Nor, be it remembered, has the recognition of a purely optical character in the revelation been restricted to the assertion of any one theory of reconciliation. It was as certainly held by Chalmers and Dr. Pye Smith, as by Dr. Kurtz and the author of this treatise; nay, it has been recognized by not a few of their opponents also. Granville Penn, for instance, does not scruple to avow his belief, in his elaborate "Estimate of the Mineral and Mosaic Geologies," that both sun and moon were created on the first day of creation, though they did not become "optically visible" until the fourth. "In truth, that the fourth day only rendered visible the sidereal creation of the first day, is manifested," he says, "by collating the transactions of the two days. On the first day, we are told generally, 'God divided the light, or day, and the darkness, or night;' but the physical agents which he employed for that division are not there declared. On the fourth day, we are told referentially, 'God commanded the lights [or luminaries] for dividing day and night, to give their light upon earth.' Here, then, it is evident from the retrospective implication of the latter description, that the lights or luminaries for dividing day and night, which were to give their light upon the earth for the first time on the fourth day, were the unexpressed physical agents by which God divided the day and night on the first day." Now, whatever may be thought of Mr. Penn's argument here, there can be no doubt that it demonstrates at least his own belief in the purely optical character of the Mosaic account of the sidereal creation. It is an account, he held, not of what God wrought on the first day in the heavens, but of what a human eye would have seen on the fourth day from the earth. And Moses Stuart, in his philological assault on the geologists, is scarce less explicit in his avowal of a similar belief. "Every one sees," he says, "that to speak of the sun as rising and setting, is to describe, in common parlance, what appears optically, that is, to our sensible view, as reality. But the history of creation is a different affair. In ONE RESPECT, indeed, there is a resemblance. The historian everywhere speaks as an optical observer stationed on a point of our world, and surveying from this the heavens and the earth, and speaking of them as seen in this manner by his bodily eye. The sun, and moon, and stars, are servants of the earth, lighted up to garnish and to cheer it, and to be the guardians of its times and seasons. Other uses he knows not for them: certainly of other uses he does not speak. The distances, magnitudes, orbicular motions, gravitating powers, and projectile forces of the planets and of the stars, are all out of the circle of his history, and probably beyond his knowledge. Inspiration does not make men omniscient. It does not teach them the scientific truths of astronomy, or chemistry, or botany, nor any science as such. Inspiration is concerned with teaching religious truths, and such facts or occurrences as are connected immediately with illustrating, or with impressing them on the mind." Thus far Dr. Stuart and Mr. Penn,—men whose evidence on this special head must be sufficient to show that it is not merely geologists who have recognized an optical or visual character in the Mosaic history of creation. And certainly the inference deduced from the admitted fact, that is, the inference that the optical description must have been founded on a revelation addressed to the eye,—a revelation by vision,—does seem a fair and legitimate one. The revelation must have been either a revelation in words or ideas, or a revelation of scenes and events pictorially exhibited. Failing, however, to record its own history, it leaves the student equally at liberty, so far as external evidence is concerned, to take up either view; while, so far as internal evidence goes, the presumption seems all in favor of revelation by vision; for, while no reason can be assigned why, in a revelation by word or idea, appearances which took place ere there existed a human eye should be optically described, nothing can be more natural or obvious than that they should be so described, had they been revealed by vision as a piece of eye-witnessing. It seems, then, at least eminently probable that such was the mode or form of the revelation in this case, and that he who saw by vision on the Mount the pattern of the Tabernacle and its sacred furniture, and in the Wilderness of Horeb the bush burning but not consumed,—types and symbols of the coming dispensation and of its Divine Author,—saw also by vision the pattern of those successive pre-Adamic creations, animal and vegetable, through which our world was fitted up as a place of human habitation. The reason why the drama of creation has been optically described seems to be, that it was in reality visionally revealed.
