It is granted that the Bible does not reveal these sequences of order and convulsion. But it shows us the principle of both in verses 1 and 2 anterior to the Adamic earth. This was enough for us to know; and this we know more clearly and certainly from these few words of scripture than science ever taught till very lately. In fact some geologists seem recently in danger of overlooking the best established facts of their own and all other science, and of drifting into that strange delusion—the Darwinian form of Lamarckian development which necessarily destroys faith in creation altogether.
But Genesis leaves room for all the changes, calm or violent, which passed over this earth before the race. Creation, and creation of the universe, verse 1 does state; how long it went on, and with what changes, till the state of chaos described in verse 2, we are not informed. Let science tell if she can. There is ample space here without danger of collision: God has effectually guarded against the mistakes of hasty expositors, friends or enemies. Verse 3 begins the account of the days; and here, after a chaos (we know not how long or often), we hear of light caused to be on the first day. The state of things is so contrasted in each of the verses that the conjunction which simply introduces each new statement can produce no difficulty whatever.
Far from contradicting the large bearing of verse 1, texts such as Gen. 14:19-2219And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth: 20And blessed be the most high God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand. And he gave him tithes of all. 21And the king of Sodom said unto Abram, Give me the persons, and take the goods to thyself. 22And Abram said to the king of Sodom, I have lift up mine hand unto the Lord, the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth, (Genesis 14:19‑22), Ex. 20:11; 31:1711For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. (Exodus 20:11)
17It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed. (Exodus 31:17), 2 Peter 3:1313Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. (2 Peter 3:13), can in no way be restrained to “the earth itself.” It is careless to confound the making of heaven and earth in six days (which I grant is always for Adam) with the original creation of verse 1. Gen. 2:44These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, (Genesis 2:4) speaks of both. As to the objection founded on animals of previous states seeing, and plants too requiring light, before the work of the first day or of the fourth, it suffices to say that not a word implies that light was created, or the heavenly bodies either, on these days. Light was caused to act, as the luminaries later still. But of the geologic periods, after creation but antecedent to the earth made for man in six days, we have nothing either affirmed or denied, though in my opinion the strikingly guarded language leaves room for all. The statements of Dr. D. are as unfounded in science as they are careless in taking account of the exactitude of scripture.
That the sense just given to the inspired account of creation is unforced and exact, it would require hardihood to question; so it would to deny the looseness of the rationalistic interpretation, inconsistent as it also is with itself and with facts, and thus exhibiting the usual faults of what is wholly misunderstood. I advocate no stooping to a barely admissible meaning, nor call in the wisdom of the world to ascertain the force of scripture. The believer need neither court nor fear human science. Nowhere, however, has a single fact of geology been proved to be at variance with the words of Moses: those who affirm it have only exposed themselves, whether they attack or apologize for Gen. 1:1-31In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 3And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. (Genesis 1:1‑3).
Further, from Gen. 2:44These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, (Genesis 2:4) we have the necessary complement of chapter 1. The terms of the fourth verse, though a most natural commencement of another aspect which follows with fresh particulars of the greatest moral weight, refer unmistakably to what had been already written. It is certainly not a summary of what is to come, for this does not describe the production of the heavens and the earth, but introduces us to the transitional state of things before rain fell or man was there to till the ground; it then gives us the specific difference which is the ground of human responsibility, and therefore forthwith describes the garden of Eden with its two trees, where the first Adam was about to be tried.
It is plain accordingly that Gen. 2:44These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, (Genesis 2:4), while it gives a retrospective glance at chapter i. with its orderly chart of the creation, leads us into the scene of relationships. Even according to the earlier outline, far from being lost in the graduated series of creative acts, the pre-eminent place of man in the scale of the creature is carefully guarded for male and female—of man made in the image of God, after His likeness, with dominion over the fish and birds and cattle and earth and reptiles, not worshipping them all like the sages of Egypt. But the detailed formation of man, in his body from the dust of the ground, in his soul from Jehovah-Elohim's breathing into his nostrils (alone of living creatures), the source of an immortal immaterial nature proper to him, is found in the later account only. Here too we have his various relations not only to the subordinate creatures to which he gave names as their lord, but to his wife (who was built up peculiarly out of Adam's body as he slept), and above all to Him who set the man in a position of such singular honor, though necessarily of commensurate responsibility.
