"The earth is progressing by excessively slow changes toward the solar and nebulous condition. Its history is a repetition of the solar, and a time must arrive when the surface, becoming incandescent, will be obscured only by casual dark pits in a brilliant atmosphere, asouvenirof the present darkness of the crust; yet during a certain period, within fixed limits of gravitating force and heat of mass, the human race may continue to exist; progressing, we may suppose, in force and fineness of organization. The race will perish, perhaps, in the order of nature, by failure or insufficient number of offspring, a principal cause of the extinction of superior races. The earth must become lone and voiceless long before the incandescence of the crust. Science may follow it into the condition of an attendant star, and then of an expanding nebula."In the cosmos all movements are cyclical, and recurrent, without change, save interchange among forms of motion. A universe which is, in its total, the same to-day as yesterday, and always, would appear idle and dull if it were not the footstool of divine force, upon which the creative will maintains a certain equipoise, necessary to the continued production of spiritual forms."
"The earth is progressing by excessively slow changes toward the solar and nebulous condition. Its history is a repetition of the solar, and a time must arrive when the surface, becoming incandescent, will be obscured only by casual dark pits in a brilliant atmosphere, asouvenirof the present darkness of the crust; yet during a certain period, within fixed limits of gravitating force and heat of mass, the human race may continue to exist; progressing, we may suppose, in force and fineness of organization. The race will perish, perhaps, in the order of nature, by failure or insufficient number of offspring, a principal cause of the extinction of superior races. The earth must become lone and voiceless long before the incandescence of the crust. Science may follow it into the condition of an attendant star, and then of an expanding nebula.
"In the cosmos all movements are cyclical, and recurrent, without change, save interchange among forms of motion. A universe which is, in its total, the same to-day as yesterday, and always, would appear idle and dull if it were not the footstool of divine force, upon which the creative will maintains a certain equipoise, necessary to the continued production of spiritual forms."
It is an impracticable notion, contrary to the first principle of mechanics, that action and reaction are equal.
The grand requirement of the system—power to work the engine—can never be raised by La Place's, nor by any other mechanical plan. The cooling cloud of fire-mist is simply a very big machine, and no machine can generate power to work itself. If La Place could have somehow or other got power for the motion of rotation outside of his cloud, he might have made it revolve, and scatter off great lumps of the lightest outside stuffs, as your grindstone scatters off drops of water when you turn it rapidly; but, having no such power, his theory is a plan to make the grindstone turn itself.It is, therefore, precisely of the same value as any one of the hundred of ingenious schemes for creating power by machinery, of the perpetual motion men, in defiance of the first law of mechanics, that action and reaction are equal.
Moreover, he proposes to raise the power by making the gas cool at one part of the surface faster than at another, and so to make a vortex around that spot, which would set the whole mass to revolving. But no conceivable reason can be alleged why the homogeneous mass should begin to cool at one place faster than another, or indeed why an eternally hot mass should ever begin to cool at all. But, letting that pass, to make the required vortex for the rotation of the whole mass, it should not begin to cool at any part of the surface, but at the center, where, as every engine driver who ever saw a condenser, and every woman who ever cooled a dish of mush knows, it could not possibly begin to cool till the outside mass had become cold; and so no motion could be produced. This is so well known in the machine shops that it is rare to find a machinist own the theory.
But even a more fatal objection has been raised by one of the most eloquent expounders of the theory. Mr. Spencer shows us that the mass, condensing under the influence of gravitation, so far from coolingmust necessarily evolve heat. He is perfectly clear and decided on this matter,that the condensing mass could never, by any possibility, begin to cool, but must begin to heat, and go on heating till it burst out in a blaze. He says: "Heat must inevitably be generated by the aggregation of diffused matter into a concrete form; and throughout our reasonings we have assumed that such generation of heat has been an accompaniment of nebular condensation."[202]"While the condensation and the rate of rotation are progressively increasing, the approach of the atoms necessarily generatesa progressively increasingtemperature. As this temperature rises light begins to be evolved, and ultimately there results a revolving sphere of fluid matter radiating intense light and heat—a sun."[203]
This, it will be perceived, is exactly the reverse of the original nebular theory of a cooling globe, or spheroid of homogeneous nebular matter, diffused by intense heat, and cooling down into suns, and moons, and planets. So far as the Spencer system is accepted, it displaces La Place's theory, and the inventor accordingly works out a new theory of his own, and equally inconsistent with known facts and principles. But as Mr. Spencer candidly owns that his scheme can neither generate matter nor force, as we have already seen, it needs no further discussion in this connection.
The fact is simply this, a chemical perpetual motion is as impossible as a mechanical one. The discovery of the convertibility of forces shows this. The development theory of the generation of motion by processes of the self-heating or the self-cooling of the machine, or by chemical actions and reactions, is, in its last analysis, only a big perpetual motion humbug.
Even were the rotation, and the cooling process, to take place, as is supposed,no such results would proceed from these combined operations as the case requires; for, according to the theory, as the cooling and contracting rings revolve in the verge of a vortex of fluid less dense than themselves, one of these two results must take place: either, as is most probable, from their exceeding tenuity, the rings will break at once into fragments, when, instead of flying outward, they will sink toward the center, and, as long as they are heavier than the surrounding fluid,they will stay there; and, as the cooling goes on on the outside, so will the concentration of the heavier matter, till we haveonegreatspheroid, with a solid center, liquid covering, and gaseous atmosphere. A vortex will never make, nor allow to exist beyond its center, planets heavier than the fluid of which it is composed. The other alternative, and the one which La Place selected, was the supposition that the cooling and contracting rings did not at first break up into pieces, but retained their continuity; but, contrary to all experience and reason, he supposed that these cooling rings kept contracting and widening out from the heated mass, at the same time. The only fluid planetary rings which we can examine—those of Saturn—have been closing in on the planet since the days of Huygens, and eventually will be united with the body of the planet. Every boy who has seen a blacksmith hoop a cart-wheel has learned the principle, that a heated ring contracts as it cools, and in doing so presses in upon the mass around which it clings. But, according to this nebular notion, the fire-mist keeps cooling and shrinking up, while the rings, of the very same heat and material, keep cooling faster, and widening out from it; a piece of schismatical behavior without a parallel among solids or fluids, either in heaven or earth, or under the earth.
