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THE 
 
 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
THE WORKS AND DAYS 
 
 MOSES 
 
 OR 
 
 A CRITICAL DISSERTATION ON THE FIRST 
 TIVO CHAPTERS OF GENESIS. 
 
 BY 
 
 1/ 
 
 Sir PHILIP ^PERRING, Bart., 
 
 FORMERLY SCHOLAR OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE; 
 
 AUTHO.< OF 
 
 HARH KNOTS IN SHAKESPEARE," ' CHURCHES AND THEIR CREEDS,' 
 ETC. 
 
 LONDON : 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK : 15 EAST i6th STREET. 
 1889. 
 
 [All Rights 7-escfve(l.} 
 
Richard Clay & Sons, Limitkd, 
 London & Bungay. ■ 
 
PREFACE 
 
 It will be admitted by every intelligent and im- 
 partial critic, that at a first view there is a marked 
 discrepancy, not to say a manifest opposition, between 
 the account which we have of the world's creation in 
 the first two chapters of the book of Genesis, and that 
 which is imprinted in stupendous characters in the 
 vast encyclopaedia of the universe itself. Over and 
 over again distinguished literary potentates have come 
 forward to offer explanations and to propose terms of 
 agreement, with the view of terminating the long 
 conflict between Biblicists on the one hand and 
 Scientists on the other ; but no one, so far as I am 
 aware, has yet succeeded in negotiating a settlement 
 by proving that the Mosaic narrative is a scientific 
 possibility. 
 
 Where so many have failed, do I flatter myself that 
 I shall succeed? I will tell 'the reader exactly what 
 I have done. 
 
 I have divided my matter into nine short chapters. 
 The first chapter is devoted to a consideration of the 
 main purpose of the Pentateuchal Scriptures, and the 
 extent to which the writer may be accepted as an 
 authority on a question of cosmogony. My second 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 chapter marks out certain limitations which were 
 imposed on him by the intellectual condition of his 
 age. In a third and a fourth I review the two chapters 
 of Genesis which are the more immediate subject of 
 our inquiry, drawing particular attention to what I 
 conceive to be the most conspicuous characteristics of 
 each. A fifth chapter prepares the reader for certain 
 difficulties which lie in our way. In the chapters 
 which follow, I start with the assumption that the 
 day of Moses is susceptible of its literal and natural 
 signification, and I show how this is possible consist- 
 ently with the just and reasonable requirements of 
 Science. As, however, to make good this position, I 
 have to ask for larger interpretative concessions than 
 may by many be deemed admissible, I next try what 
 may be done wnth the theory which makes the day a 
 figure of notation for an indefinite number of years ; 
 there is more, I think, to be said in favour of this 
 view than has been commonly urged for it ; never- 
 theless, as it is in parts cloudy and obscure, in my last 
 chapter but one I open out a new creation, which I 
 venture to affirm leaves ample room for every syllable 
 and letter which Moses has written, and every fossil 
 and footprint which Geology has discovered. Such, 
 then, is a synopsis of my work, respecting which this 
 much I can assure the reader, that that cannot with 
 truth be said of it, which was said of the axe-helve 
 of old, * Alas, master, for it was borrozued! 
 
 P. P. 
 
 Lliindovery^ Exniouth^ 
 September, 1S89. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. PROLEGOMENA ... 
 
 II. MOSES' LAW OF WRITING ... 
 
 III. THE FIRST CHAPTER OF GENESIS 
 
 IV. THE SECOND CHAPTER OF GENESIS 
 V. SOME DIFFICULTIES STATED 
 
 VI. THE LITERAL DAY THEORY 
 
 VII. THE LONG DAY THEORY ... 
 
 VIII. THE EPOCH THEORY 
 
 IX. EPILEGOMENA ... 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I 
 
 13 
 
 20 
 
 30 
 41 
 
 51 
 
 77 
 
 97 
 
 125 
 
THE 
 
 'WORKS AND DAYS^ OF MOSES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PROLEGOMENA. 
 
 If, as we have good reason for supposing, the 
 book of Genesis is to be ascribed to Moses as 
 its author — I, of course, except a few passages 
 in it, which, being of a later date than Moses, 
 must necessarily have been inserted after his 
 death — we can hardly be wrong in conjecturing 
 that the main object of his writing was to furnish 
 the people of Israel, at that critical period in 
 their history when they were first welded into a 
 nation under the Divine government, with a 
 well-authenticated record of God's mercies and 
 
2 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 promises to their fathers, and of the singular 
 faith and obedience of those great God-fearing 
 men, to the end that they might liave those 
 things in perpetual remembrance, and teach them 
 to their children from generation to generation. 
 And this conjecture becomes almost a certainty, 
 when we carefully examine the contents of 
 the book. Of the fifty chapters into which 
 Genesis is divided, no less than three-fourths are 
 taken up with an account of the life of Abraham, 
 and Isaac, and Jacob and his sons ; the whole 
 of the preceding history, extending over a period 
 of some two thousand years, if we may assume 
 that the Bibhcal chronology is more or less 
 correct, and comprising such momentous events 
 as the creation, the fall, the peopling, and, 
 after the deluge, the repeopling and distribution 
 of the inhabitants of the earth, has but ten 
 chapters apportioned to it, of no more than 
 average length. Even those chapters scarcely 
 form an exception to what I may call the Israel- 
 ism of the book. The first chapter is especially 
 remarkable for the prominence which it gives 
 
PROLEGOMENA. 3 
 
 to two of the most important articles of the 
 Jewish religion — the worship of God the Creator, 
 and the Sabbatical rest. In an age, in a country, 
 in a world, where the worship of the creature 
 was almost universal, we can trace in this exor- 
 dium the wisdom of the legislator. Practical 
 religion, not abstruse science, it was his aim to 
 inculcate — theology, not geology. The six days' 
 question, though it has well-nigh absorbed the 
 attention of some modern controversialists, is, 
 after all, in Moses' scheme, merely a secondary 
 one. Nevertheless, provided we do not lose sight 
 of the grand features of the Mosaic landscape, 
 which have, and which were intended to have, 
 the most conspicuous prominence, there is no 
 harm in passing under review some of the minor 
 details, about which there has been, and there 
 still is, no little diversity of opinion. 
 
 But, before we proceed, it will be advisable to 
 make sure of the ground on which we stand. 
 The ultimate authority on all matters appertain- 
 ing to God's work of creation must necessarily 
 be that work itself — the earth and the heavens — 
 
4 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 the true original document written by Jehovah 
 Himself in clear and telling characters, which, 
 however, because of its immensity, and bceause 
 of its variety, and because of the changes which 
 it is incessantly undergoing through the oper- 
 ation of certain laws, it is not always easy to 
 decipher, and it is sometimes exceedingly diffi- 
 cult to explain. This, I say, is our chief text- 
 book, our theological primer, our highest standard 
 of authority, which we are bound to consult 
 and follow, and for neglecting the plain testimony 
 of which long ago St. Paul declared that the 
 creature-worshipper was without excuse. All 
 which has ever been written, or which may yet 
 be written, on this, is but a commentary, and 
 can only be of value in so f^ir as it is true. 
 Moses' narrative is one of such commentaries — 
 the earliest, and, until comparatively recently, 
 generally considered the best. Of him we are 
 told, that he was learned in all the wisdom of 
 the Egyptians, that is to say, he was one of 
 the most learned men of his day ; moreover, he 
 was a great legislator, a great leader of the people. 
 
PROLEGOMENA. 5 
 
 and a chronicler of no mean order; a man, 
 therefore, whom no one now living, be he who 
 he may, can afford to cheapen or despise. This 
 Moses, then, though he could not have had a 
 very extensive knowledge from personal observ- 
 ation of the earth on which he lived, much less 
 of the sea, has left us (which may well excite 
 our wonder) a very simple, a very striking, a 
 very comprehensive, yet at the same time most 
 compendious history, of the world's creation, not 
 confining himself (be it observed) to vague 
 generalities, which it would be easy to fabricate, 
 and it might be difificult to refute, but commit- 
 ting himself to some very minute, extraordinary, 
 and what I may call unconjecturable, particulars 
 concerning it, specially with reference to the 
 formation of the first human pair ; telling his 
 tale withal with a positiveness and a precision, 
 which leave no manner of doubt in our minds, 
 that he himself at any rate was fully impressed 
 with the belief that what he wrote was true. 
 
 In striking contrast with him there has arisen 
 in modern times a new school of commentators, 
 
6 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 renowned for their ability, their industry, their 
 sagacity, their research, who, not content, as many 
 great intellects have been in times past, to take 
 their information second-hand from Moses, have 
 gone to the original text-book, the earth itself, 
 and examined it ; and, although they have not 
 been able to agree w^th one another in their 
 interpretation of all the marvellous phaenomena 
 which they have found there, are pretty nearly 
 all of them agreed in this — that Moses cannot 
 possibly be right. And, considering the excep- 
 tional advantages which they have had for making 
 experiments and registering observations — the 
 world mapped out before them, the earth bored 
 and tunnelled, the deep sea dredged, the heavens 
 opened more and more to view by means of the 
 most refined and perfected instruments — we might 
 be disposed to accept their conclusions, and to 
 excuse the author of Genesis as having given us 
 the best sketch which he could of an immense and 
 complicated subject agreeably to the crude con- 
 ceptions of a rude and unenlightened age, were it 
 not that there was a suspicion — some would say, 
 
PROLEGOMENA. 7 
 
 a certainty — and here I am introducing a most 
 important factor, which, although I have hitherto 
 purposely excluded it, must on no account be left 
 out of calculation — that Moses, as having been a 
 prophet and seer, titles which the modern scientist 
 would not think of allowing to be ascribed to 
 himself, obtained his information directly from 
 the great Author ; that by the illumination of the 
 Divine Spirit he was enabled to declare, what, 
 but for that guidance, he could not possibly have 
 known anything about ; and consequently that 
 his account, if rightly understood and applied, 
 cannot conflict with what the same Spirit has 
 inscribed on the innumerable pages of the volume 
 of the universe, albeit it may not square with 
 certain theories, which, though remarkable for 
 their ingenuity, and striking for their novelty, 
 and dressed out in a brave show of plausible 
 argument, have never yet been, and probably 
 never can be, conclusively demonstrated. 
 
 The very possibility of Moses' inspiration 
 makes us eye more jealously than ever every line 
 and word which he has left on record. It is 
 
8 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 all very fine for certain persons to exclaim, 'A 
 prophet is nothing ; ' but the monumental evi- 
 dence, which history affords, that such a body 
 of men have indeed existed, cannot be puffed 
 away with a breath ; nor can it be denied that 
 the title was conceded to Moses by the Jew, by 
 the Christian, and, I had almost said, by the 
 Pagan writers themselves, who were not ignorant 
 either of his name or his claim. What, then, will 
 be the effect, supposing that Moses was super- 
 naturally inspired to write his chapters on crea- 
 tion ? It will not alter one letter which has been 
 set down in the Scriptures of the earth ; but it 
 will compel us, before we jump to the conclusion 
 that we have sounded the depths of the Mosaic 
 revelation, to reflect whether we have made allow- 
 ance for certain peculiarities which distinguish the 
 writings of prophets. Let us pause for a moment 
 to notice one or two of those peculiarities. 
 
 In the first place, the prophet did not neces- 
 sarily know, certainly had not a full and perfect 
 knowledge of, the things and times about which 
 he spake; had he been challenged to give a clear 
 
TROLEGOMENA. 9 
 
 exposition of his own utterances, he positively 
 couUl not have done it ; he beheved them, how- 
 ever, and called upon others to do the same. 
 
 Secondly, the prophet often groups together 
 in the same verse, or in consecutive verses, events 
 which not only had no immediate chronological 
 sequence, but were not unfrequently separated 
 by a long interval of years; the remote future 
 is spoken of as if it were all but present; 
 nay, occasionally — so certain is it considered of 
 accomplishment — as if it had already past. 
 
 Thirdly, though the prophet reveals the future 
 in language which, when the event has taken 
 place, is found to be marvellously appropriate 
 and accurate, his meaning is as often as not 
 hidden from those whom he addresses, and he 
 himself perhaps is looked upon as no better than 
 a dreamer or an organ of a daemon. 
 
 It would be easy to cite instances of the pecu- 
 liarities mentioned, but I conceive that they are 
 too well known to be seriously disputed. It is 
 true that Moses in his chapters on creation looks 
 back to the past, whereas the prophets I refer 
 
 B 
 
lo THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 to look forward to the future ; but, in so far as 
 both were under special Divine direction, both 
 Stand on the same lofty pedestal, and the writings 
 of both must be measured by the same canon 
 of spiritual interpretation. 
 
 Let it not seem strange, then, if it should turn 
 out that Moses groups together in a single 
 chapter, or in a portion of a chapter, acts of 
 creative energy which were separated by a long 
 lapse of intervening years ; the prophet overleaps 
 these petty divisions of time, and comes at once 
 to what has been in the past, or to what will 
 be in the future. And again, let it not be 
 thought strange, if it should turn out that the 
 Catholic Church, that all denominations of Chris- 
 tians, have all along missed the true significance 
 of the Mosaic record. Just as the doctors of 
 the Jewish Church, though they had the oracles 
 of God committed to their charge, misconceived 
 and misapplied them, till Messiah appeared, and 
 showed their true meaning by Himself fulfilling 
 them, so may not professing members of the 
 Christian Church, though they have long had 
 
PROLEGOMENA. ii 
 
 the writings of Moses in possession, from super- 
 ficially reading them, or too literally expounding 
 them, have failed to grasp their true significance, 
 till the volume of Nature, which is the book of 
 God, was opened and examined, and men began to 
 inquire in what way the wonderful tale, which is 
 there unfolded, could be reconciled with the simple 
 and concise account of the Hebrew prophet r 
 
 But it will be said, 'Is this the case? Where 
 is the proof?' I dare not pretend that I shall 
 be able to demonstrate that there is an exact 
 correspondence in every particular between what 
 Moses has sketched and what geologists have 
 discovered ; but I hope to be able to show by 
 something more substantial than figures of 
 rhetoric or fictions of fancy, that Moses, so far 
 from being a mere mythologist, or a registrar 
 of the geological fallacies of his day, or (which 
 is the most that some will allow him to have 
 been) a careful compiler of Hebrew traditions, 
 was, if we may judge of him by his account of 
 creation, a recorder of truths which could only 
 have been revealed to him in his capacity as seer, 
 
 B 2 
 
12 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 and those truths he has recorded faithfully, in 
 human language indeed, and with a necessary 
 and prudent regard for the rude conceptions and 
 imperfect faculties of the people of Israel, but 
 uncorrupted by any admixture of human error. 
 Make but due allowance for the undoubted fact, 
 that what we have from Moses is a brief sum- 
 mary, addressed to the religious instincts of a 
 particular and peculiar people, while geologists 
 enter into the minutest details, and appeal to 
 the scientific faculties of every individual of the 
 human race, and we shall find that there is as 
 striking a general resemblance between the two 
 versions as can reasonably be looked for. A 
 record, the very first words of which carry us 
 back thus vaguely to ' In the beginning,' cannot 
 be expected to be quite exempt from difficulty ; 
 but the difficulty is not insurmountable, and, 
 when the whole subject is viewed aright, we 
 may rest assured that the handwriting of Moses 
 will not be found at variance with the handiwork 
 of God. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 MOSEs' LAW OF WRITING. 
 
