that the astronomical relations of our earth were as unsettled, as remote from what they were afterwards to be, as the then terrestrial arrange- ments ? How can science say whether there was then any revolution of the earth upon its axis, or not, or how fast or slow it may have been, — whether the revolving force grew out of the slow operation of natural causes, in which case it must have had a regular acceleration from a minimum, that is, from an infinitesimal to a maximum degree, or whether it came from a sudden impact of the Divine hand after the earth had acquired sufficient con- densation to endure the centrifugal tendency of the new and preternatural impulse, — whether there was any inclination of the ecliptic circle, and what was its amount, — whether each fluid and vapory body of the solar sys- tem may not, as a consequence of its then rarified state, have been self-luminous, — or whether the rudimentary sun, during its gradual formation, may not have been either opake in itself, or covered with a dense vail such as now seems to form its second or interior coating, until all things were adjusted for its being lighted up as the central luminary of the system. " Knowest thou when God disposed them, or when he caused the light from his cloud to shine ?" — Job, xxxvii, 15. The passage may refer to the lightning, but it is capable of a very remark- able accommodation to the great event which we are now considering. We say again, — science knows nothing 13 146 WORK OF THE FOURTH DAY. about these ancient celestial matters. We do not know . how, or when, or why, they built the pyramids, or by what mechanism they piled up the huge rocks in Stone- henge. We may be safe in deciding that the lower stones were placed before the upper, but this is more than we know when we get off the earth, and into remote times, and amid a very different state of things, where the very questions of upper and lower, and prior and posterior, and ends and means, must baffle the pursuit of our keenest calculus. The geologist spurns with contempt all reasoning from the present fixed appearance ©f fiature against undoubted facts which go to show great and sudden convulsions in former ages. If this be true of the earth, why not of the heavens also ? If it be true of the earth in itself, why not also of its relation to the sun ? Since the beginning of human observation, as recorded in history, sacred and profane, all things in the celestial spaces have continued as they were, or nearly so. The diurnal and annual revolutions have presented no perceptible or measurable variation. Whatever parallaxes there may have been among the fixed stars as a consequence of a change of our position in the great visible universe, they can hardly be determined by the nicest instruments. The same old constellations roll over our heads, in the same order, in the same relative positions, and with about the same degrees of apparent brightness. But this does not oppose the idea of former changes in the sun and stars, as well as in our immediate planet. To measure these remote effects by our now regulated times would be equally absurd in both cases. Besides, is not the tele- scope now revealing something of the same anomalous THE HEAVENLY BODIES. 147 Mnd as going on in parts of the universe which may be supposed to be as distant from us in space as the primae- val aspects of our own system are remote from us in time ? In some quarters of the heavens, there would seem to be yet transpiring changes analagous, to say the least, to those that took place in our own earth's far-off infancy. How else shall we account for the strange appearances presented by certain nebulous systems, whether we regard them as fluid, or congeries of stars ? Within the compass of a few months or days, sometimes in the hours of an evening, sometimes under the very eye of the observer, there are taking place — at least, this is the appearance — variations in the internal condition of immense masses, and their apparent relations to each other, such as in our fixed system, and under our present unchanged laws of nature, would take millions and millions of years to accomphsh. Adopting certain scientific theories as the ground of the fancy, we might imagine astronomers who lived at that re- mote day, in some other remote system of higher progress, turning their glasses towards the obscure nebulous cluster of bodies that may then have formed our condensing solar system, and speculating about their development. But " we are of yesterday," and know nothing about it. We are just as ignorant, at the best, as is the astronomer, even yet, and with all the help of Lord Rosse's telescope, in respect to the question whether the light of a nebula is from self-luminous phosphorescent parts, or whether it all comes by radiation and reflection from a central body. To regume, then, our main argument — we may con- clude that at this fourth period, partly cotemporary with yegetation, and before the earliest dawn of animal life, 148 WORK OF THE FOURTH DAY. the sun assumed toward our earth the state and form of a luminous body, and the adjustment of the shorter periodic seasons commenced. This is the great fact revealed, and revealed, as usual, through the concep- tions that Moses, or any other unscientific man, would connect with it. All that we can say is, that at this period the solar system was ht up, the phosphorescent light which the earth may have possessed went out as the planet became more dense, the vail was taken from the central luminary, in order that now there might be not only light and warmth, which existed before, but such- regulated diversities of them as would be required for the later vegetable, as well as for the animal and human life. " And God said. Let there be luminaries (^fiant lumi- naria.''') "And He made two great lights." The Hebrew verb here is nsjy. We attach little or no im- portance to any argument grounded upon any metaphy- sical distinction between it and ^<'^a. The latter, as we have seen, has no such metaphysical sense, and the other is one of the most general terms in the Hebrew language. Like the Latin ago, or facio, or our own do, or make, its precise idea ever depends on the context. The whole apparent difficulty is cleared up by looking at the syntax — " He 77iade two great lights, the greater light to rule the day." The specifying portion thus coming in makes the careless reader lose sight of the connection, und regard the verb made as an absolute term denoting pre- sent fabrication. But of the true syntax the Enghsh scholar can judge as well as the most learned Hebraist. The sense of made is limited by the infinitive that fol- lows — "He made them, to ride the day," etc. " Let I'HE HEAVENLY BODIES. 149 tliere be lights^ lighters, luminaries, ^^ said God, as in the remoter period He said " Let there be light," and in obe- dience to the same voice the Hghts appeared in the firma- ment, — the sun in its phenomenal glory, yf^tai h h'^radla.,^ &X^(iS ou^avou sv o^aiian Scj^ris, as it IS most graphically pre- sented by the Son of Sirach — " The moon, the beanty of Heaven, the glory among the stars, an ornament giving light in the high places of the Lord," — xdWog ov^uvou, 6o^a. atfr^wv, xoVfXog* (pojTi^wv sv u-^iVtw^ xu^i'ou. — Ecclesiasti- cus, xliii, 1-9. " And he made one to rule the day, and the other the night ; and he set (or displayed) them in the firmament so as to give light upon the earth," Thus would we infer that disposition, or ordination, and not creation, is the true idea. It appears on the face of the account itself, and is, moreover, abundantly confirmed by other passages of Scripture. Thus, Job, xxxviii, 33, — "Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven ; -canst thou set their dominion in the earth ?" Jeremiah, xxxi, 35, — " Thus saith the Lord who appointed (ir!=) the sun for light by day, and the moon by night ; if these my ordinances (tra'^p.h, o» vo^xoi ouro», leges istae) should depart, then should Israel cease to be a people before me." So, also, Psalms, civ, 18, which should be ren- dered, — '•''He appointed the moon for seasons, the sun knoweth his setting." To the same effect the passage to which we have already referred from Ecclesiasticus, or The Wisdom of Sirach, which, although apocryphal, pre- sents most clearly and beautifully the ancient idea. ''At * Or ** a world giving light." The whole passage is one •of exceeding beauty, and remarkable for so distinctly present- ing what we have called the optical or phenomenal aspect of creation. 13* 150 WORK OF THE FOURTH DAY. the command of the Holy One they stand in their order, and never faint in their Thatches,"™ Ecclesiasticus, xUii, 18. "We present these passages from the Hebrew poets, not as proof of the fact, or the truth of the fact, but as. evi- dence of the manner in which they conceived it. Their design is to magnify the Lord, and had an absolute crea- tion been in their mind, it is hard to explain why it should not have been strongly set forth, instead of this other idea of ordination, or phenomenal arrangement, which is so strikingly presented in these and similar allu- sions to the Mosaic account of the heavenly bodies. CHAPTER XIII. SOLAR DAY AND SOLAR DIVISIONS OP TIME. TIME-MEASUREMENTS AND TIME-IDEAS. First mention of the solah day.— Could the previous days have been OF THE SAME KIND.— QUESTION RESUMED. — ThE WORD DAY.— ANALYSIS OF the essential IDEA. — ItS FOUR CONSTITUENT ELEMENTS. — WORDS MORNING AND EVENING COMPARED WITH SPRING AND FALL. — REASONS FOR DWELLING ON THIS. — The true conceptive stand-point. — Must carry ourselves BACK into the old HEBREW FEELING. — ThE PERIODICAL IDEA. — DIFFERENT KINDS OF ASTRONOMICAL DAYS. — IDEA OF DURATION.— ThE DAY THE UNIT. — Hours derive their measure from it. — God's estimate of time. — "A THOUSAND YEARS AS'ONE DAY."— "HiS THOUGHTS ARE NOT AS OUR THOUGHTS." ^^And let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for dai/s, and for years." These certainly were natural days in the common usage of the term, — our common days of twenty-four hours. Could those that were men- tioned before as marking the creative periods, have been of the same kind and the same duration ? This brings up the old question, in respect to which we would again beg our readers' indulgence. We have already dis- cussed it at some length, but there are additional thoughts which could come in nowhere else so well as here, where we have the first mention of solar days. It is a question of naturalness of interpretation. Those who hold the indefinite periods are charged with taking the word out of its natural and easy sense. The use of the term here, it is said, limits its sense in other parts of the account. Had there been intended a different sense, or 152 SOLAR DAY AND SOLAR DIVISIONS OF TIME. a different force, some intimation would have been given to that effect. We think it has been shown that such an intimation is given — - that the strange morning and eve- ning of the first day, the necessary indefiniteness of the first night, the necessary absence of those phenomena which mark the two parts of our solar period, and the whole strange aspect of the account in all its stages, suggest the thought of the extraordinary, the anomalous, the unmeasured, and the immeasurable, that is, as far as any subsequently ordained dimensions of time should be applied to them. Such thoughts must have been in the mind of the medium who wrote the wondrous narrative ; such thoughts he must have known would naturally pre- sent themselves to the mind of the reader, should he feel himself compelled to carry the conception of solar days of twenty-four hours into his interpretation of the first four periods. The intimation was enough, and was deemed enough ; and thus viewed, the express mention here of sun-divided days, instead of being an argument for their identity, is strong proof that the previous periods, whose evenings and mornings must have been made in so very different a manner, must also, on that very account, have been of a widely different character. What do we mean by a natural day, — or as it might better be called, a common solar day ? The importance of the question demands a close analysis of the idea. There is no other way of divesting ourselves of concep- tions, which, however natural they may seem to us when entertained from one stand point, may appear most unnatural when considered from another. In the idea then of a day, in its most general sense, there are four elementary constituent thoughts. i TIME-MEASUREMENTS AND TIME-IDEAS. 153 1st. Its cyclical or periodical nature ! 2d. This periodicity made by two antithetical states characterized by opposite qualities, of "which the one kind is the negation of the other. 3d. Its duration in time. 4th. The mode in which this duration is marked, and its periodicity determined. Of these the first and second are not only essential, but constant, catholic, and immutable. The third and fourth are variable and specific. Without its periodi- city and its antithetical division, there could not be a day at all. The idea would be wholly lost. No mere division of continuous time, measured merely by a certain arbitrary extent, could answer to the notion, or be enti- tled to the name. On the other hand, the third and fourth may be varied to almost any degree, and yet the radical idea be preserved. The duration may be twenty- four hours, or twenty-four thousand years. The mode .of antithetical division may be by risings and settings of a revolving or apparently revolving body called the sun ; or it may be by any cyclical law in nature producing two opposite times of rest and action, of progress and repose, of cold and warmth, of growth and decay ; or it may be by any other mode in which there are produced two periods of direct contrast, making up by their alternation the completed cycle. Applied then to a common solar day these constituents of the idea (the two constant and the two mutable) would stand thus. 1st. Its cyclical or periodical nature. 2d. Its two antithetical seasons. 3d. A specific duration of twenty-four hours. 154 SOLAR DAY AND SOLAE DIVISIONS OF TIME. 4th. This duration and antithetical division determined bj the phenomenal rising and setting of the sun. The first and second, or the essentially immutable, are as before. The third and fourth present a varied and peculiar character belonging specifically to what we call a solar day. But such, says the objector, are the days of creation. The third characteristic is not only essen- tial, but as essentially immutable, in the idea as the first. Your analysis, he might say, is of no value, because it was made to suit a particular hypothesis which assumes fixedness and universality in the first two, and mutability in the third and fourth. Twenty-four hours, or that precise extent in time, is as essential to the idea to which we give the name day as its periodical nature; being thus essential and indissolubly associated with such name, there cannot be a day without it. Very well. We answer, then, — Why is not the fourth, or the pre- sent manner of making and marking that duration by sun-risings and sun-settings, equally essential, equally invariable, equally inseparable ? Which inheres most fixedly in the idea of a day — a common natural day, we mean — its duration of 24 hours, or its divided periods of sunrise and sunset ? Do we not truly feel that it is more difiicult to sever from the idea the thought of the latter than of the former characteristic ? We can more easily think of a day longer than 24 hours, than of one which has no such sun-made antithetical division. Now, we are compelled by the very language of the account to make this severance in the case of the Mosaic days, — at least the first four of them. They were certainly without a rising and setting of the sun. If in the absence of this they could be called days, then — a for- TIME-MEASUREMENTS AND TIME-IDEAS. 155 tioii— could the name be naturally and truly applied to those that varied from the common day in respect to the less essential element of a twenty-four hours' duration. They were not, then, common days ; they were not com- mon mornings and evenings ; and if so, what difficulty, or what violation of language, or of ideas, or of the fair laws of interpretation, in taking the other step and affirm- ing that they were uncommon or extraordinary, in their duration ? Much more easy, too, would it be to do this, if we take as our stand-point those early times when the pictorial conceptions, etymologically contained in the words Q^^ -!)