The course of creation

by John Anderson

In order, therefore, to arrive at any just conclusions respecting the comparison to be instituted betwixt the geological and the revealed account of creation, we shall first inquire into the kind, as well as amount, of information contained in the Mosaic record. The rendering of the term “day” will then fall to be considered in relation to the order of events indicated in both accounts.

I. The narrative proceeds with a fullness and minuteness of detail, which clearly show a purpose in the writer. Did Moses actually mean to trace the whole of creation in its primordial course and outline? Assuming that he did, the phraseology is pointed and admirably suited to its subject. Admitted into the presence-chamber of the Creator, he sees the instruments with which he works, the rapidity with which he executes, the subserviency of all being to his will, the arrangement and disposition of all things at his pleasure. Knowing, as we now do from the highest authority, what was the work of creation, and whence it originated, the intelligent mind discerns also the suitableness of the description, and the Divine selection of words employed to record it. There is inspiration in the pencil, as well as omnipotence in the hand, which traced out the plan of creation, and brought it into existence. The Cause willed, and the effect immediately was,—in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

Here, betwixt God and his work there are no intermediate agencies,—no pause or rest in the act of coming into being. A material universe is designed, and the substance of it is instantly produced. The inspired historian proves that he was inspired, by the brevity of the history of the event, by the employment of words so perfectly adapted to the nature of the act. He proves farther, that we have here indicated the precise course of creation, and that he meant so to represent it—that the heavens and the earth are of one and the same act—that the physical universe, through all its dominions and remotest spheres, started at one and the same time into being. The sun, moon, and stars were now all formed, as well as our own planet. The stellar systems were everywhere arranged; and the worlds of matter had their places all assigned them through infinite space. This part of the Divine actings must not be confounded with the farther evolution of creation as described in the work of the fourth day, which has reference manifestly to the division of time and the appointment of the seasons, through the revolution of the planetary worlds.

The condition of the earth as it first came from the hand of its framer is next alluded to. It was “without form and void,” and involved in darkness; that is, the arrangements necessary to constitute a habitable globe, were not completed. There was no diversity of surface—no division into hill and valley, into seas and rivers; the air, the dry land, and the waters, had not yet assumed their respective places. Form was not yet stamped upon the matter of the globe. Consequently it was also void, or without inhabitants. Neither vegetables nor animals were there. They could not exist before these necessary adaptations for life were adjusted. Let the reader note this stage of the work. Marking the precise, definite phraseology of the inspired writer, let him seriously reflect whether he has here before him the first state of the new world, or the shapeless ruined aspect of one of its subsequent geological transformations? None of the elements, he will not fail to observe, have been described as yet existing in separation. The course of creation has not advanced so far; and, if it had done so, no geologist pretends to assert, that at the close of any one of his epochs, the laws of nature were abolished, and all things reverted to their pristine formless condition. With what propriety, then, may it be asked, can an opening be made in this part of the narrative wide enough to embrace, or to have intercalated into it, all the phases of an archaic earth under his numerous formations, and the vast cycles of time in which they had been evolving? The language employed admirably represents what we can well suppose the original physical state of the planet to have been; and that state accords better with the first than with the last, or any of the intermediate series of the geological changes. And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters; and thus gave shape and outline to the planetary mass.

The light was thereupon produced. We are not told whence, nor out of what. Like all the matter of the universe, it started into being at the call of the Creator, suddenly, as its own brilliant flashing emanations over the darkness at this hour. Then came day and night; and this implies, that there came along with them the revolution of the globe and the commencement of motion in the astral universe. The production of a firmament or atmosphere is next alluded to, and in immediate connection with this part of the work, whereby a medium was provided for the diffusion of the light and the play of all that beauty and variety of coloring by which the earth was to be adorned. “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light; and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.”