 The book of Genesis having been written at a 
 comparatively early period in the history of the 
 world, and having been primarily intended for 
 the edification of the children of Israel, we should 
 not be surprised if we find in it — ratlier should 
 we be surprised if we did not find in it — a 
 primitiveness in some of its conceptions, and I 
 will not say a crudeness, but let me coin a word, 
 and say a humanness, in some of its expressions, 
 which testify alike to its antiquity, and to its 
 suitableness to the capacity of a rude and unen- 
 lightened people. No reasonable man can doubt 
 that God, had He so willed it, could have with- 
 drawn for Moses the veil which hides the 
 wonders of the natural world, and enabled him 
 
14 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS* OF MOSES. 
 
 to anticipate discoveries which have only come 
 to light after centuries of painstaking observation 
 and diligent study — that He could have endowed 
 him with powers of utterance, whereby he might 
 have expressed in no mundane fashion the 
 mysterious ways of God ; but such transcendental 
 spiritualism would have been fit only for a 
 congregation of angels, and such physicism 
 would have been far too advanced for the people 
 of Israel. Whatever truths were directly opposed 
 to what they were accustomed to see with their 
 eyes (and it must be remembered that Moses is 
 constantly appealing to what their eyes had seen), 
 and whatever expressions far outreached the 
 stretch of their minds, would have diverted them 
 rather than otherwise from those large and lofty 
 truths which it was Moses' special mission to 
 inculcate ; they would have been perplexed by a 
 double revelation, part bearing reference to the 
 spiritual world, part to the natural ; the one 
 essential for present knowledge, the other of no 
 immediate concern to them ; the result would 
 probably have been, that that revelation which 
 
MOSES' LAW OF WRITING. 15 
 
 was the least important would have had the 
 greatest importance attached to it. Accordingly, 
 Moses uses weapons which came ready to his 
 hand, and which, if rude and primitive, were 
 sufficient for the work which he had to do. 
 Was the tirmament supposed to be a sort of 
 roof to the earth, or a floor to the heaven ? 
 Moses neither yeas it nor nays it ; he takes it 
 as he fmds it; introduces it into his narration, 
 where it passes unchallenged, as a matter of 
 course. Were the stars supposed to be as small 
 in reality as they are in appearance, and the sun 
 and the moon to be the only great lights ? 
 Moses simply says, 'God made two great lights, 
 the greater light to rule the day, the lesser light 
 to rule the night ; He made the stars also.' 
 ' The sun was risen upon the earth ' ; ' The sun 
 was gomg down' — such a description of solar 
 phaenomena was optically true, was popularly 
 correct. On such subjects Moses was no wiser 
 than the men of his generation ; nor was special 
 information vouchsafed to him ; he uses, there- 
 fore, the language of his age, nor does any one 
 
i6 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 even in the present day, however scientific, 
 scruple to speak of the rising and the setting 
 of the sun. 'God rested'; * God planted a 
 garden ' ; ' God made coats of skin, and clothed 
 them ' ; ' It repented the Lord that he had made 
 man on the earth, and it grieved him at his 
 heart ' ; ' The Lord shut them in ' (the ark) ; 
 * The Lord smelled a sweet savour ' (of the 
 sacrifice) ; ' The Lord God hardened his spirit ' ; 
 *The Lord God is a jealous God'; 'The Lord 
 is a man of war' — here is another group of ex- 
 pressions intensely human and homely ; irreverent 
 some would call them, if they had not from long 
 use become familiarized with them, and if they 
 did not know that Moses was their author; yet 
 such expressions did not startle, much less shock, 
 the people of Israel. T/iey listened with childlike 
 simplicity and awful reverence, and accepted the 
 lessons which were so conveyed to them of the 
 providence, the policy, the power, the presence, 
 the perfect goodness of God. The doctrine was 
 excellent, the diction only is exceptionable ; yet 
 we must remember that even St. Paul was 
 
MOSES' LAW OF WRITING. 17 
 
 obliged to speak to some of the most enlightened 
 people of his much more enlightened age ' after 
 the manner of men, because of the infirmity of 
 their fiesh.' The object of revelation is not 
 through what men do not know, but through 
 what they do know, or what they think they 
 know, to tell them that which, but for the 
 revelation, they certainly could not know. This 
 is what Moses has done, and who will say that 
 he should have done otherwise ? 
 
 Nor was it only in his description of natural 
 phaenomena, or in his use of certain picked 
 phrases, that we trace what I may call this law 
 of adaptation. Throughout every part of the 
 book of Genesis, throughout all the books ot 
 the Pentateuch, the colour of the narrative is 
 more or less assimilated to the character and 
 circumstances of the congregation of Israel. 
 The drama of creation is cast in six acts, which 
 extend over six days, and end with a seventh 
 day of rest. Who cannot discern in this arrange- 
 ment a reference to the religious observances, 
 perhaps also to the secular occupadons, of the 
 
i8 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 Israelites ? The contemporaries of Moses would 
 see in God's rest-day an archetype of their own 
 earthly sabbaths, though they might not have 
 the remotest conception that it cast a shadow very 
 much farther — even to that heavenly o-aB^ar/o-^oV, 
 which ' remaineth for the people of God.' Yet 
 this was the use which the writer of the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews made of those words, showing 
 that the first chapter of Genesis looks as far 
 forward as it does backward — spans the vast 
 interval between the old heaven and the old 
 earth which were long ago created, and the new 
 heaven and the new earth which apostles and 
 prophets have declared are yet for to come. 
 The busy work-people in the Egyptian brick- 
 fields, who well knew what it was to have a 
 definite portion of work assigned to them, the 
 tale of bricks strictly enjoined and rigorously 
 enacted, and who went forth to their labour in 
 the morning and returned in the evening, could 
 never forget that the God of Israel had revealed 
 Himself as a workman, whose day was bounded 
 by ' the evening and the morning,' and who on 
 
MOSES' LAW OF WRITING. 19 
 
 each day had had a set portion of work to finish. 
 All this, so far from presenting any difficulty 
 to the commonalty of Israel, would be a natural 
 picture, alike intelligible and impressive. Of the 
 strata of the earth, of the myriads of creatures 
 whose remains had for myriads of years been 
 imbedded therein, they never dreamt ; nor pro- 
 bably did Moses ; what, however, they did under- 
 stand, and what he with all his might strove 
 to make them remember, was, that ' In the 
 beginning God created the heaven and the 
 earth.' 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE FIRST CHAPTER OF GENESIS. 
 
 After reading over and over again the first 
 chapter of Genesis, and being charmed with the 
 simplicity and the freshness of the narrative, and 
 the masterly manner in which a mass of most 
 interesting information is packed together in a 
 small compass — for is not the erection of the 
 tabernacle and its hangings told with greater 
 detail of circumstance than the creation of the 
 heaven and the earth ? — bearing in mind that it 
 is a very old document which we have before us, 
 which professes to give an authoritative exposi- 
 tion of the origin of the world which we inhabit, 
 we approach the subject with some diffidence, 
 but with a fixed determination to throw our 
 whole energies into its examination ; and we are 
 
THE FIRST CHAPTER OF GENESIS. 21 
 
 Struck at once quite as much by what the writer 
 has not said as by what he has said. If we take 
 up any other book which professes to treat of 
 the primordial condition of the earth, we are sure 
 to find in it copious references to the composition 
 and internal structure of the earth — to the strata 
 upon strata in regular succession, each distin- 
 guished for the peculiarity of its character. Not 
 one word of this do we find in Moses. He 
 confines himself, at least as it would seem, to 
 an account of the creation of what I may call 
 superficial phaenomena — that splendid garniture 
 which delights the eye and raptures the soul — 
 the light, the waters, the earth, in the first three 
 days ; and again in the second three days {in the 
 mme order, be it observed), the light, the waters, 
 the earth ; but, in the second triad, light not 
 primally diffused, but concentrated and ordained 
 for a purpose ; waters not merely distributed and 
 confined, but teeming with animal life ; earth 
 not covered merely with seeding herb and fruit- 
 ing tree, but covered also with a vast variety of 
 creatures having breath, of which man, the last 
 
22 
 
 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 created, is appointed lord of all. Now it can 
 hardly be supposed that a man like Moses — 
 captain, statesman, antiquarian, historian — was 
 utterly incurious of what lies beneath the surface ; 
 here and there, where least we might expect it, 
 he glances incidentally at some of earth's hidden 
 treasures. Here, he says, is the onyx stone ; 
 there is bdellium ; there the gold is good ; out 
 of such and such a place may be dug copper. 
 The Hebrew prophet, if he could not have been 
 a scientist, could have made some very shrewd 
 observations on those portions of our planet of 
 which he is so significantly silent. The declina- 
 tion was no doubt deliberate. To what pur- 
 pose to have composed a lecture on rocks and 
 stones for a host of newly-enfranchised serfs ? 
 The brickfields, or, if you like, the provision- 
 fields of Egypt engrossed their thoughts. The 
 aim and effort of the Hebrew leader was to call 
 them away from that little strip of world, where 
 Pharaoh ruled, and to lead them up through the 
 great panorama of the heaven and the earth to 
 the contemplation and adoration of that one 
 
THE FIRST CHAPTER OF GENESIS. 23 
 
 almighty invisible Being, who had made all, who 
 was Master of all, and who was in an especial 
 sense their Dehverer. It was for this that, fore- 
 going all mention, without in the least denying 
 the possibility, of secondary causes and inter- 
 mediate agencies, he repeats the name of God 
 no less than thirty times in thirty-one verses, 
 that is to say, in almost every verse. Elohim — 
 God the Creator — this is the pivot on which 
 the chapter turns ; this is his Alpha and Omega, 
 his beginning and his end. In no other work 
 that I am aware of, either ancient or modern, is 
 this great necessary cardinal doctrine so plainly, 
 so pointedly, so persistently stated ; and, if Moses 
 had contributed nothing more to the literature 
 of the subject than this, his work would deserve 
 its imperishable renown. It is a perpetual protect 
 against all low and unworthy notions of the 
 world's origin. Whether under this seeming 
 superficiality (if I may so term it) of the Mosaic 
 narrative something deeper lies, we may yet have 
 to consider. For the present it will be sufficient 
 to say, that time and circumstance, aim and 
 
n THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 object, have to be taken into account, while read- 
 ing the first chapter of Genesis. And in this 
 respect it is interesting to compare it with the 
 Jehovistic reference to the works of creation in 
 the book of Job. There the occasion and the 
 object were altogether different, and the method 
 of treatment is also different ; the language is 
 stately and grandiloquent, the tone lofty, the 
 matter more diversified, the descriptions more 
 diffuse ; yet, notwithstanding this, we feel, after 
 we have finished the questions of that catechism, 
 that the most which we have learnt from it is, 
 how little we know of it. 
 
 Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the 
 earth ? declare, if thou hast understanding. 
 
 Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest ? or 
 who hath stretched the line upon it ? 
 
 Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who 
 laid the corner stone thereof; 
 
 When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons 
 of God shouted for joy ? 
 
 Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, 
 as if it had issued out of the womb ? 
 
 When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick 
 darkness a swaddling-band for it, 
 
THE FIRST CHAPTER OF GENESIS. 25 
 
 And brake up for it my decreed place, and set bars and 
 doors, 
 
 And said, Hitherto sbalt thou come, but no farther : and 
 here shall thy proud waves be stayed ? 
 
 Without hazarding an opinion whether the 
 founding of the earth and the disemwombment 
 and cradling of the waters here described were 
 or were not antecedent in time to wliat Moses 
 tells us in the opening verses of his first chapter, 
 it will be safe to remark that no one can possibly 
 read of the ' waters having a cioud for a garment, 
 and thick darkness for a swaddling-band,' but 
 must be forcibly reminded of the equally expres- 
 sive but more simple description of Moses, 
 ' Darkness was upon the face of the deep.' Had 
 the writer of Job taken counsel with the author 
 of Genesis? — or whence got he this vision of 
 the Hebrew prophet ? 
 
 Let us turn our eyes once more to the great 
 panorama which is miniatured for us in the first 
 chapter of Genesis. Is there any one of the 
 six days' works which, from the largeness of 
 space allotted to it^ or the greater fulness with 
 
26 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 which it is described, seems to have been marked 
 out by Moses above the rest as the clief-cr ceuvre 
 of God's creation ? We observe that the account 
 of the sixth day's work occupies very nearly one- 
 fourth of the chapter ; we need not hesitate, then, 
 to say that man, though mentioned last, ranks 
 first, the crown and finish of all God's works. 
 Next after the name of God, he it is whose figure 
 holds an unquestionable pre-eminence in the 
 chapter. And this perhaps is another reason 
 why Moses presses lightly and superficially over 
 the earth to which the minds of so many now 
 gravitate, saying just so much about it as was 
 sufficient to show, how wisely it was ordered, how 
 beautifully furnished, how bountifully supplied 
 with food, with water, v/ith metal, and with stone, 
 whether for ornament or use, for the coming 
 man. It is not so much geology, then, it is 
 anthropology w^iich is Moses theme. We must 
 not expect, then, to find anything more than the 
 most cursory and general reference to the former 
 science ; but, whatever he tells us of the latter, 
 we should do well to lay to heart and ponder. 
 
THE FIRST CHAPTER OF GENESIS. 27 
 
 and all the more so, if we have reason to suspect 
 
 that what he uttered was not of his own coining, 
 
 nor yet borrowed from other people's exchequers, 
 
 on cither of which assumptions it would be 
 
 pretty sure to contain some alloy ; but sterling 
 
 metal drawn from the treasure-house of the high 
 
 King. 
 
 There is another important item in the first 
 
 chapter which must not be overlooked. Seven 
 
 times in the chapter — so that we cannot but be 
 
 struck by it — seven times in a short summary 
 
 of but six days' work we come across the words, 
 
 ' God saw that it was good.' Such repetitions 
 
 are not unfrequent in the writings of Moses ; 
 
 they are wont to be introduced where his object 
 
 is to emphasize a certain lesson or incident. In 
 
 this instance he would impress the doctrine that 
 
 this creation of God (explain it how we may) 
 
 was not merely generally and upon the whole 
 
 good, but good in every stage and in every 
 
 particular — in its climate, in its produce, in its 
 
 anim.als of the sea and animals of the land, but 
 
 above all in man. This was the sort of world 
 
 c 2 
 
28 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 which God 'saw.' What a contrast to the 
 world which God looked down upon just before 
 the Flood ! What a contrast to that world which 
 Israel saw and knew, with its high-stalking 
 tyranny and its low-crouching idolatry, its super- 
 fluity of naughtiness, its universality of evil, and 
 the leaven of evil working among themselves ! 
 Yet this evil Moses distinctly assures us was not 
 ' in the beginning ' ; was not of God's creating ; 
 w^as a plague, then, which had crept in afterwards ; 
 so that, no matter what any may say to the 
 contrary, neither had evil deities any part in the 
 creation of the world, nor is evil a necessity, 
 nor is it eternal, nor is it man's creation-right, 
 although it is now his birthright — I had almost 
 said his birthwrong — nor is it his proper, nor 
 is it his permanent, condition. That one short 
 unmistakable comprehensive declaration con- 
 cludes it all, 'God saw everything that he had 
 made, and behold, it was very good.' If in the 
 book of Job we see the terribleness, in the book of 
 Genesis we behold the goodness, of God. Thus 
 did He show Himself; thus He is; thus He 
 
THE FIRST CHAPTER OF GENESIS. 29 
 
 would be known. In this seven-tinies-repeated 
 assurance we fancy we see a shadow — is it not 
 something more than a shadow ? — of an eventual 
 restoration of all things to original goodness. 
 But, whatever we see, or fancy we see, in this 
 grand old mirror which has come down to us 
 from the time of Moses, two principal figures 
 are clearly and distinctly reflected in it — God, 
 the Creator of all things, and man, the chief of 
 all things created. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE SECOND CHAPTER OF GENESIS. 
 
 Having cursorily surveyed the most com- 
 manding features of the first chapter of Genesis, 
 we will next proceed to notice the characteristic 
 marks of the second. Some critics, perceiving, 
 as they fancy, an irreconcilable contradiction 
 between the two chapters in their geological 
 conditions, and observing also a slight difference 
 between them on a point of theological nomen- 
 clature, have come to the conclusion that they 
 were not the original production of one and the 
 same author, but were made up of waifs . and 
 strays of patriarchal traditions, which, having 
 floated down the stream of time, were rescued 
 from oblivion by Moses or some Jew of later 
 date, and tied together in the same bundle, 
 
THE SECOND CHAPTER OF GENESIS. 31 
 
 whence they have come down to us in the 
 compact and handy form in which we now 
 possess them. Without being drawn into a 
 controversy, from which I might find it cUfficuit 
 to effect a retreat, I will merely remark that an 
 acute and learned writer has observed that there 
 is not a single old-world word or phrase in the 
 opening chapters of Genesis, nor a single word 
 used in a different sense from that which it 
 afterwards bore, whence he infers that the two 
 chapters were not made up of distinct documents 
 which had come down from Enoch or Seth or 
 Adam. This judgment, pronounced after a 
 careful examination of the language, will not, 
 I think, be reversed, if we consider and compare 
 the matter. The two chapters are not like two 
 blocks of granite which have been placed along- 
 side of each other without fashion and without 
 fitment ; they are rather as pieces of a superb 
 mosaic cunningly wrought and nicely dovetailed, 
 so that the one seems almost a necessary com- 
 plement of the other. There is brain and 
 method in the arrangement. The workman, I 
 
venture to affirm, was no other than Moses. 
 What are the chief differences between the two 
 chapters, putting aside for the moment those 
 to which I have referred above, and about which 
 I shall have something to say by and by? I 
 need hardly repeat what, 1 suppose, has been 
 over and over again observed, that the first 
 chapter contains an account of the large world 
 and all its inhabitants, whereas the second tells 
 only of a small portion of that world and a few 
 only of all its inhabitants ; but I will notice 
 a circumstance, which may not equally have 
 arrested, although perhaps it deserves, the 
 attention of the reader ; that, whereas in the 
 first chapter Moses refers every work to the 
 immediate interposition of the great First Cause, 
 who commands and it is created, in the second 
 chapter he condescends to mention one or two 
 of those secondary causes, by which the Creator 
 is pleased to regulate and maintain the universe. 
 Through a want of rain, we are told, the earth 
 was unproductive and barren ; ' there went up 
 a mist from the earth, and watered the whole 
 
THE SECOND CHAPTER OF GENESIS. 33 
 
 flice of the ground.' Here we have a gHmpse 
 of some of those intermediate forces for which 
 we look in vain in the first chapter. We see 
 as it were some of the wheels of the vast machine 
 in motion ; as for the most part they required 
 then, as now, time to work out their effects, the 
 mention of them gives some countenance to the 
 theory that a much longer period than six days 
 must be allowed for the creation of the visible 
 universe. From this scene of sterility and 
 soHtude we are transported to the oasis of the 
 garden of Eden. If we cannot fix its exact 
 position ; if we know not the land of the onyx, 
 the bdellium, and the gold which is good ; if we 
 cannot identify the tree of knowledge and the 
 tree of life, either because they are no longer 
 existent, or no longer accessible, or no longer 
 efficacious, we have an unerring clue to the 
 garden's whereabouts in the mention of the river 
 Euphrates, whose mighty waters attest that, 
 whatever may be the right view to take of the 
 world as it is delineated in the first chapter, in 
 the second chapter we have no ideal type, no 
 
34 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 airy fabric presented to us, no picture or pattern 
 merely of a conceived creation, but a geographical 
 reality, a veritable bit of terra Jirvia, an Asiatic 
 paradise replete with beauty and with life. 
 