Plateau's illustration of the mode in which centrifugal force acts in overcoming molecular attraction, has been cited as a demonstration of the truth of the nebular hypothesis. The conditions, however, are entirely different. By means of clock-work he caused a globule of oil to rotate in a mixture of alcohol and waterof the same density, thus entirely getting rid of the power of gravitation; and by increasing the velocity he caused it to flatten out into a disc, and finally to project a multitude of minute drops, which continued their revolutions so long as the fluid in which they floated kept revolving by the motion of the rotating spindle,the divergent drops, the central mass, and the surrounding fluid, being all the while of the same density. But the essential conditions of the nebular theory are, thatthe central massexert an attraction of gravitation upon all its parts, andtherefore be denser than the surrounding ether or empty space, and thatthe cooling and contracting rings be of a different density from the rest of the mass. Their divergence from the more fluid portion is supposed to arise from their growing denser. And Reclus shows[204]that the divergent drops owe their existence to theexpansion, not to thecontraction, of the globule of oil. This experiment, then, contradicts the theory, so far as it is applicable.
Plateau himself never adduced this experiment in support of the nebular theory; but having, by way of illustration, spoken of the revolving drops as satellites, and finding that expression misunderstood, he corrected the error in a subsequent paper. He says: "It is clear that this mode of formation is entirely foreign to La Place's cosmogonic hypothesis; therefore we have no idea of deducing from this little experiment, which only refersto the effects of molecular attraction, andnot to those of gravitation, any argument in favor of the hypothesis in question; an hypothesis whichin other respects we do not adopt."[205]
It was always contrary to the facts of astronomical science.It has accordingly been repudiated by the most eminent astronomers.
Sir John Herschel declares that the appearance of those groups, or clusters, of stars, supposed to be formed by the condensation of nebulæ is quite different from that depicted by this theory, and that no traces of the ring-making process is visible among them. He thus describes the appearances of these groups; exactly the contrary of that demanded by the theory, which he emphatically disclaims, from the presidential chair of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
"If it is to be regarded as demonstrated truth, or as receiving the smallest support from any observed numerical relations which actually hold good among the elements of the primary orbits, I beg leave to demur. Assuredly it receives no support from the observation of the effects of sidereal aggregation as exemplified in the formation of globular and elliptic clusters, supposing them to have resulted from such aggregation. For we see this cause working out in thousands of instances, to have resulted,notin the formation of a single large central body, surrounded by a few smaller attendants disposed in one plane around it, but in systems of infinitely greater complexity, consisting of multitudes of nearly equal luminaries, grouped together in a solid elliptic or globular form. So far then as any conclusions from our observations of nebulæ can go, the result of agglomerative tendenciesmayindeed be the formation of families of stars of a general and very striking character, but we see nothing to lead us to presume its further result to be the surrounding of those stars with planetary adherents."[206]
This theory is contradicted by the peculiarities of our solar system.The orbits of the comets being inclined at all angles to the sun's equator, are often out of the plane of his rotation, and so in the way of the theory. The moons of Uranus revolve in a direction contrary to all the other bodies, and fly right into the face of the theory. According to the nebular theory, the outer planets, first cast off from the sun, ought to be lighter than those nearer him, as these had longer pressing near the middle of the mass; and the sun himself, having been pressed by the weight of all the rest of the system, should be the densest body of the whole. And the author ofThe Vestiges of Creation, in expounding the theory, manufactures a set of facts to suit it, and tells his readers that the planets exhibit a progressivediminution in density from the one nearest the sun to that which is most distant. Our solar system could not have lasted thirty years had that been the case. The Earth, Venus, and Mars, are nearly of the same density. Uranus is more dense than Saturn, which is nearer the sun. Neptune is more dense than either. The sun, which ought to be the heaviest of all, according to the theory, is only one-fourth the density of the earth. La Place himself has demonstrated that these densities and arrangements are indispensable to the stability of the system. But they are plainly contradictory to his theory of its formation.[207]
The palpable difference of luminosity between the sun and the planets, which, as they are all made of the very same materials, and by the same process, according to this theory, ought to be equally self-luminous, is in itself a self-evident refutation of the nebular hypothesis, or of any other process of creation by mere mechanical law. "The same power, whether natural or supernatural, which placed the sun in the center of the six primary planets, placed Saturn in the center of the orb of his five secondary planets; and Jupiter in the center of his four secondary planets; and the earth in the center of the moon's orbit; and, therefore, had this cause been a blind one,without contrivance or design, the sun would have been a body of the same kind with Saturn, Jupiter, and the Earth; that is,without light or heat. Why there is one body in our system qualified to give light and heat to all the rest, I know no reason, but because the Author of the system thought it convenient." So says the immortal Newton.[208]
The great expounder of modern science—Humboldt—isequally explicit in enumerating the decisive marks of choice and will in the construction of the solar system, and in contemptuously dismissing the notion of development and creation by natural law from the halls of science.
