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THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE 
 
THE 
 
 Creation Story 
 
 HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M. P. 
 
 ««!» 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 HENRY ALTEMUS 
 
Copyrighted, 1896, by Henry Altemus. 
 
 HENRY ALTEMUS, MANUFACTURER, 
 PHILADELPHIA. 
 
54 
 
 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 **The risincT birth 
 Of Nature from the unapparent deep." 
 
 Far. Lost. B. vii. 
 
 IN recent controversies on the trust- 
 worthiness of the Scripture record, 
 much has been thought to turn on the 
 Creation Story ; and the special and separate 
 importance thus attached to it has given it 
 a separate and prominent position in the 
 pubhc view. This constitutes in itself a 
 reason for addressing ourselves "at once to 
 the consideration of it, apart from any 
 more general investigation touching either 
 the older Scriptures at large, or any of the 
 books which collectively compose them. 
 
 But there are broader and deeper reasons 
 for this separate consideration. It is sug- 
 gested, first, by the form which has been 
 given to the relation itself The narrative, 
 given with wonderful succinctness in the 
 first chapter of the Book of Genesis, and 
 in the first three verses of the second 
 chapter, stands distinct, in essential points, 
 
 5 
 
 M.?49^3^- 
 
 ^Ov-? 
 
6 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 from all that follows in the Scriptures. It 
 is a solitary and striking example of the 
 detailed exposition of physical facts. For 
 such an example we must suppose a pur- 
 pose; and we have to inquire what that 
 purpose was. Next, it seems as it were to 
 trespass on the ground of science, and, 
 independently of investigation and of evi- 
 dence, to assert a rival authority. And 
 further, forming no part, unless towards its 
 close, of the history of man, and nowhere 
 touching directly on human action, it 
 severs itself from the rest of the Sacred 
 Volume, and appears more as a preface to 
 the history, than as a part of it. 
 
 And yet there are signs, in subsequent 
 portions of the Volume, that this tale of 
 the Creation was regarded by the Hebrews 
 as both authoritative and important. For 
 it gave form and shape to portions of their 
 literature, in the central department of its 
 devotions. Nay, traces of it may, perhaps, 
 be found in the Book of Job (xxxviii.), 
 where the Almighty challenges the patriarch 
 on the primordial works of creation. More 
 clearly in Psalm civ., where we have light, 
 the firmament, the waters and their sever- 
 ance and confinement within bounds ; a suc- 
 cession the same as in Genesis. Then fol- 
 low mixedly the animal and vegetable crea- 
 tions, and man as the climax crowns the 
 
THE CREATION STORY. y 
 
 series in ver. 23. So in Psalm cxlviii. we 
 have first (1-6) the heavens, the heavenly 
 bodies, and the atmosphere; then, again 
 mixedly, the earth and the agents affecting 
 it, with the animate population (7-10), and 
 lastly man. If there be some variation in 
 the order of the details, still the idea of 
 consecutive development, or evolution, 
 which struck so forcibly the intelligence of 
 Haeckel, is clearly impressed upon the 
 whole. At a later date, and only (so far as 
 is known) in the Greek tongue, we find a 
 more nearly exact resemblance in the Song 
 of the Three Children. The heavenly 
 bodies and phenomena occupy the first 
 division of the Song ; then the earth is 
 invoked to bless the Lord, with its moun- 
 tains, vegetation, and waters ; then the 
 animate population of water, air, and land, 
 in the order pursued in the first chapter of 
 Genesis, and with the same remarkable 
 omission of the great kingdom of the Rep- 
 tiles at their proper place. Then follow the 
 children of Men ; and these fill the closing 
 portion of the Song. The most noteworthy 
 differences (which, however, are quite sec- 
 ondary, seem to be that there is no mention 
 of the first beginnings of vegetation, and 
 no supplemental notice, as in Gen. i. 24-30, 
 of the reptiles. 
 