 When I read in the first chapter that ' God 
 said Let us make man,' I understand the word 
 ' man 'to be a general designation, comprehend- 
 ing the whole of human kind, w^ho immediately 
 afterwards are subdivided into ' male and female ' ; 
 but in the second chapter ' man ' is undoubtedly 
 used for a particular individual, the first speci- 
 men of the race, and the 'female' is styled the 
 'woman' — they are Ish and Isha, each being 
 called by a distinctive appellation. If this is not 
 a mere airy fancy, the shade of difference may 
 be of use to us by and by in our endeavour 
 to determine the relative value of the two chap- 
 ters. I observe, too, that the beasts now have 
 names given to them. In the account of the 
 woman's formation a certain evolutionary process 
 is described with some minuteness, which fact 
 may afford some justification for the belief that, 
 if there had been anything similar in man's 
 
THE SECOND CHAPTER OF GENESIS. 35 
 
 descent, in the second chapter, if anywhere, we 
 should have discovered traces of it; but there 
 is not a vestige of any such doctrine, unless it 
 be enwTapped in the statement that 'the Lord 
 God formed man of the dust of the ground^ and 
 ' out of the ground the Lord God formed every 
 beast of the field, and every fowl of the air.' 
 Herein, according to Moses, consisted the com- 
 mon relationship subsisting between man and 
 the low^er animals. 
 
 Perhaps, however, the most striking portion of 
 the second chapter is that in which we have some 
 additional information concerning the constitu- 
 tion, nature, position, prospects of the newly- 
 formed man. 
 
 It is true that his likeness to his Maker, and 
 his dominion over the creature, are related clearly 
 and with sufficient circumstance in the first chap- 
 ter ; but in the first chapter more is said of his 
 lower animal nature than of his higher. He stands 
 in his rank as one of many creatures; equally 
 with them he has the green herb apportioned to 
 him for his food; equally with them he is to 
 
36 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 propagate his kind ; it is the carnal and corporeal 
 man who is chiejiij here portrayed to us; but in 
 the second chapter it is not so. There we see a 
 psychic being, for the sustentation of whose higher 
 life a special food has been provided. He has 
 high relations and high responsibilities; his living 
 figure stands before us ; he is actually engaged 
 in administering the affairs of his little kingdom ; 
 capable of language, endowed with the faculty 
 of invention, he is viewing, classifying, naming 
 the creatures successively presented to him ; 
 placed in a world to which evil has access 
 (whence it originated, or how^ it came, no one 
 can explain), he has a charge to keep, and a 
 character to maintain — ' Of every tree of the 
 garden thou mayest freely eat : but of the tree 
 of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not 
 eat of it : for in the day that thou eatest thereof 
 thou shalt surely die' — w^ords these not of harsh 
 menace, but of kindly warning, hinting at man's 
 mysterious relations to other worlds than his 
 ow^n — to other creatures, who w^ere not merely 
 interested spectators of his actions, but might 
 
THE SECOND CHAPTER OF GENESIS. 37 
 
 possibly be swayed and strengthened by his 
 example, of which things we have sundry adum- 
 brations in Holy Scripture ; but I will not dwell 
 on them now, lest I should be thought to be 
 more solicitous to air a theory than to illustrate 
 the truth. Such, then, is Moses' man, not worse 
 then than he is now, but better then than he 
 is now — closer and nearer to God ; not just 
 removed a step or two from one or other of 
 the beasts, but many degrees, and in a marked 
 manner, in advance of them all. Even in his 
 sexual relations he 13 not as one of them ; the 
 female is a 'help' meet for him — she is not one 
 of many, but one to the exclusion of many ; the 
 union is perfect, is indissoluble. It was only 
 after the Fall that the Cainites lapsed into bigamy, 
 and before the Flood into plurality, perhaps, and 
 promiscuousness. Who now will say that, if we 
 had not had the second chapter, we should have 
 had anything like a correct and adequate idea 
 of the Divine part (so to speak) of the archical 
 man? Wanting this chapter, which some would 
 make out to be a clumsy piece of joinery, we 
 
38 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 should miss a fine natural branch of a grand 
 old tree. 
 
 Having, then, these facts clearly laid down for 
 us by Moses, substantiated and supported by the 
 chosen champions of the New Testament, who 
 were no mere doctrinaires^ but highly-gifted and 
 enlightened men, who spoke, and wrote, and 
 worked, and toiled, and suffered, and endured, and 
 changed the face of the world, when the world 
 was by no means easy to change, we need not 
 trouble ourselves overmuch about certain fanciful 
 conceits, bearing the name of a distinguished 
 naturalist, who, whatever other claims he may 
 have on our respectful attention, we must do 
 him the justice to say, never claimed to have, 
 as Moses claims to have had, a special Divine 
 revelation. When we consider that his account 
 of the descent of man has obtained the assent, 
 the approval, and even the applause of no incon- 
 siderable |)ortion ^ of the learned world, we might 
 
 ^ A portion, however, which seems now rapidly diminish- 
 ing according to the Edinburgh Re^neiv, April 1888, on 
 'Life and Letters of Charles Darwin.' 
 
THE SECOND CHAPTER OF GENESIS. 39 
 
 naturally suppose that, however improbable it 
 may seem to us, it is founded on the firm basis 
 of fact. What, then, must be our surprise to 
 find that the only thing, which can be said to 
 be quite certain about it, is, that it has never yet 
 been, and, what is more, that it is of such a 
 nature that it is never likely to admit of being, 
 certainly and conclusively proved. 
 
 The facts of science may be allowed to correct 
 our mistaken notions derived from a fldlacious 
 interpretation of Holy Scripture; but iht fancies 
 of science must not be permitted to shake, much 
 less to overthrow, the well-attested facts of Divine 
 revelation. 
 
 I may remark in conclusion that in the second 
 chapter we are told of the giving of the first law. 
 To adopt the style of Leviticus, ' This is the law 
 of food' — a law simple in its provisions, but far- 
 reaching in its consequences ; conceived in a 
 large and liberal spirit, and restrictive only for 
 the happiness of mankind. So early was a dis- 
 tinction drawn between what might be eaten and 
 what might not be eaten, on the observance or 
 
40 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 non-observance of which hung the tremendous 
 issues of cleanness and uncleanness, health and 
 sickness, life and death. Strange as all this may 
 sound to modern ears, the Israelite of Moses' 
 day would have no difficulty whatever in appre- 
 hending the force and fitness of that first short 
 easy commandment, and, while scrupulously 
 attending to a multitude of minute distinctions 
 which were laid down for his observance in the 
 book of Leviticus, he might recall that verse of 
 Genesis with a sigh, and reflect on it with envy. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 SOME DIFFICULTIES STATED. 
 
 Nothing can be more simple and easy than 
 Moses' account of the creation, if we only cur- 
 sorily peruse it ; nothing can be more complicated 
 and difficult, when we come to leisurely examine 
 it. Neither the theologian with his traditions, 
 nor the geologist with his discoveries, is alto- 
 gether to be depended upon by us ; the former 
 is apt to be too one-sided and prejudiced, the 
 latter to be too speculative and prone to jump 
 too hastily to a conclusion. We want some one 
 to guide us who can reverence the wTitten word 
 wdthout being a slave of the letter, yet can accept 
 demonstrated facts without indulging in flights 
 of fancy or in gratuitous assumptions. One of 
 the first steps which we must take, if we would 
 hope to make satisfactory progress, is to ascertain 
 
42 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 from Moses' own writing what it is that he 
 really says. We have already glanced at some 
 of the chief features of the two chapters in 
 which he has given us an account of the 
 creation of the heaven and the earth ; we must 
 now turn our eyes more particularly to those 
 portions of them which refer to the time in 
 which, according to him, the work was finished 
 — a question which, though it has not the vast 
 preponderance which some have assigned to it. 
 is not devoid of moment, and, having been put 
 into the scales, must be fairly balanced. 
 
 It is commonly supposed that Moses circum- 
 scribes the duration of the world's creation within 
 the narrow compass of six natural days; but a 
 more careful scrutiny will allow, or, I should 
 rather say, oblige us to conclude, that he must 
 have had in his mind at the time of writing a 
 very much more extended period. For proof of 
 this, I might rely on the first two verses of the 
 first chapter — 'In the beginning God created 
 the heaven and the earth. And the earth was 
 without form and void ; and darkness was upon 
 
SOME DIFFICULTIES STATED. 43 
 
 the face of the deep ' — which seem to imply 
 that the heaven and the earth existed before the 
 first Mosaic day, in which case Moses w^oi^ld 
 commence his chapter by giving us a picture 
 as it were in miniature of the sort of world which 
 had previously existed, a caliginous, chaotic, 
 Neptunian w^orld, of the creation of which we have 
 no details, nor any date, save that it was ' in the 
 beginning' ; but, as those verses may be merely a 
 preface or heading of what is afterwards described 
 more fully in the chapter, I will base my asser- 
 tion on a less ambiguous and debatable passage to 
 be found in the beginning of the second chapter, 
 to which I now solicit the reader's attention — 
 
 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth 
 when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made 
 the earth and the heavens, 
 
 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, 
 and every herb of the field before it grew : for the Lord 
 God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there 
 was not a man to till the ground. 
 
 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the 
 whole face of the ground. 
 
 Here a person may quarrel with the translation 
 as coming from the Septuagint ; he may prefer 
 
44 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 a version fetched directly from the original ; 
 but the gist of the passage will remain the same, 
 nor can r.ny other construction be put upon 
 it, than that the earth, after it had been created, 
 lay for some time fallow, without busli, tree, or 
 herb. Tl:e period referred to must have been 
 either before the six days or after they had 
 begun ; and, if after, somewhere about the middle 
 of the third day, after the earth had been separ- 
 ated from the waters, and before it w^as invested 
 with herbaceous and arboreous life. I shall not 
 attempt in the present chapter to resolve this 
 exceedingly knotty question ; I merely wish to 
 claim for it the attention which it deserves, and 
 to protest against the unfairness of considering 
 the first chapter without reference to the second, 
 or of slurring over, or not giving due weight to, 
 the second chapter, because it involves us in 
 intricacies from which we find it difficult to dis- 
 engage ourselves. The verses I have quoted 
 are plain, positive, and precise ; they must be 
 explained somehow. To those who would ac- 
 count for the seeming inconsistency by supposing 
 
SOME DIFFICULTIES STATED. 4$ 
 
 that the two chapters contain two separate tradi- 
 tions I answer that I cannot believe that Moses, 
 or whoever it was who put into its final shape 
 his undoubted writings, would have made such 
 a bungle as to have admitted into two chapters, 
 directly following each other, two confused and 
 contradictory accounts of an event so momentous 
 as God's creation of the universe ; neither else- 
 where in the book of Genesis, nor generally ii: 
 the Pentateuch, is there any lack either of historical 
 arrangement or of historical accuracy. It is 
 much more probable that Moses composed both 
 chapters, that he meant what he says, and that 
 what he says is capable of being explained, if 
 only we have the wit to explain it. This, then, 
 is the problem which we have to solve — either 
 creation was a work of six days and a longer 
 period, or the six days are Moses' cipher of 
 notation for that longer period. And this, I 
 would remind the reader with all the point and 
 impressiveness of which my pen is capable, is 
 not a difficulty which is forced upon us by 
 geological discovery ; the difficulty is a Mosaic 
 
46 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 — a Biblical one ; at the same time it is obvious 
 that, if by any fair process of reasoning we can 
 manage to make Moses agree with himself, the 
 same process will be available, will be sufhcient, 
 to enable us to effect a decent compromise 
 between the revelation of Moses and the record 
 of the earth. 
 
 But, before we touch the thorny question of 
 Moses' days, it will be advisable to set ourselves 
 right with regard to certain words and phrases 
 which meet us on the threshold, and which 
 are not unlikely to cause us perplexity, being- 
 capable of two interpretations, either of which is 
 admissible in itself, but only one of which can 
 have place in whatever may be the right view 
 to take of the Mosaic hexemerate. As sooner 
 or later we shall have to deal with these doubtful 
 pieces, we had better throw them into the 
 crucible at once, that we may know what value 
 we may put upon them. 
 
 When we are told that ' In the beginning God 
 created the heaven and the earth,' what is meant 
 by the Hebrew ' Beresluth,' which is translated, 
 
SOME DIFFICULTIES STATED. 47 
 
 * In the beginning'? On the one hantl, it may 
 refer to some undefinable time in the boundless 
 past, far exceeding the power of man to cipher or 
 conceive. So St. John seems to use the phrase 
 when he says, ' In the beginning was the Word, 
 and the Word was with God, and the Word was 
 God. The same was in the beginning with God.' 
 On the other hand, Jesus Christ uses it in a very 
 different sense, when, in reply to certain doctors 
 who would have made believe that Moses by 
 legalizing had sanctioned the practice of divorce. 
 He said, ' In the beginning it was not so.' And 
 He quoted the last verse but one of the second 
 chapter of Genesis. The beginning — oLpx^i — 
 reshit/i — stands here for the dawn of man's 
 creation. Here, then, we have an expression 
 which may refer to either one of two distinct 
 and widely different periods. To which period 
 shall we refer it ? Whether to this or that, it 
 will make a world of difference in the view 
 which we take of the first chapter of Genesis. 
 Equally ambiguous is the signification of the 
 word ' bara,' which has been translated ' created.' 
 
48 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 The sense commonly attached to it is that of 
 bringing into being that which did not before 
 exist ; but it is also used for fashioning anew 
 that which had already been. When the prophet 
 said, 'The Lord that created thee, O Jacob,' he 
 was not speaking of Israel's formation from the 
 womb, but of the calling and election by which 
 that people had been separated and distinguished 
 from all the nations of the earth. In which sense 
 is the word used in Genesis ? The interpretation 
 of the whole chapter will turn upon the choice. 
 
 Take now the phrase, 'The heav^en {shamaim) 
 and the earth.' What heaven is this, and what 
 earth ? The heaven and the earth in its largest 
 and most comprehensive sense ? — heights to which 
 astronomy cannot soar? — depths into which geo- 
 logy cannot dive ? — or merely the universe which 
 we see above and around us, that heaven w4iich 
 Moses defines to be the firmament, and that 
 earth which he tells us the dry land was called ? 
 Choose which you will (and you may choose 
 either), according to your choice you must frame 
 your hypothesis. 
 
SOME DIFFICULTIES STATED. 49 
 
 In what sense are we to understand the earth 
 being 'without form and void'? Tohu va 
 Bo/iu, as the Hebrew has it; ao^arog xa) 
 oLxoiTOLO-xiuaa-Tog, as the Septuagint ; apyov xai 
 a^iaxf^iTov, Symmachus; xsvov xcci ouSiv, Theodo- 
 tion. Is it merely a poetical way of saying that 
 the earth had neither form nor substance — was 
 a blank — a void — in a w^ord, was not ? Or does it 
 describe a certain rude condition of an earth, 
 which had already been created, and was after- 
 wards subjected to a process of rehabilitation ? 
 
 Over and over again in the chapter the words 
 recur, 'And God said.' To whom were the 
 w^ords said ? To angels, desirous of looking into 
 the mysteries of creation, as St. Peter intimates 
 that they desired to look into the mysteries of 
 redemption r Or is this merely Moses' way of 
 conveying to the dull ears of the natural man 
 the inscrutable counsel and unexpressed purpose 
 of God r In the account of the Deluge, and 
 elsewhere, the same wT)rds are used with a notable 
 addition, ' God said in his heart.' The heart 
 may be intended, though not always expressed. 
 
