CHAPTER XIII.
THE GENESIS NARRATIVE CONSIDERED GENERALLY.
I.—THE FIRST PART OF THE NARRATIVE.
§ 1. Objections to the Received Interpretations.
Taking the narrative as it stands, we find it to consist of two parts. First, a general statement, of which no division of time is predicated, and which is unaccompanied by any detail. Second, there is an account seriatim of certain operations which are stated to have been severally performed one on each of six days.
As regards the first portion, we have no definite knowledge of scientific truth with which to compare the narrative. It is obviously necessary for some Divine teacher to tell us authoritatively that God originated and caused the material earth, and the systems of suns and stars which men on the earth's surface are able to discern in the "heavens."
We are consequently informed that in the beginning—there is no practical need for defining further—"God created the heavens and the earth." Here the question arises whether the Hebrew "bara," which is a general term, alludes to the first production of material, or to the moulding or fashioning of material already (in terms) assumed to exist. I think that the conclusion must be that the best authority is in favour of the idea of absolute origination of the whole;—the bringing the entire system into existence where previously there was a perfect blank. But even if the secondary meaning of "fashioned" or "forged" be allowed, we have still an intelligible rendering. For in that case the first origination of matter is tacitly assumed by the term itself, and the statement would be, that the matter of the future cosmos so existing, the Divine Artificer fashioned or moulded it into the orderly fabric it has come to be.
The narrative then at once refers to our earth, with which, and with its inhabitants, the whole volume is to be in future directly concerned. "The earth was (or became) without form and void (chaotic), and darkness was on the face of the deep (or abyss)."
We have no positive knowledge of what the first condition of terrestrial matter was, apart from Revelation. The remarkable discoveries that the spectroscope has enabled, and the facts learned from the physical history of comets and meteorites, can do no more than make what is known as the "nebular hypothesis" highly probable. But it is amply sufficient for our purpose to point out, that if it is true that matter originated in a nebulous haze to the particles of which a spiral rotatory motion had been communicated, and if (confining our attention to one planet only) that attenuated matter gradually aggregated in a ring or rings, and then consolidated into a solid or partly solid globe, then the results are briefly, but adequately and sublimely, provided for by the form of the Mosaic statement.
Matter thus aggregating would have developed an enormous amount of heat, and there would have been a seething mass of molten mineral matters, with gases and other materials in the form of vapours, which would have gradually cooled and consolidated. Vast masses of water would in time be formed on one hand, and solid mineral masses on the other; the latter would contract as cooling progressed, causing great upheavals and depressions and contortions of strata. And before the advent of life-forms, it is not difficult to conceive that the first state of our globe was one which is intelligibly and very graphically described as being "without form and void." Nothing more than that, can, from actual physical knowledge, be stated.[[62]]
It is also stated that this confused elemental state of our earth was accompanied at first by darkness. Material darkness that is—for the potentiality of light and order was there; the SPIRIT OF GOD "moved" (or brooded) upon the face of the abyss. This presents no difficulty of interpretation, and may therefore be passed over for the present.
Practically, indeed, there has been no grave difficulty raised over this first portion. And if it is argued (on the ground of what I have already in general terms indicated) that the term "created" will, on my own interpretation, get us into difficulties, I reply that here, in its position and with the context, there is no room for doubt, for clearly the word implies both the great primary idea of the Divine design or plan formulated in heaven, and the subsequent result in time and space.[[63]] This will become more clear when I have further explained the subject.
II.—THE SECOND PART OF THE NARRATIVE.
But from this point the narrative commences to be more precise, and to exhibit a very singular and altogether unprecedented division of creative work into "days."
Now I have already indicated my doubt whether we ought to import any unusual meaning to explain this term.
In the first place, the objection that till the movements and relations of the sun to the earth were ordained there would be no measure of a day> will not stand a moment's examination. Nor will the further objection sometimes made, that even with the sun, a day is a very uncertain thing: for example, a day and a night in the north polar regions are periods of month-long duration, quite different from what they are in England, or at Mount Sinai. Obviously, a "day" with reference to the planet for which the term is used, means the period occupied by one rotation of the planet on its own axis. The rotation of the earth is antecedent to anything mentioned in the narrative we are considering. In the nature of things, it would have been coeval with the introduction of the prima materies—at least if any nebular hypothesis can be relied on. The "day" would be there whether it were obscured by vapours or not, and whether specially made countable and recognizable by what we call the rising and setting of the sun, or not, and whether we were standing in Nova Zembla or in Australia.