 But also the sun, moon, and stars, which 
 
8 THE CREATION STORY, 
 
 are categorically placed later in Genesis 
 than vegetation, precede in the Song any 
 notice of the earth. Let not this difference 
 be hastily called a discrepancy. Each mode 
 is to be explained by considering the 
 character and purpose of the composition. 
 In Genesis, it is a narrative of the action ; 
 in the Song, it i^ a panorama of the spec- 
 tacle. Genesis, as a rule, refers each of the 
 great factors of the visible world to its due 
 order of origin in time ; the Song enumer- 
 ates the particulars as they are presented to 
 the eye in a picture, where the transcendent 
 eminence of the heavenly bodies as they 
 are, and especially of the sun, gives to this 
 group a proper priority. 
 
 But this Creation Story may have an 
 importance for us even greater than it had 
 for the Hebrews, or than it could have in 
 any of those ages when all men believed, 
 perhaps even too freely, in special modes of 
 communication from the Deity to man, and 
 had not a stock of courage or of audacity 
 sufficient to question the possibility of a 
 divine revelation. For we have now to 
 bear in mind that the Book of Genesis 
 generally contains a portion of human his- 
 tory, and that all human history is a record 
 of human experience. It is not so with the 
 introductory recital ; for the contents of it 
 lie outside of, and anterior to, the very 
 
I 
 
 THE CREATION STORY, g 
 
 earliest human experience. How came, 
 then, this recital into the possession of a 
 portion of mankind ? 
 
 It is conceivable that a theory of Creation 
 and of the ordering of the world might be 
 bodied forth in poetry, or might under given 
 circumstances be, as now, based on the re- 
 searches of natural science. 
 
 But, in the first place, this recital cannot 
 be due to the mere imagination of a poet. 
 It is in a high degree, as we shall see, 
 methodical and elaborate. And there is 
 nothing either equalling or within many 
 degrees approaching it, which can be set 
 down to the account of poetry in other 
 spheres of primitive antiquity, whatever 
 their poetical opulence may have been. 
 Further, the early Hebrews do not appear 
 to have cultivated or developed any poetical 
 faculty at all, except that which was exhib- 
 ited in strictly religious work, such as the 
 devotions of the Psalms, and (principally) 
 the discourses and addresses of the 
 Prophets. 
 
 As they were not, in a general sense, 
 poetical, so neither were they in any sense 
 scientific. By tradition, and by positive 
 records, we know pretty well what kinds 
 of knowledge were pursued in very early 
 ages. They were most strictly practical. 
 Take, for example, astronomy among the 
 
jQ THE CREATION STORY, 
 
 Chaldees, or medicine among the Egyp- 
 tians. The necessities of Hfe then, as now, 
 pressed upon man. We may say with 
 much confidence that in remote antiquity 
 there existed no science Hke geology, 
 aiming to give a history of the earth. 
 So, again, there was no cosmogony, pro- 
 fessing to convey a history of the kosmos 
 as then understood ; which would have in- 
 cluded, together with the earth, the sun, 
 moon, planets, and atmosphere. 
 
 When, at a later date, speculation on 
 physical origins began, it was rather on the 
 primary idea than on any systematic ar- 
 rangement or succession. With the Ionic, 
 which was the earliest school of philosophy, 
 the human intelligence was mainly busied 
 in contending for one or other of the known 
 material elements, as entitled to the hon- 
 ors of the primordial cause. Nor had even 
 the Greeks or Romans formulated any 
 scheme in any degree approaching that of 
 Genesis for order and method, so late as 
 the time when they became acquainted with 
 the Hebrew Scriptures through their trans- 
 lation into Greek. The opening statement 
 \ of Ovid in the " Metamorphoses " is re- 
 markable; but at the time when he wrote, 
 the Book of Genesis had been accessible to 
 educated persons in what was then the chief 
 literary language of the Romans. There is 
 
THE CREATION STORY. jj- 
 
 not, then, the smallest ground for treating 
 the Mosaic cosmogony, whether in the way 
 of original or copy, as the offspring of scien- 
 tific inquiry. 
 
 To speak of it as guesswork would be ir- 
 rational. There were no materials for 
 guessing. There was no purpose to be 
 served by guessing. For a record of the 
 formation of the world we find no purpose 
 in connection with the ordinary necessities 
 or conveniences of life. Not to mention 
 that down to this day there exists no cos- . 
 mogony which can be called scientific, 
 though there are theories both ingenious 
 and beautiful, which apparently are coming 
 to be more and more accepted ; these, how- 
 ever, being of an origin decidedly late even 
 in the history of modern physics. 
 
