CHAPTER XV.
AND SUPPORTED BY THE CONTEXT.
But a step further is necessary: if the conclusion that I have come to, by accepting "day" in its ordinary and natural sense, and by giving a hitherto overlooked (and so far a new) meaning to "creation," is sound, it must not only be rendered probable by reference to other parts of Scripture written when Genesis was much nearer its original publication than it is now; it is still (before all things) necessary, that the interpretation adopted should be conformable to the context.
And I have heard it objected that there are verses which imply not only a Divine Act in heaven, with the Sons of God in conclave around the throne—sublime and wonderful picture!—but also distinctly indicate a corresponding action on earth, and so require us to include in our rendering of "creation" both the ideas which (page 169 ante) I have admitted may, on occasion be required by the terms. For example: after the creative command in verses 7, 9, 11, 15, and 24, is declared, it is followed by the words of fulfilment—"and it was so;" and in verse 11, when God has said "Let the earth bring forth grass, &c.", in the next verse it is positively recorded that the earth did bring forth grass, &c.
I of course admit all this, but it is in no way opposed to my suggestion.
The commencement of the result probably, if not necessarily, followed immediately on the issue of the finished command, viz., the promulgation of the forms to be obtained and the processes to be followed. The whole result did not become accomplished then and there, in the time mentioned, or exactly in the order mentioned: we know that for a fact. Take, for example, the case of vegetation. Here the author, in terms at once precise and universally intelligible, speaks of "vegetation[[76]]" (grass of the A.V.), "herb yielding seed," and "trees yielding fruit," thereby exhaustively enumerating the members of the vegetable kingdom.
Now, as a matter of fact, there was no one long (or short) period during which the whole of this command was realized, before the next creative act occurred.
At first algae and low forms of vegetable life appeared; and doubtless we have lost myriads upon myriads of such lower forms of plant-life in the early strata, because such forms were ill calculated for fossil-preservation, owing to the absence of woody fibre, silicious casing, or hard fruit or seed vessels. But when we first have a marked accumulation of specialized plant-life in the coal measures (Upper Carboniferous), it is still only of cryptogams—ferns and great club mosses. A beginning of true seed-bearing plants (Gymnosperm exogens) had been made with the conifers of the Devonian strata; but true grasses, and the other orders of phanerogamic plants and arboreous vegetation, do not appear till the tertiary rocks were deposited, very long after the age of fish and great reptiles had culminated, and the inauguration of the bird age and the mammalian age had taken place.
Looking only to the abundant, prominent, and characteristic life-forms of the several strata, it could certainly be said that the period when the water actually brought forth a vast mass of its life-forms—corals, sertularias, crustaceans, and fish of the lower orders—must have preceded (not followed) the time when the earth produced vegetation of all kinds, and further that it must have come after the appearance of scorpions and some land insects.[[77]]
Moreover, as the regular succession in periods of light and darkness on the earth, and the sequence of seasons was not organized (but only a generally diffused light, and, probably, an uniform and moist state of climate without seasons) till after the commands for the formation of the whole of the large classes of plants, both cryptogams and phanerogams, it is obvious that as many of these would require the fuller development of seasonal influences, the whole process could not have been worked out before the fourth day's creative work was begun.
This instance alone—and it would be easy to add others—shows that the narrative cannot be meant to indicate what actually happened on earth, i.e., to summarize the entire realization of the Divine command.
Such being the plain facts with regard to the kind of accomplishment meant by the terms "it was so," "the earth brought forth," &c., it is quite plain that no violence is done to the text by explaining it as intended to describe what God did in heaven, with the addition, that as each command was formulated, the result on earth surely followed, the thing "was so," and the earth and water respectively no doubt began to "bring forth." More than this cannot be made out on any interpretation that accords with facts. It seems so clear to me that this is so, that I hardly need refer to the use of the terms the "waters brought forth" and the "earth brought forth" and the phrase in chapter ii. 5—the Lord made every plant before it grew.
If, as we have been long allowed to suppose, God spake and the water and earth were at once fully and finally peopled with animals where before nothing but plants had existed, and so on, I should hardly have expected the use of words which imply a gradual process—a gestation and subsequent birth (so to speak) of life-forms.
How the order in which the events are recorded stands in relation to the subsequent history of life-development on earth, and what its significance may be, I will consider later on. First I will conclude the argument for the general interpretation of the narrative.
2. The Second Genesis Narrative.
I have only one more direct argument to offer; but I think it is a very important one. The first division of Genesis ends with the Divine commands creating man and the day of rest which followed. The narrative ending at chapter ii. verse 3 (the division of chapters here, as elsewhere, is purely arbitrary), we have at verse 4 of chapter ii, what has been loudly proclaimed as another account of the same Creation, which, it is added (arbitrarily enough—but any argument will do if only it is against religion!) is contrary to the first.[[78]]
Now, even if there is a second account of Creation, it would surely be a circumstance somewhat difficult to explain. Contrary in any possible sense, the narrative (from chapter ii. 4, onward) certainly is not. But why should there be a second narrative at all? On the hitherto received supposition that chapter i. intends to tells us the process of creation—what God caused to be done on earth, not merely what He did in heaven—there is apparently no room for a second narrative. Nor have I seen any completely satisfactory explanation. But if we accept the view that the first chapter explains the Divine Design, and its being published (so to speak) and commanded in heaven, then it would be very natural that that narrative should be followed by a second, which should detail not the whole process of all life existence on earth, but (as the Bible is to be henceforth concerned with Man, his fall and his redemption) with an account of just so much of the process as relates to the actual birth on the earth's surface of the particular man Adam, the most important (and possibly not the only) outcome of the fiat recorded in chapter i. vers. 27, 28.