50 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 This, too, is a jK)int well worthy of being 
 weighed, and perhaps we shall have occasion to 
 revert to it in the course of our inquiry. 
 
 In mentioning these diversities of interpreta- 
 tion, I have no wish to magnify the difficulties 
 which lie before us, much less to throw dust in 
 the eyes of any. But it is well to know some- 
 thing of the route by which we are to travel. 
 Where the roads branch a choice must be made. 
 Those who believe that Moses' day is a natural 
 day will take one path, those who insist that it 
 stands for an indefinite period of time will take 
 another. I myself, who have my own peculiar 
 notions of the line which had best be followed, 
 reserve to myself the liberty of choosing which- 
 ever turning seems likely to lead in the direction 
 in which my hypothesis woidd take me. Thus 
 much, then, I shall have gained by the present 
 chapter, that I shall have prevented the possi- 
 bility of future misunderstandings between myself 
 and the reader, and saved myself the necessity 
 of having to make, by and by, for the sake of 
 explanation, a tedious and untimely digression. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE LITERAL DAY THEORY. 
 
 Although we are quite sure that the article 
 of the Creed which teaches us to believe in 
 'God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven 
 and earth,' does not in the least depend for its 
 truth upon the authenticity or the unauthenticity, 
 the correctness or the incorrectness, of the 
 Mosaic account of the creation, nor yet upon 
 the days, or the years, or the cycles of years, 
 which this person or that person may imagine 
 must have been necessary for the formation and 
 completion of the visible universe, yet, considering 
 the high estimation in which Moses has long 
 been held by all thoughtful men as a generally 
 truthful and careful historian, we will address 
 ourselves more particularly in the present chaj)ter 
 
52 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 to the question of the time, in which, according 
 to him. the work was finished. Does he, then, 
 really mean us to understand that about six 
 thousand years ago — for somewhere about that 
 time ago, according to the received chronology, 
 man first appeared upon the earth — the heaven 
 and the earth were created in six of our calendar 
 days? Certainly that would be our first im- 
 pression after reading his narrative ; and it is the 
 simplest and most natural interpretation to put 
 upon it ; moreover, it strikingly coincides with — 
 some would say it is conclusively proved by — 
 the same positive assurance being repeated in the 
 very same terms in the twentieth chapter of 
 Exodus ; nor can vve doubt that such would be 
 the sense in which the Israelites would under- 
 stand his words. ' Day ' to them would have but 
 one meaning. The modern geologist, however, 
 with the great volume of the earth wide open 
 before him, smiles at the petty reckoning, and 
 without a moment's hesitation exclaims, 'Im- 
 possible.' Even the theologian, who may have 
 little more than a scanty, superficial, second-hand 
 
THE LITERAL DAY THEORY. 53 
 
 acquaintance with geological science, is perplexed 
 when he reads in the second chapter of Genesis 
 matter which seems to conflict with what he 
 finds in the first. There are some good and 
 estimable men who would stop all doubt and 
 silence all disputation by reminding us that ' with 
 God all things are possible.' I do not for a 
 moment doubt the omnipotence of God, but I 
 submit with all due deference that the question 
 is not one of God's omnipotence, but of the right 
 interpretation of Moses' narrative, and we are 
 not justified in putting forward the argument 
 of God's omnipotence in order to mask com- 
 mentatorial ignorance, or to foster commentatorial 
 indolence* The probability — perhaps I should 
 say, the certaint}^— is, that all which Moses has 
 recorded will be found to be absolutely true, 
 when we have hit upon the right ci])her to 
 enable us to read and understand it. 
 
 After carefully weighing the whole matter, I 
 have come to the conclusion that, if we are to 
 hope to establish the literal, natural, and com- 
 monly received interpretation of the Mosaic days, 
 
54 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 we must lay as our foundation the two following 
 propositions — first, that Moses does not give us 
 a summary of the whole history of the visible 
 universe from the time when it was first called 
 into some sort of being, to the time when it was 
 formed, furnished, and finished, pretty much as 
 we see it now, but only of that small but not 
 unimportant portion of its history which imme- 
 diately preceded the human era ; and, secondly, 
 that all which Moses tells us, whether with 
 reference to the state of the world immediately 
 before the six days' work, or with reference to 
 what God said and did in the course of that 
 work, is capable of being so explained, as to 
 agree with what is written in the Scriptures of 
 the earth, the characters of which are all the 
 more trustworthy, because time has not been 
 able to obliterate them, nor the hand of man to 
 tamper with them. 
 
 Have we, then, any indications in the first 
 chapter that what Moses relates therein was a 
 creative change in an already created world rather 
 than the earliest stage in that world's creation ? I 
 
THE LITERAL DAY THEORY. 55 
 
 cannot conceive how any one can read the second 
 verse of the first chapter, ' The earth was with- 
 out form and void ; and darkness was upon the 
 face of the deep,' without acknowledging that a 
 tacit comparison is drawn between two distinct 
 and widely different stages in the world's history ; 
 the one antecedent to the six days' work, the 
 other subsequent to it. Before the six days' work, 
 then, there must have been some sort of an earth 
 existing, and, whatsoever sort of earth it was, 
 it must have been created — for I do not believe 
 the doctrine of the eternity of matter — created, 
 therefore, by God — for any other account of the 
 origin of such a world as ours is, is not to be 
 entertained — but, when created, and out of what, 
 God only knows. Nor is this the only vestige 
 to be found in the chapter of what we are look- 
 ing for. It can hardly be supposed that Moses 
 meant to intimate that no such essence as Light 
 had ever been anywhere existent until just a few 
 days previous to man's appearing upon the earth ; 
 it would be difficult to say when Light nas not, 
 seeing that God is Light, and dwelleth in light 
 
56 THE *WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 unapproachable. Moses treats of light in the 
 first chapter of Genesis subjectively — in its rela- 
 tion merely to a world which was then about to 
 be newly flishioned ; with Light in its objective 
 aspect he has in the first chapter no concern. 
 Light, then, was not, strictly speaking, then for 
 the first time created, when ' God said, Let there 
 be Light.' Were the waters ? If we look at the 
 account of the second day's work, and the third 
 day's w^ork, and the fifth day's work, we shall 
 find that the waters were divided, were confined, 
 were populated ; they were not created ; they 
 already existed ; for ' darkness was upon the face 
 of the deep,' and ' upon the face of the waters 
 the Spirit of God moved.' The waters, then, had 
 formed part of some older world. What Moses 
 relates concerning them is, that they were adapted 
 to the new era and the new order of things. I 
 must not attempt to build up a theory of a 
 previous creation on such a shallow foundation 
 as a little bit of verbal criticism ; but I may 
 remark, by the way, that in the sentence, *The 
 earth was without form and void,' the verb used 
 
THE LITERAL DAY THEORY. 57 
 
 — SO Hebraists tell us — is not the copula, but 
 implies existence ; I mention this lest any should 
 say that I had overlooked it. I will now advance 
 a step further, and invite the reader's attention 
 to the following remarkable passage from the 
 book of the prophet Jeremiah (chap, iv.) — 
 
 I belield the earth, and, lo, it was without form and void ; 
 and the heavens, and they had no light. 
 
 I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all 
 the hills moved lightly. 
 
 I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of 
 the heavens were fled. 
 
 I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and 
 all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of 
 God, and by his fierce anger. 
 
 For thus hath the Lord said. The whole land shall be 
 desolate ; yet will I not make a full end. 
 
 After reading this splendid outburst of prophetic 
 eloquence, one might fancy that the clock of 
 Time had gone back some thousands of years, 
 and that Jeremiah was a veritable specimen of 
 a prehistoric man, standing betwixt the old world 
 and the new, just at that particular epoch to 
 which Moses assigns the date of ' In the begin- 
 ning.' But no; Jeremiah's vision was of the 
 
58 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 future, not of the past ; and what does he see ? 
 He sees the earth — but in reality it was only that 
 small strip of earth which Israel inhabited — in 
 such a condition that he can describe it in exactly 
 the same language as Moses describes the world 
 at large before the six days of creation. Con- 
 fusion, darkness, no herbage, animal, or man — 
 such is Jeremiah's picture ! Confusion, darkness, 
 no herbage, animal, or man — such, too, seems 
 to be Moses outline ! Now it is of the utmost 
 importance that we should ascertain, if we can, 
 the force and meaning of Jeremiah's words. Did 
 he mean that Israel's world should be so utterly 
 dissolved that it should absolutely cease to be ? 
 — that the heavens should be so black that the 
 sun should be no more? It is certain that he 
 meant no such thing. He is merely shadowing 
 forth a terrible reverse which should befall the 
 land and the people of Israel. A revolution was 
 coming which should hurl them from national 
 importance into national impotence ; as compared 
 with what they had been, they should be as 
 nothing ; this is the sum. Yet Israel's earth 
 
THE LITERAL DAY THEORY. 59 
 
 should Still remain, for all that it should be so 
 formless and void ; and Israel's sun should hold 
 its place in the sky, for all that their heavens 
 should be so dark. Now interpret Moses with 
 the same laxity that you are compelled to in- 
 terpret Jeremiah — both were God's historians, 
 Moses of the past, Jeremiah of the future ; 
 allow for the ' pomp of oriental metaphor ' ; allow 
 for the seer's clearness of vision and vividness 
 of elocution ; and I can well conceive that a 
 Hebrew prophet, speaking to Hebrew hearers, 
 might quite rightfully describe the earth before 
 the six days as without form and void, and the 
 deep as covered with darkness, and yet it would 
 no more follow that the earth was non-existent, 
 or the sun non-existent, than that, v\'hen Jeremiah 
 used exactly the same phrases to depict Israel's 
 supreme humiliation, he meant that Israel's earth 
 and Israel's sun should be no more. The spirit 
 of Moses' revelation, as seen by the flash of 
 Jeremiah's inspiration, is that a stupendous change 
 was wrought by God in the material universe 
 just about the time that man was first created — 
 
 E 2 
 
6o THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 a change the very reverse of that which Jeremiah 
 foresaw — a change to hght, and beauty, and order, 
 and life — the full nature and extent of which it 
 is hardly to be expected that we should be able 
 to gather from Moses' necessarily, purposely, 
 and politicly succinct narrative ; but this broad 
 truth, which every geologist will subscribe to, is 
 put before us in no ambiguous fashion, that, just 
 before the appearance of man, there was a change 
 in the condition of things both in the heaven 
 and in the earth, which affected both the animal 
 and the vegetable kingdoms, and was adapted 
 to the constitution and conducive to the felicity 
 of the liuman species. I think that I have now 
 said enough to show that Moses does not neces- 
 sarily in his first chapter open to us the first 
 deep foundations of the earth, but that possibly 
 he does no more than describe one only, and 
 that the latest, though not the least momentous, 
 of many revolutions, which, in the sumless series 
 of past ages, science testifies that our globe has 
 undergone. 
 
 Let me suppose now that the reader is ready 
 
THE LITERAL DAY THEORY. 6l 
 
 to admit that, what Moses relates in his first 
 chapter may be rather the finishing of the world 
 than the first founding of it ; how in the next 
 place do we explain, first, what he tells us con- 
 cerning the world's condition immediately before 
 the six days' work commenced ; and, secondly, 
 what he tells us that God said and did while 
 the six days' work was proceeding ? There are 
 two passages which relate to the earth's appear- 
 ance anterior to the human era. In the second 
 verse of the first chapter we are told, that ' The 
 earth was without form and void, and darkness 
 was upon the face of the deep ' ; in the fourth verse 
 of the second chapter, that in the day ' when the 
 Lord God made the earth and the heavens, no 
 plant of the field was yet in the earth, nor herb 
 of the field grew.' Opinions differ as to whether 
 the former passage refers to the period imme- 
 diately preceding the six days, or to a much 
 more remote antiquity ; but there can be no 
 question that the latter passage relates to the 
 time when the changes recorded by Moses were 
 being, or were about to be^ made. Possibly the 
 
 y 
 
62 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 one passage is a duplicate of the other; it will 
 be observed that Moses recapitulates in the 
 beginning of the second chapter what he had stated 
 in the first. Both passages involve considerable 
 difficulty ; science will allow of an age of water, 
 of ice, and, I believe, of fire, but not of darkness. 
 How, then, are we account for the darkness? 
 It is not a little significant that, when the waters 
 of the Flood were upon the earth, the sun, moon, 
 and stars were unquestionably in the heavens, 
 yet Moses can represent the Lord God as saying 
 in His heart, after the waters had subsided, 
 'while the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, 
 and cold and heat, and winter and summer, and 
 day and night shall not cease ; ' which implies that 
 there had been a temporary interruption of all 
 these — that the seasons had been undistinguish- 
 able, that day and night had been confounded. 
 A Hebrew, briefly describing the state of the 
 world at that time to Hebrews, would not have 
 been misunderstood if he had said that ' darkness 
 covered ' it. We must remember that the 
 Mosaic record comes filtered to us through the 
 
THE LITERAL DAY THEORY. 6$ 
 
 doubtful medium of an English translation. A 
 translation may be ever so literal, and yet fail 
 to reproduce the exact meaning of the original ; 
 even those scholars who know something — in 
 most cases how little is that something! — of 
 Hebrew literature, cannot always be sure that 
 they have caught the true spirit of a figurative 
 expression or phrase. Our only safeguard is to 
 compare scripture with scripture. By comparing 
 Moses with Jeremiah, I have already ascertained 
 that an earth without form and void does not 
 necessarily mean a non-existent earth, 7U)r a 
 darkened heaven an uncreated sun. A distinction 
 may have to be drawn between darkness as 
 science defines it, and darkness as Moses in 
 the first chapter of Genesis roughly and popularly 
 uses it. In dealing with Biblical writings we 
 have to weigh the Biblical use of words, and 
 to frame our interpretations accordingly. Pro- 
 vided, then, that the rest of the narrative will 
 admit of it, on which point I must beg the 
 reader to suspend his judgment until he has 
 heard my explanation in full, 1 shall hold that 
 
64 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 darkness^ of which there are various degrees and 
 shades, may be used in the first chapter in a 
 modified sense, and, so taken, it cannot be pro- 
 nounced a meteorological impossibility. 
 
 The second passage, in which we are told that 
 no plant of the field was yet in the earth, nor 
 herb of the field grew, is not so easily disposed 
 of An absence of vegetation involves an absence 
 of animal hfe ; an absence of animals necessitates 
 the assumption of their extinction ; but science 
 will not hear of any such break in the chain of 
 animal existences; and it is certain that ages 
 before the human era plants grew with rank 
 luxuriance, and animals in the sea and on the 
 land swarmed. Either, then, Moses must have 
 made a mistake, or the theory which we are 
 discussing must be untenable, or science cannot 
 have rightly measured all the possibilities of the 
 past. When we consider the largeness of the 
 subject of which Moses treats, and the very 
 little, comparatively speaking, which he has told 
 us concerning it, we can hardly suppose that 
 anything dropped from his pen which was not 
 
THE LITERAL DAY THEORY. 65 
 
 in his opinion essential and well-established. In 
 this instance he has emphasized his asseveration 
 of the earth's bareness by appending the cause 
 of it — ' The Lord God had not caused it to rain 
 upon the earth.' Now geologists will allow 
 generally that, in the boundless annals of the 
 past, there have been mighty revolutions both 
 in the organic and in the inorganic worlds, both 
 in the flora and in the fauna, one species becom- 
 ing extinct, and another, differing from it in 
 many important particulars, making its appear- 
 ance according to some mysterious law of hfe 
 the operation of which is as certain as the 
 immediate cause of it is uncertain. It is more 
 than probable that climatic changes have had 
 much to do with this continual shifting of plant 
 and animal life in the past history of our planet ; 
 it is certain that the plants and animals ^ of the 
 human era differ considerably in size, and some 
 
 ^ The present mammalian fauna of the globe presents 
 everywhere a striking contrast to the extraordinary variety 
 and great size of the mammals of the Tertiary periods. — 
 Geikie's Text-Book of Geology^ p. 894. 
 