 But, further, as the Tale of Creation is 
 not poetry nor is it science, so neither, ac- 
 cording to its own aspect or profession, is it 
 theory at all. The method here pursued is 
 that of historical recital. The person, who 
 composes or transmits it, seems to believe, 
 and to intend others to believe, that he is 
 dealing with matters of fact. But these mat- 
 ters of fact were, from the nature of the case, 
 altogether inaccessible to inquiry, and im- 
 possible to attain by our ordinary mental 
 faculties of perception or reflection, inas- 
 much as they date before the creation of our 
 
J 3 THE CREA TIO N S TOR V. 
 
 race. If it is, as it surely professes to be, a 
 serious conveyance of truth, it can only be 
 a communication from the Most High ; a 
 communication to man and for the use of 
 man, therefore in a form adapted to his 
 mind and to his use. If, thus considered, it 
 is true, then it carries stamped upon it the 
 proof of a Divine revelation ; an asser- 
 tion which cannot commonly be sustained 
 from the nature of the contents as to this or 
 that minute portion of Scripture at large. 
 
 If, when thus considered, it proves not to 
 be true, we then have to consider what ac- 
 count of it we are in a condition to give. I 
 cannot say that to me this appears an easy 
 undertaking. " If," says Professor Dana 
 with much reason, " it be true that the nar- 
 ration in Genesis has no support in natural 
 science, it would have been better for its re- 
 ligious character that all the verses between 
 the first and those on the creation of man 
 had been omitted." * 
 
 But the truth, or trueness, of which I 
 speak, is truth or trueness as conveyed to 
 and comprehended by the mind of man; 
 and, further, by the mind of man in a com- 
 paratively untrained and inf^mt state. I can- 
 not, indeed, wholly shut out from view the 
 possibility that casual imperfections may 
 
 * " Creation." By Professor Dana. Oberlin, O., 
 1885 ; p. 202. 
 
THE CREATION STORY. j-, 
 
 have crept into the record. Setting aside, 
 however, that possibility, let us consider the 
 conditions of the case as they are exhibited 
 to us by reasonable likelihood ; for, if the 
 communication were divine, we maybe cer- 
 tain that it would on that account be all the 
 more strictly governed by the laws of the 
 reasonable 
 
 In an address * of singular ability on 
 " The Discord and Harmony between Sci- 
 ence and the Bible," Dr. Smith, of the Uni- 
 versity of Virginia, has drawn some very 
 important distinctions. In the department 
 of natural science, and in the department 
 of Scriptural record, the question lies ** be- 
 tween the present interpretation of certain 
 parts of the Hebrew Scriptures, and the 
 present interpretation of certain parts of 
 nature." f *' We must not too hastily assume 
 that either of these interpretations is abso- 
 lute and final." ** The science of one epoch 
 is to a large extent a help, which the sci- 
 ence of the next uses and abandons." Dr. 
 Smith points out as an example that, down 
 to the early part of the present century, 
 Newton's projectile theory of light seemed 
 to be firmly established, but that it has 
 given place to the theory of undulation, 
 ** which has now for ^{Xy years reigned in its 
 
 * New York : Hatcham. The Address is dated July 
 27, 18S2. t ^^'^' P- 3- 
 
J. THE CREATION STORY, 
 
 stead." Hence, he observes, we should not 
 be too much elated by the discovery of har- 
 monies, nor should we receive with im- 
 patience the assertion of contradictions. 
 Throughout, it is probable, and not demon- 
 strative, evidence with which we are deal- 
 ing. There should always be a certain ele- 
 ment of reserve in our judgments on par- 
 ticulars ; yet probable evidence may come 
 indefinitely near to demonstration ; and, 
 even as, while falling greatly short of it, it 
 may morally bind us to action, so may it, 
 on precisely the same principles, bind us to 
 belief. What we have to do is, to deal with 
 the evidence before us according to a ra- 
 tional appreciation of its force. It may 
 show on this or that particular question the 
 concord, or it may show the discord, be- 
 tween alleged facts of nature and alleged 
 interpretations of Scripture ; or it may leave 
 the question open, for want of sufficient evi- 
 dence, either way, on which to ground a 
 conclusion. 
 