?>; ^-^y, and which are so easily associated with the general cyclical idea, may be supposed to have been yet fresh in the thoughts. Smce they have faded away or become obsolete, the conception assumes more of an abstract or mere quantitative character, and we become rigid in the notion that a certain duration is the most essential, and thus the most natural, element in the idea. When the Hebrew terms for morning and eve- ning were yet as freshly metaphorical as our words S2ning and/aZ^, and contained very much the same pic- torial conceptions of re viviscence and repose, it was much more easy to keep up the association of ideas on which the true interpretation so much depends. And this will be the more easily seen when we call to mind how much our exegetical ideas are affected by the associations of language ; so that what appears forced, or unnatural in one aspect, appears most easy and natural in another. Nothing is more certain than that t=a'.% yom^ or day^ occurs most frequently in this unmeasured sense of age or period. Now had it been, in all such cases, invariably rendered age, the reader of our English 166 SOLAR DAY AND SOLAR DIVISIONS OF TIME. version would have become familiar with the phrase, and would thus have been prepared for the notion it might be regarded as conveying in the first of Genesis. If, for example, in all such cases as that of Micah, iv, G, v, 9, Isaiah, xii, 1, ii, 1, Micah, iv, 1, vii, 12, we had been accustomed to read : '^ In that age, saith the Lord, I will gather in the outcasts, and the Lord himself shall reign over them in Mount Sion" — " In that age shall ye say I will praise the Lord, for he has become our salvation," — " In the latter ages shall the mountain of the Lord's house be^ established on the tops of the mountains and all nations shall flow unto it," — " In that age there shall come unto thee from Assyria, and from Egypt, and thy dominion shall be from sea to sea and from mountain to mountain;" — or, to take examples still more closely resembling the case we have in view, had we always read in Micah, v, 1, " whose outgoings are from the ages of eternity," or Psalms, Ixxxix, 29, " His throne shall be like the agQS of heaven,"— had we been accustomed to this, we say, and also well knew that in all these and similar passages the word there rendered, and most properly rendered, ages, was the same word which, in Genesis and elsewhere, is translated days, we might have been, in respect to this idea, in the same condition with the early Hebrew mind when it was famihar with both applications of the term, and received each as alike natural, alike literal, acknowledging no more of metaphor in the one usage than in the other. We might have even felt that the wider, the freer, was the more primitive, the more real sense, in fact, the original idea in respect to which all the lesser applica- tions are but cycHcal correspondences on a reduced scale. TIME-MEASUREMENTS AND TIME-IDEAS. 157 Such, we may say, was truly the condition of the old Hebrew writer, and the old Hebrew reader. The whole aspect of the passage, as it presents itself in the original, might have come up to his mind just as it would do to us, had we been accustomed to the translation first age^ seco7id age, etc., instead of the one which, to our present association, presents the narrower sense. The objection to this from the mention of the evening and the morning, we have already considered, and shown that such mention strengthens instead of w^eakening the main position. It may be remarked, however, that the above train of thought is equally applicable to these terms. There are many passages in which they, too, are employed in this extended sense. It is the case, tnoreover, in other tongues besides the Hebrew, that the evening is used for the period of decline, of inactivity, of repose, the morning for the sudden introduction of some- thing new, of something higher and better. As we have traced these words, this old pictorial sense, which is entirely independent of any ideas of duration, is even more marked in their etymologies (as shown in the He- brew, the Syriac and the Samaritan) than in the primi- tive words for dag and night. Again, they are distinctly applied to other portions of astronomical time of greater extent than the solar diurnal period. There is the morn- ing of the year. The spring is so called as its season of awakening, of reviving, just as winter is its evening or night of torpor and repose. So, also, there is the morn- ing of life, the morning of a nation's history, the morning of the world, and of the human race. But this, it may be said, is poetical. We deny it, in the sense in which the epithet is meant to be employed. These words, thua 14 158 SOLAR DAY AND SOLAR DIVISIONS OF TIME. used, are pictorial as all language is, more or less, but no more poetical than the common English words Spring and Fall, in their most common use as applied to differ- ent seasons of the dying and reviving year.* It is all a matter of use. Had we been as much accustomed to a similar application of morning and evening, there would have been the same easy harmony in the association required, and we would have been the more easily pre- pared to feel the right application of the same expressive terms to the longer antithetical periods of rest and awakening that constitute the Mosaic yom^ or age. The Hebrews ivere accustomed to it, and we may feel our- selves, therefore, on strong ground, when it is maintained that in the reading of Genesis, the larger cyclical ideas would come as naturally to them as the smaller do to us. We dwell on this here, as we have done elsewhere, because every thing depends upon getting the true con- ceptive stand-point. It is not enough to show, as can easily be done, that the Hebrew may have this indefinite sense, or that the word day possesses it in other parts of the Bible, or even that the language furnished no other term of time that would so well represent the long period. Something more is wanted to the argument, if we would exhibit the true ground of such usage ; and therefore in consideration of its most important bearing upon the whole ground of our discussion, we ask the reader's * The imagery is beautifully presented in the etymology of the Hebrew tptt), the almond {amygdalus.') It is so called, says Gescnius, quia omnium arborum prima e somno hyherno evigilat et expergiscitur, — because of all trees it first awakes from the sleep of winter. Hence it is presented to the Pro- phet in vision (Jeremiah, i, 2,) as a symbol of wakefulness and faith. TIME-MEASUREMENTS AXD TIME-IDEAS. 159 indulgent patience with this minute analysis of ideas and primary conceptions. The object is to show that such a view of the words day^ morning and evening, is not only a possible one, or one out of many possible conjectures, but that in the peculiar circumstances and aspects of this remarkable description, it is the most natural and easy, as well as the most satisfactory that can be taken. But let us define more carefully another term which we have been taking in its most general and indefinite sense, ^j period, then, we mean a wheel or round of events completing itself, and thus measuring itself off, and separating itself by such a completed course from other periods. Our solar day is such a currus or course of events completing itself on a reduced scale. It is with us the first and simplest cycle in nature, and, therefore, is it that in most languages, growing as they do out of the common natural logic of the human soul, this term is so easily applied to any such round or naturally connected series of events, be it longer or smaller ; and that, too, not only in the natural world, but also in the moral and poUtical. It is not a mere simile, or a merely illustrative metaphor, but an expanded application of one and the same radical idea to a different scale. This periodicity, we have said, is the first and immutable element. You cannot take it away without destroying the idea. Dura- tion, on the other hand, is the incidental, or rather the mutable, aspect. It may vary to any extent. There are different days in the different planets of our system, yet aU real days. Our own sidereal day is shorter than the solar day. Even our solar day may not be the same now as in the earUest times, or as it may be before the completion of the present ajc^v of our earth's existence. 160 SOLAR DAY AND SOLAR DIVISIONS OP TIME. The day of Joshua we know was preternaturally pro- longed. It is not the exact length even of our common day, (the Bible says nothing about that,) but its regular periodical recurrence which is secured by God's cove- nant after the flood. Now, does it not seem unnatural and forced to make the incidental or changing element (incidental at least in form and extent) the essential one, and insist upon a certain precisely measured duration (especially when the Bible is utterly silent about it) as the controlling feature in the use of the word ; as though it could not be a day without twenty- four hours, although it could very easily and naturally be a day without any rising or setting of the sun, and so, of course, without anything like our common morning and evening ? Besides, what is this duration ? Day is an absolute idea, because it contains its law and measure in itself. But divisions otherwise made are merely relative. Hours, minutes, and seconds, have no meaning except as certain divisions or fractions of an absolute or self-determining period called a day. They do not make the day, but the day them ; they do not measure the day, but the day them. They derive their ratio wholly from it. The day is the unit, and an hour is the twenty-fourth part of the diurnal cycle, be it longer or shorter in respect to abso- lute duration. To estimate, then, the horal divisions by themselves as absolute times, (which must always be done when we make them the arbitrary measures of antesolar periods,) or to regard the day as equivalent to them, or any sum of them, would be like the attempt to picture to the mind's eye yards, feet, and inches, in empty TIME-MEASUREMENTS AND TIME-IDEAS. 161 space.* We might as well give the name to any arbi- trary lengths of twenty-four hours into which a clock might divide the long day of the Arctic regions. There are still such twenty-four hour periods there, as made by the stars, but our solar diurnal cycle ceased at the Arctic circle. With perfect propriety, therefore, do we speak of the day at the pole as being a twelvemonth in its whole duration, — six months in one state and six months in the opposite, thus making its night and morn- ing. There the day has become identical with the year. And yet it is still a day. We feel that the language is literal and true, and not merely a metaphorical accom- modation. Again, before the birth of the rational soul, in other words, the space-and-time-measuring soul, what estimate — we do not say what absolute extent — but what esti- mate of time at all ? . What estimate of it in any of its relations to our earth, as they could be perceived and calculated by any observing intellect ? It may, perhaps, be said that it was measured in the mind of God. True ; but let us remember again the remarkable qualification that must suggest itself whenever that idea is brought in. *' His ways are not as our ways ; His thoughts are not as our thoughts; as the heavens are high above the * The same thought is well set forth by Augustine Contra Manichaeos, Lib. II, Ch. 14, — "Quia si currant tempora, et nuUis distinguantur articulis, qui artieuli per siderum cursus notantur, possent qnidem tempora currere atque praeterire, sed intelligi et discerni non possent. Sicut horae quando nu- bilus dies est, transeunt quidem, et sua spatia peragunt, sed distingui a nobis et notari non possunt." The reader who will take the pains to examine the passage, will see that Au- gustine is treating directly of our present subject. 14* 162 SOLAR DAY AND SOLAR DIVISIONS OF TIME. earth, so high are His ways above our ways, and His thoughts above our thoughts." For with Him " a thou- sand years are as one day, and one day as a thousand 3^ears. They are as yesterday* when it is passed and as a watch in the night" — ■ Ten thousand ages in thy sight Are like an evening gone ; Short as the watch that ends tlie night Before the rising dawn. This, it should be remembered, is from that subUme and most ancient production, the 90th Psalm, entitled '' The prayer of Moses, the man of God." Is there any thing unnatural, far-fetched, or forced, in the supposition that the same superhuman conception may have been in his mind when he was writing of the great days of crea- tion, — the days of God's working, the days of " the right hand of the Most High ?" What would more naturally suggest the thought ? What adds the strongest confirma- tion to this view of the passage is its direct connection with the mention of the work of creation as made in the second verse preceding : " Before the mountains were horyi, or the earth had been brought forth, or the round world, from everlastmg unto everlasting, taV^y— r? GV-yw, from olam to olam, (from aeon to aeon, from age to age,) Thou art God." The whole force of the contrast between * In remarkable analogy with the Hebrew notions of dura- tion, is this word "S'^toinK, commonly rendered yesterday. It is also used to denote past time generally, — sometimes great antiquity, or that which is long past, Thus, Isaiah, xxx, 33, "For Tophet is ordained of old.^^ Compare, also, Micah, ii, 8. It is the same word that is here used. It may seem a paradoxical conception, and yet the ideas of transitori- ness and of long duration would appear to be both combined in the expression. TIME-MEASUREMENTS AND TIME-IDEAS. 168 the human transitoriness and the divine eternity depends upon these different conceptions of time, and the applica- tion of the distinction to the greater works of Deity. If they have force when suggested by God's deaUngs in our own world, age, or olam, then surely would there be a still grander harmony of idea, when they come to the mind from the contemplation of the ages during which the earth was brought from chaos to its full and consummate existence as the abode of rational humanity. But how long were these creative days ? The ques- tion must remain unanswered. Perhaps it could not be answered in any language, or any computations that the human mind could receive. They were dies ineffabiles. They were mcommeasurable by any estimates we could apply. The whole question, too, is comparative. In one aspect they may have been short, in another im- mensely long. The Bible has not told us anything about it. The geologist thinks he has discovered evidence that they were of vast duration. He talks very flippantly, and very ignorantly, of milhons and billions of yeai'S. He measures the operations of God and nature then, by the movements of the latter as they come under his pre- sent observation. On the other hand, the rigid advo- cate of the twenty-four hour theory presses him with a great many very puzzling questions as to the rationale of such a method, which our confident appellant to reason and science finds it very difficult to answer. Why so many ages apparently wasted before the living organiza- tions ? Why so many thousand years of fungi and sea weed ? Why so many ages of shell fish with their un- meaning varieties, — unmeaning, he would say, as long as there were no human eyes to admire, and no men of 164 SOLAK DAY AND SOLAR DIVISIONS OP TIME. science to classify them into genera and species ? Why SO many unhistorical centuries of zoophytes, and worms, and monstrous reptiles, — - all before man appeared ? What wisdom in all this ; what possible design worthy of an all- wise and omnipotent Being ; wha^t order, what fitness, what beauty ? It is absurdity, it is confusion, says the literalist, it is worse than chaos, it is worse than atheism, it is, in truth, a godless nature that would work in this manner, and not the eternal Wisdom. Such a priori objections may be pressed mth great force and skill. The geologist, from his mere scientific position, cannot answer a word. It would certainly look like a very strange proceeding. But then, if he chooses to take other ground, and assume the offensive, he may turn right round, and press home upon our hteralist just as many questions which he cannot answer. Why a world of waters, then a world with an atmosphere and clouds, then a world of vegetation, then a world of reptile life, then a world inhabited by quadrupeds, each precisely twenty-four hours before the other? And what must have been the apparatus for making these days of twenty- four hours that had their date before the outshining of the celestial luminaries ? Did the light go out, and the darkness come back, each time, from its submersion in the abyss ? Why is there no explanation of the difiiculty which the writer m.ust have seen to exist, if the twenty- four hour duration had been meant ? Why is there not the least allusion to it in any other part of the Bible in which the creation is spoken of, and its marvels made the theme of praise and admiration ? What possible conjectures can be offered on this head, which will not seem more strange, forced, and capricious, than any posi- TIME-MEASUREMENTS AND TIME-IDEAS. 