Nor is it of much use to refer to the general use of "day" for indefinite periods, which is just as common in the English of to-day as it was in the Hebrew of the Old Testament. But the double use of the term in different senses has become general, just because it was found in practice that no confusion ordinarily resulted; and surely such a practice would not have been common, or at any rate would have been specially avoided in the sacred volume, wherever any mistake or confusion was likely or even possible.
No one can mistake what is meant when allusion is made to "the day in which God made the heaven and the earth." No one falls into doubt when the "days" of the prophets are spoken of—any more than they do now when a man says, "Such a thing will not happen in my day."
Whenever in Daniel, or in similar prophetic writings, the term "day" is used in a peculiar sense as indicating a term of years, we have no difficulty in recognizing the fact from the context and circumstances of the narrative; nor am I aware that any controversy has ever arisen regarding the use of the term "day" in any passage of Scripture excepting in this.
This fact alone is suspicious; the more so, because there is absolutely nothing in the context to indicate that anything but an ordinary day is intended. Not only so, but there is in the context something that does very clearly indicate (and I think Dr. Réville is perfectly justified in insisting on this) that an ordinary terrestrial day is meant. One of the primeval institutions of Divine Providence for men, my readers will not need to be reminded, was that of a "Sabbath," which any one reading the text would understand to mean a day, and which the Jews—the earliest formal or legal recognizers of it—did so understand, and that under direct Divine sanction.
If the days of Genesis mean indefinite periods of aeonian duration, how is the seventh day of rest to be understood?
But even if these difficulties are overcome, absolutely nothing is gained by taking the day to be a period.
I presume that the object of gaining long periods of time instead of days in reading the Mosaic record, is to assume that the narrative means to describe the actual production on the earth of all that was created; in other words, to assume a particular meaning for the words "created," "brought forth," &c and then to make out that if a whole age is granted, Science will allow us a sequence of a "plant age" a "fish and saurian age," a "bird age," and a "mammalian age";—that is, in general terms and neglecting minor forms of life. But then to make any sense at all with the verses we are bound to show that each age preceded the next—that one was more than partly, if not quite completely, established before any appearance of the next.
It is to this interpretation that Professor Huxley alludes when he says, in his first article,[[64]] "There must be some position from which the reconcilers of Science and Genesis will not retreat—some central idea the maintenance of which is vital, and its refutation fatal.... It is that the animal species which compose the water population, the air population, and the land population,[[65]] respectively, originated during three successive periods of time, and only during those periods of time."
For my own part, I hasten to say that, as one of the despised race of "reconcilers," not only is this idea no central position from which I will not retreat, but one which I should never think of occupying for one moment.
But on the view of the periods, some such position must be taken up. And if so, I must maintain that Professor Huxley has shown—if indeed it was not obvious already—that the idea of a series of periods, and in each of which a certain kind of life began and culminated (if it was not fully completed) before another began, is untrue to nature. This, therefore, cannot have been intended by the author of Genesis.
I will here interrupt my argument for a moment to say that there is a certain degree of coincidence between the succession of life on the earth as far as it is explained by palaeontological research, and the order of creation stated in Genesis; but that is not concerned with any forced interpretation of the term "day." The coincidence is just near enough to give rise to a desire to identify creative periods with the series shown by the fossil-bearing rocks; while it is attended with just enough of difference to furnish matter for controversy, and to expose the interpreters to be cut up.
But to return. Nothing, I submit, is gained by getting day to mean period. Let us put the matter quite squarely. Let us take day to mean period, and let us take all the verses to mean the process of producing on earth the various life-forms.
In order to come at once to the point, let us begin with the time when the dry land and the waters are separate. At that moment, there is nothing said (or implied) about life already having begun in either water or on dry land. God commanded plants to grow; consequently during that whole period nothing but plants, and that of all the kinds and classes mentioned, should appear either in water or on land. That period being done, then came the command for water animals, fish and great monsters, and also birds. We ought, accordingly, to come next upon a whole period in which no trace of anything but plants and these animals can be found; and lastly, we ought to find the period of mammalia, smaller reptiles, amphibia and insects (creeping things).