In Gen. 3 accordingly the issue of the trial soon appears. Abruptly and mysteriously an enemy of God and man enters, and by his subtle insinuations deceives the woman, who in turn becomes the instrument of the man's disobedience. It is a simple but profound, and the only satisfactory, solution of the problem on which human philosophy and religion have labored in vain, on which all have made shipwreck who have not submitted to the word of God. It can surprise none that it is the same serpent playing his old deceits and destroying souls by the hope of knowing good and evil as God, yea better if they refuse His account for their own thoughts, even though they yield no more than that coldest and most irreverent of results, negative criticism. Satan, availing himself of “the serpent,” thus dragged down our first parents into sin and ruin not for themselves only but for the lower creation dependent on Adam's maintenance of his relation to God, as also for the race yet to be born.
Does not this approve itself as worthy of God? Is it not in harmony not only with all the Old Testament, but only more conspicuously with the New? The earliest inspired account reveals God creating and fashioning the universe in wisdom and goodness no less than omnipotent power, the earth in detail as man's abode to whom the world is given. But man is tried and fails irretrievably as far as original innocence and Eden are concerned, but not without righteous conviction, not without a judgment which accounts for the great present facts of humanity even to the difference of woman's lot from man's, yet with their common sentence of death and the sorrowful change which has passed over the creation now subjected to vanity and groans; but not without the gracious revelation of a Deliverer, who should be in some special sense Seed of the woman, yet (after suffering) conqueror of the enemy the serpent, who had done this foul and otherwise fatal dishonor to God as well as man.
Without this key what have the greatest wits of this world made of it all? I do not speak only of monstrous cosmogony, or the (if possible) still falser and less rational assertion of the world's eternity. But take the mental workings of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle; nay take the latest philosophic enemies, who have stolen all their best from the Bible but who have not learned its first lesson, without which all is vain—that fear of Jehovah which is the beginning of wisdom. But what have any ancients or moderns said up to this day to be named in comparison of the Mosaic account, which ungrateful rationalism would fain behead, draw, and quarter? Sin and ruin, suffering and death, are facts in God's earth as it is: inspiration did not make them; rationalism cannot unmake them. To suppose that a Being of infinite power and goodness made the race and the earth as they are is to imply an absurdity, which philosophy (where it admits God at all) accepts. But scripture is in no way responsible for a conclusion which is opposed not only to His word but to all right reason and sound morality, for mind and conscience cannot but own the truth when revealed, though superstition and philosophy essay to explain it away again. Such a Demiurge as every system supposes but scripture (or what follows scripture) would be a malicious demon, not the true God.
Bow to Gen. 1-3 and the difficulty is explained, yet even then just as it ought to be, in the measure of our faith. “If thine eye be single, thy whole body is full of light": the want of this is the real source of confusion, error, contradiction and every other fault which rationalists love to heap on the Bible. These exist in their own minds and system, not in God's word. It is impossible to understand scripture without seeing the divine design which accounts for distinct aspects, repetitions, and all the other peculiarities over which they ignorantly stumble. God, being love, is considerate of the poor, the lowly, the young, the old, while He puts down the haughty who count themselves learned and deep, wise and prudent. He has revealed Himself in writings whose unity of thought and moral purpose, is only and infinitely more striking because they consist of books in more than one language, and spread over the greatest variety of writers through fifteen centuries. Hence, whether dealing by law through Moses, or by grace in His Son, one-half in both Old Testament and New consists of facts profoundly instructive for the most reflective, but withal coming down to the level of a child. Only God could have done or thought of this beforehand: now that it is before us in the Bible, we can see that there is nothing like it (save in poor measure what is borrowed from it) for simplicity or for depth, for rising up to God or for coming down to the secrets of man's heart.
What reader can fail, for example, to see that God made all around and above Adam, and pronounced it all very good; that man (the chief and most favored of all in a paradise—not such as blind Mahometanism holds out, but of purity and innocence) disobeyed Him who gave him all and tried him by the least conceivable test, and thus brought in the vanity and death of all this lower creation? Who can be deaf to the solemn voice that searches out the truth from lips which, spite of deceit and insolence, cannot but condemn themselves? Who can forget the accents of grace implied even in the hopeless condemnation of the arch-foe, and assuring the guilty of a Savior who must suffer first but at last crush the serpent's head? None but the rationalist; none but the man who prefers his own reasonings to scripture—himself the first man to Christ the Second and last Adam.
(Continued from page 211) (To be continued)