165 tions assumed by the most extravagant geologist ? There is no end to such questions. Why was this ? and why was that ? and how was this ? and how was that ? They may be asked to affinity, and the maintainor of the twenty-four hour hypothesis cannot answer one of them without resorting to that divine arUtrium under which the scientific spcculatist may take shelter as well as himself. CHAPTER XIV. as the heavens are high above the earth, so are 30d's ways above our ways, and his thoughts ABOVE OUR thoughts. IDEAS OF SUCCESSION AND DURATION. — Do THEY EXIST IN THE DiVINE MIND ? — Why WAS not creation instantaneous ?— The Divine ways unsearchable. The child interrogating Newton. — Augustine's view of the creative days. — Dies Ineffabiles. — Probable conception of Moses. — Objection considered. — Language of prophecy. — Mysteriousness of the style. We have been considering the mutual objections of the geologist, and the literalist, as he styles himself. There is, however, one great question that might be asked of both — Why was not the whole work instantaneous? This would certainly seem to accord well with some of our supposed a priori notions of the Divine dignity and power. We say supposed notions, for when we carefully examine the grounds of our thinking, it is seen that the dignity of the Divine working is no more connected with the putting forth of immense power in a moment of time, than with concentrating the same power on an atom of space. In other words, it is no more compromised by the conception of duration than by that of extent. The other view is a mere prejudice arising from the limita- tion and imperfection of the human mind, which makes us connect the idea of suddenness with any great exer- cise of power ; as though slowness, whether of continuity, or of a movement per gradus, were a waste of energy. BO THEY EXIST IN THE DIVINE MINB ? 16T It comes from viewing things, as we are compelled to view them, solely on the human and finite side. To God, all his works must appear a totality, with none of those discrete degrees of cause and effect by which we are forced to measure, and^even to conceive of, duration. In other words, the remotest natural effect (or out-worJc- ing^ is m the supernatural cause that originates the whole inseparable chain. God sees it in the cause. It is there to \x^ potentially ; but as no cause can be inert in any part, (this being contrary to the essential idea,) -the whole out-working may be said to be present to Him actually as well as potentially. We, on the other hand, must bring it into moments, or, to speak wdth more ety- mological correctness, into instants. We must connect them in our minds by links of causation, each of which we are compelled to think of as parted on either side from its antecedent and its consequent by some interval, or we cannot think of them at all. But the very idea of God forbids our rightly applying this to Him who is as immediately in all time, as He is without separation present in all space. We err, therefore, on the side of deficiency, and not of excess, when we say that the long- est chain of supernaturally originated causation, though to us it may be equivalent to the whole cycle of the mythical magnus annus, or great year of our own mun- dane system, may be, to the Divine mind, what the circuit of the electric chain is to the human sense, and the human conception. The whole is one Divine act; the whole vibration of nature, or of any particular cycle in nature, is to Him instantaneous, or, we might more correctly say, without instants. The beginning, middle, and end, are all in one flash. This is the nearest con- 168 IDEAS OF SUCCESSION AND DURATION. ceptive representation we could make of the ineffable idea a But, on the other hand, even our electric flash which seems to us so instantaneous, may be no nearer to the absolute instant, — we mean as far as any absolute mea- sure is concerned,— than the. .longest aeon of creation; just as the smallest sensible space, if we measure it by its conceivable intervals, may be no nearer to absolute nothingness than the distances of the planets. A chro- nological microscope, or some instrument which would magnify time in a way analogous to the effect produced by the microscope on space, — that is, would widen the angle of observation which we may conceive of as sepa- rating the mtervals of apparently rapid causation, — such an instrument, we say, whether its power be regarded as affecting the outer or the inner sense, might reveal in the telegraphic flash as many links, each, too, having its own separate moment, as the keenest science can count in the stratified phenomena of the long creative chain.* We have spoken of it as a mere conception of mathe- matical divisibility ; but it may be thought as an actual fact, reahzed by some actually existing mind or sense. Even ui the electric current which seems to us so instan- taneous, there may be an immensely long series of events, or causative links, of which the soul endued with micro- scopic, or rather micro-chronical, powers of sense, would be compelled to think, if it thought at all, as presenting the same slowness, gradualness, or proceeding by suc- cessive degrees — for they are all one name for the * Such a supposition of a time magnifier we know cannot be realized, because time belongs to the inner sense, and is measured by the flow of thought. But it will do for an illus- tration. CREATION WHY NOT INSTANTANEOUS? 169 same thing — which the geologist finds in the past his- tory of our world. Augustine may have meant something like this when he speaks of the mysterious first day as containing all the rest. The whole creation may be said to have been in the principium, in some such manner (if we may compare very great things with very small) as the whole of the day or the month is in the coiled spring of the clock. Is it said that all this is mere metaphysical subtlety, endangering belief in the most sober convictions, let the charge be made as well against the Psalmist and the Apostle. In what we have said about duration as related to the Divine mind, we have only dwelt upon their own sublime idea. We may perhaps have been " darkening counsel" in endeavoring to explain or add to it, but the whole truth is expressed when we simply repeat their own most vivid language, " A thousand years are with the Lord as one day, and one day as a thousand years." But we must view things from our own stand-point ; and here the question not only becomes natural, but may be rationally pressed against any mere theory which grounds itself upon certain times as essential to the work, whether those times be short or long, or by whatever standard we may attempt to measure them. Why was not the whole work instantaneous ? What need had God of periods, whether of twenty-four hours or of millions of years ? It is all strange, very strange, on either hypo- thesis. All our speculations run up, at last, into the unaccountable. The naturalist as well as the theologian has at last to take shelter in mystery. Every one acquainted with Mercator's map of the world, knows how increasingly monstrous become its projections the farther 15 170 DIVINE WAYS UNSEARCHABLE. we get away from the familiar plane of the equator. So must it be of every attempt to project the finite upon the infinite, or which is the converse of the same thought, to confine the infinite to an identity with any forms and conceptions of the finite. One thing, however, the Bible does teach us beyond all question, and that is reverence. There are difficulties everywhere. Science is revealing them much faster than she solves them, and one of her greatest wonders is that her revelations, in this respect, do not make her votaries more humble. " In thy light do we see light,'' says the Psalmist, when speaking of the Divine illumination, but of human science the seem- ing paradox holds strictly true, — through her light unaided by any higher beams, we see only an ever- increasing darkness. But the Scriptures, too, have their difficulties. Na- ture and redemption are both full of strange things. " Lo these are hut parts of his ways," says Job, xxvi, 14. The expression is remarkable, and its intimate connection with our subject warrants us in briefly dwelling upon it. " Lo these are but the ends of his ways." Such is the true rendering of the Hebrew nisj?. Umbreit very gra- phically translates it, Grenzlinien seines Weges nur. " Ofily the ultimate linear boundaries of his tvays^ So Gesenius, — Extremce linece viarum ejus. " The things that do appear" are but the outside extremities, the mere ends of the threads, we may say, that stick out from the deep-laid warp and woof of nature. The wondrous thought is carried on in the succeeding clause, — " How little a whisper* (-ps?;) is heard of Him." And then the * Umbreit — Was fiir eiii leiser Laut des Worts von dein wirhoren? Gesenius — Quid est (^quam tenuis esC) susur- VWLLD INTERROGATING NEWTON. 171 sublime contrast, — " But the thunder of his power who shall understand." If we can but just receive the reve- lation of his glory as it is whispered to us in 2^henomena, who shall hear that awful voice, should it attempt to make known to us the essential mystery of the universe ? We may "interrogate nature," we may interrogate revelation ; but when we have His answer, through one or both, we have no right to' interrogate farther the Great Workman himself. Imagine the lisping child touching the hand of Newton, and enquiring of him the meaning of the abstruse diagrams and operations on which he is so intently engaged. Imagine, too, our young philosopher of final causes exulting in the discovery that all these calculations had reference to his greatest amount of " pleasing sensations," or that the telescope and the orrery were but toys "benevolently designed" for the promotion of the "higher happiness" of himself and his prattling associates. It is no caricature ; it falls short instead of exaggerating ; it is but the faintest image of that sublime Scriptural image which rebukes this whole spirit, whether in the naturalist or the commentator. " Who shall touch* His hand, and say unto Him, — tvhat rus verhi quod nos de eo audimus ? Symmachus — rt 8^ ■^i6j^i(fix.a Twv Xoywv auTou, It is the same word we have, Job, iv, 12, where there is a like whispering revelation in respect to the spiritual world and God's moral government. "A word was secretly brought to me (or stole upon me) and mine ear received a whisperihQXQO^y * Daniel, iv, 32. — In this striking passage the rendering " to stay," (to stay his hand,) although it gives the thought fails in presenting the imagery which is in the Chaldaic xh'o It means "to touch," to strike gently — to tap — to lay the hand upon one. Gesenius, after a number of quotations from 172 worJcest Thouf^ It certainly is very strange ^2X fungi should exist ten thousand years before man ? "What purpose could they have served during all those immense ages ? But the difl&culty is not in the duration ; it is not at all lessened by any shortening of the period. It is just as strange, too, that the system of the world should require that fungi should exist exactly three times twenty- four hours before man. It is very strange that fungi, at least some fungi, should exist at all. But all such queries are met again by the impressive rebuke of the Scripture, — " Who hath directed the spirit of the Lord, (the creative Ruah Elohim,) or being his counsellor hath taught Him ? With whom took He counsel, and who instructed him, and taught Him the path of right, and showed to Him the way of understanding ? Who shall touch His hand and say unto lEm, What doest Thouf^ We would fortify this part of our somewhat prolonged argument on the duration of the periods, by referring to the opinion of St. Augustine. It was a view of the diffi- culties we have mentioned, as attending the supposition of solar periods of twenty-four hours, that led this wisest of the Fathers to conclude that they were not veri dies, real days, or the same as our natural days, but periods, morce, delays or intervals, as he calls them on account of their extraordinary character. It is of no importance here, what he may have thought of their duration, whether longer or shorter. Augustine was too philoso- phical and logical to make a precise duration of twenty- four hours, or what was equivalent to twenty-four hours^ the Arabic and Talraudic writers, thus explains the passage — Metaphora a pueris desumpta est, qui, digitis percussis, a re vetitsl deterrentur. OP THE CREATIVE DAYS. 173 the essential of a day, when he admitted that they were extraordinary in respect to that which is still more closely connected with the common idea, — we mean their measurement by the rising and setting of the sun. He may have thought them short, if he knew of no proof or reason for their being long ; but when one is thus fairly off the ground of the solar day hypothesis, there is nothing in the way of his regarding them as wholly indefinite, or as having any such duration, as a consistent explanation of the account may require. We might easily fill a chapter with quotations from this Father, and very pertinent quotations, too, on the great question, — What was the real nature of these days ? It is sufficient for our argument that he regarded them as altogether anomalous. Some of his explanations are metaphysical, involving inquires in respect to the ideas of time and duration. In one place he seems to think that they were not current days, that is, that they did not pass at all, (non prceterirunt,^ or had not strictly durar tion, because they were before the birth of time and belonged to the aeonian state. But this is unintelligible. He refers to other opinions which are partly allegorical and partly mystical. Their correctness, however, or their agreement with modern science, is a matter of little importance in our argument. They are cited only to show the impression the Mosaic language made on one of the profoundest minds of antiquity, long before any discove- ries in science could have turned the thought from what some would regard as the literal and unmistakeable interpretation. In his treatise, De Genesi ad Literam, Lib. I, Ch. 3, he thus asks, — Quid ergo volunt tres dies transacti sine luminaribus ? An ista dierum et noctium 15* 174 AUGUSTINE S VIEW eniameratio ad distinctionem valet inter illam naturam quae non facta est et eas quae factae sunt, ut mane nominarentur propter speciem, vespera vero propter privationem ? The distinction of morning and evening he thus supposes to be a distinction between a nature not yet made and its subsequent manifestation. Its coming out of the previous imvation is the morning. It is its receiving form and species, (quo facta speciosa atque formosa sunt,) as the words signify in their philo- sophical sense. The previous chaotic, or comparatively chaotic, condition of each period, is its evening ; and this, he says, still rests upon them so far as they are regarded in themselves, or in their possibility of returning, should God permit it, to their original night. To the same efiect in his work, Contra Manichoeos, Lib. I, Ch. 14, — Restat ergo ut intelligamus in mora temporis has distinctiones sic appellatas, vesperam propter transactionem consum- mati operis, et mane propter inchoationem futuri operis. Habent enim consuetudinem divinae Scripturae cTe rebus humanis ad divinas res verba transferre. The reason, it will be perceived, is somewhat similar to the one that 1i?j been advanced, that, in some respects, each imperfect -state was a night to the more perfect that succeeded. There is much more than this in the contrast of the terms, but even such an explanation is more natural, more in harmony with the language than the exegetical fan- cies to which the self-styled literalist has to resort in order to make a morning and evening without a rising and setting sun. In the work, De Genesi ad Literam, Lib. II, Ch. 14, he returns to the same topic, — Quis ergo animo penetret quo modo illi dies transierint, ante- qnam inciperent tempera quae quarto die dicuntur incip- OF THE CREATIVE DAYS. 175 ere ? And then he gives the same distinction as in the first quoted passage. It is called day, circa S2)eciem, or the coming out into form and species ; it is called night, e G-enesi ad Literam, iv, 26,) where he had been treating of the Sabbath, there is language still more clear and still more remarkable, — Ac sic per omnes illos dies unus est dies, non istorum dierum consuetudine inteUigendus quos videmus eireuitu solis determinari atque numerari, sed aUo quodam modo, a quo et illi tres dies qui ante conditionem istorum luminarium commemorati sunt alieni esse non possunt. — " The day (the seventh) is to be understood, not after the manner of those that wo see made by the circuit of the sun, but in another peculiar manner, not unlike that which characterized the first three days of creation.'