Inspiration and Interpretation / Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford

by John William Burgon

I read then, that "In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the Earth:"—by which I understand, that, at some remote period,—which may or may not baffle human Arithmetic[272],—it was the pleasure of God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost,—three Persons, coeternal and coequal,—one God,—out of nothing, to create the entire Universe. "All things that are in Heaven, and that are in Earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him[273];" and they were created out of nothing. The word in the original does not indeed necessarily imply as much: but since there is no word in Hebrew, (any more than there is in Greek, Latin, or English,) peculiarly expressive of the notion of creating out of nothing, it need not excite our surprise that Moses does not employ such a word to describe what God did "in the beginning."—Then it was, in the grey of that far distant morning I mean, that all those glittering orbs which sow the vault of Heaven with brightness and with beauty, flashed into sudden being. "Thou, even Thou, art Lord alone: Thou hast made Heaven, the Heaven of Heavens, with all their host[274]." Suns, the centres of systems, many of them so distant from this globe of ours, that sun and system scarce shew so bright as a single lesser star: suns, I say, with their marvellous equipage of attendant bodies,—our sun among the rest, with all those wandering fires which speed their unwearied courses round it: suns, and planets with their moons, bathed once and for ever in the fountain of that Light which God inhabited from all Eternity, then marshalled themselves in mysterious order, according to "the counsel of His will[275]:" yea, and with their furniture, unimagined and unimaginable, went careering through the untrodden realms of space, each on its several errand of glory, because of obedience to its Maker's sovereign Law[276]. "By the Word of the Lord," (as it is written,) "were the Heavens made; and all the hosts of them by the breath of His mouth[277]!"

Now, it is reserved to the geologist,—(Nature's High-priest!)—to guess at the condition of this Earth of ours throughout all the long period of unchronicled ages which immediately succeeded the birthday of Time. It is for him to guess at the successive changes which this globe of ours underwent; and the progressive cycles of Creation of which it was the theatre; and the many strange races of creatures which, one after another, moved upon its surface,—walking the dry, or inhabiting the moist. He shall guess; and I will sit at his feet and listen, with unfeigned gratitude, wonder, and delight, while he reports to me his guesses: (for the really great man is eager to assure me that they are no more.)—But when his tale of perplexity is ended, and the last 6,000 years of this world's History have to be discussed, the geologist's function is at an end. I bid him, in God's Name, be silent; for now it is God that speaketh. If any question be moved as to how that actual system of things to which Man belongs, began,—I bid him come down, and take the learner's place; for now I mean to assume his vacant chair. This time, there shall at least be no guess-work. God is now the Speaker: and what God revealeth unto me, that I promise faithfully to report to him.

There was a time, then,—and it was certainly less than 6,000 years ago,—when "the Earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep." What catastrophe it was which had caused that the fountains of the abyss should be broken up, and the solid Earth submerged, I am not concerned to explain:—nor how it had come to pass that from a world of seas and continents, it had become a watery ball, wrapped about with superincumbent vapour:—nor how the blessed sunlight had suffered dire eclipse;—so that the Earth revolved in a horror of great darkness. My faith however is not troubled,—nor even perplexed,—by the strangeness of these things. Shall I think it a mere matter of course that one little flaw in a pipe shall, in a second of time, transform the orderly well-compacted seats of a goodly Church to one unsightly mass of shapeless and disordered ruin[278]; and shall I pretend to stand aghast at the strangeness of a similar overthrow of this Earth's furniture at the mere fiat of the Most High?... Behold, "He measureth the waters in the hollow of His Hand, and weigheth the mountains in scales[279]." What if the Creator of the earth and the sea shall bid them of a sudden change places? Think you that they would hesitate to obey Him? Or what if He "calleth for the waters of the Sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the Earth[280]?"—Then further, if I believe, (as I do believe,) that when the Jews crucified the Lord of Glory "there was darkness over all the land" from the sixth hour unto the ninth[281];—nay, that when "Moses stretched forth his hand toward Heaven, there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt," even darkness which might be felt, for three whole days[282]:—more than that; if I believe, (as I do believe,) the solemn prediction of my Lord, that at the consummation of all things, "The Sun shall be darkened, and the Moon shall not give her light, and the Stars shall fall from Heaven[283]:"—shall it move me to incredulity, if God tells me, that six thousand years ago it was His Divine pleasure that the same phenomenon should prevail for a season? Surely,—(I say to myself,)—surely this is He "which removeth the mountains, and they know not: which shaketh the Earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble. Which commandeth the Sun, and it riseth not; and sealeth up the Stars[284]!"

