The Source and Mode of Solar Energy Throughout the Universe

by Isaac W. Heysinger

5. Periods of development of indefinite length.

6. The sun, moon, and earth organized last.

The word Mlactou, which occurs several times repeated in the summing up of this narrative, explains the character of Aleim most fully, as specially energized and directed agencies or forces. This word never has any other meaning. Even when applied to a king it was not a king as a monarch, but as the specially directed agent of God. [ I. Samuel xxviii. 17], “The Lord hath sent the kingdom out of thine hand; … because thou obeydst not the voice of the Lord.” When, in [ Exodus xiii. 21] it is said that “Jeove went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud,” this is explained, in chapter xiv. verse 19, to mean that this pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night was Mlac, a messenger, or agent. It is translated “angel” in the English version, but it was not a personal angel; it was a specially energized and directed force. In the earliest times it was not the God of fire, or of force, or of justice which men feared, but fire, or force, or justice; the anthropomorphic conception came later with the generalization of all fire, all force, or all justice. We say now that a malefactor fears the law; what he really fears, however, is punishment. In this record we are dealing with the primordial forces of God,—gravity, electricity, attraction, repulsion, cohesion, vital force, etc., etc., but acting with special energy for a predetermined result. Of these forces Dr. McCosh says, in his work on Christianity and Positivism, “One God, with his infinitely varied perfections,—his power, his knowledge, his wisdom, his love, his mercy; we should see that one Power blowing in the breeze, smiling in the sunshine, sparkling in the stars, quickening us as we bound along in the felt enjoyment of health, efflorescing in every form and hue of beauty, and showering down daily gifts upon us. The profoundest minds in our day, and in every day, have been fond of regarding this force, not as something independent of God, but as the very power of God acting in all action; so that in him we live, and move, and have our being.” In more rugged and virile form this was precisely the old Mosaic philosophy, the philosophy of the arcana of the Egyptian temples, and of the Vedaic age of the Aryans of India. Where was the radiant center of this unfailing search-light which has poured its broad belt of dazzling brightness down to our day from those old, prehistoric ages?

So De Jouvencel, in his “Genesis according to Science,” says, “We should not place the works of nature on one side and nature on the other. Nature is a work and not a person.”

The word which in the English version is translated “rested,” in the concluding verses of the narrative, does not mean rested from fatigue, but rested as a pendulum rests when it ceases to vibrate. Had the word been rendered “came to a state of rest,” it would have been far more accurate and true to the sense of the original. What is meant is that these pent-up forces had operated, under the guidance of Jeove, to rupture a state of unstable equilibrium in the attenuated matter of space, just as similar forces are now said to gather energy to produce a volcanic eruption of the earth’s crust, preceded by earthquakes and other vast disturbances radiating from the center of rupture of these tensions between the molecules of matter, accompanied by explosive expansion and all the phenomena of disorganization and repulsion, and succeeded by condensation, development, harmony, and final quiescence of these specially energized and self-opposing forces in a newly formed state of molecular equilibrium. To quote from Professor Guyot, “God rests as the creator of the visible universe. The forces of nature are now in that admirable equilibrium which we now behold, and which is necessary to our existence.” In “The Unity of Nature” the Duke of Argyle says, “We strain our imaginations to conceive the processes of Creation, whilst in reality they are around us daily.”

The words which conclude the third verse of chapter ii. are also imperfectly rendered in our English version, and this defect has led to a popular misconception almost universal. They are construed to mean “created—and made,” as though marking a broad class distinction between the different processes before described. From this the inference has been drawn that while, for the more subordinate features, the word rendered “made” indicated that these were stages in the process of creation merely involving the use of coexisting materials, in the grander features of the work it was supposed that there had been a creation ab initio,—that is, out of nothing. Whole libraries have been written on this theme; but the words used bear no such meaning; on the contrary, they signify the exact opposite. There is, however, a broad distinction between the interpretation of the two words; but it is that the word which is to be rendered “fashioned like the work of a sculptor” is narrower and not broader in significance than the simple word “made;” so that the former is included in, but is not generically distinct from, the latter. The word Bra means that these portions of creation were fashioned with the care and artistic skill of a sculptor, as contradistinguished from turning out the productions in mass; this distinction does not relate to the origin, but to the workmanship. However interstellar or primordial space was formed, or when, if it ever was formed, there is nothing in this record which excludes a pre-existent space substantially like that which now is. What we see in the sky, among the nebulæ, are later developments of like solar systems, in like manner, from the midst of the substance of the same illimitable and eternal space.