A further question still remains: If the revelation was by vision, that circumstance affords of itself a satisfactory reason why the description should be optical; and, on the other hand, since the description is decidedly optical, the presumption is of course strong that the revelation was by vision. But why, it may be asked, by vision? Can the presumption be yet further strengthened by showing that this visual mode or form was preferable to any other? Can there be a reason, in fine, assigned for the reason,—for that revelation by vision which accounts for the optical character of the description? The question is a difficult one; but I think there can. There seems to be a peculiar fitness in a revelation made by vision, for conveying an account of creation to various tribes and peoples of various degrees of acquirement, and throughout a long course of ages in which the knowledge of the heavenly bodies or of the earth's history, that is, the sciences of astronomy and geology, did not at first exist, but in which ultimately they came to be studied and known. We must recognize such a mode as equally fitted for the earlier and the more modern times,—for the ages anterior to the rise of science, and the ages posterior to its rise. The prophet, by describing what he had actually seen in language fitted to the ideas of his time, would shock no previously existing prejudice that had been founded on the apparent evidence of the senses; he could as safely describe the moon as the second great light of creation, as he could the sun as its first great light, and both, too, as equally subordinate to the planet which we inhabit. On the other hand, an enlightened age, when it had come to discover this key to the description, would find it optically true in all its details. But how differently would not a revelation have fared, in at least the earlier time, that was strictly scientific in its details,—a revelation, for instance, of the great truth demonstrated by Galileo, that the sun rests in the centre of the heavens, while the apparently immoveable earth sweeps with giddy velocity around it; or of the great truth demonstrated by Newton, that our ponderous planet is kept from falling off into empty space by the operation of the same law that impels a descending pebble towards the ground! A great miracle wrought in proof of the truth of the revelation might serve to enforce the belief of it on the generation to whom it had been given; but the generations that followed, to whom the miracle would exist as a piece of mere testimony, would credit, in preference, the apparently surer evidence of their senses, and become unbelievers. They would act, all unwittingly, on the principle of Hume's famous argument, and prefer to rest rather on their own experience of the great phenomena of nature, than on the doubtful testimony of their ancestors, reduced in the lapse of ages to a dim, attenuated tradition. Nor would a geological revelation have fared better, in at least those periods intermediate between the darker and more scientific ages, in which ingenious men, somewhat skeptical in their leanings, cultivate literature, and look down rather superciliously on the ignorance and barbarism of the past. What would skeptics such as Hobbes and Hume have said of an opening chapter in Genesis that would describe successive periods,—first of molluscs, star-lilies, and crustaceans, next of fishes, next of reptiles and birds, then of mammals, and finally of man; and that would minutely portray a period in which there were lizards bulkier than elephants, reptilian whales furnished with necks slim and long as the bodies of great snakes, and flying dragons, whose spread of wing greatly more than doubled that of the largest bird? The world would assuredly not receive such a revelation. Nor, further, have scientific facts or principles been revealed to man which he has been furnished with the ability of observing or discovering for himself. It is according to the economy of revelation, that the truths which it exhibits should be of a kind which, lying beyond the reach of his ken, he himself could never have elicited. From every view of the case, then, a prophetic exhibition of the pre-Adamic scenes and events by vision seems to be the one best suited for the opening chapters of a revelation vouchsafed for the accomplishment of moral, not scientific purposes, and at once destined to be contemporary with every stage of civilization, and to address itself to minds of every various calibre, and every different degree of enlightenment.
The statement of Dr. Kurtz, that as vision of pre-Adamic history comes under the same laws as vision of history still future, it ought therefore to be read by the same rules, craves reflection. "Since the source of knowledge for both kinds of history," we find him saying, "and not only the source, but the means, and manner, and way of coming to know, is the same, viz., the eye-witness of the prophet's mental eye, it follows that the historical representation which he who thus comes to know, projects [or portrays], in virtue of this eye-witnessing of his, holds the same relation to the reality in both the cases we speak of, and must be subjected to the same laws of exposition. We thus get this very important rule of interpretation, viz., that the representations of pre-human events, which rest upon revelation, are to be handled from the same point of view, and expounded by the same laws, as the prophecies and representations of future times and events, which also rest upon revelation. This, then, is the only proper point of view for scientific exposition of the Mosaic history of creation; that is to say, if we acknowledge that it proceeded from Divine revelation, not from philosophic speculation or experimental investigation, or from the ideas of reflecting men." There is certainly food for thought in this striking and original view; and there is at least one simple rule of prophetic exposition which may be applied to the pre-Adamic history, in accordance with the principle which it suggests. After all that a scientific theology has done for the right interpretation of prophecy, we find the prediction always best read by the light of its accomplishment. The event which it foretold forms its true key; and when this key is wanting, all is uncertainty. The past is comparatively clear. The hieroglyphic forms which crowd the anterior portions of the prophetic tablet are found wonderfully to harmonize (men such as the profound Newton being the judges) with those great historic events, already become matter of history, which they foreshadowed and symbolized; but, on the other hand, the hieroglyphics which occupy the tablet's posterior portion,—the hieroglyphics that symbolize events still future,—are invincibly difficult and inexplicable. I have read several works on prophecy produced in the last age, in which the writers were bold enough to quit the clue with which history furnishes the student of fulfilled prophecy, and, with the prophecies yet unfulfilled as their guide, to plunge into a troubled sea of speculation regarding the history of the future. And I have found that in every instance they were deplorably at fault regarding even the events that were nearest at hand at the time. History is thus the surest interpreter of the revealed prophecies which referred to events posterior to the times of the prophet. In what shall we find the surest interpretation of the revealed prophecies that referred to events anterior to his time? In what light, or on what principle, shall we most correctly read the prophetic drama of creation? In the light, I reply, of scientific discovery,—on the principle that the clear and certain must be accepted, when attainable, as the proper exponents of the doubtful and obscure. What fully developed history is to the prophecy which of old looked forwards, fully developed science is to the prophecy which of old looked backwards. Scarce any one will question whether that portion of the creation drama which deals with the heavenly bodies ought to be read in the light of established astronomic discovery or no; for, save by perhaps a few of Father Cullen's monks, who can still hold that the sun moves round the earth, and is only six feet in diameter, all theologians have now received the astronomic doctrines, and know that they rest upon a basis at least as certain as any of the historic events symbolized in fulfilled prophecy. And were we to challenge for the established geologic doctrines a similar place and position with respect to those portions of the drama which deal with the two great kingdoms of nature, plant and animal, we might safely do so in the belief that the claim will be one day as universally recognized as the astronomic one is now.