In this view, not only a second narrative, but just the particular kind of narrative we actually have, is not only natural, but even necessary. Before, we had a general account of how God ordained the scheme of material-form and life-form on the earth; now we have a detailed account of how He actually carried out one portion of it—that one portion we are most concerned to hear about, namely the man Adam, the progenitor of our own race, of whom came JESUS CHRIST, "the son of Adam.[[79]]"
The account is designed to introduce to us the scene of Adam's birthplace—the Garden of Eden.[[80]] The mention of a garden, and the subsequent important connection of the trees of that garden with the conduct of the man, naturally turn the writer's attention to the general subject of the vegetation on the earth's surface. He prefaces his new account accordingly with a brief summary—which I may paraphrase thus without, I trust, departing from the sense of the original: "Such was the origin of the earth (and all in it) and of the heavenly host, at the time when God made them. He had made every plant before it was in the earth—every herb of the field before it grew" (mark the language as confirming what I have said—God "created" everything before it actually developed and grew into being on the earth). "Rain did not then fall (in the same way as now) on the earth, but the mist that exhaled from the soil re-condensed, and fell and moistened the ground; but there was as yet no MAN to till and cultivate the soil."
Then God actually formed or fashioned a man. It is not now that He created the ideal form to be produced in due time, but that He actually formed the individual Adam, and placed him in a garden which He had prepared for the purpose. All the words used now imply actual production. The Divine ideal was ready, and the earth-elements (of which we know man's body to consist) were ready at the Divine word to assume the human shape. And that done, God "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life" (mark the direct act on the man himself), and the man became a "living soul." There is nothing here of the "earth bringing forth" as in the former narrative. We have the direct act of God, not in the design only, but in the production of the thing itself.
If this is not a complete explanation and justification of the second narrative, I do not know what, in common fairness, is entitled to be so called.
The language may be rigorously examined, and it will fully bear out the position taken up.
I conceive, then, that the cumulation of proof need go no further. The true explanation of Genesis i. also supplies the place for Genesis ii. 4, et seq., and overcomes all the difficulty that has hitherto existed on the subject.
It will now, I trust, be clear that by such an interpretation of Genesis we at once give (1) a full and natural meaning to all the terms; we reconcile it with other Scripture, and we enhance all the sublime attributes which we have been reverentially accustomed to connect with this ancient passage. (2) We obviate the difficulty regarding the second narrative in chapter ii. 4. And (3) we place the whole above any possible conflict with science, and above any need for "reconciliation." Here, too, is a purpose and meaning assigned to the whole narrative, without being driven into the difficult position of supposing the verses to be the literary outcome of an ignorant imagination which gave expression to its crude ideas only—though enshrining among utterly false details a sublime truth, regarding which one can only wonder why it could not have been stated without the encumbrance of the surroundings.
The naturalist and the biologist may continue, unquestioned, to work out more and more of the wondrous story of Life on the globe. They can never disprove, or on any of their own grounds deny, that God is the Author of all things—matter, force, and mind alike; that He designed the form and relations of the earth; that He organized its light, its seasons, and its changes; that He has furnished the types and patterns of all life-forms which matter and force are conformably thereto, developing on the earth. In short, REVELATION tells us that God did all this "in the beginning," how His form-designs were thought out and declared in six days, and how He rested on the seventh day.
SCIENCE will tell us how, when, and where the Creative fiats and the designs of heaven were realized and worked out on earth.
Here is the separate province of each, without fear of clashing, or room for controversy.
Nothing more is meant by the Hebrew "deshe." The true "grasses" (graminea),—cereals, bamboos, &c., are certainly not intended, for these are all conspicuously flowering plants, "herbs yielding seed," and therefore coming under the second plainly defined group. But the general term "sproutage" or "vegetation" is just adapted to signify the mass of cryptogamic plant-life, the mosses, lichens, algae, and then ferns, &c., which evidently formed the first stage of plant-life on the globe.
A single wing found little more than a year ago is the sole evidence of insects older than the Devonian; and scorpions (highly-organized crustaceans) have been found in the Upper Silurian in some abundance.
The contradiction is supposed to be in verse 19, as if then the creation of animals was for the first time effected—after the man and his helpmate. But it is quite clear that the text refers to the fact that God had created animals; the command was, "Let the earth bring forth," and the immediate act spoken of was not the formation of animals, but the bringing of them to Adam to see what he would call them.
St. Luke iii. 38.
Which had a real historic existence. Vide Appendix A.