(Day III.) Again God spoke, and the dry land appeared'; so that upon this Day there were already in existence earth and sea, air and water, day and night. And God Himself saw that all was good in the world which He had made. Then He adorned the earth with verdure and beauty, and brought out of it grass, corn, fruit-trees; each "after its kind," "And God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the Third Day."
(Day IV.) Again God spoke, and the two great lights, sun and moon, were set to give light—day and night—upon the earth, and to order the seasons. "And God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the Fourth Day."
(Day V.) Again God spoke; living creatures swarmed in the waters, and "winged fowl" flew "in the open firmament of heaven." It is now, in connection with air and sea being filled with living beings, to which God gave not only the same power to grow and multiply with which He had endowed the trees and the herbage, but in addition to it, power to move from one place to another at will, power to enjoy, and to go in quest of that which seems to them desirable, that we have again the word, "God created," and also a new word, never before used about day or night, earth or sea, sun or moon, tree or flower—"God blessed."
You remember how we noticed, when we were reading about the work of God on the Fifth Day, that as soon as He had made, not stones or plants, but fishes and birds, He blessed them. God made these living creatures happy, each in the place suited to the kind of life He had given it. And again of this Day's work we read, "And God saw that it was good…. And the evening and the morning were the Fifth Day."
Now let us read verses 24 and 25 very carefully. These verses tell us of part of God's work on the Sixth Day; and we notice that this Day begins, like the former ones, with those three words which we have read so many times in this chapter—"And God said."
(Day VI.) I wish you to stop at the end of verse 25 because there the account which God has given us of His creation of the world ends. All was now complete; and all was very good in the eyes of Him who had made and fashioned it. The rest of the chapter speaks of a distinct part of God's Creation, when man, who was to be over it all, was made; a part of the Creation, but head and Crown of all; a being distinct from any other inhabitant of earth, air, or sea, because created in the image of God.
The old writer who speaks so quaintly about the "great pond of the world," and the "guests" which it contains, exclaims with wonder when he thinks of the "tenant" which God, when He had made the great house of the world and furnished it, brought in to possess it. He says:—
"But, oh God, what a little lord hast Thou made over this great world!… yet none but he can see what Thou hast done; none but he can admire and adore Thee in what he seeth…. Other creatures Thou madest by a simple command, man not without a divine consultation; others at once, man Thou didst first form, then inspire; others in several shapes, like to none but themselves, man after Thine own image … others with qualities fit for service; man for dominion; other creatures grovel to their earth, and have all their senses upon it, this is reared up towards heaven."
We talked a good deal about this; for I wished that Eustace and Leslie, and even little Dick, should understand something of the great difference which God has put between those creatures—the cleverest and best of them—who live their little life in the sea or on the earth, and then pass away altogether, and even a little child who does not know its right hand from its left, and cannot take care of itself perhaps nearly so well as a bird or a beast, but who has within it what God has given to no bird or beast, a spirit which can never die, a spirit which must some time "return unto God who gave it," because it belongs to Him.
No beast will have to give an account of itself to God; for to these creatures of a day, He has given their bodies, so wonderful and beautiful, and the breath by which they live; but not that deathless part, the spirit, because of which every man is responsible to God, and knows that he is, even though he may never have read in God's Word that "every one of us shall give account of himself to God."