4. The completed creation is a Divine harmony. This is the abiding impression which the sublime Psalm of Creation leaves upon our minds as we close the book. It has taught us this final lesson, that the universe is the manifestation of one grand creative thought, as comprehensive in the diversity of its parts as it is complete in the unity of its plan. We learn, not merely that God made all the parts of the universe, but that He made each part for a specific purpose, and that all the separate and successive parts are chords in nature's music, parts of creation's anthem of perpetual praise. The Symbolical Hymn of Creation, with its striking parallelisms, its balance and correlation of parts, its harmonic numbers (3 and 7 and 10, the symbols of perfection), its pauses and refrains, its rhythm and unity symbolizes the universal prevalence of Law in nature; reveals a changeless Order in respect to space and time, to number and form; suggests harmonious relations between terrestrial conditions and cosmical adjustments, between organic and inorganic existence, and accords with the wonderful rhythm which pervades the Cosmos.
The glorious mansion is first built, then furnished. A triad of days is devoted to its architecture, a triad to its occupants. The former describes a series of dividings and combinings, the latter portrays a series of formations and vivifications. "The last day of each era includes one work typical of the era, and another related to it in essential points, but also prophetic of the future. Vegetation, while, for physical reasons, a part of the creation of the third day, was also prophetic of the future Organic era, in which the progress of life was the grand characteristic. The record thus accords with the fundamental principle in history that the characteristic of an age has its beginnings within the age preceding. So, again, man, while like other mammals in structure, even to the homologies of every bone and muscle, was endowed with a spiritual nature which looked forward to another era, that of spiritual existence. The seventh "day," the day of rest from the work of creation, is man's period of preparation for that new existence, and it is to promote this special end that, in strict parallelism, the Sabbath follows man's six days of work."[218]
The following scheme will exhibit the completeness of the parallelism:
INORGANIC ERA. ORGANIC ERA.
I. Day.....Luminosity. IV. Day....Luminaries
II. Day....{Water, V. Day...{Marine Animals, Reptiles,
{Atmosphere. {Birds.
III. Day.....Dry Land VI. Day....Mammals
VEGETATION. MAN.
Note.
The Principle of Teleology not affected by the Theory of Evolution.—"It is necessary to remark that there is a wider teleology which is not touched by the doctrine of evolution, but is actually based upon the fundamental proposition of evolution.... The teleological and the mechanical views of nature are not necessarily mutually exclusive; on the contrary, the more purely a mechanist the speculator is, the more firmly does he assume a primordial molecular arrangement, of which all the phenomena of the universe are the consequences; and the more completely thereby is he at the mercy of the teleologist, who can always defy him to disprove that this primordial molecular arrangement was not intended to evolve the phenomena of the universe."—Prof. Huxley, in The Academy for October, 1869, No. 1, p. 13.