The Story of Creation as Told By Theology and By Science

by T. S. Ackland

"And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night.

"And there was evening and there was morning, one day."

The first clause seems to belong rather to the period of action than to the precedent indefinite period of chaos, and may therefore be taken as marking the transition from the "beginning" to the first day, better than as belonging to that beginning itself. The Jewish interpretation of the clause is untenable in the light of the doctrine of the Correlation of the Physical Forces. Till force was evolved there could be neither air nor motion, and so no wind. The words of course bear on their face an assertion of the action of the eternal Spirit in the work of Creation; but when we examine the position which they occupy, it seems highly probable that they have beyond this a much more definite signification. In them a sort of localized action is ascribed to the Spirit—a something very different from the idea conveyed by the often-repeated phrase, "And God said." What that something may be it is hard for us to conceive, harder still to express, but the following considerations may perhaps throw some glimmering of light upon the matter:—

1. There must be some point in which the Creator comes into contact, as it were, with His creature—a point at which His Will first clothes itself in the form of a physical fact—the point to which all second causes lead up, and at which they lose themselves in the one first cause, the Will of God. Now this is what all systems of philosophy require as their starting-point, but it is entirely out of their unaided reach. But these words supply that indispensable desideratum.

2. These words come in immediate connexion with the evolution of light. Light is throughout the Bible intimately connected with the Deity. It is His chosen emblem. "God is light." It is His abode. "He dwelleth in the light inaccessible." It is the symbol of His presence, and the means by which Creation is quickened. "In Him was life; and the life was the light of men."

3. Light, as we now know, is only one form of the force by which the universe is upheld. But the phenomena of light lead us to infer the existence of what we call Ether, which is supposed to be a perfectly elastic fluid, imponderable, and in fact exempt from almost all the conditions to which matter, as we know it, is subject, except that POSSIBLY it offers resistance to bodies moving in it. [Footnote: Encke's comet shows signs of retardation, as if moving in a resisting medium; but it is possible that that resistance may not arise from the ether, but from the nebulous envelope of the sun.] This fluid must pervade the whole universe, since it brings to us the light of the most distant star or nebula. As it is the medium through which light is conveyed, and as light is now known to be identified with force of all kinds, it seems by no means improbable that it is the medium through which all force acts.

These words, then, seem to suggest the idea that the brooding of the Spirit may have some connexion with the formation of that ether which is indispensable to the manifestation of light, and probably to the operations of all force; and that, if so, the ether may also be the point at which, and the medium through which, Spirit acts upon Matter. On the one hand, the facts that force, as used, is constantly in process of degradation, and that it is also constantly poured forth into space from the Sun and Planets in the shape of heat, and so lost to our system, seem to indicate that fresh supplies of it are continually needed; while, on the other hand, the supply of that need seems to be implied in the words, "By Him all things consist." "Upholding all things by the word of His Power."

If this be so, we have a point up to which natural laws may possibly be traced, but at which they merge in the action of the Will of God, which is beyond our investigation. Here, then, is a solution of that great difficulty, which those who are most familiar with the laws of nature have felt in reconciling the existence of those laws with a particular Providence and with the efficacy of Prayer, since we have here the point at which all forces and all laws begin to act, and at which, therefore, the amount of the force, and the direction of its action, are capable of unlimited modification, without any alteration of, or interference with, the laws by which that action is regulated, and consequently without the danger of introducing confusion into the Universe.

"And God said, 'Let light be' and light was." It has already been pointed out that these words differ from those used in describing any other creative act. They are the only ones which seem to imply an instantaneous fulfilment of the command. Another matter which has long since been observed, is their exact harmony with what science teaches us respecting the nature of light. Light is not a material substance, but a "mode of motion." It consists of very small undulations propagated with inconceivable velocity. Hence of it, and of it alone, it could not be correctly said that it was created. To say that God made light would be inexact. The words which are used exactly suit the circumstances of the case. But the discovery of the correlation of forces has given to these words a much more extended significance, while at the same time it furnishes a satisfactory reason for their occurrence at this particular point. So long as they were supposed to refer to light simply, they seemed out of place. Light was not apparently needed till there were organisms to whose existence it was essential. But we now know that to call forth light, was to call force in all its modifications into action. It has been seen that matter and force are the two elements out of which everything that is discernible by our senses is built up. The formation of matter has already been described in the original act of creation. But till force also was evolved, matter must of necessity remain in that chaotic state to which verse 2 refers. To matter is now added that which was required to enable the progressive work of Creation to be carried on. The first result of this would probably be that the force of gravitation would begin to act, while, from what the telescope reveals to us, we may conjecture, that at the same time the whole incoherent mass would be permeated with light and heat, and some, at all events, of those elementary substances with which chemistry makes us acquainted would be developed, and the whole mass, acted upon by the mutual attraction of its several particles, would begin to move towards, and accumulate about its centre of gravity.

It has been shown that Laplace's Nebular Hypothesis, when substituted for the action of a Creator, broke down in three important points. Of these the first two were, that it failed to give any account of the origin of matter, and of the first commencement of the action of Gravitation. These two defects are completely supplied by the first three verses of Genesis. We may probably see in the "Great Nebula" in Orion an illustration of the condition of the solar system when light first made its appearance. It is very probable that that nebula has only very recently become visible. Galileo examined Orion very carefully with his newly invented telescope, but makes no mention of it. [Footnote: Webb's Celestial Objects, p. 255, note.] At present it is visible to the unaided eye even in England, where the atmospheric conditions and its low altitude are alike unfavourable. In Italy, where the atmosphere is remarkably pure, and the meridian altitude is greater by 7 1/2 degrees, it must be a conspicuous object, and had it been so at the time when Galileo was observing the constellation, it could hardly have failed to attract his attention. It was, however, noticed in 1618. It is a vast, shapeless mass, having its boundaries in some parts tolerably well defined, while in other directions it fades away imperceptibly; its light is very faint, and when examined by the spectroscope is found to proceed from a gaseous source. Professor Secchi has traced it through an extent of 5 degrees. When it is remembered that at such a distance the semi-diameter of the earth's orbit subtends an angle less than 1 inch, some idea of the enormous extent of this mass of gas may be formed. Drawings of it have been made from time to time by our most distinguished astronomers, which are found to differ considerably. Great allowance must, of course, be made for differences in the telescopic power employed, and in the visual powers of the several observers, but the differences in the drawings seem too great to be explained by those sources of inaccuracy alone, and actual change in the nebula is therefore strongly suspected. Another nebula of similar character, in which changes are suspected, is that which surrounds the star A in the constellation Argo. This is being very carefully watched through the great telescope recently erected at Melbourne, and from the observations made there, it is probable that fresh light may soon be thrown on the subject.