"Up to the present time,we are ignorant, as I have already remarked, of any internal necessity—any mechanical law of nature—which (like the beautiful law which connects the square of the periods of revolution with the cube of the major axis) represents the above-named elements—the absolute magnitude of the planets, their density, flattening at the poles, velocity of rotation, and presence or absence of moons—of the order of succession of the individual planetary bodies of each group, in their dependence upon the distances. Although the planet which is nearest the sun is densest—even six or eight times denser than some of the exterior planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—the order of succession in the case of Venus, the Earth, and Mars, is very irregular. The absolute magnitudes do, generally, as Kepler has already observed, increase with the distances; but this does not hold good when the planets are considered individually. Mars is smaller than the Earth; Uranus smaller than Saturn; Saturn smaller than Jupiter, and succeeds immediately to a host of planets, which, on account of their smallness, are almost immeasurable. It is true, the period of rotation generally increases with the distance from the sun; but it is in the case of Mars slower than in that of the Earth, and slower in Saturn than in Jupiter."[209]"Our knowledge of the primeval ages of the world's physical history does not extend sufficiently far to allow of our depicting the present condition of things as one of development."[210]
Sir David Brewster adds his testimony as follows: "Geology does not pretend to give us any information respectingthe process by which the nucleus of the earth was formed. Some speculative astronomers indeed have presumptuously embarked in such an inquiry; but there is not a trace of evidence that the solid nucleus of the globe was formed by secondary causes, such as the aggregation of attenuated matter diffused through space; and thenebular theory, as it has been called, though maintained by a few distinguished names, has, we think, been overturned by arguments which have never been answered. Sir Isaac Newton, in his four celebrated letters to Dr. Bentley, has demonstrated that the planets of the solar system could not have been thus formed and put in motion round a central sun."[211]
4.Astronomy not only exposes the folly of past cosmogonies, but demonstrates the impossibility of framing any true theory of creation, and thus refutes all future cosmogonies.
The grand error of all cosmogonies lies in the arrogant assumption, on which every one of them must be founded,that the theorist is acquainted with all substances, and all forces in the universe, and with all the modes of their operation; not only at the present period, and on this earth, but in all past ages, and in worlds in widely different, and utterly unknown situations; for, if he be ignorant of any substance, or of any active force in the universe, his generalization is avowedly imperfect, and necessarily erroneous. That unknown force must have had its influence in framing the world. Its omission, then, is fatal to the theory which neglects it. A theory of creation, for instance, which would neglect the attraction of gravitation would be manifestly false. But there are other forces as far reaching, whose omission must be equally fatal; for instance, the power of repulsion.
A conviction of this truth has given rise to a constant effort to simplify matters down to the level of ourignorance, by reducing all substances to one, or at most two simple elements, and all forces to the form of one universal law; but the progress of science utterly blasts the attempt. Instead of simplifying matters, the very chemical processes undertaken with that view revealed new substances, and every year increases our knowledge of nature's variety. No scientific man now dreams of one primeval element. In the same way, astronomy, which, it was boasted, would enable us to account for all the operations of the universe, by reducing all motion to one mechanical law, has revealed to us the existence of other forces as far reaching as the attraction of gravitation, and more powerful; and substances whose nature and combinations are utterly unknown. But every cosmogony is just an attempt to simplify matters, by ignoring the existence of these unknown substances, and mysterious forces; a process which science condemns, as utterly unphilosophical and absurd.
Astronomy has shown usour ignorance of the substances, ormaterials,of our own little globe. It has demonstrated that the whole body of the earth must have an average density equal to iron. As the rocks near the surface are much lighter, those toward the center must be heavier than iron, to make up this density. Of what, then, do they consist? The geologist says he does not know. No geologist ever saw them. No mortal ever will see them, and report their chemical constitution, their dip, and the arrangement of their strata, to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The very utmost "we can say is that they are unlike anything with which we are acquainted." Very well; then be pleased to have the decency to abstain from telling us how the world was made, when you don't know what it is made of.
The sun's heat, at its surface, is 300,000 times greater than at the surface of the earth, but a tenth of this amount, collected in the focus of a lens, dissipates gold and platinum invapor. When the most vivid flames which we can produce are held up in the blaze of his rays, they disappear. If a cataract of icebergs, a mile high, and wider than the Atlantic Ocean, were launched into the sun with the velocity of a cannon-ball, the small portion of the sun's heat expended on our earth would convert that vast mass into steam as fast as it entered his atmosphere without cooling its surface in the least degree. "The great mystery, however, is to conceive how so enormous a conflagration (if such it be) can be kept up. Every discovery in chemical science here leaves us completely at a loss, or rather seems to remove farther the prospect of probable explanation."[212]Yet, the sun is the nearest of the fixed stars, and by far the best known, and most nearly related to us. In fact, we are dependent on his influences for life and health. But if the theoristcan not tell his substance, or the nature and cause of the light and heat he sends us, how can he presume so far on the world's credulity as to present a theory of his formation?
"Astronomical problems accumulate unsolved upon our hands, because we can not, as mechanicians, chemists, or physiologists, experiment on the stars. Are they built of the same material as our planet? Are Saturn's rings solid, or liquid? Has the moon an atmosphere? Are the atmospheres of the planets like ours? Are the light and heat of the sun begotten of combustion? And what is the fuel which feeds these unquenchable fires? These are questions, which we ask, and variously answer,but leave unanswered after all."[213]But, till he can answer these, and a thousand questions like these, let no man presume to describe the formation of these unknown orbs.