66 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 of them also in species, from those which dis- 
 tinguished the era immediately preceding. What 
 caused the difference ? Is it not possible that 
 God, willing to prepare a plant and animal world 
 suitable to the requirements of the coming man- 
 world, may have shut the windows of heaven, 
 as Moses says He did, and with a cessation of 
 rain have caused a temporary cessation of life 
 upon the earth ? The effect of such a withdrawal 
 would be pretty much what we know it to be 
 on a small scale and over a limited area in some 
 parts of the world in the present day : soon 
 vegetation disappears, cattle die. Such a con- 
 tingency can hardly be pronounced a physical 
 impossibility. But say that it is improbable, 
 still there is a way of resolving the difficulty. 
 The words of Moses may apply to the main 
 portion of the earth's surface without embracing 
 every part of it. A large generalization is as 
 much as can be expected in a short compendium. 
 Nor is this an unbalanced assumption. If it 
 did not naturally occur to us, it is an opening 
 which Moses has indicated to us. The garden 
 
THE LITERAL DAY THEORY. 67 
 
 of Eden is excepted by him ; there, he tells us, 
 were irrigating rivers, there trees and plants 
 flourished, there beasts and cattle lived ; this, 
 then, was a centre of life, until the time came 
 when God, intending to make man, watered the 
 whole face of the ground, and effected a general 
 though gradual resurrection of the produce, and 
 with the produce of the population of the earth. 
 Having done something to relieve the darkness 
 and the desolation, which have not a little im- 
 peded our progress, our next step must be 
 to show how all this is compatible with what 
 Moses tells us that God said and did during 
 the hexemerate. Now I think it quite possible 
 for Moses to have written that God said. Let 
 there be light. Let there be a firmament. Let 
 earth and sea know their bounds, Let the earth 
 be green. Let there be lights in the heaven. 
 Let creatures multiply in the sea and multiply 
 on the land, and yet all these laws (or let us 
 say some of them), all these phacnomena (or let 
 us say some of them) may have already been 
 in time past ; nay, may at that very time have 
 
68 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 been existent, though temporarily and to a certain 
 extent obscured. For does any one suppose 
 tliat, when Moses testifies that God said, ' I do 
 set my bow in the cloud,' he meant us to 
 understand that that beautiful arch had never 
 before spanned the sky, and not rather that it 
 had again and again appeared, but never till 
 then had been consecrated as the splendid symbol 
 of Divine forbearance and mercy ? — or, when he 
 declares in the book of Exodus, and again in 
 the book of Leviticus, that God ordained that 
 certain distinctions should be observed between 
 beast and beast, so that this one should be 
 accounted clean, and that one unclean, he 
 meant us to suppose, as we certainly should have 
 supposed had our Bibles wanted the book of 
 Genesis, that no such distinctions had ever before 
 been? Why, Moses himself is our authority 
 for saying that they had been prescribed to 
 Noah, and in all likelihood they were coeval 
 with creation. Or again, because the Decalogue 
 was first given to the Israelites on Mount Sinai, 
 would it be reasonable to suppose that no such 
 
THE LITERAL DAY THEORY. 69 
 
 moral and religious obligations had ever before 
 
 been in force ? — that men had been free to covet, 
 
 to slander, to steal, to commit adultery, to kill, 
 
 to dishonour parents, to fall down before images, 
 
 to worship any and every god or daemon of 
 
 man's fabHng? I might pursue the same line 
 
 of argument in reference also to the Sabbath. 
 
 The true explanation seems to be that, at a great 
 
 turning-point in the history of Israel, laws, many 
 
 of which had long been in force, were solemnly 
 
 renewed, ratified, and promulgated, and divers 
 
 additions at the same time made, such as suited 
 
 the time and suited the people. Well now, 
 
 in the first chapter of Genesis we are told of a 
 
 great turning-point in the history of the earth. 
 
 May not God have willed, not in forty days 
 
 and forty nights, but in six successive days, as 
 
 Moses reckons them, to solemnly and formally 
 
 renew, confirm, and publish, laws and phaeno- 
 
 mena which had been from of old, and may 
 
 He not h.ave inaugurated at the same lime many 
 
 momentous changes, such as the occasion required, 
 
 without our being obliged to suppose that, 
 
70 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 because Moses tells us that at such and such 
 a time God proclaimed His counsel concerning 
 them, at that time the laws were first instituted 
 and the phaenomena first came into being? We 
 may find some justification for this view in the 
 chapter itself. In the fourteenth verse we read 
 that ' God said, Let there be lights in the firma- 
 ment of the heaven, to divide the day from the 
 night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, 
 and for days, and for years.' What! had the 
 darkness never before been divided from the light ? 
 Was the day then for the first time ordained ? 
 Nay, in the very opening of the chapter, ' God 
 divided the light from the darkness. And God 
 called the light Day, and the darkness he called 
 Night. And the evening and the morning were 
 the first day.' The time, when a code of laws 
 is drafted and promulgated, is not necessarily 
 the time w^hen the principles embodied in it are 
 first generated. The laws of nature were in 
 operation long before the proclamation of them. 
 Now Moses takes cognizance of the period of 
 publication. And why ? Because it was the 
 
THE LITERAL DAY THEORY. 71 
 
 period of man's appearing, on whose behalf all 
 these laws were proclaimed, and who, when great 
 changes were wrought in the material world, was 
 himself no metamorphosed creature, promoted 
 from a lower grade to a higher, but a distinct 
 addition to God's creation, having the precedency 
 and command of all. And this may be one 
 reason why a different formula is used in giving 
 an account of his creation from that which is 
 employed in describing the creation of God's 
 other creatures ; for of tliem it is said, ' Let this 
 be,' and 'Let that be,' as of things which might 
 have been already, and for which all that was 
 necessary was a decree of confirmation for their 
 continuance ; but of man it is said, * Let us make 
 man,' as of one who was then for the first time 
 to be made; and similarly in the history of the 
 woman's formation we read that the Lord God 
 said, ' I will make him*a help meet for him.' 
 
 It would seem, then, that the usage of the 
 Bible, and Moses' own style, will allow of our 
 putting such a modified construction on the 
 language used in the first chapter of Genesis, 
 
72 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 that nothing of what we there read, that God 
 said or did, needs of necessity clash with any 
 of those facts of which science can afford good 
 and conclusive proofs. 
 
 Whatever may be thought of the theory of 
 a six literal days' creation, as, following the 
 notion commonly entertained concerning it, I 
 have presented it in this chapter, one thing is 
 certain — every portion of Moses' narrative natur- 
 ally and easily adjusts itself to it. The meaning 
 of ' day ' will accord with Moses' definition of it. 
 * In the beginning' will stand for the beginning 
 of the human era, further back than which neither 
 Moses' purpose nor Israel's curiosity extended. 
 All the living things enumerated in the first 
 chapter are described in pretty nearly the same 
 terms as those which are mentioned in the 
 history of the Flood, and also in the book of 
 Leviticus, the reason being obvious, that they 
 belonged to the same era, inhabited the same 
 world, were of the same type and species, and 
 withal were such as Israel was familiar with. 
 Dare I add, that God's calling the light day. 
 
THE LITERAL DAY THEORY. 73 
 
 and ca/Ii)io- the darkness night, and calling the 
 gathered waters sea, and calling the dry land 
 earth, may possibly be regarded as small but 
 not insignificant tokens, that the time had come 
 in the long succession of ages, when things, 
 which themselves had long been, required to be 
 named for human discrimination and use ? 
 
 Briefly and comprehensively, I may say that 
 in the opening chapter of Genesis we have an 
 account of the giving of certain laics — not, as 
 in the books of Exodus and Leviticus, the moral 
 and ceremonial laws, but those great laws of 
 nature, by which God, who made the universe, 
 willed that it should be governed, and which He 
 empowered Moses to declare to the congregation 
 of Israel, and through Israel to mankind, that 
 all might have the assurance that, as the world 
 was not made by chance, so neither was it 
 governed by chance, nor was it at the mercy 
 of any creature, nor of any nor of all of the 
 fabulous gods of the heathen ; but that it was 
 upheld by ordinances which He had contrived, 
 and which He had commanded should not be 
 
74 THE * WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 broken. Such a view of the first chapter of the 
 first book of the Old Testament is consonant 
 with the whole drift and tenor of the Pentateuch, 
 which is emphatically the book of the laiu — law, 
 may we say, for the world of matter ; law, we 
 certainly may say, for the world of Israel. From 
 this point of view the first chapter of Genesis 
 assumes a new significance. It was Israel's 
 charter touching the government of the material 
 universe. But it is something more than this. 
 It is figurative and prophetic ; it carries us not 
 merely backward to a remote past, but forward 
 to a possibly yet more remote future ; it spans 
 the interval between the earth and the heavens 
 that are, and the earth and the heavens that are 
 to be ; it opens with darkness and death, but it 
 closes with glimmerings of evangelistic light and 
 life ; it compasses both the natural and the spiritual 
 worlds, thus awakening hopes, but for which what 
 were this world, and what were we ? If such be 
 the scope of the first chapter of Genesis, the pen 
 of Moses may indeed have written it, but the 
 brain of Moses never originated it. 
 
THE LITERAL DAY THEORY. 75 
 
 I have now said all that I can conceive can 
 fairly and advantageously be said in favour of 
 the hypothesis, that the heaven and the earth 
 were actually and visibly created in six calendar 
 days, and all that I have said I have essayed to 
 rampart with material fetched from Holy Scrip- 
 ture. My facts cannot be discredited ; only the 
 inferences which I have deduced from them 
 may by some be disputed. What will the reader 
 say ? Will he tolerate this planing down of 
 Moses' text in order that it may fit in with the 
 hard facts of science ? Perhaps he will reject 
 it at once as a specious but spurious and fal- 
 lacious novelty ; perhaps, after he has severely 
 examined it, he may admit that it does not 
 exceed the bounds of credibihty; that it is a fair 
 compromise, a not unreasonable solution of an 
 uncommonly stiff problem ; perhaps, before pro- 
 nouncing a final decision, he may prefer to hear 
 what I have to say for one or two other solutions 
 which have been or may be proposed. If he 
 will follow me into my next chapter, I will 
 endeavour to conduct him through the intricacies 
 
 F 2 
 
76 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 of what has been called ' The Long Day Theory.' 
 Although in this part of my work I shall be 
 building upon a foundation which others have 
 laid, I shall adopt my own style and method of 
 treatment, and I think that I shall be able to 
 add strength to an old structure by the use of 
 some new and substantial material. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE LONG DAY THEORY. 
 
 After it had been established beyond a doubt 
 by the consentient testimony of the most ap- 
 proved geologists, that the earth could not pos- 
 sibly have been founded, fashioned, and finished 
 in six calendar days, but that it must have been 
 ages a-making, that it must be of incalculable 
 antiquity, and that it is still subject to oscillation 
 and flux and change — after, too, it had come to be 
 fully realized, that even Moses, though in his first 
 chapter he seems to assign to the whole work of 
 creation but a six days' limit, in his second chapter 
 delineates a state of things which he could not 
 have been ignorant necessitated a much more 
 extended term, telling us of a time when the 
 
73 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 earth indeed was created, but no plant of the 
 field was yet in the earth, nor herb of the field 
 grew, for the Lord God had not caused it to 
 rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to 
 till the ground, not a few theologians, unable 
 to resist this twofold testimony, pressed on them 
 by men who well knew how to marshal their 
 arguments and push them home to a logical 
 conclusion, shifted their ground, and entrenched 
 themselves in the position that the Mosaic days 
 were not days at all in the common acceptation 
 of the word, but large spans of time, stretching 
 back into an immeasurable past. By what pro- 
 cess of mental ratiocination could they have per- 
 suaded themselves, by what show of fair and 
 well-founded argument did they hope to persuade 
 others, to accept an interpretation apparently so 
 far-fetched, so strained, so opposed to all which 
 they themselves had previously promulgated ? 
 To say that the general law of God's working is 
 by gradual development rather than by instan- 
 taneous completion is true enough ; but such a 
 truism could not be accepted as proof that, when 
 
THE LONG DAY THEORY. 79 
 
 Moses says days, he meant a sumless series of 
 years. Their chief rehance was placed on the 
 occasional use of the word in a non-natural sense 
 in the Bible itself, especially in the prophetical 
 portions of it. ' The day of temptation in the 
 wilderness' was a period of forty years' duration. 
 'To-day if ye will hear my voice,' in David's 
 prophetic hymn, we have the highest authority 
 for saying, denoted no one day in particular, 
 but any and every day of the whole period inter- 
 vening between the first and the second coming 
 of Jesus Christ. In a book like Genesis, some 
 passages of which are undoubtedly prophetical, a 
 similar use of the term ' day ' cannot be pro- 
 nounced offhand an impossibility. Moreover, 
 it will be observed that the account of each day's 
 work is prefaced by the words, ' And God said ' ; 
 but in the account of the third day's work, and 
 again in the account of the sixth day's work, that 
 formula occurs twice, as though there had been a 
 subdivision of the ivork, and, if of the work, of 
 the time also. Nor would it be unreasonable to 
 suppose that between the emergence of the 
 
8o THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF iMOSES. 
 
 dry land and its efflorescence, and between the 
 creation of mammals and the formation of man, 
 some time should have elapsed during which 
 the creative processes were going on. Add to 
 this that, whereas Moses concludes his account of 
 the work of each of the six days with the remark 
 that ' the evening and the morning w^ere such 
 and such a day,' he has not so terminated his 
 account of the seventh day, whence it has been 
 inferred that the seventh day has not come to an 
 end, in which case it has been a long day indeed ; 
 and, if the sev^enth day has to be measured so, 
 the other six will have to be regulated according 
 to the same standard of measurement. I have 
 already hinted that in the second chapter we are 
 led to believe that ages elapsed, after the earth 
 had been founded, before it was clothed with 
 vegetation, or teemed wdth animal life. Nor is it 
 of slight significance that the word used for 
 ' day ' by the Egyptians, as was discovered not 
 so many years ago from old Egyptian papyri, 
 was not confined to a cycle of twenty-four hours, 
 but stood for an undefined period, a month, a 
 
THE LONG DAY THEORY. 8i 
 
 year, or what not, so that it would not be sur- 
 prising if Moses, who was ' learned in all the 
 wisdom of the Egyptians,' should have used the 
 word once and again with something like Egyptian 
 latitude. 
 
 On reviewing these several arguments, we 
 cannot say that any one of them comes home to 
 us with the force of conviction ; but, if we scale 
 them all together, they present a body of evidence 
 sufficiently weighty to induce us to suspend our 
 judgment until we have heard what may be 
 said for and against the proposed interpretation 
 from the standpoint, first, of a geologist, and, 
 secondly, of a meteorologist;^ for, the subject 
 of the chapter being the creation of 'the heaven 
 and the earth,' these are the two main branches 
 which naturally divide between them the hexe- 
 merate of Moses, a triad being apportioned to 
 each. We will first consider that portion of 
 the chapter which comes within the province 
 of geology. 
 
 It is w^ell known that geologists distinguish 
 ^ I use meteorology in its ancient and etymological sense. 
 
82 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 three great rock-divisions in their treatises on 
 the earth — the Primary, the Secondary, and the 
 Tertiary, to which some would add a fourth, 
 which they designate the Quaternary. 
 
 The earliest rocks of the Primary division 
 exhibit no remains whatever either of organic or 
 inorganic life ; ev-en the Silurian and Old Red 
 Sandstone systems have nothing more remarkable 
 to show than fucoids, fish, and reptiles. But the 
 carboniferous system has not these only, but, far 
 more conspicuous than these, an untold wealth 
 of vegetable deposit, which fills the mind with 
 astonishment — trees and plants of prodigious 
 size and prodigal luxuriance — ' huge pines, stately 
 araucarians, the reed-like calamite, the tall tree- 
 fern, the sculptured sigillaria, and the hirsute 
 lepidodendron.' No such are found in either of 
 the other two divisions ; they are the peculiar 
 feature of the Primary division ; and it is on this 
 account, they say, that Moses assigned to them a 
 primary place in his narrative, to the exclusion of 
 everything else, describing them in no ambiguous 
 language, when he says that on the third day 
 
THE LONG DAY THEORY. 83 
 
 ' God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the 
 herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding 
 fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon 
 the earth. And the earth brought forth grass, 
 and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the 
 tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after 
 his kind.' This, then, is the first striking parallel 
 which they profess to find between the first 
 chapter of Genesis and the fossil-chambers of 
 the earth. 
 
 The most conspicuous feature of the Secondary 
 period is unquestionably its fossil fauna — ' huge 
 creeping things, enormous monsters of the deep, 
 and gigantic birds. It was peculiarly an age 
 of egg-bearing animals, winged and wingless.* 
 These, they say, are the animals to which Moses 
 refers, when he says that on the fifth day ' God 
 said. Let the waters bring forth abundantly the 
 moving (creeping) creature that hath life, and 
 fowl that may fly above the earth in the open 
 firmament of heaven. And God created great 
 tanninm, and every living creature that moveth, 
 which the waters brought forth abundantly, after 
 
8+ THE * WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind/ 
 This, then, is the second great feature in which 
 the writings of Moses are alleged to resemble 
 the rocks of the earth. 
 
