If it were not so, every thing would be isolated and disconnected, and consequently unintelligible. There would be a succession of phenomena, but no manifestation of thought; a series of dissolving views presented to the sense, but no revelation to the understanding. Isolated phenomenal changes might be continued through untold ages, but the past would have no connection with the present, and would be unknown and lost to all the future. A revelation of the Infinite Mind to finite intelligences, made through the manifold and diversified phenomena of nature, must be a connected and related whole, so that from phenomena actually observed we may infer antecedent conditions, and anticipate future evolutions; otherwise it could not be understood. To be intelligible, a process of development must be the product of thought, and it must reveal thought—that is, it must be consecutive.[186]
4. This manifestation must be HARMONIOUS. Notwithstanding its multiplicity of parts and manifold stages, it must be a unity—a Cosmos.
Beings the most varied in endowment, things the most diversified in form and function, events the most remote from each other in time and space, must all be related and connected in virtue of the ultimate and all-embracing purpose for which the universe exists. An external purpose revealed under time-relations must be an all-harmonious evolution and an orderly totality—a Cosmos.
Let us now turn to the record of creation as given in the Sacred Scriptures—the Mosaic Cosmogony—and see how that account conforms to the laws which on logical grounds we have deduced as the Laws of the Divine Manifestation.
The fundamental prerequisite for a right interpretation of the sacred narrative is a clear apprehension, first, of its general purpose, and, secondly, of its special literary characteristics. On these two points, therefore, we offer the following preliminary considerations:
1. The design of the sacred narrative is to teach Theology and not Science. A cursory reading of the narrative will convince any one that its purpose is not to enlarge men's views of nature, but to teach them something concerning nature's God. It says nothing about the forces of nature, the laws of nature, the classifications of natural history, or the size, positions, distances, and motions of the heavenly bodies. From first to last, every phenomenon and every law is linked immediately to some act or command of God. It is God who creates, God who commands, God who names, God who approves, and God who blesses. Strike out the allusions to God, and the narrative is meaningless. Clearly, it was never intended to teach science. It has obviously one purpose, to reveal and keep before the minds of men the grand truth that Jehovah is the sole Creator and Lord of the heavens and the earth; and it leaves the scientific comprehension of nature to the natural powers with which God has endowed man for that end.
All this is what we might legitimately expect. The narrative was designed primarily and mainly for the instruction of the masses of men who knew nothing or scarcely any thing of science; and if designed for their instruction, it must be couched in language which they could comprehend. A revelation made in the language of science would have been unintelligible to the race for nearly six thousand years of its history, and, practically, would have been no revelation at all. Scientific language, moreover, is subject to modification and change as science advances; but the narrative of Genesis was intended for all time, and therefore needed to be couched in language not liable to change. "The only language which possesses these two requisites of general intelligibility and non-liability to change is the language of appearances. The facts set forth must be described as they would have seemed to the eye of man; that is, in a word, phenomenally, or the cosmogony would fail of its purpose. All scrutiny or objection in the matter of unscientific, or scientifically inaccurate language, then, must be put aside as irrelevant."[187]
While earnestly maintaining that the inspired history of creation was given for the instruction of unscientific persons, and is therefore theological and not scientific, we also believe that all truth is one, and that all revelation, whether in Scripture or in nature, must be ultimately harmonious. Science in its last generalization must be Theology. Theology in its proper development must be Science. They are twin children of heaven, vestal virgins which can not be wedded to error. We are, therefore, justified in the expectation that the revelation in Scripture, when rightly interpreted, will contain nothing that is inconsistent with the scientific interpretation of nature. While we hold that there are no untimely anticipations of scientific discovery in Genesis, yet we expect that when the scientific discoveries are made, the congruity and dignity of the moral and religious lesson shall not be defeated and marred. Nay, more, we maintain that the Mosaic cosmogony presents the great principles which really lie at the basis of a truly scientific interpretation of nature. It teaches that God is before all things and the Creator of all things—that He alone is unbeginning, and that all things had a beginning in his creative word and will. It presents the universe as one harmonious whole, the product of one designing Mind, the project of his thought, the transcript of his plan—a plan evolved through successive stages toward a foreseen terminus or goal. And, finally, it teaches that man is the end toward which creation was tending, that he is the last and crowning work of God, and that he is the child and charge, not of a blind, impersonal force, but of a living, loving God.
2. The sacred narrative is poetic, symbolical, and unchronological. It is a noteworthy fact that the early literature of the most ancient nations was poetic—the natural, spontaneous product of that earliest stage of mental development in which the conceptions of God and of nature were determined by subjective feeling and native sentiment, and not by reflective thought. The "Vedas" of the Hindus, the "Iliad" of the Greeks, the "Eddas" of the ancient Germans, were each the product of an age in which "prose was unknown, as well as the distinction between prose and poetry." The earliest Hebrew compositions are of the same character; and it is reasonable to assume that a primitive revelation to the progenitors of our race would be accommodated to this earliest phase in the development of mind.
The Book of Genesis opens with a Psalm—"the inspired Psalm of Creation"[188]—"a grand symbolical Hymn of Creation." "The rhythmical character of the passage, its stately style, its parallelisms, its refrains, its unity within itself, all combine to show that it is a poem."[189] Here is the same organic unity which marks the 104th Psalm, or the Lord's Prayer, or the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. Or, if we go out of the Bible for illustration, it combines with lyric breadth of treatment and stateliness of movement all the compactness of a "solemn sonnet freighted with a single thought from beginning to end." Analysis of its interior structure exhibits a most artificial synthesis, founded upon well-known sacred numbers. It has, first, an Exordium, the proemial part. Then it is articulated into six Strophes. Finally there is the Epode, or peroration. The six strophes separate naturally into two groups, in which there is a balance and correlation of parts celebrating the first three and the last three concordant steps in the creative movement—the Strophe and the Antistrophe.