But it is replied, "Does not the Bible say, in the fourth commandment, 'In six days the Lord made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is?' etc" True. But we are speaking just now of a very different work; the work of creation. If any one does not know the difference between create and make, let him turn to his dictionary, and Webster will inform him. If he has no dictionary, he can satisfy himself thoroughly, as to the different meanings of these two words, by looking at their use in the Bible. He will find the term create used when there were no organized materials to form the earth from; unless we adopt the infidel absurdity that the paving stones made themselves. He will also find that the term make is applied to the adjusting of the earth in its present condition (see Gen., i, 21 and 27. Psalms, li, 10. Ecclesiastes, xii, 1. Col, i, 16).
But between these two widely different processes, namely the creation, and the organizing of the world there intervened a period of indefinite length. That original chaos, which some would find in the second verse, never had an existence save in the brains of atheistic philosophers. It is purely absurd. The crystals of the smallest grain of sand, the sporules of the humblest fungus on the rotten tree, and the animalculae in the filthiest pool of mud, are as orderly in their arrangements, as perfect after their kind, and as wisely adapted to their station as the most perfect beings on the earth.
If then astronomers and geologists assert that the earth was millions or hundreds of millions of years in process of preparation for its present state, by a long series of successive destructions and renovations, and gradual formations, there is not one word in the Bible to contradict that opinion; but on the contrary, very many texts which fully and unequivocally imply its truth.
Infidels frequently attempt to make sport of the figures of sacred poetry such as the "pillars," and "windows of heaven," the "corners of the earth," the "four winds of heaven," etc. One prominent infidel writer asserts that Moses was so ignorant of the nature of the atmosphere, and the origin of rain that he taught that the firmament was simply a brazen hemisphere or huge caldron placed in an inverted position over the earth, that a fresh-water ocean was outside of this, and that the figurative term "windows of heaven" meant trap-doors to let the waters descend in the form of rain upon the inhabitants of the earth. If so, Moses did not put his teachings into practice; for we find that he set up a brazen hemisphere in the tabernacle and placed its mouth upwards and put water on the inside of it. Such are the miserable subterfuges to which infidels will resort when in want of an argument. They seem to forget that a thousand years before skeptics had learned to talk nonsense about crystal spheres, and trap-doors in the bottom of celestial oceans, the writers of the Bible were recording those conversations of pious philosophers concerning stars, clouds and rain, from which Galileo derived the first hints of the causes of barometrical phenomena. The origin of rain, its proportion to the amount of evaporation, and the mode of its distribution by condensation, could not be propounded by Humboldt himself with greater clearness than they are described by Job, the ancient philosopher of the land of Uz. "He maketh small the drops of water: they pour down rain according to the vapor thereof, which the clouds do draw and distil upon man abundantly" (Job xxxvi. 27). The cause of this rarefaction of cold water, is as much a mystery to modern scientific associations as it was to Job and Elihu; and even were all the electrical tension of vapors disclosed, "the balancing of the clouds" would only be more clearly discovered to be, as the Bible declares, "the wonderful works of Him, who is perfect in knowledge." Three thousand years before the theory of the trade winds was demonstrated by Maury, it was written in the Bible, "The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north," and, "The wind returneth again according to his circuits" (Eccl. i, 6). Thousands of years before Newton, Galileo and Copernicus were born, Isaiah was writing about the orbit of the earth and the earth's relative insignificance (Isaiah xl, 22). Even the modern names of some of the constellations of the heavens were known to the ancients. "Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?" (Job xxxviii, 31).
One of the most vaunted objections, which infidels bring against the Bible, is that which represents God as creating light before the sun, and the sun, moon and stars, only two days before the creation of man. They seem to forget that the term to create is nowhere used in connection with the preparing of the earth for the habitation of man. By careful reading it will be seen at once that the darkness spoken of in the first chapter of Genesis had reference to this planet only. There is not the remotest hint, in any portion of scripture, that any other planet or star was shrouded in gloom at that time. On the contrary, we are most distinctly informed that the wonders which God was performing in this world, at that very time, were distinctly visible amid the cheerful illumination of other orbs. "When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy," as this earth emerged from its primeval darkness.
True the Bible represents that this earth was illuminated at a time when the sun was not visible from its surface. Now, if any one will presume to scoff at the Bible for speaking of light without sunshine—as infidels frequently do—what will he say of the light which exists in the midst of a London fog or on the banks of Newfoundland? To understand, how there may be day without sunshine, we need only conceive the whole earth enveloped in vapors such as Humboldt describes a portion of Peru. "A thick mist obscures the firmament in this region for many months. If by chance the sun's disc becomes visible during the day, it appears devoid of rays, as if seen through colored glasses. According to what modern geology has taught us concerning the ancient history of our atmosphere, its primitive condition must have been unfavorable to the transmission of light" (Humboldt's Cosmos, Vol iii, p. 139).
Dr. Dana is evidently of the same opinion. In speaking of the formation of coal and the peculiar vegetation which flourished upon the earth during that period, the remains of which are found imbedded in the coal measures; he says, "In the Pacific ocean, off the coast of Chili, there is an island named Chiloe, where it rains 300 days in the year, and where the light of the sun is shut out by perpetual fogs. On this island, arborescent ferns, form forests, beneath which grow herbaceous ferns, which rise three feet and upwards above a marshy soil, and a mass of plants flourish there, resembling in their main features the plants found in the coal fields" (Manual of Geology, 1880). Thus science corroborates the word of God.
Another favorite theory of the unbeliever is the uniformity of nature. "Where," says he, "is the promise of Christ's coming to judgment; for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were since the beginning of the world?" But on examination astronomy dispels the illusion, exhibits the course of nature as a succession of catastrophies, displays the conflagration of other worlds, and the extinction of other suns, before our eyes, and asks, Why should our sun differ from other suns? In short there is no permanence in the heavens, any more than on the earth; but a perpetual change is the destiny of suns and stars. A few instances it may be well to transcribe: "On the 11th of November, 1572, as the illustrious Danish astronomer, Tycho Brahe, was walking through the fields, he was astonished to observe a new star in the constellation Cassiopea, beaming with a radiance quite unwonted in that part of the heavens. Suspecting some delusion about his eyes, he went to a group of peasants to ascertain if they saw it, and found them gazing at it with as much astonishment as himself. He went to his instrument and fixed its place, from which it never after appeared to deviate. For some time it increased in brightness—greatly surpassing Sirius in luster, and even Jupiter—so that it could be seen by good eyes in the day time. After reaching its greatest brightness, it again diminished, assuming in succession the hues of a dying conflagration, and then finally disappeared. It is impossible to imagine anything more tremendous than a conflagration that could be visible at such a distance" (Nicholl's Solar System, page 118).
Sir John Herschell describes the star, Eta Argus, which, in the year 1837, went through similar variations. Humboldt gives a catalogue of twenty-four such stars, whose variations have been recorded, and asks, Why should our sun differ from other suns? "What we no longer see is not necessarily annihilated. It is merely the transition of matter into new forms—into combinations which are subject to new processes. Dark cosmical bodies may, by a new process of light, again become luminous" (Cosmos Vol. III, page 232).
Nicholl sums up the matter in the following emphatic words: "No more is light inherent in the sun than in Tycho's vanished star; and with it and other orbs a time may come when the sun shall cease to be required to shine. The womb which contains the future is that which bore the past" (Solar System, page 190).