* What follows puts his meaning beyond all doubt, and shows that he was not merely endeavoring to account for the three ante-solar days, or the phenomenal manner of producing them, but that he 176 DIES INEFFABILES. regarded the whole seven as belonging to this same strange category. Even after the ordination of the sun and heavenly bodies, the remaining creative days pre- served the same transcending character. They were still dies ineffahiles, or, to use his own clear language, " days and nights which God himself had divided in dis- tinction from those of which He said let them be divided by the sun :" Is enim modus non usque ad diem quar- tum, ut inde jam istos (id est quartum quintum sextum septimum) usitatos esse cogitaremus,sed usque ad sextum septimumque perductus est ; ut longe aliter acdpiendus sit dies et nox inter quae duo di visit Deus, et aliter iste dies et nox inter quae dixit ut dividant luminaria ; tunc enim hunc diem condidit quum condidit solem. " For that mode (the unusual or anomalous mode) is carried through, not merely to the fourth, as though we should thenceforth regard the others as usual solar days, but even to the sixth and seventh ; so that, throughout, there is to be a far different understanding of the day and night between which God himself divided, and that other day and night of which He said let the luminaries divide them ; for this latter kind He then established when He ordained the sun." It is sometimes said that the Fathers were poor com- mentators ; pious and good men, they are allowed to be, but deplorably ignorant of the true prmciples of herme- neutics. It is true, they sometimes see what is not in the Scriptures, and yet it is equally true, that they often see what is really there, but which our modern scholar- ship in its boastful blindness, wholly overlooks, because it is not really looking to " discover wondrous things out of God's law." But why should the most modern inter- GOD-DIVIDED AND SUN-DIVIDED DAYS. 177 pretation have so generally failed to notice the distinc- tion which Augustine presents ? It is certainly patent on the very face of the language when we come to view it in its true contrasts and its true emphasis. When the eye is once upon it, we see that it could not have been more clearly given in the Hebrew or the English. There it stands in the Scripture, plainer than any records of geology, as distinct as though " graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever." There are the days which Crod divided, — supernaturally divided by his own direct immediate power originating a new thing, or a new work, in nature — and there are the days of which He said, " let the sun divide them," natural days, measured pff in the regularly returning course of nature, and mark- ing the interior divisions of that nature instead of being its exterior chronological bound. Here is this wondrous difference patent, we repeat it, on the very face of the account. Can we read of these two kinds of days so strikingly contrasted in their natural and supernatural character, their God-made and sun-made modes of divi- sion, and yet believe that they must be exactly ahke in all the other features with which we are familiar as belonging to our solar periods ? In other words, can we recognize the immense difference in their work and origin, without feeling that the most obvious exegesis is the one that makes a corresponding difference in their duration ? There is a place for other quotations of a similar kind from Augustine, in the argument respecting the Sabbath. Like thoughts abound in some other sections of his argu- ment against the Manichseans. He recurs to the subject, also, in his great work, De Civitafe Dei, Lib. xi, Ch. S7, 178 CONCEPTION OF MOSES. — Qui dies cujus modi sint, aut perdifficile nobis aut etiam impossibile est cogitare, quanto magis dicere. " Which days, of what kind they were, it is very difficult, yea, impossible, for us even to think, how much more to say" ! But our quotations are enough to satisfy the reader that ages before geology was thought of, or science had pro- \ duced any motive for warping the Scriptures, the sound- I est minds regarded the days in Genesis as denoting j strange anomalous periods, moras, ot intervals in creation, / that could never be brought under our common solar measurements. This is all that need be desired as against the twenty-four hour literalist, and the interpre- tation he would so dogmatically maintain. There is another question which may be fairly asked here, and to which therefore we would give attention. Can it be supposed that Moses himself really beUeved in such long periods as the geologist talks of ? Was this, or anything like this, his conception of the word day when he employed it? It might be rephed that we have / nothing to do with Moses' conception. He was a mere medium to write down certain Hebrew words, and if the higher Author has so caused the language to be arranged that it is capable of any expanding sense that science may demand, it is enough. Eut with this we should not be satisfied. We do not deem the position wholly tena- able. According to the theory of language before pre- sented, the conception is part, and an important part, too, in the chain of communication. It is represented directly by the words it suggests, and is itself represen- tative of the great fact which stands behind it. We can not, therefore, wholly dispense with the thought of the / writer. The higher Author of the Bible, in his commu- CONCEPTION OF MOSES. 179 laications to us, made use of the conception of Moses just as truly as he has made use of the Hebrew, or language of Moses, through which that' conception was both pro- duced and expressed. It is enough, however, if this conception may embrace the larger idea, and does not exclude it. It may be scientifically very rude, very sim_ pie, very incorrect, and yet wide enough, that is suffi- ciently indefinite or unbounded, to hold all, and more than all, that science can ever bring to fill it. And this furnishes the element of our answer. It is enough for us if we can gather from the face of the account itself, and from all the associations of thought that connect themselves with it, that the writer, be he who he may, was not confined, and did not consider himself confined, to the narrow platform of the twenty-four hour hypothesis. If we can regard him as fairly ofi* it, or if he has said that which makes it impossible that we should view him as standing on it, then have we room enough. We answer, therefore, — It is not supposed that Moses had the conception of our modern geologist ; yet still we no less strongly maintain that he had in mind something very different from the solar periods of twenty-four hours such as make our common day. They were to him, not geological ages, any more than they were the ordi- nary mornings and evenings, but the great days of God's working, — strange, extraordinary, pneternatural days, i It was not the idea of the modern man of science, yet I still it might embrace it. Did the writer extend his mind beyond the limited period of twenty-four hours ? Were his mornings and evenings of a different kind from those made by our constant sun-rising and sun-setting ? Did his thought go abroad into the indefinite and take in — 180 BEGmNING OF SOLAR DAYS. to what extent we do not now enquire — the vast in time, as well as in space and power, associating it with the greatness of the Divine action, and measuring it by days analogous to other aspects of the vast conception and such as the thought of God's working would naturally suggest ? Then, however limited the science of Moses, or his view of the actual universe, there is room enough in the expansion of such a conception to take in all that science has discovered, or may discover, should her pro- gress even extend so far as to render childish and obso- lete all the doctrines and all the language in which she now so proudly boasts. But why, then, call them days ? On this objection, in its general aspect, sufficient has been said. A more specific form of it, however, is drawn from the undoubted mention here of the common solar period, — "And let them be for years and for days,^^ etc. Can it be sup- posed, says the objector, that the indefinite could have been intended in the preceding use, and that then there should have been so sudden a change. We think we have fairly stated the difficulty, and, in reply to it, we say, that everything depends upon the stand-point we occupy in our interpretation. In one aspect, and as we think, the only consistent aspect of the account, this express mention of the solar days is a decided confirma- tion of the view that has been taken. The declaration that solar days now begin, seems to establish the position f that the days previously mentioned must have been of a different character. The employment of the same word is a matter which resolves itself solely into the usage of language, and will appear natural or forced, according to our familiarity, or want of famiharity, with such usage. STAND-POINT OF INTERPRETATION. 181 A like juxijaposition of terms might occur in our own tongue, without exciting surprise. Our own language, like most others, uses the word day to denote an epoch or cjcHcal period,* and an English writer, in setting forth an order or scheme of creation, could say with perfect propriety, and without meaning to be poetical, in that day there first commenced the regular division and mea- surement of years, and days^ and seasons. Still more consistent would it be in the Hebrew, where yom is the most common word for indefinite period, and would most naturally come to the reader's mind whenever that idea had to be expressed. In such interpretation everything depends upon the association of ideas and feeling, which is forced upon us by the context. Should one thus take the word day in some plain historical passage in Kings, or Chronicles, or the " Books of the Matters of the Days,"f (ea^tosn •'•na^j) as it is called, he might justly be condemned as extrava- gant. There is no call there for such an interpretation. We do not mean merely that there is no exigeiitia loci, but that there is, moreover, an utter want of harmony with such an idea. Everything looks the other way. It would be purely arbitrary, if not utterly absurd. But take next a passage from one of the prophetical books, where the writer is looking out into the great uncreated * It may have come to us from the Bible, like some other idioms in our language which have the appearance of oriental- isms. t Even here, however, the word is used more properly of years than solar days, and would be better rendered Annalia than Diurnalia. It is chronological history — or history re- corded with reference to measured times, instead of being a list of events simply. 16 182 PROPHETICAL DAYS. future, where the whole context favors the thought of the vast, the unknown, the indefinite, the unmeasured, — where great events viewed fer se and without reference to their chronological extent, or strict chronological connec- tions, image themselves upon the canvas of the prophetic eye. In the midst of such associations we feel that the case is quite different, and all the laws of sober hermeneu- tics require a different treatment of the language. " In that day shall the mountain of the Lord's house be estab- lished on the tops of the mountains, and all nations shall flow into it." The thought of solar days here is alto- gether out of place ; nor, on the other hand, can we explain the use of the term as merely poetical. There is something more than illustrative metaphor, there is a propriety in the language which is independent of all mere rhetorical or tropical adornment. The word has its true and literal, yet vastly expanded and elevated, sense. Take still another case in which the term occurs in connection with specific numbers, and with something, too, of a chronological aspect, but everything around is mysterious, extraordinary, and of a nature to carry us out of the common chronological associations of regular time-measured periods. In such circumstances it does not strike us as at all unnatural to interpret days by years, or even longer cycles of time. Whether our specific view as to mere duration be well founded or not, we feel that the extraordinary interpretation is demanded by the whole air and spirit of the passage. The 'weeks of Daniel and the days of the x\pocalypse we cannot treat as ordinary weeks and days. The grandeur of the prophecy wholly collapses on such a view. Aside from all questions of chronological correctness, the narrow MYSTERIOUSNESS OP THE STYLE. 183 ■estimate is felt to be out of critical and hermeneutical harmony with the accompanying imagery. We are in the midst of the vast, the obscure, the mysterious. We are brought in connection with ideas which, although capable of partial revelation, are in a great degree ineifable. We permit the feeling to influence our interpretations, and we act naturally and consistently in so doing. Carry this out, then, and w^ould it not apply with equal, if not still greater, force, to the wondrous account of the creation, taking us away back into the unmeasured and immeasurable regions of the past, just as prophecy throws the beams of its lamp upon the dark places of the distant future. Here, too, then, is everything to suggest the same associations of the marvellous and the extraordinary. The word employed is a very common one, but the man- ner of expression is very strange, and designed, we think, to give us an intimation of something very strange in its significance. It is a mode of speech unique upon the face of the Scripture. There is certainly nothing like it in any of the chronological parts of revelation. Time is nowhere else reckoned in this mysterious manner, — There was an evening and there was a morning — one day, — There was an evening and there was a morning — second day, — There was an evening and there was a morning — third day, etc. There was one of these days in which God rested. Was that twenty-four hours long ? Has it been finished and the work of creation again resumed by the great Architect ? And then there is the day of days, w^hen the whole creative genesis, or series of generations (nSnV'in) is summed up in one grand period called "• the day in which the Lord made the heavens and the earth." We do not say that here is? 184 MYSTERIOUSNESS OF THE STYLE. in all respects, the same style as in the other parts of the Scripture referred to, but we are in the midst of ideas suggestive of a similar expansion of thought and feeling, and which should, therefore, be permitted to have a similar expanding effect on our interpretation of language. CHAPTER XV. CREATION OF TIME. Division of time. — PlUle of the heavenly bodies. — Regulate, oub phy- sical LIFE. — An aid to our rational existence. — He made the stars also. — In what sense made for us. — Regulators of the seasons. — Tuk POET Aratus. — Whole for the parts. — Astrology. — Phenomenal uses. " And let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years." ^' And he made them to riile the day, or for the rule of the day, and for the rule of the night." We have ah-eady compared with this the passage. Job, xxxviii, 33, — " Knowest thou the ordinances of the hea- vens? Canst thou set their dominion in the earth?" There is here the same idea of appointing, ordaining, arranging, in distinction from creation. But not to dwell further on this, we would present another thought, which comes to us from the Hebrew nVty^^. There is a beau- T T : •.