Comets constitute by far the greatest number of the bodies of our solar system. Arago says seven millionsfrequent it, within the orbit of Uranus.[214]They are the largest bodies known to us, stretching across hundreds of millions of miles. They approach nearer to this earth than any other bodies, sometimes even involving it in their tails, and generally exciting great alarm among its inhabitants. But the nature of the transparent luminous matter of which they are composed is utterly unknown. As they approach the sun, they come under an influence directly the opposite of attraction. The tail streams away from the sun, over a distance of millions of miles,and yet the rate of the comet's motion toward the sun is quickened, as though it were an immense rocket, driven forward by its own explosion.
Further, while the body of the comet travels toward the sun, sometimes with a velocity nearly one-third of that of light, the tail sends forth coruscations in the opposite direction, with a much greater velocity. The greatest velocity with which we are acquainted on earth is the velocity of light, which travels a million of times faster than a cannon-ball, or at the rate of 195,000 miles per second; but here is a substance capable of traveling twenty-three times faster, and here is a force propelling it, twenty-three times greater than any which exists on earth. Its existence was first discovered by the coruscations of the comet of 1807. "In less than one second, streamers shot forth, to two and a half degrees in length; they as rapidly disappeared, and issued out again, sometimes in proportions, and interrupted, like our northern lights. Afterward the tail varied, both in length and breadth; and in some of the observations, the streamers shot forth from the whole expanded end of the tail, sometimes here, sometimes there, in an instant, two and a half degrees long;so that within a single second they must have shot out a distance of 4,600,000 miles."[215]Similarexhibitions of this unknown force were made by the comet of 1811, by Halley's comet, and several others.
In these amazing disclosures of the unknown forces of the heavens, do we not hear a voice rebuking the presumption of ignorant theorists, with the questions, Knowestthouthe ordinances of heaven? Canstthouset the dominion thereof in the earth? Hear one of the most distinguished of modern astronomers expound the moral bearings of such a discovery: "The intimation of a new cosmical power—I mean of one so unsuspected before, but which yet can follow a planet through all its wanderings—throws us back once more into the indefinite obscure, and checks all dogmatism. How many influences, hitherto undiscovered by our ruder senses, may be ever streaming toward us, and modifying every terrestrial action. And yet, because we had traced one of these, we have deemed our astronomy complete! Deeper far, and nearer to the root of things, is that world with which man's destiny is entwined."[216]
We can have no reason, save our own self-sufficient arrogance, to believe that the discovery of these two forces exhausts the treasures of infinite wisdom. Humboldt thus well refutes the folly of such an imagination: "The imperfectibility of all empirical science, and the boundlessness of the sphere of observation, render the task of explaining the forces of matter by that which is variable in matter, an impracticable one. What has been already perceived, by no means exhausts that which is perceptible. If, simply referring to the progress of science in our own times, we compare the imperfect physical knowledge of Robert Boyle, Gilbert, and Hales, with that of the present day, and remember that every few years are characterized by an increasing rapidity of advance, we shall be better able to imaginethe periodical and endless changes which all physicalsciences are destined to undergo. New substances and new forces will be discovered."[217]
Thus, all true science, conscious of its ignorance, ever leads the mind to the region of faith. Its first lesson, and its last lesson, is humility. It tells us that every cosmogony, which the children of theory so laboriously scratch in the sand, must be swept away by the rising tide of science. When we seek information on the great questions of our origin and destiny, and cry, "Where shall wisdom be found, and what is the place of understanding?" The high priests of science answer, in her name, "It is not in me; the measure thereof is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea."
We receive this honest acknowledgment as an inestimable boon. We are saved thereby the wearying labor of a vain and useless search after knowledge which lies not in her domain. We come down to the Bible with the profound conviction that science can give us no definite information of our origin, no certainty of our destiny, and but an imperfect acquaintance with the laws which govern this present world. If the Bible can not inform us on these all-important questions, we must remain ignorant. Science declares she can not teach us. The Word of God remains, not merely the best, but absolutely the only, the last resource of the anxious soul.
The Bible gives us no theory of creation. It simply asserts the fact, that "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," but does not tell ushowhe did so. The knowledge could be of no use to us, for he never means to employ us as his assistants in the work of creation. Nor could we understand the matter. The force by which he called the worlds into being, and upholds them in it, exists in no creature. "He stretcheth forth the heavens alone.He spreadeth abroad the earth by himself." "He upholdeth all things by the word of his power."
But it presents anxious, careworn, humbled souls with something infinitely more precious than cosmogonies; even an explicit declaration of the love toward them of him who made these worlds.
"Thus saith the Lord,thy Redeemer,And he who formed thee from the womb:I am the Lord, who maketh all things;Who stretcheth forth the heavens alone,And spreadeth abroad the earth, by myself.""He healeth the broken in heart,And bindeth up their wounds.He telleth the number of the stars,And calleth them all by their names.Great is our Lord, and of great power;His wisdom is infinite!"
"Thus saith the Lord,thy Redeemer,And he who formed thee from the womb:I am the Lord, who maketh all things;Who stretcheth forth the heavens alone,And spreadeth abroad the earth, by myself."
"He healeth the broken in heart,And bindeth up their wounds.He telleth the number of the stars,And calleth them all by their names.Great is our Lord, and of great power;His wisdom is infinite!"
Yes, the Creator of heaven and earth, who upholds all things by the word of his power, became a man like you, and dwelt on earth, and suffered the sorrow, the shame, the pain, the death, that sinful man deserved; and when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. From that heavenly throne his voice now sounds, reader, in your ear, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, andI will give you rest."