 Of the Tertiary period we are informed that 
 Mts flora seems to have been no more con- 
 spicuous than those of the present time ; its 
 reptiles occupy a very subordinate place ; but its 
 beasts of the field are by far the most wonder- 
 fully developed, both in size and number, that 
 ever appeared upon earth ; its mammoths and 
 mastodons, its rhinoceri and hippopotami, its 
 enormous dinotherium and colossal megatherium, 
 greatly more than equalled in bulk the hugest 
 mammals of the present time, and vastly ex- 
 ceeded them in number.' It is argued that these 
 are they of which Moses wrote, when he tells 
 us, that on the sixth day ' God said, Let the 
 earth bring forth the living creature after his 
 kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the 
 earth after his kind : and it was so. And God 
 made the beast of the earth after his kind, and 
 cattle after their kind, and everything that creep- 
 
THE LONG DAY THEORY. 85 
 
 eth upon the earth, after his kind.' This, they 
 confidently assert, is the third great feature 
 common to the book of Moses and the volume 
 of the earth. Lastly (and here there is no 
 discrepancy whatever between the two records), 
 man appeared upon the earth. 
 
 Now it must be admitted that there is a strik- 
 ing general correspondence between a geological 
 table thus presented to us, and the geological 
 portion of the first chapter of Genesis ; it is 
 equally obvious that there are some marked 
 incongruities. In the opinion of some, it would 
 be a downright error for Moses to affirm that 
 marine animals were created on the fifth day, 
 when long before the third day — that is, accord- 
 ing to the hypothesis, millions of years previously 
 — the waters swarmed with animal life. But the 
 upholders of the Long Day theory maintain that 
 it is no error at all; it is simply an omission, 
 which in a brief synopsis like that of Moses 
 might be expected, and may be explained. The 
 very nature and extent of the subject necessitated 
 not one omission only, but several. There is 
 
S6 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 no specific mention of the insect world, an innu- 
 merable though infinitesimally small population ; 
 none of comets and some other heavenly bodies, 
 which, though rarely visible, are regularly re- 
 current. If we had not had the second chapter, 
 who would have guessed that but one man and 
 one woman were originally made, and the woman 
 after the man, and of the man, and a rib of the 
 man ? — or that to the large permission given to 
 feed upon everi/ tree there was an important 
 exception, an important prohibition — a tree, the 
 fruit of which was death to the taster, and 
 another which v>^as potent to preserve and 
 perpetuate life ? All this additional and most 
 interesting information is reserved for a second 
 chapter. What if we had had a supplementary 
 chapter for each one of the other five days? 
 Might not much which is now involved in dark- 
 ness have come out clearly enough ? Where 
 all could not be told, a selection had to be made. 
 The calamite and the tree-fern were surely better 
 representatives of plant-life than fucoids, though 
 the latter had the seniority in the world of crea- 
 
THE LONG DAY THEORY. 87 
 
 tion. The great tannijiim, the huge saurians, 
 and the enormous birds, were more striking 
 representatives of marine animals than the crus- 
 taceans and batrachians of the primary rocks. 
 These last were of small size, of low type, inver- 
 tebrates for the most part, not worthy of being 
 mentioned side by side with the monstrous growths 
 which came into being on the fifth day. Such, 
 I believe, is a fair general representation of the 
 arguments of those who hold that the Mosaic 
 day stands for an indefinite period of time. It 
 may be added that in the account of the Flood 
 nothing is said of the survh:al of marine crea- 
 tures, though survive we believe they did ; 
 similarly in the account of the creation nothing 
 is said of the existence of the earliest aquatic 
 animals, though exist we are assured that they 
 did. But, though Moses does not expressly 
 mention them, he leaves abundance of room for 
 them ; in the very beginning of his chapter he 
 opens out to view a vast watery expanse, capable 
 of harbouring any number of crustaceans, and 
 other fish, and reptiles. But are we quite sure 
 
88 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 that he has left us no trace cf the existence of 
 this original population of the deep ? What, 
 then, does he mean, when he says, ' The Spirit 
 moved' — the word implies incubation — 'upon the 
 face of the waters'? Not surely that a wind of 
 God, which in the Hebrew idiom anight mean 
 a mighty wind, tempested the deep, as though 
 he would have us understand that in the begin- 
 ning the earth was all confusion and the waters 
 all uproar, but rather that there was an actual 
 going forth of creative energy ; so that Moses 
 perhaps whispers, what the earth by its strata 
 proclaims, that animal life was called into being 
 from the very first. Dare I put it thus ? The 
 animals, which Moses tells us were created on 
 the fifth day, were those which had their habitat 
 in the sea ; now the sea, as sea, had no distinct 
 and recognized existence before the third day ; 
 before that day all was ivaters^ unconfined, un- 
 divided waters ; the fifth-day animals, then, may 
 have been in a special sense those which the sea 
 brought forth in contradistinction to those which 
 at a very early period had inhabited the ivaters; 
 
THE LONG DAY THEORY. 89 
 
 roughly speaking, and for shortness sake, the 
 later creatures we may call marine, the earlier 
 by the more general designation of aquatic. It 
 this is not a sophistical subtlety, those pregnant 
 words, 'The Spirit movQd upon the face of 
 the waters,' may be a comprehensive mode of 
 describing the general work of creation, the main 
 portion of the chapter being devoted to some 
 interesting particulars under the threefold division 
 of plants, sea-animals, and land-animals. The 
 object of Moses being to relate not so much 
 the creation of the inferior animals as the crea- 
 tion of the human species, a superficial survey 
 of the former was all that was necessary for 
 the edification of the Israehtes. Bearing this 
 in mind, we may expect not a few omissions, 
 and, in consequence of those omissions, some 
 difficulties. 
 
 If we turn now from the geological to the 
 meteorological portion of the £rst chapter of 
 Genesis, we are constrained to cry out, Dark, 
 dark, dark! The sun and the moon and the 
 stars are not mentioned until the fourth day. Is 
 
 G 
 
90 THE 'WORKS AXD DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 it possible that Moses meant to intimate that 
 they had not been created before that day ? 
 Science may well be pardoned for refusing to 
 accept such an order of creation as this. It has 
 been contended that Moses' words do not nece=-- 
 sarily imply that then for the first time God 
 created those luminous bodies, but rather that 
 then for the first time He ordained them to stand 
 in a definite relation to the earth, viz. to mark 
 the boundary of the day and the night, and to 
 regulate times and seasons. This may be, but I 
 hardly think that it is. There is another way 
 of smoothing the difficulty, which I do not 
 remember to have seen noticed, but which is 
 perhaps deserving of a passing mention. In the 
 second chapter we are told that ' the Lord God 
 formed man of the dust of the ground, and 
 breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and 
 man became a living soul ' ; and in the very 
 next verse we read that ' the Lord God planted 
 a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the 
 man whom he had formed.' Here, if we were 
 guided by the strict sequence of the narrative, 
 
THE LONG DAY THEORY. 91 
 
 we might imagine that the j)lanting of the garden 
 was posterior in time to the formation of the 
 man. Such, however, could not possibly have 
 been the case; the garden with its mineral re- 
 sources, its river-system, its well-matured trees, 
 must have been prepared long before the man 
 was made who was destined to be its lord. Moses 
 informs us of its having been planted — he does 
 not specify the time when it was planted. Strict 
 sequence of narrative, then, cannot always be 
 depended upon in Moses writings as a sure 
 basis for his chronology. The sun, moon, and 
 stars, then, may be mentioned on the fourth 
 day, not as having been then for the first time 
 created — they may have been coeval with the 
 manifestation of light on the first day, or even 
 have been created at a very much earlier period 
 — but because Moses, wishing to mark certain 
 great climatic changes, which were brought into 
 operation between the third day and the fifth — 
 changes which had the closest possible con- 
 nection with the mighty revolution which was 
 
 to take place, and which actually did take 
 
 G 2 
 
93 THE ^ WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 place, in vegetable and animal life — changes in 
 which the sun and the moon were to have a 
 predominating influence — found it convenient in 
 that pordon of his chapter to record the fact 
 that God had created them, without ever intend- 
 ing to fix the time when He created them. A 
 supplementary chapter would probably clear away 
 this obscurity also. Eut this I may say : the 
 subject of the first chapter of Genesis is stated 
 to be the creation of the heaven^ which Moses 
 defines to be the firmament, and the earth, 
 which is the dry land— not the heaven separ- 
 ately, nor the earth separately, but the heaven 
 and the earth, the two in combination, and 
 the heaven mainly (and this is the point which 
 I would impress here) in so far as it minis- 
 tered to the earth. It is not the waters, then, 
 it is not even the heaven, it is the earth which 
 is Moses' principal theme. And of this there 
 is a slight indication in the opening verses of 
 the first chapter ; for, after he had mentioned 
 ' the heaven and the earth,' of the earth he 
 proceeds to say that it was without form and 
 
THE LONG DAY THEORY. 93 
 
 void, but of the heaven he says nothing — not, I 
 take it, because there was nothing to say of it, 
 but because it did not come within his scope to 
 tell us everything of every part of the visible 
 universe, but only just so much as was necessary 
 to illustrate that portion of it which was destined 
 to be the home of man. We can understand, 
 then, why all that is said of the myriads of 
 creatures, who from the very earliest times had 
 populated the waters, should be comprehended in 
 that short statement, 'The Spirit of God moved 
 upon the face of the waters ' ; we can understand, 
 too, why even the phaenomena of the heavens 
 should have received what seems to us but scant 
 and secondary attention, all mention of the sun, 
 moon, and stars being postponed to the fourth 
 day. 
 
 If it be urged that the fourth commandment 
 positively states that 'in six days God made the 
 heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them 
 is ' — how, then, can ' days ' bear the extended 
 meaning which the hypothesis would assign to 
 them ? — it may be answered that if the work of 
 
94 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS* OF MOSES. 
 
 God differed beyond all conception from the 
 work of Israel, and the rest of God from the 
 rest of Israel, are we so sure that the days of 
 God must liave contained exactly the same 
 number of hours, minutes, and seconds as the 
 days of Israel? The work of God was the 
 creation of a universe ; the rest of God had 
 nothing whatever in common with the weary 
 frames and exhausted faculties of Israel. Who 
 knows but that the days of God must be 
 similarly allowed for ? Certainly the spirit 
 of the precept is that Israel was to do in his 
 little day that little bit of work which fell to 
 him, just as God in His incomparably greater 
 day had done His incomparably greater work. 
 We must be cautious that we do not con- 
 found the human and the Divine, the finite 
 and the Infinite. 
 
 I have now exhausted every argument that I 
 can think of, at least in so far as it can be drawn 
 from the Mosaic narrative, in defence of the 
 figurative, the prophetic, the Egyptian interpreta- 
 tion of the Mosaic day. Notwithstanding that 
 
THE LONG DAY THEORY. 95 
 
 this mode of explanation has received the sanc- 
 tion and support of many able and learned men, 
 I confess that I regard it with suspicion and 
 distrust. I am not quite sure that Holy Scripture 
 will allow of our holding that the seventh day 
 has endured to, much less has extended beyond, 
 the Christian era. I am not quite sure that 
 language, which Moses uses in his account of 
 the Flood, and again in the book of Leviticus, 
 to describe the ordinary fauna of the human 
 era, would have been employed by him in the 
 lirst chapter of Genesis to designate the enormous 
 growths of a very different world in a very differ- 
 ent age. IN or am I satisfied, nor do I expect 
 that the critic has been satisfied, with the only 
 reason that 1 can assign for the postponement of 
 all mention of the sun, moon, and stars until 
 the fourth day. Now, then, is my opportunity 
 to invite the reader to follow me into the next 
 chapter, where I shall offer for his consideration a 
 new method of explication, which shall neither 
 shirk nor slur any portion of Moses' sublime and 
 simple narrative ; shall be in keeping with the 
 
96 THE * WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 high character and lofty mission of the Hebrew 
 prophet ; shall be thoroughly Scriptural ; and, 
 lastly, if I mistake not, shall leave ample room 
 for all that the scientist can reasonably demand, 
 or the Biblicist desire. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE EPOCH THEORY. 
 
 Trite, but true, is the text, ' My thoughts 
 are not your thoughts, neither are your ways 
 my ways.' As with God's thoughts and ways, 
 so also with His words and works. ' We cannot 
 bv searching find out God.' 'We do but darken 
 counsel bywords without knowledge.' Yet some 
 knowledge we have, and it is sometimes possible 
 from "ivhat we do know to ascend to what we do 
 not know. Our knowledge is partly natural, 
 partly acquired. Our acquired knowledge is 
 derived from the visible universe, from experi- 
 ence and observation, from tradition written and 
 unwritten, but most of all, and especially in things 
 pertaining to God, from the Scriptures of God, 
 and from the Spirit of God. Till the day-star 
 
98 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 arise in our hearts, we are counselled to take 
 the night-lamp of God in our hands. Let us 
 see whether we cannot, with the help of its light, 
 find our way through the dark places in the first 
 two chapters of Genesis. 
 
 The chapters tell of a great work of God. 
 Now can we discover in the Holy Scriptures 
 traces of any general law, according to which 
 the work of God proceeds ? We can discern, 
 I think, three distinct and well-defined stages. 
 At first, it is a mystery hidden in Him ; it is 
 foreknown to Him, and to Him alone ; it is deter- 
 mined by Him and prepared beforehand ; it is 
 what God is sometimes said to 'say' in His 
 heart ; in His heart it may remain for no one 
 can tell how long, until, according to His dispens- 
 ation, the time of the second stage has come — 
 the time for making it known — God Himself 
 declaring it either directly, or indirectly through 
 one or other of the many ministers who are at 
 His command. If it concern mankind, through 
 one of mankind it is usually spoken — through 
 a prophet or seer, who cries, ' Hear the word of 
 
THE EPOCH THEORY. 99 
 
 the Lord ' ; and sometimes the year, and the 
 month, and the day of the month, are added, 
 when it is important to particularize the time. 
 Thus, what at first God had ' said ' in His heart, 
 He has now 'said' by word of mouth; His 
 purpose is unbosomed, His secret is proclaimed ; 
 and here the m^atter may rest for generations 
 and for ages, without any further outward effect 
 ensuing, until the time of the third stage has 
 come, and the word, which had first been spoken 
 by God to Himself (if I dare so express it), 
 and after that had been spoken by God to His 
 servants, begins to take effect, being seen in the 
 working of His mighty power — not always, 
 perhaps not generally, instantaneously and with 
 observ^ation, but gradually and imperceptibly, 
 extending through ages, so that to the ignorant 
 and impatient it may seem to be making no 
 progress whatever. 'All,' they say, 'is as it was 
 in the beginning,' and 'Where is the sign, the 
 promise of fulfilment?' Now, such being the 
 three stages observable in the Divine operations, 
 in which stage shall we say that that mighty 
 
loo THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 work, the creation of the heaven and the earth, 
 is presented to us by Moses in the first chapter 
 of Genesis ? When he employs that very com- 
 mon, but, as used of God, most comprehensive 
 and mysterious phrase, ' God said,' is it God's 
 volition that he refers to ? — or is it God's voice ? 
 — or is it God's work ? Is it a purpose, a promise, 
 or a performance ? Agreeably to the usage of 
 the Bible, it may be either of the first two, 
 and perhaps also the last ; one of the three 
 it must certainly be- Which shall we decide 
 that it is ? 
 
 But, lest I should be suspected of trying to 
 steal a march upon the reader, as though I 
 flattered myself that I could surprise the citadel 
 of his judgment, I will fortify myself by certain 
 prominent pertinent examples, which shall witness 
 for me that my operations are regular, and my 
 position secure. 
 
 Now it happens conveniently to our purpose 
 that the Holy Scriptures contain a record of 
 another creation — a creation indeed very different 
 from that of which Moses writes, but none the 
 
THE EPOCH THEORY. loi 
 
 less real for all that. I refer to that marvellous 
 outburst of light and life which dates from the 
 first appearing of Jesus Christ. A new spiritual 
 world then began to emerge out of chaos and 
 darkness ; new creatures were called into being. 
 It is true that the work has not yet been com- 
 pleted ; but it has commenced ; and,'as it happens, 
 it is its initial stage, about which, by the way, 
 we have some very remarkable particulars, which 
 chiefly concerns us now. How was it, then ? 
 Was the word spoken followed instantaneously 
 by the work done ? It does not appear so. 
 Certain epochs are plainly enough marked out. 
 There is an epoch of purpose, of counsel, of 
 ordainment ; there is an epoch of promise, of 
 gift ; and either of these epochs might be fltly 
 designated by the w^ords, ' Let it be ' ; and lastly, 
 there is an epoch of operation, of manifestation, 
 of effect, of going on to completion, or, in a 
 word, an epoch of 'It was so.' Between these 
 epochs innumerable years intervened. We imagine 
 that we can count back correctly to such and 
 such a figure ; but we soon come to a stop ; 
 
102 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 the sum is lost in the infinity of the past. As 
 a proof that what I affirm is no idle tale, I will 
 quote the passages on which my statements are 
 founded. St. Paul, the reality of whose existence 
 no man can dispute, the weight of whose authority 
 no man can set light by, says plainly that 'grace, 
 which is now ' — -/. e. in his own lifetime — ' made 
 manifest by the appearing of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, was given us in Christ Jesus before the 
 world began ' (tt^o ^f^ovwv aicovUov), and in another 
 place he speaks of that ' eternal ' {i. e. spiritual) 
 ' life, which God that cannot lie promised be/ore 
 the world begafi, but hath in due time manifested 
 his word.' St. Peter also, fetching his knowledge 
 from the same high source, and being privy, 
 therefore, to the same high secret, speaks to 
 the same purpose, and with the same positiveness 
 of assurance — ' the precious blood of Christ, who 
 verily was foreordained before the foundation 
 of the workr (Trpo xoLTa^o'kr\g xoa-ixott), 'but was 
 manifest in these last times.' Such are some 
 of the passages in which, con them over as 
 much as you like, if you do not utterly reject 
 
THE EPOCH THEORY. 103 
 
 them, you must confess that certain epochs are 
 distinctly set forth — epochs separated by long 
 lengths of time, far exceeding all possibility of 
 human notation or human conception. And let 
 it be observed that we are not merely told of 
 the epoch of God's purpose, but also of His 
 promise. Now a promise implies some one else 
 than the promiser. The promise, then, which 
 must have been posterior to the purpose, must 
 have been made to some one ; to man it could 
 not have been made, although man it concerned, 
 for man had not then been created. From certain 
 streaks of light, which are scattered throughout 
 the sacred volume, we gather that it may have 
 been signified to the high spiritual intelligences 
 in the great Council-Chamber of God. Such, 
 then, are some of the assurances which we have 
 touching the dispensation of the times, in the 
 account which has come down to us of that 
 second great work, wherein God has been pleased 
 to reveal Himself as a Creator. 
 