• tiful suggestion, which may be regarded as fairly con- necting itself with the etymological significance of the word. More than any other kindred root in Hebrew, the verb presents the idea of ruling by law, by conformity to a measured and measuring standard. This it gets from the radical primary sense of comparison., assimila- tion, agreement with some canon or rule ; and hence the authority or dominion expressed by it is more properly one of guidance, regulation, direction, than of arbitrary and undetermined power. We see this in the noun V^iw, 16^ 186 RULE OF THE HEAVENLY BODIES. a similitude, a proverb, a parable, hence applied to any regulated or poetical construction of language. Now, in this sense, and without pressing too far the etymological image, we may say that it has a striking and beautiful application to the dominion of the heavenly bodies in respect to our earth. The motions of the sun and moon, or of the earth in relation to them, are not only in themselves the result of law, or conformity to regulative canons, but productive of a corresponding assimilation, or conformity, in our general terrestrial physics. The vegetable and animal worlds become modified by it. The growth of plants, and, perhaps, of all organic substances, is different from what it would have been in the absence of any such arrangement. But more than all this ; it doubtless exerts an important influence over the exercises of the rational soul. Every one who reflects must see that the exact knowledge of years, and times, and eras, constitutes one of the great differences between the civilized and savage state, even where such knowledge is regarded as simply affecting those outward utilities that depend upon accurate canons of time. Next to the Bible, the most important book for the human race is doubtless the alma- nac. Without an accurate measurement of the day and year, there could be no chronology ; without chronology there could be no history ; without history there could be no national or generic experience ; without such expe- rience there could be no progress ; and without progress there could be no civilization. All this, perhaps, would be readily admitted in its bearing on our outward state and relations. But do we sufficiently appreciate the direct relation of such measurements to the laws of our EFFECT UPON BODY AND MIND. 187 inner life ? What would we be, what would our minds become, without known divisions of time ? How much is our very thinking, yea, the very law of our thinking, determined by them ? They form the connection between the inner and the outer worlds. By means of them, even our material frame is brought into harmony with the phenomenal universe. Our human micro-cosmos is timed and tuned to the great kosmos. The circulation of the blood, the periodical working of the general animal ma- chinery, gets modulated in accordance with its unvary- ing cycles ; and we know that these movements of our bodily microcosm regulate, in a large degree, the flow of the thoughts and emotions. When, through any exciting cause, we think or feel at a faster rate than would be in sympathy vfith these internal periods, we are reminded of it by a fever, or some other ill effect proceeding from the spiritual to the animal or sentient economy. Take away, then, all outward measures of time, and formed as we now are of soul and body, it would be like removing the regulator, or balance wheel, of the whole system. The inner as well as the outer machinery would run down. Our souls would become chaotic, our thoughts unregulated ; our life a dream, in which past phenomena, present sensations, and future imaginations would be mingled in hopeless confusion. For the want of such a regulator, man with his boasted intellect would sink below all that is known of the condition of the savage. For this reason alone, had there been no other, he could not have existed with his present mental and bodily organization in the ante-solar periods, or before these arrangements for recurring vicissitudes and regular times had been brought into operation. 188 Vegetable life might have been supported long before. Warmth and light, if necessary, might have been pro- duced, in all required abundance, from chemical agencies solely terrestrial. Animals, we are expressly told, com- menced existence after the celestial ordinations of the fourth period ; but, for all that science could say to the contrary, there might have been some species of torpid animal natures millions of years before the sun was appointed to rule the day. Man, however, with his pre- sent physical and spiritual constitution, could not have existed as man, — that is, as a comparing, assimilating, time-measuring intellect, whose most constant and prac- tical exercise of rationality consists in judging the future by the past, through the aid of those regulated divisions without which his conceptions of both would present only a dark and formless abyss. In other words, without some such arrangement, he must either rise above time and " be as Gods," that is, think as God thinks, or fall below it, into that state which is alone adapted to the irrational animal nature. '' He made the stars also^ In the Hebrew the ex- pression is peculiar. It is without any governing verb, and seems to come in by way of a note in passing. Moses does not say that he made the stars to give light upon the earth, although this may be inferred from the connection. Much less does he say that he made them for no other purpose. The mention of the moon and the night makes this the proper place to speak of them, if / they are to be alluded to at all, and the writer makes this brief note or scholium, — " He made the stars also ;" or, still more concisely, — " the stars also." When, and THEIR RELATION TO THE EARTH. 189 how, and why ? In respect to these questions no informa- tion is given to us. It is, however, still objected to the Mosaic account, that it seems to represent the celestial bodies — certainly the sun with its huge bulk — as having been made for the use of our earth, and for such use alone. But giving the language such a meaning as the objection demands, and laying aside all such considera- tions as we before adverted to in respect to the compara tive insignificance of mere space magnitude, the represen- tation might still be maintained as being in accordance with that oldest and truest philosophy that regards the universe as a kosmos, or unity, in which each part is made for the whole ; whilst no less really and truly may it be conversely said, that the whole is in some way for each and every part. Moses may not have known of any other uses. But he knew from his reason, as well as from God's inspira- tion, that whatever in the physical world anything statedly and regularly does, that thing it was designed to do. To the pious soul, the a priori argument here is not only first, but strongest. It starts with the designer, and thence infers the design in the fact. Thus it operates, and thus, therefore, was it intended to operate. In this view the sun and moon were certainly made to give light upon the earth, and to 7'ide the earth's seasons whatever other designs may have been in their creation, or their appointment with reference to our own world. The inter- pretation does not demand it, and yet we may extend the same view to the stars. The light they give the earth could hardly have been in the writer's mind at all, but the other use may have been intended, and that, too, with great propriety. They rule the seasons and the 190 REGULATORS OP YEARS AND SEASONS. years ; that is, they regulate our knowledge of them ; and in the early ages of the world, were almost the oiJy means for this end. They furnished the rule or canon by which they were determined. The first nations had no other almanack than the roUing heavens. Spring and summer, plowing, sowing, and reaping time, were regu- lated by the rising and setting of certain constellations. Their use in this respect is referred to, not only by the Greek and Latin poets, but also in the Bible. " Canst thou bring out Mazzaroth in its seasons ?" The '' bands of Orion" are the iron chains of the wintry frosts and storms; the "sweet influences of Pleiades" represent the return of the genial vernal season, and of that revi- viscence of nature of which the hehocentric rising of this beautiful constellation was the well known rule or signal. The thought is admirably expressed by the old poet Aratus, in the beginning of his Phaenome^ia. AuTog ya^ rays 2HMAT' ev ou^avw idrrj^i^sv. The stars* propitious power he shows to men, And high in heav'n firm binds their ruling signs. One might almost fancy it a free translation of the very language of Moses, — "He set them in the firmament for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years." In the same manner Cicero speaks of them as the mode- rators or 7nders (d-^Vtyto) of those temporal vicissitudes, by the accurate knowledge of which man is distin- guished from the brute. Cum videmus vicissitudines dierum atque noctium, commutationesque temporum quadripartitas, ad maturitatem frugum et ad tempera- tionem corporum aptas, eorumque omnium moderatorem et ducem solem, lunamque quasi fastorum notis signantem THE WHOLE FOR THE PARTS. 191 dies, — turn quinque stellas eosdem cursus constantissime servantes, etc. Tusc. Quoes. I, 28. These important uses they serve, and we may there- fore truly say, as far as our earth is concerned, that for such purposes they were manifested in the firmament, A one-sided science may object to the language, but a more catholic philosophy endorses it without scruple. In such philosophy the idea of a perfect organic whole is that in which the whole and all the parts are mutually and reciprocally ends and means, — not only each part for the whole, which is the finding of a mere mechanical physics, but the whole for each, and each for each. The remotest systems have a bearing upon our earth, and our earth on the remotest systems. No part is what it would be, except as such a part of such a whole. It is from this idea, grossly perverted as it may have been, came the old astrology. The destiny of each world, the des- tiny of each man, was supposed to vary according to the state of the universe when he came into being. The doctrine was founded upon a glorious thought which more than redeems its superstitious abuses. It was the oneness of the kosmos, — an idea which, even when held in connection with the grossest ignorance in respect to facts, is of more value than any science, however accu- rate and extensive, that does not make it the beginning and the end of all its investigations. In connection with this, there comes up a thought analogous to one on which we have before dwelt at some length. In setting forth the facts of creation, the Mosaic record takes as their representatives the most outward or obvious phenomena, that is, '' the things that are seen," and that appear the same for all eyes and for all ages. Science takes the more interior phenomena, but 192 PHENOMENAL USES. revelation could not adopt any language built upon them, because the farther or more inward progress of science is ever rendering it obsolete. So, also, when the Bible speaks of uses, it takes those more obvious and outward ones which all minds at once acknowledge. In this way it answers its great end of being universally, and for all times, inteUigible, without contradicting, or coming in collision with, any other phenomena, or any other uses which the progress of scientific discovery may bring to light. Science boasts of having ascertained other ofiices for the sun, beside that of giving light upon the earth and exercising a dominion over our thoughfb in the regu- lation of years and seasons. But has she yet determined the great design— we mean the great physical design— which embraces aU others, and to which all partial ends are incidental or subordinate ? Can she give the highest or most ultimate physical reason for the sun or the solar system? Is it likely she will ever discover, or even approximate to, this design, or this reason, in its bearing upon other systems, and other systems of systems, and so on to the entire universe of material being ? If she, too, then, must be content with intermediate uses, let her adore the higher wisdom of revelation, in taking those which, although seemingly the most partial and local, do present, in fact, a language so much surpassing her own in impressiveness, in catholicity, in enduring moral power. Let astronomy be carried ever so far theoretically, the great practical uses of the stars to us will continue to be the accurate determination of the year, the regulation of the seasons, and the safe navigation of ships. For these uses, therefore, if not created, they were at least appointed, and revealed to our earth. CHAPTER XYI. WORK OF THE FIFTH DAY. Phoduction of the animal baces. — Production out of the earth. — Lite- ral SENSE. — COJI.MON PREJUDICES. — MuST NOT BE AFRAID OF NATURALISM. — Hebrew words of production. — ^Definition of nature. — Discrete degrees CAN NHVER PASS INTO EACH OTHER. — ThE SUPERNATURAL. — ThE CONNATURAL. — The CONTRA-NATURAL. — ThE UNNATURAL. — WORDS FOE GROWTH AND BIRTH IMPLY DURATION.— Theories of animal production. — Milton. — Old greek F-iNCiEs. — The omnific word. — A nature in the earth. To this period belong the birth and growth of the ani- mal races. We would, however, take in connection with it the germination of plants, which, the reader will recol- lect, was reserved for subsequent discussion under this head, because of its presenting the same questions and having the same bearing upon our general argument respecting the true nature of the creative days. Going back, therefore, to the third period, we find there, as here, a pecuUar feature in the account to which sufficient attention has not been given. And here, especially, would we appeal to those who assume to be the exclusive advocates of the fair and literal interpretation, or contend that we must take language in its most obvious and ordinary sense. It has been shown, that in determining this easy sense, everything depends on getting a true position in respect to a writing so ancient and on a subject so much out of the track of ordi- nary ideas. But have these advocates of Hteralism well weighed the Htcral, and, as it would seem, only possible meaning of the words here employed ? The writer, too, IT 194 WE MUST FOLLOW THE RECORI>. is in favor of the literal seme, that is, the true sense, made out bj the most sober consideration of everything which should control our view of the proper significance of language. Let us, then, follow the record wherever it leads us ; even though it may sometimes seem to favor naturahsm, in opposition to what might be thought to be the more pious conclusion. We know nothing about these old matters but what the Bible tells us. Science here is dumb. Geology finds very ancient vegetable and animal remains, but gives us no light whatever on the questions, whence they came, or how they commenced the origin of their existence. In no part of the history of creation are we thrown more completely on the record ; in no part is the language less suggestive of anything out of the most common significance of terms ; and yet it is not a little singular that no commentators are more pre- pared to break over the common senses of words, and to do violence to language here, than those who are the most narrow in their interpretations elsewhere, and espe- cially in those parts where the widest significance would seem to be demanded by the Avhole aspect of the account. There are some common opinions which affect our view of the ordinary sense of the words, and yet these opinions or prejudices could never have come from the mere study of the passage itself They may be thought to be more pious, more in accordance with what, in our conception, is due to the Divine dignity ; but they involve a departure from the literal sense, or anything like the literal sense, much wider, to say the least, than an inter- pretation which only follows one of the most universal laws of language in giving an indefinite sense to a word of time. THEORIES OF ANIMAL PRODUCTION. 