That is the fair and plain result of what comes of supposing the terms "let there be," &c., to mean production on earth of the thing's themselves, and that the days are long periods.
All overlapping of the periods is inadmissible. All meaning is taken away, if we allow of fish (e.g.) appearing in the middle of our first period; for God did not command another day's work till after the first was completed—"there was evening and there was morning, a first day" (period), &c.
No; to suit the text so interpreted, we must have a full period of plants with no fish; then a period of both but no insects, no creeping things, no animals; and so on. Now it is quite idle to contend any longer, that any such state of things ever existed.
If we pass over the long series of the most ancient strata in which doubtful forms of obscure elementary plant and animal life appear almost together, we shall come to shell-fish, and crustaceans fully established in the water, and scorpions, and some insects even on land, before plants made any great show. For the Carboniferous—the age of acrogen plants, par excellence—does not occur till after swarms of Trilobite Crustaceans had filled the sea and passed away, and after the Devonian fish-age had nearly passed away; and so on throughout.
The groups in nature overlap each other so closely, that though plant-life (in elementary forms) probably had the actual start; virtually the two kingdoms—plant and animal—appeared almost simultaneously. There is nothing like the appearance of a first period in which one alone predominated. And long before the plants are established in all classes, the great reptiles, birds, and some mammals, had appeared. The seed-bearing plants—true grasses and exogens with seed capsules (angiosperms) did not appear till quite Tertiary times. That is the essential difference between the facts and the theory. If we make a diagram, and let the squares represent the main groups, the order (according to the period interpretation) ought to be as in A, whereas it really more resembles B. Thus.
But then it will be asked, if the day means only an ordinary day—not a long period—what is there that actually could have happened, and did happen, in three days (for that is the real point, as we shall see), such as the writer describes as the third, fifth, and sixth days?
I answer that on those days, and on the previous ones, God did exactly what He is recorded to have done. After the creation of light (first day), and the ideal adjustment of the distribution of land and water (second day), He (a) "created," on the third day, plants, from the lowest cryptogam upwards; then (b) paused for a day (the fourth) in the direct work of creating life-forms, to adjust certain matters regarding times and seasons, and regulation of climate, which doubtless would not be essential during the early stages of life evolution, but would become so directly a certain point was reached; then (c) resumed the direct creating work (fifth day), with fishes, great reptiles,[[66]] and birds (grouped purposely so, as we shall see); and, lastly (d), before the Day of Rest, created the group of mammals (carnivora and herbivora), the "creeping things" of the earth, and man (also grouped together).
But some one will ask, You then accept the earlier theory, that the whole life-series that is now revealed to us by the rocks, from the Laurentian to the Recent, is excluded from the narrative; and that some special acts of creation, regarding only modern and surviving life-forms, were made immediately before man appeared? By no-means; for such a theory is not only in itself improbable, but is contrary to all the evidence we possess of life-history on the earth, and is so hopeless that it is really not worth serious examination and refutation.
We have no evidence of any such gap—such sudden change in the history of life. Nor is it possible to find any place in the Mosaic story at which we could reasonably interpolate a long period, such as that indicated by the entire series of rock strata. For a great part of such a period, not only must there have been a regular succession of life just the same in nature (though specifically different) as that now on earth, but a regular distribution of land and water, and a settled action of the sun and the seasons, would be required. No; we must give up all the older methods which try to ignore the study of the word "created," or to assume for it a meaning that it is not intended to bear.
All depends, then, on what is meant by such terms as "created," "let there be," "let the earth bring forth," &c. Perhaps it has occurred to but few of my readers seriously to examine into their own mental conception of an "act of creation." Some will readily answer, "Of course it means only that at the Divine fiat, any given species—say an elephant—appeared perfect, trunk, tusks, and all the peculiar development of skull and skeleton, where previously no such creature had existed." But what possible reason have they for this conclusion? None whatever. It has simply been carelessly assumed from age to age, because people at first knew no better; and when they began to know better, they did not stop to amend their ideas accordingly.
