Evening and Morning. 117 He who would have Apostolic authority for this statement as to the coming of light, and see the spiritual use made of the natural fact, will do well to remember "God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Cor. iv. 6). Evening was and morning was וַיְהִי עֶרֶב וִיהִי בֹקֶר יוֹם אֶחָד: T day one. The Days of Creation are fully investigated in Study VII. The words light and darkness are no indication that creative days were common days. There is no mention of light and darkness after the fifth verse, in which night means the darkness which was upon the face of the deep, and day is the light which followed. Day is light put within limits; and night is darkness put within limits; but the days are not long periods of light alternating with long periods of darkness. Their measure and definition are not by light and darkness, the two sides of a common day, but by evening and morning. The peculiarity of reckoning marks a peculiarity like that in Daniel (viii. 26), where the vision of the evening and the morning is for many days. Knowledge of the earth's physical history gives grandeur to these days, some thought-standard of eternity-some measure of God's day. "We must not suppose that the evening and the morning were merely the sequence of the preceding darkness and of the light that followed it, notwithstanding that the first evening and morning so fittingly append themselves to such a contrast. Still less are we to think of the usual evening and morning, since the earth had not yet been astronomically arranged. Evening and morning denote rather the interval of a creative day, after the Hebrew mode of reckoning from sun-set. The morning that follows stands for the second half of the day proper." The fact of God setting certain divisions of time before the sun was conditioned, and then making the sun ruler, as He first formed the animals, and afterwards appointed Adam to be king, is not a mark of equal cycles, but that time-limits contain all created things. 1 "Genesis:" Professor Lange. Firmament, the heaven or sky of the earth-world. The Greek word crew, and the Latin, firmamentum, have led some to think "that the Hebrews understood the sky to be a permanent solid vault.1" The Hebrews may have thought so; Moses himself may have thought so; some ancient nations may have had the idea of a solid firmament; but, nevertheless, firmament simply means extension involving great tenuity. The fowls flew in it, the sun and moon were set in it, and the stars lighted it. No candid reader will think that the inspired writer meant people to understand that fowls were flying in a vault, that the sun and moon moved up and down in it, and that stars were little lights thereof. Dr Kitto writes:-"A portion of the heavy watery vapour had flown into the upper regions, and rested there in dense clouds, which still obscured the sun; while below, the earth was covered with water. Thus we see the propriety with which the firmament is said to have divided the waters from the waters." The waters were not waters in the modern scientific sense; but that fluidity out of which land and water were formed. The earth germinated and brought forth grass, herb yielding seed, and tree bearing fruit; which may be thus arranged Algæ, Fungi, Lichens, Grasses. by Herbs, Vegetables, Cereals. רשא עֵשֶׂב It is remarkable that the comprehensive word may include all that class of vegetable life which we call "Flowerless," that herb, y tree, designate all flowering plants. It is not less remarkable, that this comprehension of all vegetation into grass, herb, tree, disposes of every attempt, by means of evolution, to discredit the Divine account. Indeed, the general summary accords with the indefiniteness of modern classification, and finds confirmation, so far as evolution is scientifically accepted. The existence, moreover, of a certain common similitude 1 "Essays and Reviews :" Mosaic Cosmogony, p. 220. Sun, Moon and Stars. 119 amongst organisms, so that all plants are akin, the kinship extending to and embracing even every form of animal life, has been cited in argument against the Divine narrative. The argument falls to the ground so soon as the fact is realised that He who established the simple primitive unity endued it with essential but, to us, undiscoverable differences; which grew up-if we speak scientifically-according to natural law into special structure and function of "kind after its kind." Lights in the Firmament. The lights are not the primal illumination is, light; but the collocation of light in such manner that there may be lights for many worlds. is properly means luminous instruments, receptacles, places, or bodies whence light proceeds. The word was afterwards used in a wider sense, in poetry, as we use it—"Sun of my soul;" Prov. xv. 30, "Light of the eyes;" also in connection with the candlestick or lamp in the tabernacle, where a special dignity attaches to that light as emphatically " the light." The sun, moon, and stars are spoken of in their relative importance as lights seen from the earth, not as they are in themselves. The word y, constituting them to be lights and signs, dividers of the day and night, and rulers of the seasons, means to crown or make a king, and is used of the firmament. In Psalm civ. 19 it is translated appointed"He appointed the moon for seasons." The peculiar power of the letter D, showing that the sun is light-bearer, the instrument or holder of light, not light itself, but to regulate it for the future, seems to anticipate the following scientific statement,-"In nebulous sphere, just become luminous, and in the red-hot liquid earth of our modern cosmogony, light was not yet divided into sun and stars, nor time into day and night, as it was after the earth was cooled." 