195 A common opinion is, that the first vegetable and ani- mal formations were direct acts of God ; and most of those who hold it think, perhaps, that they have derived it from the Scriptural statements. This opinion presents two aspects. Some would maintain, that, as in the origin of man, they proceeded in each case from a primitive pair, or from a primitive individual, or specific progenitor the immediate creation of the Divine hand, and had thence, from such individual centre, spread themselves over all those parts of the earth in which they are to be found. Another theory would regard them as created in numbers, and assigned to their positions in all quarters of the globe, thus constituting a great many centers of production. In both cases the original plants and ani- mals would be direct creations, coming immediately from the ab-extra plastic power, or mechanical shaping of the Deity. But certainly, the account does not tell us anything like this. There is no language from which we could infer it. There is nothing in any other parts of the context that would shut us up to it. There are no metaphors which would in any way imply it. There are no words containing the germs of ideas which could possibly be expanded so as to embrace such a conception. Nay, more, any interpretation of the kind, even had there been something in the context to favor it, is directly excluded by the positive assertion of a process which involves the contrary supposition. " And God said, — Let the earth bring forth grass ^ the herb yielding seed (or seeding seed) after its kind, and the fruit tree yielding fruit whose seed is in itself, after its kind, and it was so — And the earth brought forth^^ etc. Here are two distinct things — the going 196 HEBREW WORDS OF PRODUCTION. forth of the Divine Omnific Word, as in the other crea- tive periods, and the productive power, energy, or ener- gising of the earth. This latter is expressed by two different, yet kindred Hebrew verbs. One of them, Ntt;n, means properly to germinate, (Greek, ^Xatfrvja'ai, — Vul- gate, gei^minare,') to bud, or to sprout, as in Joel, ii, 22. '' For the pastures of the wilderness do spring, the tree beareth fruit ; the fig tree and the vine do yield their strength," — (B^QXadT-rixsv ra liB^la — Quia germinaverunt speciosa deserti. There it is applied in Kal to the plant. Here in Hiphil, it has for its subject the earth, — " Let the earth germinate, or cause to germinate.''^ It is the causal or causative conjugation, and although we would not attach much importance to this standing alone and unsupported by the context, yet in the connection in which we here find it, it is certainly worthy of note. The other Hebrew word means precisely what the English does, to come forth, and in the Hiphil conjugation which is here used, to cause to come forth, or out, to bring forth — to give birth to, nasei facer e, or cause to he horn, which is the special sense it has. Job, x, 18, Isaiah, Ixv, 9, and other places. The earth then was not a mere passive recipient, nor was production by it a mere outward unessential mode, having no other than an arbitrary connection with the Divine working, or employed merely as an accompanying sign ; but the earth exerts a real causative power, and this becomes an essential and im- portant part in the chain of causation which God saw fit to originate and estabhsh. The Divine power was exerted, but it was upon the earth, and through the earth. It was upon the nature and through the nature that had become established in the previous creative acts, whilst, A NEW THING IN NATURE. 197 at the same time, there is the beginning of a new energy imparted to this nature which it did not possess before. The command is to the earth; but the earth is not passive. She exerts an active obedience in the exercise of the old nature modified by the new force which comes from the supernatural Omnific Word going forth, as it previously did for the separation of the light from the chaos and the waters from the waters. Before, it was said, " Let there be light," and now again, Let there he life — and life began to be. As in all the other periods, so here there was doubtless the instantaneous beginning of a new, and, at first, supernatural force put into nature. Vegetable life had a moment when it began to be, — a new thing upon the earth, unborn and undeveloped out of anything previously existing. The earth, by any natural power previously imparted, or previously exer- cised, would never have produced it ; but then, when the new energy is imparted, the mode, or law of production, is through the earth. This work might have been direct and instantaneous ; and there would have been no difficulty in believing such a declaration, had it been made. Reason has no diffi- culty in admitting the supernatural. The devout mind loves to believe it when clearly revealed, and is ever most fond of those parts of the Bible in which it is most boldly set forth. It loves to read how nature, ever so obedient to her Lord, is sometimes commanded to stand away from His Presence. It loves to read how God came down on Sinai, and Christ rose in the clouds before the gaze of the wondering disciples. But here the lan- guage just as clearly conveys the idea of a natural pro- cess, or going on, after a supernatural origin. The 17* 19b A NATUKAL PROCESS IMPLIED. germination, the bringing forth, the growth, the seeding^ the yielding, each after its kind, implying previous types, laws, or ideas, according to which they grew, — all this has the appearance of a natural process. It is a nature^ a being horn, if we can attach any meaning to such a word, and to suppose all evolved by a rapid crowding of causalities into a period equal to one of our present solar days, is not to maintain the supernatural, but the unnatu- ral. Strange as this would be, still if it were the fair meaning of the language, we would not hesitate to yield to it any opposing hypothesis, however cherished ; for we have no other guide here than the Scriptures. With all reverence, however, and with every caution lest we might be in the wrong, must we say, that such a pro- ceeding would appear to be neither nature nor miracle. It would seem to lack what we must regard as the most essential features of the one, whilst it vfould have only an unreal semblance of the other, A few distinctions and definitions may be needed here to place this subject in a clearer light. The only idea we have of nature is that of a regular, constant flow of cause and effect governed bv established laws operat- ing uniformly, or ever in the same manner under the same circumstances, and with the same accompaniments. Phenomenally, it is a continual coming out, growth, ((putfiff,) or hirth of one thing from another, or as its ety- mology imports, a being horn, Qnatura,) or a heing about to he horn, from something that has gone before, and, at the same time, a giving birth to something which is to follow. We cannot conceive of it except as having had a beginning at some time, and from something out of itself. From the necessity, therefore, of our laws of IDEA OF NATURE. 199 thinking, as well as from revelation, we say, that it is a power given originally by God. But though thus ori- ginated, we can distinctly conceive of it as a nature only when we regard it as in some manner left to itself, and operating by its own laws or methods. How this should be we cannot understand ; and yet we must adopt some distinction of fact between the prime originating super- natural energy and the subsequent ongoing, or we resolve God into nature and nature into God, — thus run- ning into atheism on the one hand, or an equally godless pantheism on the other We may suppose this original divine force ever present as the supporting ground, but not im-manent or per-manent as the immediate causal force in every natural effect. We must believe that God is able to impart such a natural power, and leave it, in this sense, to itself, — thus making it something differ- ent from the immediate divine energy. Those who hold, with Malbranche, and others, that there is ever the im- manent divine presence in every act of nature, do, in fact, diminish, instead of magnifying, the divine power and dignity. It is simply maintaining that God cannot make a nature, and hence, of course, that there is no- thing supernatural, because, in fact, there is nothing truly natural. It is unmeaning, too, and absurd, since it supposes media which are, in truth, no media, but only arbitrary signs, having no dynamical connection with the effects. Nature, in this view, would be as irrational as a machinery having all the appearance of mediate dynamical causation, and yet requiring the constant application of the original motive force directly to every wheel, and cog, and strap, in the complicated structure. 200 DIFFERENT KINDS OP NATURES. Holding nature thus to be, in some sense, a self-sub- sisting, self-acting power, we may next regard it in its extent and its degree. It may be the universal nature, that is, the whole nature of the universe in all its con- nected and interdependent organization as one great force developing itself by laws which God has given it. Or it may be a partial nature, such, for example, as the nature of the earth, or of some still less organism, such as that of a tree, or an animal, developing itself by its own internal law, as modified by its connection with the uni- versal. Again, in respect to degree. There may be an inchoate, an imperfect, or rudimentary nature, which is preparatory to some higher stage ; which higher stage will be generated, not through any unaided development of the old, but by the supernatural interposition, when the old or lower nature has prepared the way for the new Word and the new Presence. Again. Every nature, whether of the whole or a part, whether inchoate or advanced, must be finite. There are limits to its work- ing which it cannot pass ; there is a height above which it cannot rise. The one ground power, and the from time to time superadded powers, if there are such, can only develop themselves to a certain degree which is their maximum. When this is arrived at, the nature must do one of three things. It must either stop entirely, or go on unlimitedly at the maximum development and in the same plane, — which we think we could show to be impossible, — or it must return and continually repeat itself in an ever waxing and waning cycle. But it can never, of itself, get above the original force as controlled by the original finite law. CONTINUITY IN NATURE. 201 In every nature, too, regarded bj itself, 'there must be continuity. The mind demands this as involved in the very idea of a nature. There can be^ within it no discrete degrees. Its law can have no leaps ; it must be an iinhrohen law, or law of continuity. Every effect, or out-working, must have something in common with the cause which precedes it, and out of which it flows, or which may be also said to flow into it. Hence, however it may seem to change, such change is only the outward growth of the cause varying in manner and degree as it proceeds from its latent to its phenomenal state. This is the law of each several nature within its own bounds. But beyond these bounds, the different natures, or the different scales, must be parted from each other by dis- crete supernatural beginnings. The continuity from nature to nature is severed by impassable chasms. Thus we may say of the ascending degrees, inert matter, motion, organic growth proceeding from within, outward self-mo- tion or locomotion, mere animation, appetite, choice, the rational will, and rationality itself; they are all distinct from each other ; they never can come out of, or be born, (nata, naturata, yiyvo^sva^') that is, proceed naturally horn each other. So says the revelation which God has made to us in the laws of our own minds, and by which we inter- pret the revelation He has made to us in nature. By these laws of our thinking it is made impossible for us to conceive of one of these states being the other, or being involved in the other. They are parted by chasms, across Avhich no mere nature can ever leap. Any other supposition would involve a war of ideas, or the contra- diction which our scientific naturalists are sometimes so fond of using, — ex nihilo niJiil — nothing can ever come 202 CHASMS BETWEEN NATURES. from nothing. It is just as certain, too, that more can never come from less. To apply this, then, we may say, that the old nature existing in the earth previous to the destined period, could never have produced the first dawning of vegetable life. It could not have given birth to the lowest fungus. We infer this, too, not merely from our sensible know- ledge of nature's phenomena, or our reasoning about her potentialities, but from the express revelation of the fact, that here the Divine creative Word again goes forth. Had the development been wrapped up in the previous nature, there would have been no need of this, and therefore, no distinct creative day or period for the work. Again. Nature must not only be finite in extent, and degree of its power, but must have a certain duration as viewed by the finite mind. It is only comprehensible to us as a floiv or succession. To the Deity, as Vr'e have said before, all the effects, or as we may more properly say, the tvliole effect is in the cause. And since to Him — with all reverence would we venture the opinion — powers and potencies are the higher realities, it is all affectum, all done, all completed or summed in the ori- ginal causative energy ; and hence, speaking more lai- mano, may we say, that to Him it is instantaneous. To us, although we know that the flow of a nature must be continuous, and that every effect must be in the cause, and ever coming out of the cause, yet still must it pre- sent (to our finite sense at least) the appearance of steps or degrees. Hence, too, for us, to whom the phenomenal are the realities, or the nearest realities, nature must have succession, and succession for finite minds is dura- tion longer or shorter in its seeming, according to the PLOVf OR SUCCESSION IN NATURE. 