On this principle there may, of course, be portions of the prophetic pre-Adamic past of as doubtful interpretation at the present time, from the imperfect development of physical science, as is any portion of the prophetic future from the imperfect development of historic events. The science necessary to the interpretation of the one may be as certainly still to discover as the events necessary to the interpretation of the other may be still to take place. Three centuries have not yet passed since astronomic science was sufficiently developed to form a true key to the various notices of the heavenly bodies which occur in Scripture; among the others, to the notice of their final appearance on the fourth day of creation. Little more than half a century has yet passed since geologic science was sufficiently developed to influence the interpretation given of the three other days' work. And respecting the work of at least the first and second days, more especially that of the second, we can still but vaguely guess. The science necessary to the right understanding of these portions of the prophetic record has still, it would seem, to be developed, if, indeed, it be destined at all to exist; and at present we can indulge in but doubtful surmises regarding them. What may be termed the three geologic days,—the third, fifth, and sixth,—may be held to have extended over those Carboniferous periods during which the great plants were created,—over those Oolitic and Cretacious periods during which the great sea monsters and birds were created,—and over those Tertiary periods during which the great terrestrial mammals were created. For the intervening or fourth day we have that wide space represented by the Permian and Triassic periods, which, less conspicuous in their floras than the period that went immediately before, and less conspicuous in their faunas than the periods that came immediately after, were marked by the decline, and ultimate extinction, of the Palæozoic forms, and the first partially developed beginnings of the Secondary ones. And for the first and second days there remain the great Azoic period, during which the immensely developed gneisses, mica schists, and primary clay slates, were deposited, and the two extended periods represented by the Silurian and Old Red Sandstone systems. These, taken together, exhaust the geologic scale, and may be named in their order as, first, the Azoic day or period; second, the Silurian and Old Red Sandstone day or period; third, the Carboniferous day or period; fourth, the Permian and Triassic day or period; fifth, the Oolitic and Cretaceous day or period; and sixth, the Tertiary day or period. Let us attempt conceiving how they might have appeared pictorially, if revealed in a series of visions to Moses, as the successive scenes of a great air-drawn panorama.