 It is by these principles, and under these 
 limitations, that I desire to see the question 
 tried in the terms in which I think it ought 
 to be stated ; namely, not whether the reci- 
 tals in Genesis at each and every point have 
 an accurately scientific form, but, Whether 
 the statements of the Creation Story, as a 
 whole, appear to stand in such a relation to 
 
THE CREA riON STORY. j r 
 
 the facts of natural science, so far as they 
 have been ascertained, as to warrant or re- 
 quire our concludinc^ that the statements 
 have proceeded, in a manner above the or- 
 dinary manner, from the Author of the cre- 
 ation itself.* 
 
 Those, who maintain the affirmative of 
 this proposition, have by opponents been 
 termed Reconcilers; and it is convenient, 
 in a controverted matter, to have the power 
 of reference by a single word to the pro- 
 posers of any given opinion. The same 
 rule of convenience may perhaps justify me 
 in designating those who would assert the 
 negative by the name of Contradictionists. 
 The recorder of the Creation Story in Gen- 
 esis I may designate by the name of Moses 
 himself, or the Mosaist, or the Mosaic 
 writer. This would not be reasonable, if 
 there were anything extravagant in the sup- 
 position that there is a groundwork of fact 
 for the tradition which treats Moses as the 
 author of the Pentateuch. But such a sup- 
 position, in whole or in part, is sustained by 
 
 * See the attractive paper of Professor Pritchard, in 
 his *' Occasional Thoughts," Murray, 1889. He says on 
 p. 261, "I cannot accept the Proem as being, or even as 
 intended to he, an exact and scientific account of Crea- 
 tion," but adds that it ** contains within it elements of 
 that same sort of superhuman aid or superintendence^ 
 which is generally understood by the undefined term of 
 inspiration,'^ 
 
J 6 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 many and strong presumptions, and I bear 
 in mind that Wellhausen, in giving Bleek's 
 " Introduction " to the world, stated it as his 
 opinion that there is a strong Mosaic ele- 
 ment in the Pentateuch. 
 
 It does not seem too much to say, that 
 the conveyance of scientific instruction as 
 such would not, under the circumstances of 
 the case, be a reasonable object for the Mo- 
 saic writer to pursue; for the condition of 
 primitive man, as it is portrayed in the Book 
 of Genesis, did not require, perhaps did not 
 admit of, scientific instruction. On the other 
 hand, it could not but be a reasonable ob- 
 ject then to convey to the mind of man, 
 such as he actually was, a moral lesson 
 drawn from and founded on that picture, 
 that assemblage of created objects, which 
 was before his eyes, and with which he lived 
 in perpetual contact. We have, indeed, to 
 consider both what lesson it would be most 
 rational to convey, and by what method it 
 would be most rational to stamp it, as a 
 living lesson, on the mind by which it was 
 to be received. And the question finally to 
 be decided is not, whether according to the 
 present state of knowledge the recital in 
 the Book of Genesis is at each several point 
 either precise or complete. It may here be 
 general, there particular; it may here de- 
 scribe a continuous process, and it may there 
 
THE CREATIOM STORY, j^ 
 
 make large omissions, if the things omitted 
 were either absolutely or comparatively im- 
 material to its purpose ; it may be careful 
 of the actual succession in time, or may 
 deviate from it, according as the one or the 
 other best subserved the general and prin- 
 cipal aim ; so that the true question, I must 
 repeat, is no more than this : Do the prop- 
 ositions of the Creation Story in Genesis 
 appear to stand in such a relation to the 
 facts of natural science, so far as they are 
 ascertained, as to warrant or require our con- 
 cluding that these propositions proceeded, 
 in a manner above the ordinary manner, 
 from the Author of the visible creation? 
 
 What, then, may we conceive to have 
 been the moral and spiritual lessons which 
 the Mosaist had to communicate, and not 
 only to communicate but to infuse or to im- 
 press ? I do not presume to attempt an 
 exhaustive enumeration. But it is not dif- 
 ficult to specify a variety of purposes which 
 the narrative was calculated to promote, 
 and which were of great and obvious value 
 for the education of mankind. 
 