203 manner, or number, or apparent separation of succes- sive events (or out-comings) as they present them- selves like points on which the eye can rest in the steady flowing stream. If any one ask, — Why does God work in this way? what need has he of natures ? We can only say, " So it seemeth good in his sight." He could doubtless have made all things differently, but then we know it would not have been the best way, because He has not adopted it. He works through nature, or a succession of natures, no one developing another, yet each preparing the way for the one that is to succeed. We see enough of the universe to know that this is the method, and thus considered, the general view is unaffected by the mea- sure of dura,tion. It is of no importance to the argu- ment, whether the flow seem more or less rapid as viewed from our stand-point, or as measured by the shorter periods of' that exactly divided physical system to which our thinking, that is, our flow of ideas, has become conformed. It is still the same great princii^le, whether it appears in the growth of the fungus, the " son of a night," in the growth of the plant that lives for years, in the growth of a tree that endures for centu- ries, in the growth of worlds whose cyclical law extends through geons or ages, embracing a duration equal, per- haps, to millenial or miUio-millenial recurrences of such cycles as are made by our exact sun-measured years. It is the great principle for which we contend ; and this established, it certainly ought to guide us in our inter- pretations of a record which professes to reveal the cre- ative acts of God. 204 If we thus view nature as a stream of causation gov- erned by a certain law which not only regulates but limits its movements, then the supernatural, as its name imports, would be all above nature^ — in other words, that power of God which is employed " according to the counsel of his own will" in originating, controlling, limit- ing, increasing, opposing, or terminating nature, whether it be the universal or any particular or partial nature. Thus regarded, the supernatural would assume various aspects to which we may give distinctive names. As originating nature, we may call it the ante-natural. As adding a new force to a previously existing nature, it may be styled praeter-natural^ although there are some uses of the word that might vary from this idea. If such new power, though higher than the previous nature, is in harmony with it, and works through it, thus pro- ducing a higher order of results, though still through it and by it, then it may be named the con-natural, — since, in this manner, in connection with the old, it truly be- co i:es itself a new nature. When the Divine power is in immediate and direct opposition to nature, breaking through its laws, and producing events the opposite of what would have come out of its unobstructed sequences, then may we rightly call it the contra-natural — such as are those interpositions that are generally termed mira- culous. But there is another aspect still, which we would attempt to define, although it does not fall in so readily with our laws of thinking as the others, and may, there- fore, appear to involve inconsistencies. There may be the conception of a supernatural power working through a nature, or said thus to work through it, (as far as Ian- THE UN-NATURAL. 205 guage can convey such an idea,) and yet in opposition to it, or in a manner which is not in harmony with it, — or, in other words, without any regard to the laws, or successions of time, or orderly phenomenal manifestations of that previous nature through which it is said thus to work. This may be called not the supra-natural, or the contra-natural, or the con-natural, but the un-natural. It is not the supra-natural strictly, for it is expressly said to work through an existing nature. We mean, it is not the supernatural in its method of operation, although it may be such in its origin. On the other hand, it is not nature ; for it is at war with the settled processes of her ongoing. This, then, is the epithet by which we must characterize the work of the third and fifth days, if we attempt to reconcile the Bible language to the idea of a (p'o'j?, or natura^ that is of a birth and growth out of the earth of all plants, herbs, trees, etc., (^from the seminal beginning to the end of the natural increment,^ by an energizing process in the earth and through the earth, and yet all in the duration of one solar day. The objection is not to the supernatural, or to the idea of marvellous rapidity in itself considered, but to the un-naturalness of the proceeding. It is the seeming nature implied in the language, but which, instead of being really such, is at war with all the ideas that the laws of our mind com- pel us to associate with the word natural. The best name for it would be found in that strange term, magical, as indicative of some incomprehensible as well as incon- ceivable process with which we cannot connect the idea either of law or miracle. Here, then, comes up clearly and strongly the point we would wish to present. We must not take words IS 206 PARTURITIVE POWERS OF THE EARTH, out of tlieir ordinary use, it is said. This is the whole length and strength of the objection. Day means twenty- four hours, and so all minds understand it. But cer- tainly the Hebrew word yojii does not so inseparably carry with it the conception of a certain unvarying short duration, as the terms of birth and growth here applied to the nutritive and parturitive action of the earth connect themselves with the ideas of a longer duration. If we can- not separate the word day from the thought of twenty-four of our present hours, then, a fortiori atque a fortissimo, do we say, that we cannot separate such a process as the growth of a plant, or of a tree, through all the regular sequences, such as the germination, the parturition, the growth, the seeding, the ripening, etc., from the concep- tion of a season, to say the least, or many seasons. To admit the process, and yet deny the associated period of duration, or that it had the successive steps, is a war of ideas, as well as of language. We are not told that the parturitive powers of the earth, when they first began to be exercised, were very- different from what they are now. They may have been more rapid, or more slow ; but if it was a real physical energy governed by law, and not merely an arbitrary sign of a contra-natural power, it must, at least, have had a harmony in its workings, such a harmony as would have required that the widely varying among its diversi- fied effects should bear some ratio to the greater strength or longer duration in the cause. It would not have brought out the full-formed, full-grown, and ripened cedar of Lebanon, in the same time it required for giving birth to the mushroom. No intimation is given that the first growth, after the instantaneous starting power, or the FIKST GROWTHS NATURAL. 207 utterance of the creative Word, was not as natural as as any that followed. We are the rather led to beheve that this first growth gave the law to all subsequent pro- duction. If the first plants or trees did not come from a pre^dous organized seed, the first seeds, at all events, grew out of the plant, and as far as the language gives us any idea, in a similar manner, and by a similar law, and in a corresponding time, or succession of times, to that which regulated any subsequent seeding, or ripening, or fructification of the parent organism. Did the writer of the creative history think of anything but a natural growth, originated, it is true, by a Divine power, but still a natural growth with all its successive steps and changes? Yes, the objector may say, — he must have thought so to be consistent with his other idea of a day of twenty-four hours. But with how much force may this be turned the other way. Moses does speaTi of growth; all the terms employed are consistent with such an idea; the more we examine into their very roots, the more does this (pj(fig generation, or nature appear, and, therefore, we say, he was not limited, and did not consider himself limited, by any such notion of time as our interpreters would force upon him. To get away from this, we must say, that it was not a growth^ a natui^e, a genesis, — for all these terms are synonymous. But what was it, then ? What possible meaning in the strange procedure ? Had we been told, that instantly, by the Divine fiat, the earth was covered with vegetation of the largest and most perfect kind, that in a moment there stood forth in all their physical perfec- tion the " creeping hyssop," the rose of Sharon, and the waving cedar of Lebanon, that in the twinkling of an eye, 208 NOT PRODUCED IN SUDDEN MATURITY. from being a barren, inanimate, and solitary waste, our world was swarming with animals of every size and spe- cies, full grown, and at the maximum of their strength and beauty, there would have been no a priori diffi- culty in believing it. There would have been nothing irrational or incredible in the account. Such an instan- taneous production would have been in harmony with all our ideas of the Divine power and dignity. But it has not been so revealed. A different method was taken by the Divine Wisdom, — the method to which we give the name of nature, — the method of growth, of succession, of duration, of the apparent birth of one thing out of another, and this, too, through the action of a previous nature quickened by a new Word into a new energy, and to the development of a new law. Both these sup- positions, we say, are rational, both are pious, both are credible if clearly revealed. But there are other hypotheses which are not rational, which are not credible, which do not enhance our ideas of the Divine dignity, or the glory of the creative work, and which are, moreover, most difficult to reconcile with any fair interpretation of the Biblical language. One is, that the trees and animals were formed directly by the hand of God, and then placed in the earth that it might bring them forth, or be said to bring them forth, thus perfectly formed. Another is, that by the same direct divine power, they were formed in the earth, but not through any natural agency of the earth ; the formative act, not being a nature, or a growth, but as far as the earth was concerned, outward, mechanical, or magical ; and even the hringing forth being by no natural power acting through any previous, or then imparted law. FALSE CAUSATION, THE LEGENDARY. 209 Another is, that the seeds of vegetables were formed per- fect by direct Divine power, and then planted in the earth. But all have this feature. They present the appearance of a causation which is not a causation. They are forced ideas which come from a supposed exigentia loci, and not from any fair and harmonious interpretation of language. They seem unworthy of the Divine character. With all reverence be it said, they have not the dignity of the instantaneous act which demands no appearance of any accompanying media, whilst they lack the beautiful consistency of a true nature. Even the last escapes the difficulty no better than the others. The seed is as much an organism as the plant or tree, — far more so than the bark, or branch, or root. It has the same appearance of growth, or of having grown from a younger state ; it suggests the same idea of suc- cession, or natural process. Divine Omnipotence could make them, doubtless ; but so, also, it could have made the perfect tree or animal. It is liable, therefore, to the same charge of unmeaningness, of inconsistency, of apparent fallacy, of having neither the reason of the supernatural, nor the law of the natural. We may say, moreover, of them all, that they have too much the look of the legendary, the peculiarities of which are, not the marvellous, the supernatural — these may enter into the most sober and rational narrative — but the dreamy, the fantastic, the grotesque, the unmean- ing violation of all the unities,or all the harmonies, of time, place, and causation. From such distorted traditions of the passage came probably the gross fancies of some of the old Ionic philosophers as we find them set forth in the verses of Lucretius ; only there the grotesque work 18* 210 THE GROTESQUE, MILTON'S PICTURE. is ascribed to an unnatural nature, not to God. Hence, too, Milton's picture, which, although merely poetical, presents probably the conception that has been most common among a certain class of interpreters who would make the twenty-four hour rule the one to which every thing else in reason, nature, and language, must conform. Even as a picture it is unnatural. It is like some of the inartistic drawings on the old tapestries, where every thmg stands right out m the foreground without shade or perspective. " The earth obeyed ; and straight Opening her fertile womb, teemed at a birth Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms, Limb'd and full grown. Out of the ground uprose As from his lair the wild beast, where he wona In forest wild, in thicket, brake, or den. Among the trees in pairs they rose, they walked ; The cattle in the fields and meadows green Those rare and solitaiy, these in flocks, Pasturing at once, and in broad herds upsprung. The grassy clods now calved ; now half appeared The taiony lion pawing to get free His hinder parts, then springs as broke from bonds, And rampant shakes his brinded main : the ounce. The libbard, and the tiger, as the mole Rising, the crumbled earth above them threw In hillocks : the swift stag from under ground Bore up his branching head ; scarce from his mould Behemoth, biggest born of earth, upheaved Hi« vastness." In setting forth the suddenness of the work as a supposed exhibition of the divine omnipotence, Milton is truly sub lime; but in attempting to connect the earth with the animal productions, as he was led to do by his view of the passage, he descends to the grotesque and even to the ludicrous. That image of the tawny lion patving to get free his hinder parts, and of Behemoth upheaving the earth under which he is buried, like a mole coming DIGNITY OP THE BIBLE ACCOUNT. 211 out of the ground, falls in dignity, we must say it, beneath the wildest Greek conceptions of earth-born Typhons, centaurs, " Oorgons, hydras, and chimaeras dire." We would speak with reverence of what to any minds might seem to be the meaning of the Scriptures ; but could this sense have been intended ? Wild as the Greek fables are, there is some meaning and method in their grotesque fancies. Centaurs may have been the produc- tion of some law of nature, or they may have been direct divine creations intended to subserve some wise purpose in the chronological developments of our world. There is nothing in either supposition that can be called irrational. But the emerging of lions and behemoths out of the earth, when the earth, after all, has nothing to do with their generation, no natural connection with their former tion or their growth, would seem to be, not merely wild or grotesque, but absurd, not merely marvelous, but unmeaning. It would also be a deception. It would present the appearance of a nature where there is none in reaUty ; it would give us the seeming of law where there is no dynamical connection, and where the associ- ated sequences, even if we would regard them merely as signs, are significant of no intelligible purpose or idea. But when we take the passage in its whole connection it has nothing of this grotesque or legendary aspect. The impression it produces is one of gravest dignity. In its general effect, and still more in the conceptions which lie at the roots of its most important terms, it forces upon the mind the idea of a nature in the earth acting through a real dynamical process of its own, and in periods, which, whether longer or shorter, contain 212 GROWTH FROM THE EARTH. within themselves all the changes and successive stages which we find it impossible to dissociate from the thought of birth and growth. And this, too, of the animal as well as of the vegetable worlds. There is no more diffi- culty in the one case than in the other. One may be higher than the other ; but both, we are plainly taught m the Scriptures, are products of nature and matter act- ing through laws and energies quickened to a higher work by a new command and a new Presence of the Creative Word. CHAPTER XVII. WORK OF THE FIFTH DAY. Gbowth from the earth.