During the Azoic period, ere life appears to have begun on our planet, the temperature of the earth's crust seems to have been so high, that the strata, at first deposited apparently in water, passed into a semi-fluid state, became strangely waved and contorted, and assumed in its composition a highly crystalline character. Such is peculiarly the case with the fundamental or gneiss deposits of the period. In the overlying mica schist there is still much of contortion and disturbance; whereas the clay slate, which lies over all, gives evidence, in its more mechanical texture, and the regularity of its strata, that a gradual refrigeration of the general mass had been taking place, and that the close of the Azoic period was comparatively quiet and cool. Let us suppose that during the earlier part of this period of excessive heat the waters of the ocean had stood at the boiling point even at the surface, and much higher in the profounder depths, and further, that the half-molten crust of the earth, stretched out over a molten abyss, was so thin that it could not support, save for a short time, after some convulsion, even a small island above the sea level. What, in such circumstances, would be the aspect of the scene, optically exhibited from some point in space elevated a few hundred yards over the sea? It would be simply a blank, in which the intensest glow of fire would fail to be seen at a few yards' distance. An inconsiderable escape of steam from the safety-valve of a railway engine forms so thick a screen, that, as it lingers for a moment, in the passing, opposite the carriage windows, the passengers fail to discern through it the landscape beyond. A continuous stratum of steam, then, that attained to the height of even our present atmosphere, would wrap up the earth in a darkness gross and palpable as that of Egypt of old,—a darkness through which even a single ray of light would fail to penetrate. And beneath this thick canopy the unseen deep would literally "boil as a pot," wildly tempested from below; while from time to time more deeply seated convulsion would upheave sudden to the surface vast tracts of semi-molten rock, soon again to disappear, and from which waves of bulk enormous would roll outwards, to meet in wild conflict with the giant waves of other convulsions, or return to hiss and sputter against the intensely heated and fast foundering mass, whose violent upheaval had first elevated and sent them abroad. Such would be the probable state of things during the times of the earlier gneiss and mica schist deposits,—times buried deep in that chaotic night or "evening" which must have continued to exist for mayhap many ages after that beginning of things in which God created the heavens and the earth, and which preceded the first day. To a human eye stationed within the cloud, all, as I have said, must have been thick darkness: to eyes Divine, that could have looked through the enveloping haze, the appearance would have been that described by Milton, as seen by angel and archangel at the beginning of creation, when from the gates of heaven they looked down upon chaos:—
"On heavenly ground they stood, and from the shore
They viewed the vast immeasurable abyss,
Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild,
Up from the bottom turned by furious heat
And surging waves, as mountains to assault
Heaven's height, and with the centre mix the pole."
At length, however, as the earth's surface gradually cooled down, and the enveloping waters sunk to a lower temperature,—let us suppose, during the latter times of the mica schist, and the earlier times of the clay slate,—the steam atmosphere would become less dense and thick, and at length the rays of the sun would struggle through, at first doubtfully and diffused, forming a faint twilight, but gradually strengthening as the latter ages of the slate formation passed away, until, at the close of the great primary period, day and night,—the one still dim and gray, the other wrapped in a pall of thickest darkness,—would succeed each other as now, as the earth revolved on its axis, and the unseen luminary rose high over the cloud in the east, or sunk in the west beneath the undefined and murky horizon. And here again the optical appearance would be exactly that described by Milton:—
"'Let there be light,' said God, and forthwith light
Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure,
Sprung from the deep, and from her native east
To journey through the airy gloom began,
Sphered in a radiant cloud, for yet the sun
Was not: she in a cloudy tabernacle
Sojourned the while. God saw the light was good,
And light from darkness by the hemisphere
Divided: light the day, and darkness night,
He named. This was the first day, even and morn."
The second day's work has been interpreted variously, according to the generally received science of the times of the various commentators who have dealt with it. Even in Milton, though the great poet rejected the earlier idea of a solid firmament, we find prominence given to that of a vast hollow sphere of "circumfluous waters," which, by encircling the atmosphere, kept aloof the "fierce extremes of chaos." Later commentators, such as the late Drs. Kitto and Pye Smith, hold that the Scriptural analogue of the firmament here—by the way, a Greek, not a Hebrew idea, first introduced into the Septuagint—was in reality simply the atmosphere with its clouds. "The historian" [Moses], says Dr. Kitto, "speaks as things would have appeared to a spectator at the time of the creation. A portion of the heavy watery vapor had flown into the upper regions, and rested there in dense clouds, which still obscured the sun; while below, the whole earth was covered with water. Thus we see the propriety with which the firmament is said to have divided the waters from the waters." It is certainly probable that in a vision of creation the atmospheric phenomena of the second great act of the creation drama might have stood out with much greater prominence to the prophetic eye placed in the circumstances of a natural one, than any of its other appearances. The invertebrate life of the Silurian period, or even the ichthyic life of the earlier Old Bed Sandstone period, must have been comparatively inconspicuous from any sub-ærial point of view elevated but a few hundred feet over the sea level. Even the few islets of the latter ages of the period, with their ferns, lepidodendra, and coniferous trees, forming, as they did, an exceptional feature in these ages of vast oceans, and of organisms all but exclusively marine, may have well been excluded from a representative diorama that exhibited optically the grand characteristics of the time. Further, it seems equally probable that the introduction of organized existence on our planet was preceded by a change in the atmospheric conditions which had obtained during the previous period, in which the earth had been a desert and empty void. We know that just before the close of the Silurian ages terrestrial plants had appeared, and that before the close of the Old Red Sandstone ages, air-breathing animals had been produced; and infer that the atmosphere in which both could have existed must have been considerably different from that which lay dark and heavy over the bare hot rocks, and tenantless, steam-emitting seas, of the previous time. Under a gray, opaque sky, in which neither sun nor moon appear, we are not unfrequently presented with a varied drapery of clouds,—a drapery varied in form, though not in color: bank often seems piled over bank, shaded beneath and lighter above; or the whole breaks into dappled cloudlets, which bear—to borrow from the poetic description of Bloomfield—the "beauteous semblance of a flock at rest." And if such ærial draperies appeared in this early period, with the clear space between them and the earth which we so often see in gray, sunless days, the optical aspect must have been widely different from that of the previous time, in which a dense vaporous fog lay heavy upon rock and sea, and extended from the earth's surface to the upper heights of the atmosphere.