1. But it was now God's pleasure to bring Beauty out of Chaos, and to establish a fresh order of things upon the surface of our Earth. And, as the first step thereto, "the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." The Hebrew phrase implies no less than the tremulous brooding as of a bird,—causing the dreary waste to heave and swell with coming life. "And God said, Let there be Light. And there was Light." "He spake and it was done[285]." From Himself, who is "the true Light," (not from the Sun, which,—like the rest of the orbs of Heaven,—is but a lamp of His kindling);—from Himself, I say, a ray of Light went forth; and that is why He was pleased to praise it. Look through the chapter, and you will find that it is the only one of His creatures of which it is specially said that "God saw that it was good[286]." ... Thus, one hemisphere was illumined,—whereby "God divided the light from the darkness;" and when the Earth had completed a single revolution, there had been a Day and there had been a Night,—so named by the Word of God: "and the evening and the morning were the first Day[287]." ... Do you see any impossibility so far? I, certainly, see none. It does not seem to me absurd that "the Light of the world[288]," "dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto[289]," should cause "the light to shine out of darkness[290]." We shall perhaps come upon the absurdity by and by. Let us hasten forward.

2. "And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters." The Hebrew word (an expansion), and the context, shew plainly enough what is meant. The atmosphere was now created,—whereupon the watery particles either subsided into sea, or rose aloft in the form of clouds. "And the evening and the morning were the second Day,"—which is the only day of which it is not said that God saw that it was good.

3. "And God said, Let the waters under the Heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear." Then it was that these continents were upheaved,—other than those which had been continents before; and the sea sank into the cavities which had been ordained for its reception. Then, "God saw that it was good." The sentence of approval which had been withheld from the work of yesterday, because that work, (namely, of dividing the waters from the waters,) was incomplete,—is freely bestowed to-day. And it may have been to teach us that no incomplete work is "good," in God's sight.—Next, the Creator called into being every extant form of vegetable life. So that, instead of a world of waters, which was all that was to be seen yesterday,—not only cliffs, and mountains, and bays,—but green hills, and fertile valleys, and grassy meadows had come to view,—with lakes, and rivers, and fountains, and falls of water. Again it is written, concerning Earth's green furniture, "God saw that it was good." "And the evening and the morning were the third Day."

4. "And God said, Let there be Lights in the firmament of the Heaven to divide the day from the night: and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years." And so it was. Sun, moon, and stars, came to view[291]; and this globe of ours, no longer illumined, as, for three days, it had been, rejoiced in the sun's genial light by day,—and by night in the splendours of the paler planet. And thus was also gained an easy measure for marking time,—the succession of months and years, as well as of days. "And God saw that it was good." "And the evening and the morning were the fourth Day."

5. "And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life." Thus the inhabitants of the sea and of the air were called into existence; and it was from the sea that God seems to have commanded that they should derive their being. He saw that it was good, and He blessed the fish and the winged fowl; "and the evening and the morning were the fifth Day."

6. It remained only to provide for the dry land its occupants; and the Earth was accordingly commanded to bring forth the living creature after his kind,—beast and cattle and creeping thing. Unlike that first Creation which was of all things out of nothing, the work of the six days was a creation of new things out of old.—To the Creation of Man, His crowning work, God is declared to have come with deliberation; as well as to have announced His purpose with significant solemnity of allusion. "Let us make Man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle." "And the Lord God formed Man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and Man became a living soul."—Transferred to the Garden of God's planting in Eden, to dress it and to keep it, (for inactivity is no part of bliss!)—and brought into solemn covenant with God,—to Adam, God brings the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, of set purpose that God may "see what he will call them:" a wondrous tribute, truly, to the perfection of understanding in which Man had been created!... "And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, made He a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore shall a Man leave his Father and his Mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh." ... Man's creation was the crowning wonder, to which all else had, in a manner, tended.... Truly when we think of him,—newly made in God's image,—surveying this world, yet fresh with the dew of its birth, and beautiful as it came from the Hands of its Maker,—it seems scarcely the language of poetry that then "the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy[292]."

I have preferred thus to complete the history of Man's Creation; which presents us with the primal institution of all,—that, namely, of Marriage.—"On the seventh Day, God rested from all His work which He had made; and blessed the seventh Day, and sanctified it; because that in it He had rested from all His work."—This then is the other great primæval institution; more ancient than the Fall,—the Law of the Sabbath;—which in the sacred record is brought into such august prominence. And never do we ponder over that record, without apprehension at what may be the possible results of relaxing the stringency of enactments which would seem to be, to our nature, as the very twin pillars of the Temple,—its establishment and its strength[293].