— Was it a growth of individuals or of spb ciES ? — Either view may be piously held. — The Acari insects and Mr. Cross. — Nature a stream. — A supernatural seed dropped into it. — How did the first plants grow? — The first animals. — Hebrew words employed. — We must keep close to the record. — The great whales. — Science can trace footsteps but tell us nothing of origin. When we are once led to admit that the work of the third and of the fifth period was through such a process as we may fairlj call nature, or the natural, we may regard ourselves as having the simple conception as it lay in the mind of the writer, and the question of longer or shorter duration becomes one altogether of secondary conse- quence. All that is required is that the idea of time and its successions be not out of harmony with the main thought. Exact measures, of course, are out of the ques- tion, but we can say generally, that in harmonizing the conception it is the work must measure the day, and not the day the work. Both, we think, can be preserved in perfect consistency, but if either is to be favored in our minds at the expense of the other, duration is the second- ary idea. The causality must expand the time instead of being limited by it, or crowded into unnatural dimen- sions while assuming to be a natural process. Our views, however, of such duration would be modi- fied in no sHght degree, according as we adopt one or the 214 INDIVIDUALS OR SPECIES? other of two theories of growth or development. Assum- ing that there was a real nature, or production out of the earth, the question might still be raised, — was it a growth, in the first place, of individuals or of species. The one conception is connected in our minds with years and seasons made up of the lesser diurnal cycles, the other with ages, or seonic cycles of cycles, the olams and seons of the Bible, or the great years (the magni anni) of the philosophical imagination. In the one case we must suppose the Divine Word energizing in as many specific acts, or beginnings, as there are species of vegetable and animal life. Each species or genus is a separate sper- matic word Qi'UB^^arwjg 'koyog) or, at least, a separate and distinct energizing of the one Universal Word. In the other view, the original divine power may be supposed to have originated the new order of life in its most generic or universal germ, and all subordinate genera and species may have been developed from it, and from each other, by the action of nature under this new power, and in obedi- ence to the new law, or the new modification of previous law, thus and then imparted to it. In this way species would grow out of species, as individuals out of individu- als. There would be an ascent from the first rudiments of vegetable and animal life to the higher and more per- fect growths^ or natures. It would be the same ivonl repeating, yet expanding, itself in every ascending spe- cies, just as it is the same specific word repeating itself in every individual birth which the laws of the maternal nature are ever bringing out from the seminal energy. What science would say to this we do not clearly know, nor are we much concerned about her decisions. An immense time, as well as an immense accumulation NO FEAR OF NATURALISM. 215 of data, are required to give them any claim upon our confidence. Neither, on the other hand, if it be most in harmony with the language of the Bible, would we be concerned about the charge of naturalism. A develop- ment theory which has no divine origination, or acknow- ledges the going forth in time of no Divine Word, is indeed atheism. That which acknowledges only one divine origination, and this from the logical necessity of getting a starting-point for physical speculation, is as near to atheism as it can be. It hath said in its hearty There is no God, and the only thing which prevents it from being also the conclusion of the mere scientific intel- lect, is this logical impediment which God has mercifully put in its waj'. But a development theory in the sense of species from species, as well as of individual from indi- vidual, may be as pious as any other. It may have as many Divine int-erpositions as any other. It may be regarded as a method of God's working, and that, too, as rationally and as reverently as the more limited system to which we give the name of nature in its ordinary or more limited sense. Modern theologians have been too much frightened by certain assumptions and speculations on this field. It may well be doubted whether Mr. Cross ever produced insects under the circumstances which he maintains to have given birth to his famous acari, but there is no rational difiiculty, and no impiety in the supposition that the Divine Word which first ori- ginated and gave law to animal life, may have connected its development with certain chemical conditions which science may discover, as well as with the presence of a seed in certain states of air and heat, or, in other words, those seminal conditions under which as yet, as far as 216 A NEW POWER IN THE STREAM OF NATURE. our experience goes, the phenomenon has received its manifestation. But there is no place here for any such speculations ; since, as far as our philological argument is concerned, either view satisfies its requirements. It is enough for us to learn, without doing any violence to the language of the account, that the production of the vegetable and animal races are set forth as having been originally a 9^'^'?, or groivth — a growth out of the earth, and by and through the earth, in other words, a nature with its laws, stages, successions, and developments. There was a previous nature in the earth, whether it had been in operation for twenty-four hours, or twenty- four thousand years. We may compare this to a stream flowing on and having its regular current of law, or regu- lated succession of cause and effect. Into this stream, we may say, there was dropped a new power, superna- tural, yet not contra-natural, or unnatural — varying the old flow and raising it to a higher law and a higher energy, yet still in harmony with it. New causations, or new modifications of causation arise, and after the suc- cessions and steps required, be they longer or shorter, a world of vegetation is the result of this chain of causa- tion in the one period, and through an analogous, if not similar process, an animal creation arose in another. Our mode of argument may be denounced as metaphy- sical, and yet it is but the analysis of a common thought, which every man who examines his own mind will find that he has in connection with the words nature, growtlt, etc., or the terms that in all languages grow out of roots corresponding to those that are here employed in this plain narrative of the Bible. LET THE WATERS BRING FORTH. 217 We have no guide here but the Scriptures, and if they say the earth brought forth the vegetable and ani- mal races, we will believe it, without any fear of scien- tific objections on the one hand, or the charge of an im- pious naturahzing on the other. We feel that we are in a region where we must tread cautiously, for it is sacred ground ; yet still there is nothing left but to follow what seems to be the fair and natural meaning of the language. The first plants grew^ they were made to grow in the earth, and hy the earth, and out of the earth. They were hoyii of the earth ; they were carried m her womb during their respective periods of gestation ; their embryo or foetal life was fed from her warmth and moisture ; and they afterwards were nurtured and grew up, each to its perfection, on her maternal bosom. They fjreio ; and groivth is the cardinal idea of the word na- ture. The same thing, or a similar thing, is said of the ani- mals. And God said, — ""Let the waters bring forth ahun- dantly the moving creature that hath life.^'' Genesis, i, 20. This refers to the fish and reptile races, and what would seem more strange, to the birds, who are con- nected with them in a manner which would appear to imply some community or similarity of origin. And again, — " Let the earth hring forth the living creature after his hind.'''* This refers to the quadrapeds and land animals generally. In the first passage, it might be said that 'is-jtti">. has simply the intransitive sense, although the subject is ta':^^:, the waters. "Let the waters sivarm with^'' or abound with. If the word stood alone, there might be some room for such a supposition ; but its use in other passages, and its connections here 19 218 CAUSAL SENSE OF THE HEBREW VERBS. force us to give it the sense of prolific breeding,* and to regard it as causal in the same manner as stann and Nstw and ?^"7t^, in the passage above, and in the verse below.f This causal signification is given to it both in the Septua- gint and Vulgate versions, and it is clear that those early translators could have had no other thought in their minds. Kai sjVsv o dkg, s^ayayiro sva, to use Paul's very word, in distinction from the aKi&yiTa. They are not merely what we would call spiritual things, or truths, but the unseen dynamical entities which are not only the law, but the life of the phenomenal and * No careful reader can avoid being struck with the resem- blance between the language of Plato and that of Paul in such passages as 2 Corinthians, iv, 18, Hebrews, xi, 1, 8, Romans, i, 20, Colossians, i, 16. Compare especially the clear con- trast presented by Plato in the Eepublie, 508 C, where he represents God, or the Good, as having the same relation to the ideal world that the sun, or light, bears to the visible, ori'TTSP auTo iv ToTg vor\ToTg it^og ts vovv xal to. voovfJ^sva tovto TouTov £v ToTs o^uToTg cT^o^ TS Osj^jv xoLi TO. h^(^\i.sva. Compare, also, 509, D., Phaedo, 79, A, Gwfjtsv ouv /SoJXsi 5uo sV^^ Twv ovTt^v, TO fxsv o^aTov TO 61 a?iS:'s. "Let us distinguish two kinds of being, the visible (or the phenomenal) and the unseen." Numerous passages of the same kind may be found throughout the dialogues. The Apostle may not have read Plato, much less copied from him ; but this Platonic style of speech had become quite common in his age, and must have been familiar in the schools of Tarsus, that third great seat of ancient learning after Athens and Alexandria. It is no impeachment of Paul, or of Paul's inspiration, that he em- ployed the same truthful language, not only as Plato did, but also to represent invisible entities far higher than were ever dreamed of in his philosophy. 228 PAUL CARRIES THE IDEA FARTHER. material. All these, whether of higher or lower rank, Paul tells us come from the Eternally Begotten Word, the n^wroVoxo^j or First Bom before all creation," Colos- siaus, i, 15. They are £v auTcj in Him, and 5»' ccutoo through Mini, — that is, as the immaterial laAV and the outward manifestation — "and in Him all things stand together," tfuvsV-r^ixs. . And then the Apostle proceeds farther, '' things in heaven and things on the earth. Thrones, Dominions, Principalites and Powers," whether these be dynamical or personal entities, they are all from the same life-giving, law-giving, spirit-quickening, creative Word. Next he rises still higher to the moral or purely spiritual world, and traces the same relation of the Aoyog^ or Word, to the Church. He is the Author of the new spiritual life which the Church is developing in humanity during the new dispensation, or alC^v^ or daT/, of Christi- anity. No one of these applications of the language is any more metaphorical than another. Natural life, psy- chical or animal hfe, pneumatical or spiritual life, all come from one originating, generating, animating, and renovating Word. But where did Paul learn all this ? From personal revelation, it might be said, as he himself has more than intimated. And yet we may suppose that this was in connection with the study of the Older Scripture, either as called to mind from the expositions he had learned in the school of Gamaliel, or as it came up still more strongly and vividly to his thought during the period of his con- templative seclusion in Arabia. The germs of these ideas, which are so wondrously expanded in his own mind, he found in such passages as Psalms, xxxiii, 6, Proverbs, viii, 22, and especially in the Mosaic account WHERE DID PAUL LEARNT THIS? 229 of the creation when studied from the higher position to which Paul had attained. In that declaration, ''And God said/^ which precedes every creative act, he found the going forth of the Eternal Word or Logos ; and he does not hesitate to hypostatize it as the earlier Jewish interpretations have done ; only Paul carries out the idea to other entities about which the Mosaic record is silent. There had been creations older than that of our visible earth and heavens. As the Word went forth, *' Let there be light," " Let there be a firmament," " Let the dry land appear," " Let the earth bring forth," ''Let us make man," so, also, in some of the still more ancient days had it been said. Let there be Thrones, Let there be Dominions, Let there be " Principalities and Powers in the heavenly places." " For in Him it was pleasing that all fullness should dwell, so that He is the " recon- ciliation," the " peace," the pervading harmony in the physical, spiritual and moral worlds. " He maketh peace in his high places." Some would regard the expression, m (pa£va, He- brews, xi, 3, as equivalent to tcI ^yj ovrct, and the entire verse as simply meaning that God made all things out of nothing. This is Pearson's view. But the whole aspect of the passage shows that these unseen, or unap- l)earing things are not spoken of as nihilities, for which the proper term would be Ta f^^ ovto.^ but true and most real existences contrasted with (pajvofxsva, as being not objects of sense in any actual or possible way, and yet the seminal source of all natural or sensible manifestar tions, nor merely, on the other hand, naked or abstract truths, but created ideas, types, or powers having their acting and their energy in time. If the m^ara.^ or the 20 230 WHAT ARE THE UNSEEN THINGS? unseen, are only the negations of tlie o^ara, the seen, then the latter are the highest realities, and the whole power of the antithetical cHmax is destroyed. To apply all this to our present argument, we would f say, with all reverence, that here in the works of the third and fifth days, or in the production of life from the earth, the " unseen things that are understood" are the created ideas or types, the divine seminal powers which are anterior in time, as well as in order of existence, to all natural or outward manifestation. Before the earth could bring forth, or begin to bring forth, the lowest form of vegetation, there must be the Divine Word call- ing into being those seminal activities, or principia, whose presence the old nature is commanded to acknowledge, and by which, henceforth, the new nature, so far as it can be called a new nature, is to be modified. Thus did " God make the herb, the tree," each after its type, or kind, " before it was in the earth." Thus did he make it " before it greic^^ or germinated, or had a mate- rial seed, or outward seminal organism, or any outward material being whatever, whether in the plant or in the seed. God made the perfect plant, it may be truly said,- and this, too, not only as a mediate work which would be the fact phenomenally and chronologically, but also as an effect (efiectum or thing done) viewed as already existing in the cause. In a higher and truer sense, however, the making of the formal in distinction from the material cause was the real making, and this the thing made, — that is, the law, idea, or principle in each thing, — that by virtue of which it can be truly called a thing, and which alone can be said to make it what it is. In no other way can THE UNSEEN MADE BEFORE THE SEEN. 231 tlie two passages be brought into that perfect harmony which is so evidently intended. In no other tvay could it he said, G-od made the plants hefore they were in the earth, and yet have this consistent with the idea, so exp-essly given, of their mediate 'production through the earth. Instead of being far fetched and unnecessarily metaphysical, it is the only easy way m which we can form any notion of the process that will not destroy the supernatural on the one hand, or the natural on the other, — throwing all meaning out of a portion of the terms employed, or reducing them to a mere figure of speech, which there is no evidence or intimation that the writer intended to employ. There was, then, a creation anterior to any natural causahty, and this seems to be meant by the declaration that " God had not yet caused it to rain upon the earth, and that there was no man to till the ground." The birth of these seminal principles was independent of all natural agency. In this sense it was before the fertiliz- ing rain, or the assiduous human culture. However progressive and natural the after-production from the earth, the creation of these seminal types, or principles, was wholly supernatural, immediate, divine. We do not hesitate to use here the subhme expression of Plato, for we regard it as akin to the thought which Paul presents in the Eleventh of Hebrews, '' God is the Maker of types (twv tu