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. But, as the knowledge of the exact age of the earth is by no means necessary to any man's present happiness, or the salvation of his soul, it is nowhere taught in the Bible. God has given us the stars to teach us astronomy, the earth to teach us geology, and the Bible to teach us religion, and neither contradicts the other.
This is no new interpretation evoked to meet the necessities of modern science. The Jewish Rabbins, and those of the early Christian Fathers who gave any attention to criticism, are perfectly explicit in recognizing these distinctions. The doctrine of the creation of the world only six or seven thousand years ago is a product of monkish ignorance of the original language of the Bible. But Clement of Alexandria, Chrysostom, and Gregory Nazianzen, after Justin Martyr, teach the existence of an indefinite period between the creation and the formation of all things. Basil and Origen account for the existence of light before the sun, by alleging that the sun existed, but that the chaotic atmosphere prevented his rays from being visible till the first day, and his light till the third.[231] Augustine, in his first homily, represents the first state of the earth, in Genesis i. 1, as bearing the same relation to its finished state, that the seed of a tree does to the trunk, branches, leaves, and fruit. Horsley, Edward King, Jennings, Baxter, and many others, who wrote during the last two centuries, but before the period of geological discovery, explained the second verse substantially as did Bishop Patrick, a hundred and fifty years ago. "How long all things continued in confusion, we are not told. It might have been, for anything that is here revealed, a very great while."[232]
Some persons, however, have supposed that the chaos of the second verse succeeded immediately to the creation of the first, and that the six days' work in like manner followed that instantaneously, or at least after a very brief interval, because the records of these cycles are connected by the word and, which, they think, precludes the idea of any lengthened periods or intervals. But the slightest reflection upon the meaning of the word will show that and can not of itself be any measure of time, its use being to indicate merely sequence and connection. When used historically, it always implies an interval of time; for there can be no succession without an interval; but the length of that interval must be determined from the context, or some other source. A very cursory perusal of the Bible, either in English or Hebrew, will show that very often in its brief narratives, the interval indicated by and, and its Hebrew originals, is a very long time. The descent of Jacob and his children into Egypt is connected with the record of their deaths, in the very next verse, by this word and, which thus includes nearly the lifetime of a generation. That event, again, is connected with a change of dynasty in Egypt, and the oppression and multiplication of the Israelites there, recorded in the next verse, by the same word, vau, and; while the period over which it reaches was over two hundred years.[233] So in the brief record of the family of Adam, after reciting the birth of Seth, the historian adds, in the next verse, "And to Seth also was born a son, and he called his name Enos;" while the interval thus indicated by the word and was a hundred and five years. The command to build the ark, recorded in the last verse of the sixth chapter of Genesis, is connected with the command to enter into it, in the first verse of the seventh chapter, by this same word and, although we know, from the nature of the case, that the interval required for the construction of such a huge vessel must have been considerable; and from the third verse of the sixth chapter, we learn that it was a hundred and twenty years. So the births and deaths of the antediluvians are connected by this same word and, throughout the fifth chapter of Genesis; while the interval, as we see from the narrative, was often eight or nine hundred years. The descent of the Holy Spirit upon Christ, to qualify him for judging the world, is connected with the actual discharge of that office, in the destruction of Antichrist by the breath of his mouth, by this word and,[234] although the interval has been over eighteen hundred years. If in the records of the generations of mortal men, the word and is customarily employed as a connecting link in the narrations of events separated by an interval of hundreds of years, it is quite consistent with the strictest propriety of language to employ it, with an enlargement proportioned to the duration of the subject of discourse, to connect intervals of millions, in the narrative of the generations of the heavens and the earth.
The Bible uniformly attributes the most remote antiquity to the work of creation. So far from supposing man to be even approximately coeval with it, the emphatic reproof of human presumption is couched in the remarkable words, "Where wast thou, when I laid the foundations of the earth?" In majestic contrast with the frail human race, Moses glances at the primeval monuments of God's antiquity, as though by them he could form some faint conceptions even of eternity, and sings, "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the universe, even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God."[235]
The very word here used, the beginning, is in itself an emphatic refutation of the notion that the work of creation is only some six or seven thousand years old. Geologists have been unable to invent a better, and have borrowed from the Bible this very form of speech, to designate those strata beyond which human knowledge can not penetrate—the primary formations. But, with far greater propriety, the Holy Spirit uses this word with regard to ages, compared with which the utmost range of the astronomer's or geologist's reasonings is but as the tale of yesterday. For this word, in Bible usage, marks the last promontory on the boundless ocean of eternity; the only positive word by which we can express the most remote period of past duration. It is not a date—a point of duration. It is a period—a vast cycle. It has but one boundary; that where creation rises from its abyss. Created eye has never seen the other shore. It is that vast period which the Bible assigns to the manifestations of the Word of God, "whose goings forth have been of old, from everlasting." Carrying our astonished gaze far back beyond the era of his creature, man, and ages before the "all things" that were made by Him, the Bible places this beginning on the very shore of the eternity of God, when it declares, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."[236] Thus, both by the use of the imperfect tense, was, denoting continued existence, and by the connection of this beginning with the eternity of the Word, does the Bible teach us to dismiss from our thoughts all narrow views of the period of duration employed in manifesting the glory of the self-existent Eternal One, and to raise our conceptions to the highest possible pitch, and then to feel, that far beyond the grasp of human calculation lies that beginning which includes the years of the right hand of the Most High, and is even used as one of the names of the Eternal: "I am the Beginning and the Ending, saith the Lord, who is, and who was, and who is to come—the Almighty."[237]
In another Bible exhibition of the eternity of the Son of God, we are conducted from that beginning, downward, stage by stage, from those periods of remote antiquity prior to the formation of water, the upheaval of the mountains, the alluvial deposits, the subsidence of the existing sea basins, and the adornment of the habitable parts of the earth, to that comparatively recent event, the existence of the sons of men. Our ideas of the eternity of the love of Christ are thus enhanced, by the vastness of the ages which stretch out between the human race and that beginning when He was, as it were, "The Lamb slain from before the foundations of the world."