1 On the Fifth Day, power was given to the waters, and they brought forth abundantly. swarm : Let the waters יִשְׂרְצוּ חפַּיִם 1 Professor Helmholtz: "Interaction of Natural Forces." "Ut merito maternum nomen adepta LUCRETIUS, De Rerum Natura, v. 793-796. "With good reason the earth has gotten the name of mother, since out of the earth all things are produced. Many living things even now are being formed in rain water, and in warm vapours raised by the sun.” Moses had a deep scientific spirit. He knew, or not knowing, uttered that latest of truths,-"All living powers are cognate, all living forms are fundamentally of one character." He anticipated the researches of the chemist, that there is "a striking uniformity of material composition in living matter." He was not a "barbarous Hebrew" with absurd hypothesisthat species arose without natural agencies, without modification of organic or of living matter. He makes no mention of species, goes below them, declares that their unsearchable roots are in cosmical life-the waters swarmed. We may say, in Hugh Miller's words,-"What fully developed history is to the prophecy which of old looked forwards, fully developed science is to the prophecy which of old looked backwards."1 The great truth, declared by Moses, is affirmed by science. that, regarding organisms, the difference as to one another is of degree, not of kind: a difference solely of molecular complexity. We are not warranted in thinking, though asserted by some, that vital energy and chemical energy are the same as mechanical power: nor that all substances are resolvable into one kind of matter "by the different grouping of units, and by combination of unlike groups, each with its own kind, and each with other kinds;" for there are secrets in every organism which we cannot hope to detect-barely to conjecture; things beyond our understanding, things outside the ordinary chemical and electrical affinities. On the Sixth Day, God created, the flesh-eating animal, or wild beast; nonan, cattle, or the herb-eating animal; and л, creeping things, all the lower forms of life which are on the land; after their kind. The TTT "Testimony of the Rocks." Rhythmical Arrangement of Days. 121 fierce and terrible are first mentioned because terrible; the others follow in their apparent importance. It is probable that the order of life's appearance on earth was, first, with the lowest grades of vegetable and animal existence; and then, by progression, to the higher types; possibly according to the classes in which the flora and fauna are scientifically arranged. Animal life is thus classified, Protozoa, Cælenterata, Annuloida, Annulosa, Mollusca, Vertebrata. The arrangement in Scripture is probably rhythmical, not scientific, we have not only the six days apportioned into two triplets, so that the work of the first is completed on the fourth, that of the second on the fifth, and that of the third on the sixth; but the two triplicates are headed by the seventh or Sabbath day. These triplicates themselves are triple: in vegetationgrass, herb, tree; in light-sun, moon, stars; in life from the water-fish, bird, creature of length; in life from the ground -wild beast, cattle, creeping thing. Over all this life man is constituted king. Plant, fish, The evidence in favour of Evolution having shown some truth-though not the whole truth, it is one of the Bible's great triumphs to overcome all objections, difficulties, and doubts which arise on the supposition that the Divine narrative asserts the special creation of species. "The book does not so speak, as all may see who will." bird, mammal, man, were framed by a continually ascending process from unity to diversity. The fundamental statements enabling us to see, as by a succession of dissolving views, that God is the source of all things: so that Nature, endued with energy, advances grade by grade, until the earth is filled with life; do not reveal particulars of the process, nor by what means the great gulf between the dead and the living was spanned, nor how the vital spark was first kindled. These were left for science to discover if it can the province of science being the discoverable, that of revelation the undiscoverable. We now, and rightly, regard it as perfectly natural that the stately oak should be developed from the tiny acorn; is that really less miraculous, less divine, than the production of the earth's primal and rudi1 "Cambridge University Sermon," Gen. i. 1: Rev. T. G. Bonney. |