Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith / Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity

by Robert Patterson

The duration of the seventh day is also hidden from man. It is God's Sabbath, on which he entered when he ceased from the work of creation, a rest which still continues, and which he invites us to enter into (Hebrews iv. 1-5) as a preparation for the eternal rest. God's rest day has already lasted six thousand years, and no man can tell how much longer it may last. Perhaps his working days were each as long.

But if our objector had read the Bible attentively, he would have seen that it does not say that God created the heavens and the earth in six days. Before it begins to give any account of the six days' work, it tells us of a previous state of disorder; and going back beyond that again, it says: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." It is as self-evident that this beginning was before the six days' work, as that the world must have existed before it could be adjusted to its present form. How long before, the Bible does not say, nor does the objector pretend to know. It may have been as many millions of years as he assigns to the stars, or twice as many, for anything he knows to the contrary. He must have overlooked the first two verses of the Bible, else he had never made this objection; which is simply a blunder, arising from incapacity to read a few verses of Scripture correctly.

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 that the primary literal meaning of create is, "To produce; to bring into being from nothing; to cause to exist." The example he gives to illustrate his definition is this verse, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." But the primary meaning of make is, "To compel; to constrain;" thence, "to form of materials;" and he illustrates the generic difference between these two words by a quotation from Dwight: "God not only made, but created; he not only made the work, but the materials." Both words are as good translations of the Hebrew originals, bra, and oshe, as can be given.

If any of my readers has not a dictionary he can satisfy himself thoroughly as to the different meanings of these two words, and of their equivalents in the original Hebrew, by looking at their use in his Bible. Thus, he will find create applied to the creation of the heavens and the earth, in the beginning, when there could have been no pre-existent materials to make them from; unless we adopt the Atheistic absurdity, of the eternity of matter—that is to say, that the paving stones made themselves.[225] Then it is applied to the production of animal life—verse twenty-one—which is not a product or combination of any lifeless matter, but a direct and constant resistance to the chemical and mechanical laws which govern lifeless matter: "God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth."[226] Next it is applied to the production of the human race, as a species distinct from all other living creatures, and not derived from any of them. "God created man in his own image."[227] It is in like manner applied to all God's subsequent bestowals of animal life and rational souls, which are directly bestowed by God, and are not in the power of any creature to give. "Thou sendest forth thy spirit: they are created." "Remember now thy Creator, in the days of thy youth."[228] In all these instances, the use of the word determines its literal meaning to be what Webster defines it: "To bring into being from nothing."

The metaphorical use of the word is equally expressive of its literal meaning, for it is applied to the production of new dispositions of mind and soul utterly opposite to those previously existing. "Create in me a clean heart;" which God thus explains: "A new heart will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh."[229] The Hebrew word bra has as many derivative meanings as our English word create; as we speak of "creating a peer," "long abstinence creating uneasiness," etc.; but these no more change the primitive idea in the one case than in the other.

From this word create, the Bible very plainly distinguishes the words make and form, using them as the complement of the former, in many passages which speak of both creation and making. Thus, man was both created and made. His life and soul are spoken of as a creation; his body as a formation from the dust; his deputed authority over the earth also implies a primal creation, and subsequent investiture; and so both terms are applied to it. So the words make and form are applied to the production of the bodies of animals from pre-existing materials, while animal life is ever spoken of as a product of creative power. But, that we may see that these processes are distinct, and that the words which express them have distinctive meanings, the Author of the Bible takes care to use them both in reference to this very work, in such a way that we can not fail to perceive he intends some distinction, unless we suppose that he fills the Bible with useless tautologies. For instance, "On the seventh day, God rested from all his work, which God created and made." "These are the generations of the heavens and the earth, when they were created; in the day the Lord God made the earth and the heavens." "But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel." "For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens, God himself, that formed the earth, and made it; he hath established it; he created it not in confusion; he formed it to be inhabited."[230] In all these passages creation is clearly distinguished from formation and making, if the Bible is not a mass of senseless repetitions. If create, and make, and form, have all the same meaning, why use them all in the same verse? These, and many similar passages, show that the Bible teaches the work of creation—calling things into being—to be previous to and distinct from the work of making—forming of materials already created.

Between these two widely different processes—of the original creation of the universe, and the subsequent preparation of the habitable earth, by the six days' work—two intervening periods are indicated by Scripture, both of indefinite length. The first of these is that which intervened between the original creation and the period of disorder indicated in the second verse. The second is that disordered period during which the earth continued without form and void.

That original chaos which some would find in the second verse, never had any existence, save in the brains of Atheistic philosophers. It is purely absurd. God never created a chaos. Man never saw it. The crystals of the smallest grain of sand, the sporules of the humblest fungus on the rotten tree, the animalculæ 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 angels before the throne of God. And as man never saw, so he has no language to describe, a state of original disorder; for every word he can use implies a previous state of regularity; as disorder tells of order dissolved; confusion of previous forms melted together. So the poets who have tried to describe a chaos have been obliged to represent it as the wreck of a former state.

Both the Bible language and the Bible narrative correspond to the philosophy and philology of the case; for, by the use of the substantive verb, in the past tense, implying progressive being, according to the usual force of the word in Hebrew, we are told literally, "the earth became without form and void." God did not create it so, but after it was created, and by a series of revolutions not recorded, it became disordered and empty. The Holy Spirit takes care to explain this verse, by quoting it in Jeremiah iv. 23, as the appropriate symbolical description of the state of a previously existing and regularly constituted body politic, reduced to confusion by the calamities of war. Again, he explains both the terms used in it in Isaiah xxxiv. 11, by using them to describe, not the rude and undigested mass of the heathen poet, but the wilderness condition of a ravaged country, and the desolate ruins of once beautiful and populous cities: "He will stretch out upon it the line of confusion, and the stones of emptiness." In both these cases the previous existence of an orderly and populous state is implied. And finally, we are expressly assured, that the state of disorder mentioned in the second verse of Genesis i., was not the original condition of the earth—Isaiah xlv. 18—where the very same word is used as in Genesis i. 2, "He created it not, teu, disordered, in confusion." The period of the earth's previous existence in an orderly state, or that occupied by the revolutions and catastrophes which disordered its surface, is not recorded in Scripture.

The second period is that of disorder, which must have been of some duration, more or less, and is plainly implied to have been of considerable length, in the declaration that "the Spirit of the Lord moved"—literally, was brooding (a figure taken from the incubation of fowls)—"upon the face of the waters." But no portion of Scripture gives any intimation of the length of this period.