Life: Its True Genesis

by Horatius Flaccus

1. Take the statement that "in the beginning" the earth was without form and void, and darkness rested upon the face of the depths. Here is not only no conflict with science, but the great suggestive fact which led Laplace to construct his "Nebular Hypothesis," or that magnificent system of world-structures which regards the universe as originally consisting of uniformly diffused matter filling all space, and hence "without form and void," but which subsequently became aggregated by gravitation into an infinite number of sun-systems, occupying inconceivably vast areas in space.

2. Nor can science well afford to cavil at that other most important suggestive statement that "the spirit of God"--the great formative force of the universe--moved upon the face of the depths, after which the evening and the morning were the first day, that is, the first distinctive epoch in the order of creation. When materialistic science shall define "gravitation"--the supposed aggregating force of infinitely diffused matter in space--so as to make it a distinct and separate factor in the universe from "the spirit of God,"--that spirit which was breathed into man when he became a living soul, and which, we are told, "upholds the order of the heavens," then its devotees may sneer at the Bible Genesis, and the logical deductions to be drawn therefrom.

3. Again, science can have no conflict with the Bible Genesis, except in the most hypercritical way, in the affirmative statement that God set two great lights in the firmament, the one to rule the day and the other to rule the night; and that "he made the stars also." For it is nowhere stated that the "greater light" was not made to perform a similar office for each of the other planets of our system, or that it was not set in the firmament to adorn the skies of other and far-distant worlds, as "bright Arcturus, fairest of the stars," adorns our own.

4. Nor can materialistic science dispute the more explicitly revealed fact, that the order of creation, so far at least as animal and vegetable life are concerned, is precisely that to be found in geological distribution, or as unerringly recorded in the lithographic pages of nature. And yet nothing was known of these pages--not a leaf had been turned back--at the time the Bible Genesis was written. So that, whoever was its author, this precise order of distribution could only have been "guessed at," setting aside its inspirational claims, by the writer of this most remarkable genesis.

5. And again, science can have no successful conflict--certainly none in which she will ultimately come off victor--in reference to the equally explicit statement that every living thing, and every living creature, either yields seed, bears fruit, or brings forth issue, "after his kind," and distinctively none other. For this would seem to be the one inflexible law governing all living organisms, from which there can be no divergence in any such sense as the "scientific genesis," pretentiously so called, would authoritatively indicate. No "increase in variety," which Mr. Spencer regards as the "essential characteristic of all progress," will ever enable us "to gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles."

6. Nor will materialistic science ever succeed in overthrowing the Bible theory herein advanced, that "the germs of all living things, man only excepted, are in themselves (that is, each after its kind) upon the earth," and that they severally make their appearance whenever the necessary environing conditions occur. This most remarkable statement of the Bible genesis will be found to fit into all the vital phenomena occurring upon our globe, explaining the appearance of infusoria, all mycological and cryptogamic forms, as well as all vegetal and animal organisms. All these come from "the earth wherein there is life," and hence the divine command for the earth "to bring forth" every living thing (except man) "after his kind."

But let us embrace, in the proper antithetical summary of statements, some of the more distinctive points of antagonism between the Bible genesis and that of materialistic science:--

THE BIBLE GENESIS.

1. The Bible Genesis presents the theological conception of a God, or an Infinite Intelligence in the universe, with whom, as personified, there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

2. The Bible Genesis represents every living thing as perfect of its kind, which the earth was commanded to bring forth from seed or "germs," declared to be in themselves upon the earth.