Of course, as Professor Huxley puts it, millions of pious Jews and Christians[[67]] supposed creation to mean a "sudden act of the Deity"—i.e., to mean just what the knowledge of the time enabled them to imagine. They could do nothing else. The state of knowledge fifty years ago would not have rendered it possible for an article like Professor Huxley's (that to which allusion has several times been made) to have been written at all. What wonder, then, that the multitude did not understand what creation meant, and that a reasonable interpretation of the word has only become possible in quite recent times? Surely all that is the fault of the reader, not of the text. I do not even care that the writer himself did not fully apprehend the subject. When a human prophet is entrusted with the divulgation of high and wonderful things, it is quite possible that he may have been to greater or less extent in the dark as to all or some of the communication he was writing.
All that can be reasonably required is that the narrative, as it stands, shall be consistent with actual truth, and shall at no time come to be provably at variance with it.
But let us look at the word "creation" more closely. We accept what we are told, that in the beginning God called into existence force and matter, the material or "physical basis," and all other necessaries of life. Suppose, then (even dropping the question of Evolution, in order to satisfy the "pious millions"), that this "matter" was all ready (if I may so speak) to spring into organized form and being to take shape on earth—what shape should it take? Why (e.g.) an elephant? Why not any other animal, or a nondescript—a form which no zoologist could place, recognize, or classify? The form, the ideal structure, the formula, of the genus elephant must somehow have come into existence before the obedient materials and the suitable forces of nature could work themselves together to the desired end.
Mr. Mivart has defined "creation" at page 290 of his "Genesis of Species." There is original creation, derivative or secondary creation (where the present form has descended from an ancestor that was originally "directly" created), and conventional creation (as when a man "creates a fortune," meaning that he produces a complex state or arrangement out of simpler materials). That is perfectly true, so far; but it is only a verbal definition, and still does not go inside, into the idea involved. We must go farther.
In every act of creation, two requisites can clearly be distinguished: (1) the matter of life, and the forces, affinities, and local surroundings necessary; and (2) the type, plan, ideal, or formula, to realize or produce which, the forces and the matter are to act and react. This second is all-essential; without it the first would only produce a limbo of
"Unaccomplisht works of Nature's hand, Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixt.[[68]]"
No creation in any sense whatever could come out of it.
In the same way, when we speak of the Divine Artificer "creating," or saying "Let there be," there are two things implied: (i) the Divine plan or type-form, and its utterance or delivery (so to speak) to the builder-forces and materials; (2) the result or the translation into tangible existence of the Divine plan.
In every passage speaking of creation it possible that both processes may be implied; it may be clear from the text (as in Genesis i. 1) that this is so. But it is equally possible that the first point only, which in some aspects is really the essential matter, is alone spoken of.
And I submit that, given the general fact that God originated everything in heaven and earth (as first of all stated generally in Genesis i. 1-3), the essential part of the detailed or specific creation subsequently spoken of, was the Divine origination of the types, the ideal forms, into which matter endowed with life was to develop; without any necessary reference to how, or in what time, the Divine creation was actually realized or accomplished on earth. It may be that the form so conceived and drawn in Nature's book by the Divine Designer is a final form, up to which development shall lead, and beyond which (at least in a material sense) it shall not go; or it may be that it is a type intended to be transitory;[[69]] but both the intermediate and final forms must take their origin first in the Divine Mind, and be prescribed from the Heavenly Throne, before the obedient matter and forces and the life-endowment could co-operate to result in the realization of the forms and the population of the globe.
The reason why it is the essential part, is, that when once the Divine command issued, the result followed inevitably—that will "go without saying."
In human affairs, also, we speak of the architect having created the palace or cathedral, or the ironclad; meaning thereby not the slow process of cutting and joining stone, or riveting steel plates, but the higher antecedent act of mind in evoking the ideal form and providing for all contingencies in the adaptation and subsequent working of the finished structure. And if we limit this use of the term "creation" somewhat in speaking of human works, it is because the concept of the human mind so often fails of realization; that it is one thing to design, and another to accomplish. The grandest design for a palace may fail to stand because some peculiarity of the stone has been forgotten, or some character of foundation and subsoil has been misunderstood. The noblest form of turret-ship may prove useless because the strength of some material will not correspond to the ideal, or some curve of stability has been miscalculated. Not only this: man may create, as a sculptor, the ideal form for his to-be statue, or the dramatist his character; but the perfect realization, either in marble or in an actual being, may be impossible; the ideal remains "in the air." The ideal, therefore, is not the major part of "creation" in a human work.