"The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way,
Before his works of old.
I was set up from everlasting,
From the beginning, or ever the earth was.
When there were no depths, I was brought forth;
When there were no fountains, abounding with water;
Before the mountains were settled,
Before the hills, was I brought forth;
While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields,
Nor the highest part of the dust of the world
When he prepared the heavens, I was there;
When he described a circle upon the face of the deep;
When he established the clouds above;
When he strengthened the fountains of the deep;
When he gave to the sea his decree,
That the waters should not pass his commandment;
When he appointed the foundations of the earth:
Then was I by him, as one brought up with him;
And I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him:
Rejoicing in the habitable parts of his earth;
And my delights were with the sons of men."[238]
Let the geologist, then, penetrate as deeply as he can into the profundities of the foundations of the earth, and bring forth the monuments of their hoary antiquities: we will follow with the most unfaltering faith, and receive with joy these proofs of his eternal power and Godhead. Let the astronomer raise his telescope, and reflect on our astonished eyes the light which flashed from morning stars, on the day of this earth's first existence, or even the rays which began to travel from distant suns, millions of years ere the first morning dawned on our planet: we will place them as jewels in the crown of Him who is the bright and morning star. They shall shed a sacred luster over the pages of the Bible, and give new beauties of illustration to its majestic symbols. But never will geologist penetrate, much less exhaust, the profundity of its mysteries, nor astronomer attain, much less explore, the sublimity of that beginning revealed in its pages; for eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive, either the antiquity, or the nature, or the duration of the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. Human science will never be able to reach the Bible era of creation. It is placed in an antiquity beyond the power of human calculation, in that sublime sentence with which it introduces mortals to the Eternal: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
3. The third objection we have named is equally unfounded. The Bible nowhere teaches that the sky is a solid sphere, to which the stars are fixed, and which revolves with them around the earth. I know that Infidels allege that the word firmament, in the first chapter of Genesis, conveys this meaning. It does not. Neither the English word, nor the Hebrew original, has any such meaning. As to the meaning of the English word, I adhere to the dictionary. Infidels must not be allowed to coin uncouth meanings for words, different from the known usage of the English tongue, for which Webster is undeniable authority. His definition of firmament is, "The region of the air; the sky, or heavens. In Scripture, the word denotes an expanse—a wide extent; for such is the signification of the Hebrew word, coinciding with regio, region, and reach. The original, therefore, does not convey the sense of solidity, but of stretching—extension. The great arch or expanse over our heads, in which are placed the atmosphere and the clouds, and in which the stars appear to be placed, and are really seen." The word firmament, then, conveys no such meaning as the Infidel alleges, to any man who understands the English tongue.
No Hebrew speaking man or woman ever did, or ever could understand the original Hebrew word reqo in any other sense than that of expanse; for the verb from which it is formed means to extend, or spread out, as even the English reader may see, by a few examples of its use, in the following passages of Scripture; where the English words by which the verb reqo is expressed, are marked in italics. "Then did I beat them small as the dust of the earth, and did stamp them as the mire of the street, and did spread them abroad." "The goldsmith spreadeth it over with gold." "Thus saith the Lord: he that created the heavens, and stretched them out; he that spread forth the earth." "I am the Lord, that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone, and spreadeth abroad the earth by myself." "To him that stretcheth out the earth above the waters." "The censers of these sinners against their own souls, let them make them broad plates, for a covering for the altar. And they were made broad." "Hast thou with him spread out the sky;"[239] or, in Humboldt's elegant rendering, "the pure ether, spread (during the scorching heat of the south wind) as a melted mirror over the parched desert."[240] We might refer to the opinions of lexicographers, all unanimous in ascribing the same idea to the word; but the authorities given above are conclusive. The meaning, then, of the Hebrew word rendered firmament is so utterly removed from the notion of compactness, or solidity, or metallic or crystalline spheres, that it is derived from the very opposite; the fineness or tenuity produced by processes of expansion. Science has not been able to this day to invent a better word for the regions of space than the literal rendering of the original Hebrew word used by Moses—the expanse.