FOOTNOTES:[186]Cosmos III. 138.[187]Herschel's Outlines, chap. xvii. sec. 887.[188]Cosmos III. 197.[189]Nichol's Architecture of the Heavens, 9th ed. p. 180.[190]Cosmos IV. 292.[191]Nichol's Contemplations on the Solar System, xxx.[192]Cosmos III. 253.[193]Herschel's Outlines of Astronomy, chap. xvi.[194]New York Evangelist, May 5, 1870.[195]Nichol's Architecture of the Heavens, 9th edition, 272.[196]Pontecoulant inSystem of the World, p. 70.[197]Progress of Astronomy, 70.[198]Memoirs of the French Academy, by M. Le Verrier; fromThe Annual of Scientific Discovery, for 1855, p. 376.[199]Herschel's Outlines of Astronomy, p. 558, ed. of 1853.[200]Illustrations of Universal Progress, page 298.[201]Fragments of Science and Scientific Thought, p. 163.[202]Illustrations of Progress, page 292.[203]Illustrations of Progress, page 34.[204]The Earth, page 256.[205]Taylor's Scientific Memoirs, Vol. V., cited in McCosh's Typical Forms and Special Ends in Creation, p. 403.[206]Opening Address to the British Association, 1845.[207]Taking water as the unit of density, Mercury is 6.71; Venus, 5.11; Earth, 5.44; Mars, 5.21; Saturn, 0.76; Uranus, 0.97; Neptune, 1.25; the Sun, 1.37.—Cosmos IV. p. 447.[208]Newton's Optics, IV. p. 438.[209]Cosmos, IV. p. 425.[210]Cosmos, III. p. 28.[211]More Worlds Than One, p. 45.[212]Herschel's Outlines, VI. Sect. 400.[213]Dr. George Wilson, F. R. S. E., in Edinburgh Phil. Journal, V. p. 53.[214]Somerville's Connection of the Physical Sciences, p. 360.[215]Dick's Sidereal Heavens, chap. xx.[216]Nichol's Solar System, p. 76.[217]Cosmos, III. p. 27.
FOOTNOTES:
[186]Cosmos III. 138.
[186]Cosmos III. 138.
[187]Herschel's Outlines, chap. xvii. sec. 887.
[187]Herschel's Outlines, chap. xvii. sec. 887.
[188]Cosmos III. 197.
[188]Cosmos III. 197.
[189]Nichol's Architecture of the Heavens, 9th ed. p. 180.
[189]Nichol's Architecture of the Heavens, 9th ed. p. 180.
[190]Cosmos IV. 292.
[190]Cosmos IV. 292.
[191]Nichol's Contemplations on the Solar System, xxx.
[191]Nichol's Contemplations on the Solar System, xxx.
[192]Cosmos III. 253.
[192]Cosmos III. 253.
[193]Herschel's Outlines of Astronomy, chap. xvi.
[193]Herschel's Outlines of Astronomy, chap. xvi.
[194]New York Evangelist, May 5, 1870.
[194]New York Evangelist, May 5, 1870.
[195]Nichol's Architecture of the Heavens, 9th edition, 272.
[195]Nichol's Architecture of the Heavens, 9th edition, 272.
[196]Pontecoulant inSystem of the World, p. 70.
[196]Pontecoulant inSystem of the World, p. 70.
[197]Progress of Astronomy, 70.
[197]Progress of Astronomy, 70.
[198]Memoirs of the French Academy, by M. Le Verrier; fromThe Annual of Scientific Discovery, for 1855, p. 376.
[198]Memoirs of the French Academy, by M. Le Verrier; fromThe Annual of Scientific Discovery, for 1855, p. 376.
[199]Herschel's Outlines of Astronomy, p. 558, ed. of 1853.
[199]Herschel's Outlines of Astronomy, p. 558, ed. of 1853.
[200]Illustrations of Universal Progress, page 298.
[200]Illustrations of Universal Progress, page 298.
[201]Fragments of Science and Scientific Thought, p. 163.
[201]Fragments of Science and Scientific Thought, p. 163.
[202]Illustrations of Progress, page 292.
[202]Illustrations of Progress, page 292.
[203]Illustrations of Progress, page 34.
[203]Illustrations of Progress, page 34.
[204]The Earth, page 256.
[204]The Earth, page 256.
[205]Taylor's Scientific Memoirs, Vol. V., cited in McCosh's Typical Forms and Special Ends in Creation, p. 403.
[205]Taylor's Scientific Memoirs, Vol. V., cited in McCosh's Typical Forms and Special Ends in Creation, p. 403.
[206]Opening Address to the British Association, 1845.
[206]Opening Address to the British Association, 1845.
[207]Taking water as the unit of density, Mercury is 6.71; Venus, 5.11; Earth, 5.44; Mars, 5.21; Saturn, 0.76; Uranus, 0.97; Neptune, 1.25; the Sun, 1.37.—Cosmos IV. p. 447.
[207]Taking water as the unit of density, Mercury is 6.71; Venus, 5.11; Earth, 5.44; Mars, 5.21; Saturn, 0.76; Uranus, 0.97; Neptune, 1.25; the Sun, 1.37.—Cosmos IV. p. 447.
[208]Newton's Optics, IV. p. 438.
[208]Newton's Optics, IV. p. 438.
[209]Cosmos, IV. p. 425.
[209]Cosmos, IV. p. 425.
[210]Cosmos, III. p. 28.
[210]Cosmos, III. p. 28.
[211]More Worlds Than One, p. 45.