But with the Divine work it is otherwise. The Divine thought in Creation and its result are separated by no possibility of failure. Given the matter and the laws of force and of life, directly the Great Designer has uttered His thought to those that are His builders, they must infallibly and without discord, work through the longest terms, it may be, of an evolutionary series, till, every transitional condition passed, the final form emerges perfect.
Our very verbal definition, admitting as it does "derivative" creation, implies this. We all speak of ourselves as "created." How so? We are not produced ready made. Nor do we wholly solve the matter by saying that we are "created" because we are born from parents who (if we go far enough back) originated in a first production from the hand of Nature. We are really "created" because the design—the life-form of us, which matter and force were to work together to produce—was the direct product of the Divine Mind.[[70]]
My question, therefore, of the Genesis interpreters is: Why will you insist on the text meaning only the second element in Creation—the production on earth, and not the Design or its issue in heaven?
The former we could find out some day for ourselves; we have found out some of it (though only some) already; the latter we could never know unless we were told. Surely it is the "dignus vindice nodus" in this case. To tell us the earth's history within a brief space would be impossible, and would have been for ages unintelligible if it could have been told; to tell us of God's creation is possible—for it has been done; and the record, unless misread, is intelligible for all time.
The narrative, if it is a revelation of Divine Creation in heaven, takes up ground that none can trespass on. None can say "it is not so," unless either he will show that the words will not bear the meaning, or that the context and other Scripture contradict it.
So soon as the matter of earth and heaven (and all that is implied therewith) originated "in the beginning," the narrative introduces to our reverent contemplation the solemn conclave in heaven, when, in a serial order and on separate days, God declared, for the guidance of the ever potentially active forces, and for materials ever (as we know) seeking combination and resolution,[[71]] the form which the earth surface is (it may be ever so gradually) to take and the life-forms which are to be evolved.
That this creative work was piecemeal, and on separate days, we know from the narrative. Why it was so arranged we do not know. Vast as was the work to be done, almost infinite as was the complexity of the laws required to be formulated, it could have all been done at once, in a moment of time; for time does not exist to the Divine Mind. But seeing that the work was to be on earth, and for the benefit of creatures to whom the divisions of time were all-important, we can dimly, at least, discern a certain fitness and appropriateness in the gradual and divided work.
It would be hardly necessary (but for some remarks in the course of the Gladstone-Huxley controversy) to observe that the term "void" does not imply vacuity or emptiness, as of substance, but absence of defined form such as subsequently was evolved.
And of course if the true sense be "fashioned" or "moulded," the question does not arise.
"Nineteenth Century," December, 1885, pp. 856-7.
These (unfortunate) terms are Mr. Gladstone's.
This term may be here accepted for the moment—not to interrupt the argument. It will be more fully dealt with in a subsequent chapter.
Article quoted, p. 857.
"Paradise Lost," iii. 455.
The idea which I am endeavouring to make clear is well illustrated by another passage in one of the Mosaic books—the account of the Tabernacle. Moses had no idea of his own of the structure, its furniture, implements, or the forms of these. The narrative expressly states that the Divine power originated the designs, and caused Moses to understand them. In a human work the designer would have drawn the objects with measures and specifications, and given the papers to the workmen. With the Divine work, where the design is in the Divine Thought, and the workmen and builders are forces and elementary matter, the process is a mystery, but in its practical bearing is understood from analogy. The Tabernacle was truly God's creation, because it was all commanded in design and "pattern" by the Almighty before Moses put together the materials that realized the pattern in the camp of Israel.
"In Thy book were all my members written, while as yet there were none of them" (Psa. cxxxix. 16).
"How did this all first come to be you?
God thought about me and I grew."—Macdonald.
The reader will recognize that there is not the least exaggeration in this. It is plain matter of fact, as I have endeavoured to show in the earlier chapters of this book. Everywhere we see force ready to be evoked by the proper method. Everywhere we see molecular motion, and a perpetual combination and resolution of elements and compounds, whether chemical or mechanical.