 And now a word on the manner in which, 
 after God's purpoce was first made known to 
 
I04 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 man (for the manifestation did not follow close 
 upon the publication), that work is not unfre- 
 quently described. After the material world had 
 been created, but lon^ before the spiritual world 
 was made to appear, that spiritual w^orld was 
 the theme of holy men, who spake of it not 
 always, as one might have supposed, as a work 
 which had yet to be, but not unfrequently as 
 a work which had already been. Numbers 
 of passages might be cited in proof of this 
 assertion. Here is one capital example from the 
 book of Psalms — 
 
 The Lord gave the word ; great was the company of the 
 preachers. 
 
 Kings with their armies did flee and were discomfited, 
 and they of the household divided the spoil. 
 
 A person not aware of the extraordinary 
 powers with which the prophets were gifted, 
 and the free use which they were wont to make 
 of the perfect tense, would naturally suppose that 
 the verses quoted formed part of a triumphal 
 ode, commemorative of great national glories 
 which had been achieved in the past, and had 
 
THE EPOCH THEORY. 105 
 
 heen instantaneously effected. Nothing could 
 be further from the truth. The glories cele- 
 brated were glories to come, and, if the march 
 of the Church militant, and not rather of the 
 Church triumphant, is portrayed, the rapidity 
 of the successes fell far short of what might 
 liave been expected from the prophet's descrip- 
 tion, the fact being that he passed over all 
 the tedious advances, operations, oppositions, 
 struggles, casualties, reverses, and caught with his 
 eye the signal victories and triumphs, and these 
 he haikd with delight and heralded to mankind. 
 
 Here is another striking passage from the book 
 of the prophet Isaiah — 
 
 The peo[)le that \Aalked in darkness have seen a great 
 light ; they that dwell in the valley of the shadow of death, 
 upon tliem hath the light shined. 
 
 Tliere may be some who will not believe that 
 there ever was such a person as Isaiah, or, if 
 there were, that the prophecies which are attributed 
 to him were actually uttered by him, or that the 
 particular passage which I have quoted refers to 
 the future, and not rather to the past ; but those 
 
io6 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 who are willing to weigh e\idence and to accept 
 facts will not doubt that Isaiah lived ; that Isaiah 
 prophesied ; that, what Isaiah here expresses as 
 if it had already been, only had its fulfilment 
 centuries afterwards in Jesus Christ, who was, 
 and is, the true Light of the w^orld. 
 
 So frequently, so clearly, and in so many 
 divers ways, is this fore-announcement by God 
 of His purpose set forth in the Scriptures of 
 the Old Testament, that it may almost be pro- 
 nounced part of the regular policy of the Divine 
 government. The following passages will supply 
 corroborative evidence — 
 
 (a) I am God, and there is none beside me, 
 
 Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient 
 times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel 
 shall stand, and I will do nil my pleasure. — Isaiah xlvii. lo. 
 
 (3) I have declared the former things from the beginning ; 
 and they went forth out of my mouth, and I showed them. 
 
 I have even from the beginning declared it to thee ; before 
 it came to pass I shewed it thee. 
 
 I have shewed thee new things from this time, even 
 hidden things, and thou didst not know them ; they are 
 created now, and not from the beginning : even before the 
 day that thou heardest them not, lest thou shouldst say, 
 Behold, I knew them. — Isaiah xlviii. 3, 5, 6, 7. 
 
THE EPOCH THEORY. 107 
 
 (c) Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new 
 things do I declare; before they spring forth, I tell you 
 of them. 
 
 Now may not the creation of the heavoi and 
 the earth have been declared by God from the 
 beginning, before ever they were as yet, and, as 
 the Apostles were empowered to te'l of the fore- 
 announcement of the spiritual world, so may 
 not Moses have been of that of the material, 
 and by Divine direction and under Divine guid- 
 ance have recorded it? Certainly, whoever it was 
 who drew that most lively sketch of creation, 
 he had a full, thorough, and commanding view 
 of the great original. There is not that multi- 
 plicity of petty details which too often confuses 
 the eye, and betrays the imperfect knowledge 
 of the artist; but a few bold strokes, and the 
 whole scene stands out clearly before us — Light, 
 the firmament of Heaven, Ocean, Earth with its 
 vegetable fulness; and then (perhaps because 
 the precious things of the earth depend so much 
 on the precious things of the heaven) the quick- 
 ening, regidating Lights of heaven ; and then the 
 
 H 2 
 
io8 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 world of Animals — those in the ocean and of the 
 air lirst, those on the earth next ; the whole 
 concluding with Man, the chief of all God's 
 works in the terrestrial sphere. Nothing can 
 be more complete, nothing more compendious, 
 nothing more comprehensive. If it be said that 
 the work is described as not merely purposed, 
 planned, and published by God, but finished, 
 I reply that this should no mere appear strange 
 or incredible than that David should chant the 
 victories of the Christian armies though their 
 Captain had not appeared nor the conflict begun, 
 or that the Lamb should be represented as ' slain 
 from the foundation of the worlds' or the saints 
 and faithful as ' chosen in Jesus Christ, before the 
 foundation of the world' We need not, however, 
 push this principle of interpretation to its utmost 
 limit. I draw a distinction between what Moses 
 tells us that ' God said ' and what Moses tells 
 us that God did, or, in other words, between 
 God's counsel^ or, I should rather say, God's 
 expression of His counsel, and Moses' comment on 
 it. These, though they follow each other closely 
 
THE EPOCH THEORY. 109 
 
 in the order of the narration, did not necessarily 
 follow each other closely in the order of time. 
 Millions of years may have intervened between 
 God's ' Let it be ' and Moses' ' It was so,* the vast 
 interval with all its processes and progresses 
 being left a blank, as not falling within the scope 
 of the prophet's vision, twj leading epochs only 
 being particularized, in one of which the work 
 was — let us say — published, in the other com- 
 pleted. I will pu: it thus: in the forty-second 
 chapter of Isaiah it is written — 
 
 Thus saith God the Lord, he that created the heavens, 
 and stretched them out; he that spread forth the earth, and 
 that which cometh cut of it ; he that giveth breath unto thj 
 people upon it, and spirit to them that walk tht-rein : 
 
 Let the wilderness and the cities thereof lift up their 
 voice, the villages that Kedar d.)th inhabit; let the inhabit- 
 ants of the rock sing, let tliem shout from the top of the 
 mountains. 
 
 Let them give glory unto the Lord, and declare his praise 
 in the islands. 
 
 Now if I, knowing that all this has already 
 either wholly or partly come to pass, choose to 
 add, 
 
no THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 And the wilderness and the cities lifted up their voice, 
 and the inhabitants of the rock sang, and they gave glory 
 to the Lord, and declared his praise in the islands, 
 
 wliat difference is there, except as to length, 
 between Isaiah's words with my addition, and 
 Moses' words, 'And God said, Let there be hght, 
 and there was light ' ? In neither is there so 
 much as a hint that there was any interval of 
 ti:r.e between the speaking of the word and its 
 taking effect ; yet in the one case we know, and 
 in the other we can well believe, that a vast 
 chasm intervened, to be measured in the one 
 case by centuries, in the other by ages. 
 
 But, when Moses attributes speech to God, 
 does he mean something that was inwardly de- 
 creed by Him, or something which outwardly 
 proceeded from Him — in other words, the speech 
 of the heart, or the speech of the tongue? It 
 has been assumed that it must have been the 
 former ; but the assumption is arbitrary, unsus- 
 tainable, hardly consistent with the fact, tliat the 
 speech is represented as having been continued 
 during six successive ' da) s,' which it surely 
 
THE EPOCH THEORY. iii 
 
 would not have been, had God's counsel only 
 and purpose been signified. Let :t not be sup- 
 posed, because the world was not then founded, 
 nor man made, that God could lack either a 
 place for the publication of His purpose, or intel- 
 ligent beings to listen to it. If, w4ien the Lord 
 shincd forth from Mount Paran, ' he came with 
 ten thousands of saints ' ; if, in the reign of 
 Ahab, Micaiah the prophet ' saw the Lord sitting 
 on his throne, and all tlie host of heaven stand- 
 ing on his right hand and on his left'; if, in the 
 year that King Uzziah died, that startling con- 
 trast was seen of the ' Lord sitting on a throne, 
 high and lifted up, and his train filled the 
 temple'; if, when the Lord shall come to create 
 the new heaven and the new earth, He will come, 
 as we are assured, ' with ten thousands of his 
 saints' — no ideal pictures these of a highly- 
 wrought fancy, but sober and awful realities of 
 an invisible, unknown world — it would not be 
 unreasonable to assume that, when God an- 
 nounced His great conception of this world's 
 creation, He would be environed by multitudes 
 
112 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 of the heavenly hosts, even though we liad not 
 been expressly told in the book of Job, that, 
 when the foundations of the earth were laid, the 
 morning stars sang together, and all the sons 
 of God shouted for joy. Six days, according to 
 Moses, the session lasted, nor need we scruple 
 to accept this account of the time, during which 
 the laws of the universe were promulgated, any 
 more tlian we shrink from believing that by 
 God's command Moses remained forty days and 
 forty nights on the mount, when a law was given 
 for Israel. Without presuming to pry too curi- 
 ously into the mysteries of the Divnie calendar, 
 or into the nature of the Divine rest, I may 
 venture to suggest that it is quite possible that 
 God, having regard to the future necessities, 
 spiritual and secular, of the human f^imily, may 
 have willed, when making His purpose known, 
 to extend His revelations over six divisions of 
 time, called by Moses days, and terminating wdth 
 a seventh day of rest, to be a pattern in after 
 ages of that hebdomadal cycle, which was to be 
 to mankind in the same proportion a time to 
 
THE EPOCH THEORY. 113 
 
 work, and a time to rest. We need not suppose 
 that Moses tells us all that God said, hut only 
 as much as it fell within his purpose, as much 
 as in a brief epitome he could be expected, to 
 tell. There may be some question as to the 
 exact meaning of the words, ' And God saiv 
 everything that he had made, and, behold, it was 
 very good.' God works not as man works ; 
 God rests not as man rests ; God sees not as 
 man sees. To Him the past is as the present, 
 the future as the past. It is not necessary that 
 the clay should have received the impress of 
 the seal for God to see it. We cannot be sure, 
 then, whether the reference is to the work of 
 creation, as it was first conceived and patterned 
 by the Divine mind ; or as it was afterwards 
 fashioned for human purposes by the Divine 
 hand ; or as it is to be, when it shall be once 
 more remoulded, and set by the same great 
 Builder and Maker on a firm and everlasting 
 foundation. 
 
 I have been speaking of the great cosmos of 
 the universe ; let us turn our eyes for a moment 
 
114 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 to a creation on a much smaller scale. In the 
 verse which follows it is the human microcosm 
 w^hich is preser.ted to us. ' Thine eyes did see 
 my substance, yet bemg imperfect : and in thy 
 book all my members were written, which in 
 continuance were fashioned, when as yet there 
 w^as nothing of them.' What an extraordinary 
 avouchment! And yet it is no mere flourish, 
 no poet's fiction or prophet's phrenzy — nothing 
 of the sort. In the Book of God David is 
 written as being, though no David is yet in 
 existence. Change the object; magnify the 
 embryo ; substitute for David the heaven and 
 the earth ; and may it not be true that in God's 
 Book — in Moses' record of it — the light, the 
 firmament, the sea, the plant and the herb, the 
 sun and the moon and the stars, animals marine 
 and animals terrene — all may have been ivntten, 
 albeit light, firmament, sea, earth, plant, herb, 
 sun, moon, and all the living swarms of sea and 
 land, were neither visible, nor had any embodied 
 existence ? Incomprehensible, no doubt, to human 
 reason ! But it is the same mysterious character, 
 
THE EPOCH THEORY. 115 
 
 the sa.ne language hard to be understood, which 
 pervades more or less the whole of the sacred 
 volume. Hear what Bacon saith — 'The Scrip- 
 tures, being given by inspiration, and not by 
 human reason, do differ from all other books in 
 the author, which, by consequence, doth draw 
 on some difference to be Lsed by the expositor. 
 For the inditer of them did know four things, 
 which no man attains to know, which are, the 
 mystery of the kingdom of glory, the perfection 
 of the law of nature, the secrets of the heart 
 of man, and the future succession of all ages.** 
 Weighty words these of a very wise man ! 
 
 I have endeavoured to show that, when Moses 
 tells us that ' In the beginning God created the 
 heaven and the earth,' he does not niean, and 
 the law of Biblical interpretation does not compel 
 us to believe that he means, that God did at 
 that very time actually and visibly complete His 
 work, but rather that He announced His j)urpose 
 and exhibited His plan, which purpose and plan 
 Moses assures us were in after times effectually 
 and fully accom.plished ; but, because Moses links 
 
no THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 together in his narrative the epoch of announce- 
 ment and the epoch of accomphshment, a person, 
 not acquainted witli his style, nor mindful of his 
 object, nor observant of the brevity of his de- 
 scription, nor famiUar with the real facts of the 
 case, might, not to say, would, naturally suppose 
 that the one followed the other in the order 
 of time as well, although an incalculable number 
 of years may have revolved, before the work was 
 so much as begun, much more, after it was 
 begun, before it was absolutely finished. Of the 
 progress of the work, of the manifold and marvel- 
 lous operations by which it w^as brought to its 
 present order and beauty, Moses is all but silent ; 
 partly, because those who need such information 
 have within their reach the fuller and larger 
 volume of the earth, wherein every the minutest 
 particular is set down in God's own handwriting ; 
 but principally, because the main scope of Moses' 
 revelation was the rise and progress of the human, 
 as distinguished from the material, universe. 
 Nevertheless the second chapter contains a cur- 
 sory reference to one of the earth's inchoate and 
 
THE EPOCH THEORY. 117 
 
 transitional stages. 'I'hese are the generations 
 of the heavens and of the earth when they were 
 created, in the day that the Lord God made the 
 earth and the heavens, and every plant of the 
 field not yet was in the earth, and every herb 
 of the field not yet grew : for the Lord God 
 had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and 
 there was not a man to till the ground. But 
 there went up a mist from the earth, and watered 
 the whole face of the ground.' We are not 
 required to fix the particular stage in the history 
 of the earth's formation when this state of things 
 prevailed ; all that we can certify is that, if there 
 was at that time no herbage, neither could there 
 have been any herbivorous animal. This short 
 and incidental allusion to what must have been 
 a phase of the earth at a very remote period 
 in the past, was probably intended to be a means 
 of introducing us by an easy and natural tran- 
 sition to the mention of man, whose formation, 
 name, place of habitation, and rule of life, are 
 next more particularly related. 
 
 Before I conclude, I must notice certain objec- 
 
ii8 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 tions which may be raised to the view which I 
 have taken. 
 