[211]More Worlds Than One, p. 45.
[212]Herschel's Outlines, VI. Sect. 400.
[212]Herschel's Outlines, VI. Sect. 400.
[213]Dr. George Wilson, F. R. S. E., in Edinburgh Phil. Journal, V. p. 53.
[213]Dr. George Wilson, F. R. S. E., in Edinburgh Phil. Journal, V. p. 53.
[214]Somerville's Connection of the Physical Sciences, p. 360.
[214]Somerville's Connection of the Physical Sciences, p. 360.
[215]Dick's Sidereal Heavens, chap. xx.
[215]Dick's Sidereal Heavens, chap. xx.
[216]Nichol's Solar System, p. 76.
[216]Nichol's Solar System, p. 76.
[217]Cosmos, III. p. 27.
[217]Cosmos, III. p. 27.
In the last chapter we saw astronomy demonstrating our need of a revelation from God. In this we shall see how it illustrates and confirms that revelation. Seen through the telescope, the Bible glows with celestial splendor. Even its cloudy mysteries are displayed as clouds of light, and its long misunderstood phrases are resolved, by a scientific investigation, into galaxies of brilliant truths, proclaiming to the philosopher that the Book which describes them is as truly the Word of God as the heavens which it describes are his handiwork.
If, once in a century, a profound practical astronomer is found denying the inspiration of the Bible, he will either acknowledge, or discover himself, not familiar with its contents. For the most part, the charges brought against the Bible, of contradicting the facts of astronomy, are based upon misstatements and mistakes of its teachings, and so do not fall within the range of the telescope, or the department of the observatory. The Sabbath-school teacher, and not the astronomer, is the proper person to correct such errors. A few months' instruction in the Bible class of any well-conducted Sabbath-school would save some of our popular anti-Bible lecturers from the sin of misrepresenting the Word of God, and the shame of hearing children laugh at their blunders.
A favorite field for the display of their knowledge of science, and ignorance of the art of reading, by our modernInfidels, is the Bible account of creation, in the first chapter of Genesis, which is alleged to be utterly irreconcilable with the known facts of astronomy and geology. Leaving the latter out of view, for the present, the astronomical objections may all be arranged under four heads. First: that the Bible account of the creation of man, only some six or seven thousand years ago, must be false; because the records of astronomical observations, taken more than seventeen thousand years ago, by the Hindoos and Egyptians, are still in existence, and have been verified. Second: that the light of some of the stars, now shining upon us, and especially of some of the distant nebulæ, must have left them millions of years ago, to have traveled over the vast space which separates them from us, and be visible on our globe now; whereas, the Bible teaches that the universe was created only some six or seven thousand years ago. Third: that the Bible represents God as creating the sky a solid crystal, or metallic sphere, or hemisphere (they are not agreed which), to which the stars are fastened, and with which they revolve around the earth; which every school-boy knows to be absurd. Fourth: that the Bible represents God as creating the sun and moon only two days before Adam, and as creating light before the sun, which is also held to be absurd.
1. The first of these objections—that the Hindoos and Egyptians made astronomical observations thousands of years before Adam, and that the accuracy of these observations has been verified by modern calculations—is simply untrue. No such observations were ever made. The pretended records of such have been proved, in the case of the Hindoo astronomy, to be forgeries, and in the case of the Egyptian records, blunders of the discoverers. There is not an authentic uninspired astronomical observation extant for two thousand years after Adam.
The objection, however, is worth noticing, and its historyworth remembering, as a specimen of the way in which ignorant men swallow impudent falsehoods, if they only seem to contradict the Word of Truth. When the labors of oriental scholars had made the Vedas and Shasters—the sacred books of the Hindoos—accessible to European philosophers, a wonderful shout was raised among Infidels. "Here," it was said, "is the true chronology. We always knew that man was not a degenerate creature, fallen from a higher estate, some few thousand years ago, but that he has existed from eternity, in a constant progress toward his present lofty position; and now we have the most authentic records of the most ancient and civilized people in the world—the people of India—reaching back for millions of years before the Mosaic cosmogony, and allowing ample time for the development of the noble savage into the cultivated philosopher. These records have every mark of truth, giving minute details of events, and histories of successive lines of princes; and, moreover, record the principal astronomical facts of the successive periods—eclipses, comets, positions of stars, etc.—which attest their veracity. Henceforth, the Hebrew records must hide their heads. Neither as poetry nor history can they pretend to compare with the Vedas."
The Hindoo Shasters were accordingly, for a time, in high repute, among people who knew very little about them. Even Dr. Adam Clarke was so far led away with the spirit of the age, as to pollute his valuable commentary by the insertion of theGitagovinda, after the Chaldee Targum on the Song of Solomon; where the curious reader can satisfy himself as to the scientific value of such Pantheistic dotings. By the Infidels of Britain and America they were appealed to as standard works of undoubted authority; and hundreds, who declared that it was irrational credulity to believe in the Bible, risked their souls on the faith of the Vedas,of which they never had read a single sentence!
Now, when we remember that these veracious chronicles reach back throughmaha yugsof 4,320,000 years of mortals, a thousand of which, or 4,320,000,000, make akalpaor one day of the life of Brahma, while his night is of the same duration, and his life consists of a hundred years of such days and nights, about the middle of which period the little span of our existence is placed; that among the facts of the history are the records of the seven great continents of the world, separated by seven rivers, and seven chains of mountains, four hundred thousand miles high (reaching only to the moon); of the families of their kings, one of whom had a hundred sons, another only ten thousand, another sixty thousand, who were born in a pumpkin, nourished in pans of milk, reduced to ashes by the curse of a sage, and restored to life by the waters of the Ganges; and that among the astronomical observations, by which the accuracy of these extraordinary facts is confirmed, are accounts of deluges, in which the waters not only rose above the tops of earth's mountains, but above the seven inferior and three superior worlds,reaching even to the Pole Star[218]—we may well wonder at the faith which could receive all this as so true, that on the strength of it they rejected the miracles of the Bible as false. Even Voltaire ridiculed these stories.
