As to the character of this spiritual creation nothing is known; nothing, so far as I know, has been revealed in relation to it. Here let me say, by way of caution, that those who accept the revelations of God as truth need not be alarmed or worried if they meet with things in the sacred writings that they cannot explain or understand, as in the case of this spiritual creation of the heavens and the earth which preceded the natural, or what we regard as the actual creation of the earth. In this and in all cases of like character we claim for those who accept the revelations of holy writ as facts, what Professor Huxley claims for those who build up theories on their conception of facts in nature, viz— "There is a wide difference between the thing you cannot explain and the thing which upsets your theory altogether." This idea is a pendulum which should swing just as high for the believer in revelation as for the scientist. Not that there is anything wrong with revelation, the difficulty arises from our inability to comprehend it; but when increased intelligence shall give us enlarged views and keener powers of penetration, we shall then find that the revelations of God are in strict accord with the facts in the case, and perfectly simple however incomprehensible they may have seemed to us in the day when we saw as through a glass darkly. But this is a digression.
Though we cannot understand the nature of this spiritual creation, yet to learn that the first account of the creation in the Bible is of a spiritual creation and the second of an actual or natural one, gives some comfort, from the fact that it does away with all charges of inconsistency or contradiction between the two accounts. For since they are descriptions of two different things instead of one thing, there is nothing in the law of consistency requiring the accounts of different events to be alike.
In these articles, however, what turns out to be an account of the spiritual creation of the earth has been spoken of and treated as the natural or actual creation.[B] It has been treated so purposely, because I believe the natural in the order of its creation and development corresponds with the creation and development of the spiritual. Furthermore, I believe the account in the first chapter of Genesis could be safely accepted as the announcement of the general plan of creation, not only of our planet but of all worlds; and in it will be found ample scope for the belief that the earth came into existence by the accretion of nubulous matter; that it took thousands of years, yea, millions, perhaps, for the condensation and solidification of that matter; granting as long periods as geologists may demand for the formation of the earth's curst; that then followed the changes which were wrought during the six great periods named in Genesis; beginning with the production of light, and ending with placing man upon the completed planet as its lord and sovereign under God.
[Footnote B: I do not wish in making this distinction between the spiritual and natural creation, and in using the word "actual" to be understood as implying that the spiritual creation was not an actual creation. It may have been just as tangible and actual as the creation on which we walk. I only use the expression to make a distinction between the natural and spiritual creations.]
The careful reader of this paper will say, however, that the statements in the last paragraph permit all the old difficulties to surge back upon us; all the old apparent inconsistencies between the first and second accounts of creation in Genesis remain unreconciled. For if the natural creation of our planet corresponded to the spiritual creation of it, the spiritual standing in the same relationship to the natural as the well devised plan of the architect does to the actual erection of a building—then the account given of the spiritual creation of our earth may as well be regarded as the account of the actual creation of it also. But this leaves all the difficulties. between the two accounts of creation in the Bible untouched, and we must look to other facts than those yet considered if we would see them removed.
The Prophet Joseph Smith is credited with having said that our planet was made up of the fragments of a planet which previously existed; some mighty convulsions disrupted that creation and made it desolate. Both its animal and vegetable life forms were destroyed. And when those convulsions ceased, and the rent earth was again consolidated, and it became desirable to replenish it, the work was begun by making a mist to rise that it might descend in gentle rain upon the barren earth, that it might again be fruitful. Then came one of the sons of God[C] to the earth—Adam. A garden was planted in Eden and the man placed in it, and there the Lord brought to him every beast of the field and every fowl of the air, and Adam gave names to them all. Afterwards was brought to Adam his wife, whom, since she was derived from man, he named wo-man; and she became his help-mate, his companion and the mother of his children. In this nothing is hinted at about man being made from the dust, and woman manufactured from a rib, a story which has been a cause of much perplexity to religious people, and a source of much impious merriment to reckless unbelievers. We are informed that the Lord God made every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb before it grew[D] on our planet. As vegetation was created or made to grow upon some older earth, and the seeds thereof or the plants themselves were brought to our earth and made to grow, so likewise man and his help-meet were brought from some other world to our own, to people it with their children. And though it is said that the "Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground"—it by no means follows that he was "formed" as one might form a brick, or from the dust of this earth. We are all "formed" of the dust of the ground, though instead of being moulded as a brick we are brought forth by the natural laws of procreation; so also was Adam and his wife in some older world. And as for the story of the rib, under it I believe the mystery of procreation is hidden.
[Footnote C: Lest any one should doubt that Adam was one of the sons of God, I call attention to the verse of Luke, iii chapter, where in tracing the genealogy of Jesus back to Adam, and coming to Cainan it goes on to say that "he (Cainan) was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.">[
[Footnote D: Genesis ii: 4, 5.]
Of the things I have spoken, this is the sum: There was a planet created on the plan of the spiritual creation described in the first chapter of Genesis; beginning with the condensation of nubulous matter to a "fire ball," then the cooling of the surface and thickening of the earth's crust, and the envelopment of it in water; then came light, and by internal eruptions portions of land were thrown above the surface of the water —"the dry land appeared;" then came the simpler forms of vegetation; then the sunlight visited the earth, and doubtless higher forms of vegetation, fruit-trees and flowers and grains were brought forth; then came the creatures that abound in the ocean, that fly in the air, and the beasts of the earth. Not by the process of evolution, but by the various species suitable to the condition of the earth's development being brought from some other and older sphere, with power to propagate their kind, until the changed conditions of the earth became unfavorable to them, when they became extinct and were replaced by other species of a higher type. Then came the mighty convulsions which, for some cause or other, and doubtless for some wise purpose, disrupted that planet; and when from its fragments a new world—our present planet—was brought into existence, it was made the abode of man, as described in the second account of the creation in Genesis, which begins by placing man upon the earth, and then the inferior animals.
Accepting this statement of Joseph Smith relative to our planet in its present state being created or formed from the fragments of a planet which previously existed, one may readily understand how the supposed differences between scientists and believers in revelation have arisen. Scientists have been talking of the earth's strata that were formed in a previously existing planet; they have considered the fossilized flora and fauna imbedded in those strata, and have speculated as to the probable lapse of time since those animal and vegetable forms of life existed; and have generally concluded that the age is so far remote that there is no possible chance of harmonizing it with the account of the creation as given in the Bible. Believers in the Bible, on the other hand, have generally taken it for granted that the account of the creation in the sacred record, would give to the earth no greater antiquity than six thousand years; and have held that within that period the universe was created out of nothing by the volition of Deity—an idea so palpably absurd that intelligence, despite all church authority to the contrary, everywhere rejects it.