 First, it was fitted to teach man his 
 proper place in creation in relation to its 
 several orders, and thereby to prepare at 
 least for the formation of the idea of rela- 
 tive duty, as between man and other created 
 beines. 
 
l3 THE CREATION STORY, 
 
 Secondly, it presented to his mind, and by 
 means of detail made him know and feel 
 what was the beautiful and noble home that 
 he inhabited, and with what a fatherly and 
 tender care Providence had prepared it for 
 him to dwell in. There was a picture be- 
 fore his eyes. That picture was filled with 
 objects of nature, animate and inanimate. 
 I say, one of its great aims may have been 
 to make him know and feel by means of 
 detail ; for wholesale teaching, teaching in 
 the lump, or abstract teaching, mostly 
 ineffective even now, would have been 
 wholly futile then. It was needful to use 
 the simplest phrases, that the primitive man 
 might receive a conception, thoroughly 
 faithful in broad outline, of what his Maker 
 had been about on his behalf So the 
 Maker condescends to partition and set out 
 His work, in making it a picture. 
 
 But He proceeds further (and this is the 
 climax) to represent Him elf as resting 
 after it. This declaration is in no conflict 
 with any scientific record. It, however, 
 implies a license in the use of language, 
 which for its boldness was never exceeded in 
 any interpretation, reconciling or other, 
 which has been applied to any part of the 
 text of Genesis. But it draws its ample 
 warrant from the strong educative lesson 
 that is to be learned from it ; for it invests 
 
THE CREATION STORY. jq 
 
 both with majesty and authority the 
 doctrine of a day of rest, which was of the 
 highest importance to the higher and inner 
 hfe of man, and which the daily cares of 
 his existence were but too hkely, as ex- 
 perience proved, to efface from his recollec- 
 tion. 
 
 I contend then, thirdly, that the Creation 
 Story was intended to have a special bear- 
 ing on the great institution of the day of 
 rest, or Sabbath, by exhibiting it in the 
 manner of an object lesson. Paley, indeed, 
 has said that God blessed the seventh day 
 and sanctified it (Gen. ii. 3), not at that time 
 but for that reason. He is a writer much 
 to be respected, for many reasons ; but, in 
 dealing with Holy Scripture, he was some- 
 what apt to rest upon the surface. And 
 now we have learned from Assyrian re- 
 searches how many and how sharply traced 
 are the vestiges, long anterior to the de- 
 livery of the law, of some early institution 
 or command, which in that region evidently 
 had given a special sanctity to the number 
 seven, and, in particular, to the seventh day. 
 
 Man then, childlike and sinless, had to 
 receive a lesson which was capable of 
 gradual development, and which spoke to 
 something like the following effect. It has 
 not been by a slight or single effort that 
 the nature, in which you are moulded, has 
 
20 THE CREATION STORY, 
 
 been lifted to its present level ; you have 
 reached it by steps and degrees, and by a 
 plan which, stated in rough outline, may 
 stir your faculties, and help them onwards 
 to the truth through the genial action of 
 wonder, delight, and gratitude. This was 
 a lesson, as it seems to me, perhaps quite 
 large enough for the primitive man on the 
 facts of creation, and one which, when he 
 had heard and had begun to digest it, might 
 well be followed by a rest for generations. 
 And it further seems to have been vital 
 to the efficiency of this lesson, from such a 
 point of view, that it should have been 
 sharply broken up into parts, although 
 there might be in nature nothing, at any 
 precise points of breakage or transition, to 
 correspond physically with those divisions. 
 They would become intelligible, significant, . 
 and useful on a comparison of the several 
 processes in their developed state, and of 
 the vast and measureless differences, which 
 in that state they severally present to con- 
 templation. As, when a series of scenes 
 are now made to move along before the 
 eye of a spectator, his attention is not fixed 
 upon the joints which divide them, but on 
 the scenes themselves, yet the joints con- 
 stitute a framework as it were for each, and 
 the idea of each is made more distinct and 
 lively than it would have been if, without 
 
THE CREATION STORY. ^i 
 
 any note of division, they had run into one 
 another. 
 