But a visionary man, named Baillie, calculated the alleged observations backward, and found them sufficiently correct to satisfy him that all the rest of the story was equally true. It never seems to have occurred to him, that if he could calculate eclipsesbackward, so could the Hindoos. It is just as easy to calculate an eclipse, or the position of a planet, backward as forward. If I watch the motion of the hands of a clock accurately, and find that the little hand moves over the twelfth of a circle every hour, and the large hand around the circle in the same time, and that the largehand, now at noon, covers the little one, I can calculate, that at sixteen minutes and a quarter past three it will nearly cover it again; but then, it is just as easy to count that the two hands were covered at sixteen minutes and a quarter before nine that morning, or that they were exactly in line at 6 A. M. If my clock would keep going at the same rate for a thousand years, I could predict the position of the hands at any hour of the twenty-ninth of March, of the year 2857; but it is evident that the very same calculation applied the other way would show the position that the hands would have had a thousand years ago, or five thousand years ago, just as well. And if I were to allege that my clock was made by Tubal Cain, before the flood, and for proof of the fact declare, that on the first of January, 3857 B. C., at 6 o'clock P. M., I had seen the two hands directly in line, and some wiseacre were to calculate the time, and find that at that hour the hands ought to have been just in that position, and conclude thence that I was undoubtedly one of the antediluvians, and the clock no less certainly a specimen of the craft of the first artificer in brass and iron, the argument would be precisely parallel to the Infidel's argument from the Tirvalore Tables, and the astronomy of the Vedas.
But suppose my clock ran a little slow; say half a minute in the month, or so; or that it was made to keep sidereal time, which differs by a little from solar time, and that I did not know exactly what the difference was; it is evident that on a long stretch of some hundreds or thousands of years, I would get out of my reckoning, and the hands would not have been in the positions I had calculated. Now, this was just what happened with the Brahmins and their calculations. The clock of the heavens keeps a uniform rate of going, but they made a slight mistake in the counting of it; and so did their Infidel friends. But our modern astronomers have got the true time, set their clocks, andmade their tables by it; and on applying these tables to the pretended Hindoo observations, find that they are all wrong, and that no such eclipses as they allege ever did occur or possibly could have happened in our solar system.[219]So the Hindoo astronomy is now consigned to the same tomb with the Hindoo chronology and cosmogony, except when a missionary, on the banks of the Ganges, exhibits it to the pupils of his English school, as a specimen of the falsehoods which have formed the swaddling bands of Pantheism.
Failing in the attempt to substitute Brahminism for Christianity, Infidels beat a retreat from India, and went down into Egypt for help. Here they made prodigious discoveries of the scientific and religious truths believed by the worshipers of dogs and dung beetles, recorded upon the coffins of holy bulls, and the temples sacred to crows and crocodiles. The age was favorable for such discoveries.
Napoleon and his savans cut out of the ceiling of a temple, at Denderah, in Egypt, a stone covered with uncouth astronomical, astrological, and hieroglyphic figures, which they insisted was a representation of the sky at the time the temple was built; and finding a division made between the signs of the crab and the lion, and marks for the sun and moon there, they took it into their heads that the sun must have entered the Zodiac at that spot, on the year this Zodiac was made; and, calculating back, found that must be at least seventeen thousand years ago. Hundreds of thousands visited the wonderful antediluvian monument, in the National Library, in Paris, where it had been brought; and where Infidel commentators were never wanting to inform them that this remarkable stone proved the whole Bible to be a series of lies. A professor of the University of Breslau published a pamphlet, entitledInvincible Proof that the Earth is at least ten times older than is taught by the Bible.Scores of such publications followed, and for forty years Infidel newspapers, magazines, and reviews kept trumpeting this great refutation of the Bible. From these it descended to the vulgar, with additions and improvements; and it is now frequently alleged as proving that "ten thousand years before Adam was born, the priests of Egypt were carving astronomy on the pyramids." There is scarcely one of my French or German readers who has not heard of it.
It did not shake the Skeptic's credulity in the least that no two of the savans were agreed, by some thousands of years, how old it was—that they could not tell what the Egyptian system of astronomy was—and that none of them could read the hieroglyphics which explained it. Whatever might be doubtful, of one thing they were all perfectly sure, that it was far older than the creation. But in 1832 the curious Egyptian astronomy was studied, and it appeared that the sun and moon were so placed on the Zodiac to mark the beginning of the year there; and the dividing line fenced off one half of the sky under the care of the sun, while the other was placed under the moon's patronage. Then it was discovered that the positions of the stars were represented by the pictures of the gods whose names they bore—Jupiter, Saturn, etc.—and by calculating the places of these pictures back, it was found that this Zodiac represented their places in the year of our Lord 37; the year of the birth of Nero, a great temple-builder and repairer. Finally, Champollion learned to read the hieroglyphics, and the names, surnames, and titles of the emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero, and Domitian were found on the temple of Denderah; and on the portico of the temple of Esneh, which had been declared to be a few thousand years older than that of Denderah, were found the names of Claudius and Antoninus Pius; while the whole workmanship and style of building have satisfied all antiquarians that these buildings were erected during the declining days of art in the RomanEmpire. The Roman title,autocrat, engraved on the Zodiac itself, attests its antiquity to be not quite two thousand, instead of seventeen thousand years.