 It may be said that the order in which Moses 
 has arranged his matter tells against the sound- 
 ness of my exegesis — that die mention of the 
 day, on which God announced in each instance 
 His creative purpose, should have come immedi- 
 ately after Moses had mentioned the declaration 
 of that purpose, and not have been deferred 
 until he had inserted his own comment of how 
 it all came to pass, seeing that it came to pass 
 ages after the day on which the purpose w^as 
 announced. But it must be remembered, that 
 the days of Moses have a prospective as well as 
 a retrospective reference ; they are the steps by 
 which he advances to the mention of the Sab- 
 batical rest ; and, if one object of his revelation 
 was to root in the hearts of the Israelites a rever- 
 ential regard for that fundamental article of the 
 Jewish religion, he could not have introduced it 
 more solemnly, or impressed it more effectually, 
 than by giving the days the somewhat excep- 
 tional and certainly most emphatic position in 
 
THE EPOCH THEORY. 119 
 
 his narrative which he has done. But, in(lej)en(l- 
 ently of this, such interruptions and interlocutions 
 are quite in keeping with the general style of 
 Moses. So far from invariably observing the 
 order of time in the arrangement of his matter, 
 he abounds with parentheses, which introduce 
 digressions, explanations, annotations, thoughts 
 by the way, anything germane to his subject, 
 whether it be of earlier date, or whether it be 
 of later. Thus in the second chapter the seventh 
 and the fifteenth verses would very naturally 
 have followed each other thus — 
 
 7. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the 
 gro;nd, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of hfe ; 
 and man became a living soul. 
 
 8. And the Lord God took the man, and put him into 
 the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. 
 
 Instead of which what have we? Between the 
 two verses is intercalated a description of the 
 garden of Eden, its situation, its river-system, its 
 vegetable and mineral products, all which must 
 have been silently prepared long before ; and it 
 is only then that the thread of the narrative is 
 
120 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 resumed, and we are told what was done with the 
 newly-formed man. 
 
 Again, in the third chapter there is a long 
 digression about the progeny of Cain, their 
 place of settlement, their social history, their 
 industrial pursuits, and just at the lag end of 
 the chapter mention is made of Adam's third son 
 Seth, who, if sequence of time had been studied, 
 should have had precedence. The reader will 
 recall many such chronistic irregularities in other 
 parts of the Pentateuch. 
 
 It may be further objected that Moses makes 
 God speak to the man, as if he were a corporeal 
 being, and standing by a present listener — 
 ' Behold, I have given you every herb bear- 
 ing seed,' &c. Would this have been his style 
 if he had been telling of a conceived, and not 
 rather of a completed, creation ? It may be 
 answered, that a license of this sort is not without 
 example in Holy Scripture. In the forty-fifth 
 chapter of Isaiah God is represented as addressing 
 Cyrus by name, though years were to elapse 
 before Cyrus was cradled, much less crowned. 
 
THE EPOCH THEORY. 121 
 
 Or we may adopt the simpler explanation, that 
 the words quoted are not part of what ' God 
 said ' on the sixth day, when the word first went 
 forth that the earth should be framed, but part 
 of Moses' comment of what took place ages 
 afterwards, when the time arrived for man to 
 be made. 
 
 Lastly, it may be objected that, in naming the 
 Deity, a different style is noticeable in the second 
 chapter from what we find in the first; and on 
 this difference has been founded a theory, that 
 the book of Genesis could not have been the 
 production of a single author. But, so far from 
 seeing in this duality of names the slightest 
 reason to question the authorship of Moses, I 
 rather derive from it a strong presumptive proof 
 of his Divine inspiration, because he seems to 
 have anticipated a mystery, a knowledge of which 
 it would have been impossible for him to acquire 
 by meditation, or to derive from human sources. 
 To make my meaning clear, I must have recourse 
 once more to the Holy Scriptures, and where else 
 can we hope to find any certain and authentic 
 
122 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 information concerning God's nature and God's 
 ways? In that portion of the New Testament, 
 then, where the Apostles (whose inspiration, by 
 the way, rests on the strongest internal and ex- 
 ternal evidence) disclose to the Christian Churches 
 the secrets of the new spiritual creation, two 
 persons, and two persons only, have a distinct 
 and decided pre-eminence. The full force of 
 this statement can only be apprehended by those 
 who have carefully studied the Epistles ; it will be 
 sufficient to say, that almost every Epistle begins 
 with the salutation, only occasionally slightly 
 varied — ' Grace, mercy, and peace, from God our 
 Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ ' ; that 
 throughout every Epistle the same two names 
 repeatedly recur in intimate and exclusive asso- 
 ciation ; and that, when St. Paul, in his Epistle to 
 the Corinthians, carries us forward to the time 
 when the struggle of ages shall have terminated, 
 because sin and death shall be no more, it is the 
 Son, who, havang subdued all, delivers all to the 
 Father, that God may be all in all. Nor is it 
 only when the neiv creation is the theme, that we 
 
THE EPOCH THEORY. 123 
 
 observe this marked duality of persons. Where 
 (as is not unfrequently the case) the old creation 
 is referred to in the New Testament, we discer.i 
 the same two persons, we derive the same dual- 
 istic doctrine — ' God created all things by Jesus 
 Christ.' 'By the Word all things were made, 
 and without him was not anything made that 
 was made.' 'Thou, Lord' — the Son is being 
 compared with angels — 'in the beginning hast 
 laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens 
 are the work of thy hands.' Now if, as has been 
 suggested, and as is not improbable, the differ- 
 ence of names in the first two chapters of Genesis 
 are signs and symbols of a difference of persons, 
 if Elohim and Jehovah Elohim of the Old 
 Testament represent respectively the Father and 
 the Son of the New, whence did Moses get 
 this sublime mystery? Who initiated him into 
 it ? Who assured him ? Who but that great 
 Being who alone had the power to impart it, 
 and who afterwards did impart it, to the 
 Apostles ? Will this in any degree invalidate 
 the explanation which I have given ? Nay, 
 
124 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 it will rather confirm it. In the first chapter 
 I see the Divine Architect, who purposes, who 
 originates, who patterns, who proclaims ; in the 
 second chapter I behold the Divine Artificer, 
 who founds, who operates, w^lio executes, who 
 finishes. Thus does Moses, led by the Holy 
 Spirit, without pains or effort, with seeming 
 inconsistency, but With splendid consistency, 
 anticipate, if I should not say, foreshadow, the 
 evangelistic tidings of the joint workmanship of 
 two Divine persons — ' of one God, the Father, 
 of whom are all things, and one Lord, Jesus 
 Christ, by whom are all things/ 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 EPILEGOMENA. 
 
 Just as men of science have sometimes been 
 able, by a careful application of well-established 
 laws, to account for natural phasnomena which 
 had long lain beyond the reach of their appre- 
 hension, so I, by relying on certain Scriptural 
 assurances which have proceeded from God- 
 inspired men concerning the ways of God in 
 connection with the creation of the spiritual 
 world, have sought to elucidate what Moses has 
 recorded concerning the ways of God in con- 
 nection with the creation of the material universe. 
 If it is impossible that the mode of God's pro- 
 cedure could have been the same, when He made 
 the world of matter, as it unquestionably is 
 represented as having been when He called into 
 
126 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 being the new creation, the whole of my argu- 
 ment in the foregoing chapter, being void of 
 foundation, collapses ; but once let it be granted, 
 as I think it must be, that the law of the Divine 
 operation in the two cases may have been the 
 same, and I have shown a way of explaining the 
 first chapter of Genesis, which may fairly claim 
 to take its place among possible solutions of that 
 mysterious and hitherto unexplained chapter. 
 And it is surely something to have hit upon 
 a method, which on the one hand cannot conflict 
 with the well-ascertained facts of science, and on 
 the other does not transgress the recognized 
 limits of interpretation of Holy Scripture. That 
 the law of interpretation, which applies to the 
 sacred writings, is not always identical with the 
 law of interpretation, which applies to secular 
 literature, is explicitly declared in the Scriptures 
 themselves, and those who will not accept the 
 testimony of the Scriptures must not take it 
 amiss, if we, who do accept it, base our argu- 
 ments on the faith of it. In other words, we 
 claim to interpret the Scriptures according to the 
 
EPILEGOMENA. 127 
 
 Scriptural law of interpretation, which we hold 
 to be good and true. We insist on a distinction 
 between things secular and things spiritual. We 
 refuse to confine the operation of God to those 
 laws only, which are called the laws of nature, 
 and which are the only laws which some profess 
 to know, or think they know. We believe that 
 God Himself has revealed what unassisted reason 
 could never have guessed. If I am asked, whether 
 I have any warrant, other than I have mentioned, 
 for interpreting the simple narrative of Moses in 
 this high spiritual fashion, I answer that the 
 writers of the New Testament have interpreted 
 parts of the Pentateuch in a somewhat similar 
 fashion, when, to illustrate the mysteries of the 
 Christian rehgion, they quote passages from it, 
 which we should never have thought capable of 
 such an application, had we not been authorita- 
 tively told so ; a type, an allegory, a prophecy, are 
 made to appear, where neither type, allegory, nor 
 prophecy would seem to be possible ; nay, verses 
 of the first two chapters of Genesis have been 
 cited to show the certainty of the rest that 
 
128 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 remaineth for the people of God, and the intimate 
 union which subsists between Christ and His 
 Church. I may not, of course, conclude, because 
 parts of the Pentateuch are thus spiritualized, 
 that therefore all of it must bear a similar com- 
 plexion; but I may fairly argue, if portions, 
 where human actors mainly figure, can be made 
 to glow with Divine light, what may we not 
 expect in a chapter which carries us back to a 
 time when neither man nor matter existed, but 
 God was the sole operator, and God's work the 
 theme? Unless the first Christian writers were 
 strangely mistaken in their interpretations, which 
 we cannot for a moment allow, it is impossible 
 to escape from the conclusion, that, wlien Moses 
 penned the particular passages which are so 
 expounded by them, he was, so far as those 
 passages are concerned, whether consciously or 
 unconsciously, moved by a Divine impulse. 
 Shall we say that God dictated to Moses the 
 far-off things of the latter days, yet, when Israel 
 had need to be instructed in the far-off things 
 of the former days, God left him to tell his 
 
EPILEGOMENA. 129 
 
 Story as best he couid ? The style and sub- 
 stance of Moses' narrative forbid us to think 
 so. If we compare the Mosaic cosmogony with 
 the various others which in various times and 
 countries have been disseminated, we shall find 
 that theirs are at the best a monstrous compound 
 of wisdom and folly, of morality and immorality, 
 of divinity and daemon ry, prolix, confused, con- 
 tradictory, a famous theme for comic poets to 
 parody and ridicule ; whereas his is a masterpiece 
 of simple writing, full of good sense and sub- 
 stance, succinct, comprehensive, Catholic, pre- 
 senting such a vivid, intelligible, impressive 
 picture of a great work of God, that it has won 
 the assent and approbation not only of the simple- 
 minded and inerudite, but of those also who have 
 been justly ranked among the wise men of the 
 earth. How do we account for this remarkable 
 difference? I can imagine but one probable 
 explanation — that Moses wrote not of himself, 
 but received a revelation from God. The ques- 
 tion of Moses' inspiration is so intimately bound 
 up with the history of the Jews, that, as long as 
 
I30 THE ^ WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 that remarkable people are scattered over the 
 face of the globe, mingled with the nations, but 
 not of them, so long will Moses not lack wit- 
 nesses to prove that he was indeed a man of 
 God. If I were asked to single out some one 
 portion of his writings rather than another, as 
 affording convincing evidence that he partook, 
 at any rate at times, of a celestial illumination, 
 I should select his Song in the latter part of 
 Deuteronomy, where with unerring accuracy he 
 forecasts the future of the Jewish nation — a future 
 so extraordinary, that no man could of himself 
 have divined it ; so tragic, that no Jew, certainly 
 no patriot Jew, would have credited, much less 
 clearly and unreservedly proclaimed it, unless he 
 had been moved to do so by the Spirit of God — 
 a future, where rebellion was followed by chastise- 
 ment, apostasy by rejection, after which came 
 dispersion to the uttermost parts of the earth, 
 fierce persecutions, wholesale massacres, yet a 
 remnant always to be found. If I were asked 
 to point out a portion of Mcses' writings, which, 
 next after his Song, would seem almost to have 
 
EPILEGOMENA. 131 
 
 necessitated the interposition of the Deity, I 
 should quote the chapter where he professes to 
 relate what God said and did before ever the 
 world of man or matter w^as. And here I may 
 enumerate certain points of agreement which are 
 observable between the revelation of Moses and 
 the record of the earth. From both we learn 
 that water existed at a very early period, and 
 exercised a potent influence in the formation of 
 the globe ; in both certain epochs are traced out, 
 marking the progress of the work ; both tell of 
 a time when not a blade of grass, nor an animal, 
 was living; in both animals of the water are 
 represented as created before animals of the land, 
 beasts before man ; both agree that man was 
 made last, and was endowed with a superior 
 nature and commanding powers. A capital 
 elementary lesson surely of the great work of 
 creation to be compressed into a chapter of 
 some thirty verses! But the Hebrew prophet 
 would have counted that he had laboured in vain 
 if he had not again and again, in every part of 
 his chapter, given the foremost place to the 
 
132 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 Name of Him of whom it is written, that He is 
 ' wonderful in counsel, and excellent in ivorking' 
 Divinity of this sort was not to be learnt in the 
 schools of Egypt. 
 
 In conclusion, I shall state it as my firm con 
 viction and irreversible belief, that Moses tells 
 us nothing more or less than the truth, when 
 with majestic simplicity and marked emphasis 
 he announces that God said, Let there be light ; 
 and God said. Let there be a firmament ; and 
 God said, Let the dry land appear ; and God said, 
 Let the earth bring forth grass and herb and 
 tree; and God said. Let there be lights in the 
 firmament of heaven ; and God said, Let the 
 waters bring forth abundantly the moving crea- 
 ture and the fowl ; and God said, Let the earth 
 bring forth the living creature after his kind ; and 
 God said. Let us make man : innumerable ages 
 may have intervened ; innumerable agencies may 
 have operated ; many may have been the steps 
 in the progress of creation ; but this one essential, 
 eternal truth neither philosophy nor science, 
 neither secularist nor ecclesiastic, no, nor yet an 
 
EPILEGOMENA. 133 
 
 angel from heaven, can shake, any more than 
 they can disrobe the sun of Hght, or start the 
 minutest star one-milHonth of an inch from its 
 appointed course — that ' in the beginning God 
 created the heaven and the earth.' And this 
 high doctrine will stand, whether there be any 
 truth in the evolutionary theory or not. If 
 evolution have any foundation in fact, it will still 
 have been God who planned it, God who brought 
 it to pass ; nor will a believing mind have any 
 more difficulty in apprehending, that man was 
 evohed from a molecule or a monkey, than that 
 he was formed — than which descent what can be 
 lower ? — from ' the dust of the ground.' Moses' 
 formula, ' God said,' covers it all. When, how- 
 ever, we are asked to abandon well-attested, long- 
 cherished truths for new and fanciful conceits — 
 to bid a long farewell to the garden of Eden, 
 and to search for our first progenitor in the 
 shaggy wilds of some primaeval forest, we are 
 constrained to ask, What is the proof? Granted 
 that there is a graduation of form from the lowest 
 to the highest; granted that there are striking 
 
134 THE 'WORKS AND DAYS' OF MOSES. 
 
 Structural resemblances between all animals, and 
 that the monkey is a mocking counterpart of the 
 man, is there, then, nothing to be said on the 
 other side ? Are there no disparities, no dissimi- 
 larities ? If there is continuity of form, there is 
 discontinuity of substance. ' All flesh is not 
 the same flesh : but there is one kind of flesh 
 of men, another flesh of fishes, another flesh of 
 birds.' And then, far more than all this, there 
 is man's inner life, man's marvellous continuous 
 history, man's high revealed destiny. What is 
 there in the whole range of the brute creation 
 to parallel these ? Here we have a yawning gulf, 
 which no scientific engineering has been able to 
 bridge. The missing link, more valuable than 
 all the rest of the links put together, cannot 
 be found ; nor would it, could the waters of the 
 Indian Ocean be dried up, beneath whose depths 
 a profound German professor fondly divines — does 
 he believe it himself? does he dream that he will 
 be able to induce a single rational being to believe 
 it: — that it might be found imbedded. One 
 thing, however, is certain — the law of evolution 
 
EPILEGOMENA. 135 
 
 is not universally true ; the higher has not in 
 every case been evolved from that which is below 
 it — God 2vas not evolved. More reasonable, 
 more trustworthy, the express declaration of the 
 Mosaic Scriptures, that 'God created man in 
 his own image, in the image of God created 
 he him.' ' And the Lord God formed man of 
 the dust of the ground, and breathed into his 
 nostrils the breath of life, and man became a 
 living soul.' It is on the faith of this simple 
 representation, that St. Luke traces up man's 
 pedigree not to any one of the brute creation, 
 but directly to God — ' which was the son of 
 Adam, which was the son of God.' If, then, 
 we are to borrow terms from the dictionary 
 of the evolutionist, let us say that man was 
 evolved from God, and from no other but God. 
 This is the teaching of true science ; this is the 
 wisdom which cometh down from above. 
 
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Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, 
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 The 'works and days' of Moses : or, A 
 
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