 There is, however, another purpose, not 
 yet named, and more remote yet perhaps 
 even more vital, which appears to be power- 
 fully served by the Creation Story of the 
 Bible. In the prehistoric time, polytheism 
 was very largely engendered by national 
 distinctions, rivalries, and amalgamations. 
 By a ready and ingenious compromise each 
 people became habituated to recognize a 
 deity all-sufficient for its own wants, but 
 unconcerned with those of others. In the 
 course of time and of successive change, 
 many of these deities might find themselves 
 inducted into one and the same thearchy, or 
 mythological system, such as that of Assyria 
 or of Olympus, and sitting there side by 
 side. When this happened, the polytheistic 
 idea had reached its full development. But 
 the road to it lay principally through the 
 erection of separate thrones each for its 
 particular national organization, and through 
 the limits thus imposed upon the earlier 
 and more proper conception of a Divine 
 Governor. But where the Creation Story 
 of Genesis was received, the door was effect- 
 ually closed for all thinking men against 
 these coequal and purely national gods. 
 And how ? Because the God of Israel 
 was the Maker of the world, and of all the 
 
22 THE CREATION STORY, 
 
 nations in it. It was His creation ; and its 
 inhabitants, whether terrestrial or celestial, 
 were His creatures. Thus the narrative in 
 this great chapter was nothing less than a 
 charter of monotheism ; and though, in 
 Israelitish practice, Baal and Ashtoreth 
 might find their way into popular worship, 
 and spread around them an infinity of cor- 
 ruption, the lines of the dogma never were 
 obscured, and the standard of authoritative 
 reform still lifted up its head to heaven 
 from the first day of idolatry to the last, 
 when, in the Exile, it was finally sub- 
 merged.* 
 
 How effectually and vividly this great 
 idea of creation, lost or dilapidated else- 
 where, was impressed upon the Hebrew 
 mind we may perceive from an usage in the 
 Psalms, to which I do not remember a 
 parallel in the classical literature. The 
 lower orders of animated creatures are 
 themselves placed in a living relation to the 
 Almighty. " The lions roaring after their 
 
 prey, do seek their meat from God 
 
 These all wait upon thee ; that thou mayest 
 give them meat in due season." f Nor is 
 the boldness' of Hebrew devotion arrested 
 at this point. It extends to the inanimate 
 
 * For the further elucidation of the subject of this par- 
 agraph see the Postscript to *' The Creation Story." 
 f Ps. civ. 21, 27. 
 
THE CREATION STORY. 2X 
 
 world. " The heavens declare the glory of 
 God ; and the firmament shovveth His 
 
 handiwork Their sound is gone out 
 
 into all lands, and their words into the ends 
 
 of the world The sun cometh forth 
 
 as a bridegroom out of his chamber, and 
 rejoiceth as a giant to run his course." *- 
 This is without doubt noble poetry, but it 
 is also nobler than any poetry. Mute Na- 
 ture is instinct and vocal with worship, and 
 Creation in its humblest orders, giving a 
 lesson to its loftiest, ministers to the glory 
 of the Most High. 
 
 In order, then, to approach any attempt 
 at comparison between the record of Script- 
 ure and the record of Natural Science, we 
 must consider first, as far as reasonable 
 presumption carries us, what is the proper 
 object of the scientist, and what was the 
 proper object of Moses, or of the Mosaic 
 writer, in the first chapter of Genesis. 
 
 The object of the scientist is simply to 
 state the facts of nature in the cosmogony 
 as and so far as he can find them. The 
 object of the Mosaic writer is broadly 
 distinct ; it is, surely, to convey moral and 
 spiritual training. This training was to be 
 conveyed to human beings of childlike tem- 
 perament and of unimproved understanding. 
 It was his business to use those words which 
 
 * Ps. xix. 1-5. 
 
24 
 
 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 would best convey the lessons he had to 
 teach ; which would carry most truth into 
 the minds of those he taught. This ob- 
 servation has not the honors of originality. 
 " He emphasized," says Rabbi Grossmann,* 
 in his interesting tract on Maimonides, " as 
 very proper and wise, the Talmudic maxim, 
 that the Torah employs such diction as is 
 likely to be most communicative." 
 