But, not satisfied with merely demolishing the batteries of Infidelity, astronomy has been employed to ascertain the dates of numbers of events recorded on Egyptian monuments to have happened to one or other of the Pharaohs, "beloved of Ammon, and brother of the sun," when such a star was in such a position. Mr. Poole has spent years in gathering such inscriptions, and in calculating the dates thus furnished. The astronomer royal, at Greenwich, Mr. Airy, has reviewed the calculations, and finds them correct. Wilkinson, the great Egyptologist, agrees with their conclusions. And the result is, thatthe astronomical chronology of the Egyptian monuments sustains the Bible chronology.[220]Geology comes forward to confirm the testimony of her elder sister, and assures us, that the alleged vast antiquity of the Egyptian monuments is impossible, as it is not more than 5,000 years since the soil of Egypt first appeared above water, as a muddy morass.[221]The learned Adrian Balbo thus sums up the whole question: "No monument, either astronomical or historical, has yet been able to prove the books of Moses false;but with them, on the contrary, agree, in the most remarkable manner, the results obtained by the most learned philologists and the profoundest geometricians."[222]
2. To the second objection—that astronomers have discovered stars whose light must have been millions of years traveling to this earth, and that consequently these stars must have existed millions of years ago, and therefore the Bible makes a false declaration when it says the universe wascreated only some six or seven thousand years ago—I reply by asking,Where does the Bible say so?
"What," says our objector, "is not that the good old orthodox doctrine of Christians and commentators? Do they not unanimously denounce geologists and astronomers as heretics, for asserting the vast antiquity of the earth?"
We shall see presently that no such unanimity of denunciation has ever existed, and that some of the most ancient and learned Christian commentators taught the antiquity of the earth, from the Bible, before geology was born. But that is not the question before us just now. We are not asking what the good old orthodox doctrine of Christians, or the unanimous opinion of commentators may have been; but what is the reading of the Bible—What does this Book say?—not, "What does somebody think?"
"Well," replies our objector, "does not the Bible say, in the first of Genesis, that God created the heavens and the earth in six days, and Adam on the sixth; and are not chronologists agreed that that was not more than seven thousand years ago, at the very utmost?"
If the Bible had said that God created the heavens and the earth in six days, and that the end of that period was only seven thousand years ago, it would by no means follow that the beginning of it was only a few hours before that; for every Bible reader knows, that the most common use of the wordday, in Scripture, is to denote, not a period of twenty-four hours, but a period of time which may be of various lengths.[223]In this very narrative (Genesis ii. 5) it is used to denote the whole period of the six days' work: "In the day the Lord God made the earth and the heavens." Does it mean just twenty-four hours there? In the first of Genesis, its duration is defined to consist of "the evening and the morning." Before our Infidel chronologistfinds out the Bible date of creation, he must be able to tell usof what length was the evening which preceded the first morning, and with it constituted the first day? God has of set purpose placed stumbling-blocks for scoffers at the entrance and the exit of the Bible, as a rebuke to pride and vain curiosity.[224]
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 itdoes 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 thisbeginningwas 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 ofcreation. If any one does not know the difference betweencreateandmake, let him turn to his dictionary, and Webster will inform him that the primary literal meaning ofcreateis, "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 Godcreatedthe heavens and the earth." But the primary meaning ofmakeis, "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 onlymade, butcreated; he not only made the work, but the materials." Both words are as good translations of the Hebrew originals,bra, andoshe, 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 findcreateapplied 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. "Godcreatedman in his own image."[227]It is in like manner applied to all God's subsequent bestowals of animallife 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 arecreated." "Remember now thyCreator, 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 wordbrahas as many derivative meanings as our English wordcreate; 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 wordcreate, the Bible very plainly distinguishes the wordsmakeandform, 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 wordsmakeandformare 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,theAuthor of the Bible takes care to use them bothin 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 Godcreatedandmade." "These are the generations of the heavens and the earth, when they werecreated; in the day the Lord Godmadethe earth and the heavens." "But now thus saith the Lord thatcreatedthee, Jacob, and he thatformedthee, O Israel." "For thus saith the Lord thatcreatedthe heavens, God himself, thatformedthe earth, andmadeit; he hath established it; hecreatedit not in confusion; heformedit to be inhabited."[230]In all these passagescreationis clearly distinguished fromformationandmaking, if the Bible is not a mass of senseless repetitions. Ifcreate, andmake, andform, 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 ofcreation—calling things into being—to be previous to and distinct from the work ofmaking—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 createda 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 earthbecamewithout 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 ofconfusion, and the stones ofemptiness." 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, "Hecreated it not,teu,disordered, inconfusion." 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.
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 thechaotic 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 wordand, which, they think, precludes the idea of any lengthened periods or intervals. But the slightest reflection upon the meaning of the word will show thatandcan not of itself be anymeasureof time, its use being to indicate merelysequenceandconnection. 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 byand, 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, inthe very next verse, by this wordand, 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 wordandwas 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 wordand, 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 wordand, 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 wordand,[234]although the interval has been over eighteen hundred years. If in the records of the generations of mortal men, the wordandis 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 ofthe 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 thisbeginningon the very shore of the eternity of God, when it declares, "In the beginningwas 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 thisbeginningwith 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 thatbeginningwhich 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 Beginningand the Ending, saith the Lord, who is, and who was, and who is to come—the Almighty."[237]