But biology has an interest in this account of creation equally as great as has cosmology. The word Bra is first applied to the formation of the individualized substance of the heavens and the earth. They were fashioned or carved out like a sculpture from something on which the forces could operate. There was, of course, creation involved, but it was a mental, not a physical process. When a sculptor has completed his clay figure he has brought forth a great creation, perhaps, and the “creation” is still his own, though the figure be cast in bronze by hired workmen in the foundry, who execute the sculptor’s will at two dollars a day, it may be, each. Beyond this mental element there is no more creation, in its widest sense, than when a boy “creates” a new point on his pencil by guiding his hand and knife to sharpen it.

When the “diffused light” came, it is not said that it was “fashioned like the work of a sculptor,” or that it was even “made;” but that it “came into existence.” “Let there be light, and there was light,” as the English version has it. But when the radiant energy of the sun came to be formed, on the fourth day, it did not “come into existence,” nor was it “fashioned like the work of a sculptor;” it was “made.” The reason is that it was not a development from the preceding “diffused light,” but a new kind of light, made mechanically by the electrolysis of aqueous vapor around the sun’s body, forming a hydrogen envelope, and by driving the furious torrents of electricity from the planets through this atmosphere, while the auroral, “diffused light” of the earth was gradually dying away during the process. Hence there was no room for the word Bra, or for the word Iei (came into existence) here; the word to be used was Osh. And when life was first introduced,—vegetable life, the primal life,—the word used is not Bra; this life was not “fashioned” or developed from other life. But when animal life was afterwards introduced, the word used is Bra; it was a refashioning. What was this life fashioned out of? It was not “made;” it did not “begin to exist;” it was developed. In this manner the earth was finally filled with animal life. Then came the introduction of the human race. Here we again have the word Bra, thrice repeated; but when this introduction of mankind was first projected, and before it was executed, it was in these words, “We will make [the root Osh] mankind;” or, in the English version, “Let us make man.” There seems here to have been a gradual ascent of living organisms by development, almost precisely in accordance with the most recent teachings of science. Two essentially different kinds of light were successively produced, independently of each other; the earlier kind “came into being,” and the later “was made.” The substance or entity of the heavens and of the earth, generically, “was fashioned.” Three successive introductions of organic life not essentially different from each other occurred; the first is described thus: “Let the earth bring forth; … and the earth brought forth,” in the English version; or “There shall be made to grow; … and there was caused to arise suddenly out of the ground … vegetation,” as more accurately rendered. The second form of organic life, in order of time, the animal, was “fashioned.” The third form, mankind, was also “fashioned,” and this was done long subsequently to the introduction of the second.

If the word Bra had any signification of original creation it would have been applied to the first creation of life, for it was far more wonderful and original that there should be vegetable life which grew and developed, which brought forth flowers and then fruit, which formed germinative seeds, and from these successively and continuously reproduced its multifarious species, than that animal life should have been introduced long afterwards to repeat these same things which vegetation had been, in all its forms, from the lowest to the highest, already doing for untold ages,—from the third period of the earth’s long history to the fifth; and more especially still when we consider that vegetable life and animal life, in their lowest forms, have no positive line of division between them.

And if Osh, which is applied to the genesis of solar light, be capable of the signification of original creation, then this word should have been applied to the generation of the “diffused light” of the second day, for the genesis of light is far more wonderful and original than the subsequent production of sunlight, after the forming earth had existed for two whole formative periods, from the second to the fourth, under the constant illumination of this universally diffused auroral light. If, on the other hand, the words applied to the first generation of light and the first generation of life be held to mark an original creation, then these words are never applied in this whole narrative to the genesis of the entity of the heavens, or the earth, or the sun and moon, or to animal life, or the life of man.