 In speaking of the Mosaic writer, I would, 
 without presumption, seek to include any 
 divine impulse which may have prompted 
 him, or may have dictated any communica- 
 tion from God to man, in whatever form it 
 may have been conveyed. With this aim 
 in view, words of figure, though literally 
 untrue, might carry more truth home than 
 words of fact ; and words less exact will 
 even now often carry more truth than 
 words superior in exactness. The truth to 
 be conveyed was, indeed, in its basis phys- 
 ical ; but it was to serve moral and spiritual 
 ends, and accordingly by these ends the 
 method of its conveyance behoved to be 
 shaped and pictured. 
 
 I submit, then, that the days of creation 
 are neither the solar days of twenty-four 
 hours, nor are they the geological periods 
 which the geologist himself is compelled 
 popularly, and in a manner utterly remote 
 
 * P. 12. Putnam, New York and London, 1890.' 
 
( 
 
 I 
 
 THE CREATION STORY. 35 
 
 from precision, to describe as millions upon 
 millions of years. To use such language as 
 tills is simply to tell us, that we have no 
 means of forming a determinate idea upon 
 the subject of the geologic periods. I set 
 aside both these interpretations, as I do not 
 think the Mosaist intended to convey an 
 idea like the first, which was false, or like 
 the second, which for his auditory would 
 have been barren and unmeaning. Un- 
 meaning, and even confusing in the highest 
 degree ; for large statements in figures are 
 well known to be utterly beyond compre- 
 hension for man at an early intellectual 
 stage ; and I have myself, I think, shown * 
 that, even among the Achaian or Homeric 
 Greeks, the limits of numerical comprehen- 
 sion were extremely narrow, and all large 
 numbers were used, so to speak, at a ven- 
 ture. 
 
 It seems to me that the " days " of the 
 Mosaist are more properly to be described 
 
 as CHAPTERS IN THE HISTORY OF THE CREA- 
 TION. That is to say, the purpose of the 
 writer, in speaking of the days, was the 
 same as the purpose of the historian is, 
 when he divides his work into chapters. 
 His object is to give clear and sound in- 
 struction. So that he can do this, and in 
 
 *" Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age," vol. 
 iii., Section on Number. 
 
26 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 order that he may do it, the periods of time 
 assigned to each chapter are longer or 
 shorter, according as the one or the other 
 may minister to better comprehension of 
 his subject by his readers. Further, in 
 point of chronology, his chapters often 
 overlap. He finds it needful, always keep- 
 ing his end m view, to pursue some narra- 
 tive to its close, and then, stepping backw 
 wards, to take up some other series of facts, 
 although their exordium dated at a period 
 of time which he has already traversed. 
 The resources of the literary art, aided for 
 the last four centuries by printing, enable 
 the modern writer to confront more easily 
 these difficulties of arrangement, and so to 
 present the material to his reader's eye, in 
 text or margin, as to place the texture of 
 his chronology in harmony with the texture 
 of the action he has to relate. The Mosaist, 
 in his endeavor to expound the ordinary 
 development of the visible world, had no 
 such resources. His expedient was to lay 
 hold on that which, to the mind of his time, 
 was the best example of complete and or- 
 derly division. This was the day ; an idea 
 at once simple, definite, and familiar. As 
 one day is divided from another, not by any 
 change visible to the eye at a given moment, 
 yet effectually, by the broad chasm of the 
 intervening night, so were the stages of the 
 
THE CREATION STORY, 27 
 
 creative work several and distinct, even if, 
 like the lapse of time, tliey were without 
 breach of continuity. Each had its work, 
 each had the beginning and the completion 
 of that work, even as tlie day is begun by 
 its morning, and completed and concluded 
 by its evening. 
 
 And now to sum up. In order that the 
 narrative might be intelligible, it was useful 
 to subdivide the work. This could most 
 effectively be done by subdividing it into 
 periods of time. And further, it was well 
 to choose that particular circumscription or 
 period of time which is the most definite 
 and best understood. Of all these, the day 
 is clearly the best, as compared with the 
 month or the year — first, because of its 
 small and familiar compass ; and, secondly, 
 because of the strong and marked division 
 which separates one day from another. 
 