The third day's vision seems to be more purely geological in its character than either of the previous two. Extensive tracts of dry land appear, and there springs up over them, at the Divine command, a rank vegetation. And we know that what seems to be the corresponding Carboniferous period, unlike any of the preceding ones, was remarkable for its great tracts of terrestrial surface, and for its extraordinary flora. For the first time dry land, and organized bodies at once bulky enough, and exhibited in a medium clear enough, to render them conspicuous objects in a distant prospect, appear in the Mosaic drama; and we still find at once evidence of the existence of extensive though apparently very flat lands, and the remains of a wonderfully gigantic and abundant vegetation, in what appear to be the rocks of this period. The vision of the fourth day, like that of the second, pertained not to the earth, but to the heavens; the sun, moon, and stars become visible, and form the sole subjects of the prophetic description. And just as, during the second period, the earth would in all probability have failed to furnish any feature of mark enough to divert a human eye placed on a commanding station from the conspicuous atmospheric phenomena of the time, so it seems equally probable that during this fourth period it would have failed to furnish any feature of mark enough to divert a human eye from the still more conspicuous celestial phenomena of the time. As has been already incidentally remarked, the Permian and Triassic periods were "epochs"—to employ the language of the late Professor Edward Forbes—"of great poverty of production of generic types." On the other hand, the appearance for the first time of sun, moon, and stars, must have formed a scene well suited to divert the attention of the seer from every other. Nor (as has been somewhat rashly argued by Dr. Kitto and several others) does it seem irrational to hold that three very extended periods should have elapsed ere the sidereal heavens became visible on earth. Addison's popular illustration, drawn from one of the calculations of Newton, made in an age when comets were believed to be solid bodies, rendered the reading public familiar, considerably more than a century ago, with the vast time which large bodies greatly heated would take in cooling. "According to Sir Isaac Newton's calculation," said the exquisitely classical essayist, "the comet that made its appearance in 1680 imbibed so much heat by its approaches to the sun, that it would have been two thousand times hotter than red hot iron had it been a globe of that metal; and that, supposing it as big as the earth, and at the same distance from the sun, it would be fifty thousand years in cooling before it recovered its natural temper." Such was an estimate of the philosopher, that excited no little wonder in the days of our great grandfathers, for the vast time which it demanded; and, now that the data on which such a calculation ought to be founded are better known than in the age of Newton, yet more time would be required still. It is now ascertained, from the circumstance that no dew is deposited in our summer evenings save under a clear sky, that even a thin covering of cloud,—serving as a robe to keep the earth warm,—prevents the surface heat of the planet from radiating into the spaces beyond. And such a cloud, thick and continuous, as must have wrapped round the earth as with a mantle during the earlier geologic periods, must have served to retard for many ages the radiation, and consequently the reduction, of that internal heat of which it was itself a consequence. Further, the rocks and soils that form the surface of our globe would be much more indifferent conductors of heat than the iron superficies of Newton's ball, and would serve yet more to lengthen out the cooling process. Nor would a planet covered over for ages with a thick screen of vapor be a novelty even yet in the universe. It is doubtful whether astronomers have ever yet looked on the face of Mercury: it is at least very generally held that hitherto only his clouds have been seen. Even Jupiter, though it is thought his mountains have been occasionally detected raising their peaks through openings in his cloudy atmosphere, is known chiefly by the dark shifting bands that, streaking his surface in the line of his trade winds, belong not to his body, but to his thick dark covering. It is questionable whether a human eye on the surface of Mercury would ever behold the sun, notwithstanding his near proximity; nor would he be often visible, if at all, from the surface of Jupiter. Nor, yet further, would a warm steaming atmosphere muffled in clouds have been unfavorable to a rank, flowerless vegetation like that of the Coal Measures. There are moist, mild, cloudy days of spring and early Summer that rejoice the heart of the farmer, for he knows how conducive they are to the young growth on his fields. The Coal Measure climate would have consisted of an unbroken series of these, with mayhap a little more of cloud and moisture, and a great deal more of heat. The earth would have been a vast greenhouse covered with smoked glass; and a vigorous though mayhap loosely knit and faintly colored vegetation would have luxuriated under its shade.