Light, the subtilest and fleetest of all elements, has nearly eluded every effort of man to detect or analyze its essence. It travels swift as thought through infinite space. It spreads its ethereal force over every opposing obstacle. It gives brilliancy to the gem, form to the crystal, color to the flower, health to animal life, and is so indispensable to every existing condition of existing physical nature, that, were the mandate of its creation revoked, we know just as much of its principle as to see in its annihilation a relapse into that state of chaos when all things were without form and void. Not only the beauty of organic structure, but the molecular arrangement of the mineral mountain masses of the earth, would, in all probability, have been an impossible condition of matter without the existence and agency of light. And light, whether glowing in the solar disc, gleaming in remotest stars, or breaking and sparkling in the rain-drop, what revelation has science made of it beyond its properties of luster and activity?—We trace its effects; we discern its influence upon all bodies; but when we would go deeper, and seek to know it essentially and in itself, we can only speak of it as the utterance of Him who said,—Let there be light.

Nor has science made any attempt, at least no successful one, to account for the origin of the atmosphere. Its constituent elements are known. They are every day made the subject of direct experiment. The solution and ascent of water in the air is also a matter of daily visible occurrence. But by what process this great mass of impalpable fluid was brought together, enveloping the entire earth, and suspended as a curtain over our heads, no ingenuity or dexterity of man has been able to determine. There is no evidence by which to explain it upon the principles of natural law, slowly elaborating the materials, and piling them high in the starry vault. The atmosphere, indeed, must ever stand in the original formation, the result of the immediate creative act, brought together in all its volume and vast incredible capacity of receiving and holding in its grasp the gaseous residue of all earthly things. And what of its electricity, its magnetism, the aurora and its streaming meteors,—its thunder, lightning, clouds, and rain,—all, shall we say, the instantaneous effect of the authoritative command? And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters!

We every day see the conversion of water into steam, and steam into air; and the air, like the ocean, receiving every substance into itself. But, nevertheless, it is not inferred that there is any augmentation to the volume of the atmosphere, any increase or essential change upon its original mass. Without the existence of this fluid, the earth would have been no suitable place for any of its living inhabitants, vegetable or animal. Therefore was it created; therefore does the account of its creation stand in the order in which we find it in the Mosaic narrative; and, therefore, from this very circumstance, are we not warranted to infer that we have before us a description of the actual genesis of things—that it is not a remodeling or transformation of the old, but the veritable course under which all creation was at first brought into being, form, and parts, that the inspired writer intends to record?

We cannot refuse, by parity of reasoning, to conclude the same as to the immediately succeeding act in the Divine operations. The arrangement of the surface of the earth was now to be effected; and, just as one portion of the waters was lifted and expanded into air, so, in consequence of a different proportion in the elements, and evolution of new principles, the seas were formed and gathered into the depressions occasioned by the raising up of the dry land, its consolidation into rocks and mountains. This is the starting point of geology. The science can get no deeper. It begins all its researches, and builds all its calculations, upon that crystalline crust which is termed primary, which is co-extensive with the superficial area of the globe, which is found in every region, and beneath which no explorations have anywhere been made. And wherefore not assume this as an immediate formation, as a direct preparatory arrangement, like the seas and atmosphere, for the life that was just to be provided with a habitation upon it? A beginning for organic bodies is demonstrable upon geological evidence. The lowest fossiliferous rocks have been reached, and everywhere they are found to maintain the same relative position. The inference, therefore, is legitimate, nay, probable, that the primary formations of geologists constituted the first dry land, as herein described; and that Time, calculated according to the operations of natural mechanical laws, can enter in no way into our speculations as to their origin. “And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together in one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.”

The course of creation proceeds. “And God called the dry land earth, and the gathering together of the waters called he seas.” The globe was thus divided into land and ocean. An atmosphere embraces the whole, tempering the heat and cold of the one, receiving the exhalations of the other, and both prepared for the ministrations required of them. The dry earth is represented as being first the seat of organic life. The new and bare surface is covered with herbage. The grasses, shrubs, and trees all start into being, prepared each for the diffusion and continuance of their kind, by yielding seed and fruit. And then commenced on the theater of our globe the successive evolution of the principle of life, subtile, active, prolific, in all the boundless prodigality of nature, and mysterious still as the essence and fount of all-creative Being.