 Hence, we may reasonably argue, it is 
 that not here only, but throughout the 
 Scripture, and even down to the present 
 time in familiar human speech, the day is 
 figuratively used to describe periods of time, 
 perfectly undefined as such, but defined, for 
 practical purposes, by the lives or events to 
 which reference is made. And if it be said 
 there was a danger of its being misun- 
 derstood in this particular case, the answer 
 is that such danger of misapprehension at- 
 
28 THE CREATION STORY, 
 
 taches in various degrees to all use of fig- 
 urative language ; but figurative language 
 is still used. And with reason because the 
 mischiefs arising from such danger are rare 
 and trivial, in comparison with the force and 
 clearness which it lends to truth on its pas- 
 sage, through a clouded atmosphere of folly, 
 indifference, and prejudice, into the mind of 
 man. In this particular case, the danger 
 and inconvenience are at their minimum, 
 the benefit at its zenith ; for no moral mis- 
 chief ensues because some have supposed 
 the days of the creation to be pure solar 
 days of twenty-four hours, while the bene- 
 fit has been that the grand conception of 
 orderly development, and ascent from chaos 
 to man, became among the Hebrew people 
 an universal and familiar truth, of which 
 other races appear to have lost sight. 
 
 I may now part from the important and 
 long-vexed discussion on the Mosiac days. 
 But I shall further examine the general 
 question, what is the true method, what the 
 reasonable spirit, of interpretation to be ap- 
 plied to the words of the Creation Story ? I 
 will state frankly my opinion that, in this im- 
 portant matter, too much has sometimes 
 been conceded in modern days to the Scien- 
 tist and to the Hebraist, just as in former 
 days too much was allowed to the unproved 
 assumptions of the Theologian. Now it is 
 
THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 29 
 
 I 
 
 evident that the proper ground of the Scien- 
 tist and of the Hebraist respectively is un- 
 assailable, as against those who are neither 
 Scientists nor Hebraists, On the meaning 
 of the words used in the Creation Story I, 
 as an ignoramus, have only to accept the 
 statements of Hebrew scholars, with grati- 
 tude for the aid received ; and in like man- 
 ner those of men skilled in natural sci- 
 ence on the nature and succession of the 
 orders of being, and the transitions from 
 one to the other. Not that their statements 
 are inerrable; but they constitute the best 
 working material in our possession. Still 
 they are the statements of men whose title 
 to speak with authority is confined to their 
 special province; and if we allow them 
 without protest to go beyond it, and still 
 to claim that authority when they are 
 what is called at school '* out of bounds/' 
 we are much to blame, and may suffer for 
 our carelessness. 
 
 I will now endeavor to illustrate and 
 apply what has been said. The Hebraist 
 says, I will conduct you safely (as far as 
 the case allows) to the meaning of the 
 Hebrew words. And the Scientist makes 
 the same promise in regard to the facts 
 of the created orders, so far as they are 
 exhibited by geological investigations into 
 the crust of the earth. At first sight it 
 
30 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 may seem as if these two authoritative wit- 
 nesses must cover the whole ground, each 
 setting out from his own point of depart- 
 ure, the two then meeting in the midst, 
 and leaving no unoccupied space between 
 them. But my contention is that there is 
 a ground which neither of them is entitled 
 to occupy in his character as a special- 
 ist, and on which he has no warrant for 
 entering, except in so far as he is a just 
 observer and reasoner in a much wider 
 field. And what is the residuary subject- 
 matter still to be disposed of? Not the 
 meaning of the Hebrew words. The He- 
 braist has already given us their true equiv- 
 alents in English. We now learn, for ex- 
 ample, that the " whales " of Gen. i. 21 are 
 not whales at all, but that they are aquatic 
 monsters * or great creatures ; while we 
 learn from the biologist that the whale is 
 a late mammal. So geology has acquainted 
 us what are the relative dates of the water 
 and of the land populations, and has sup- 
 plied much information as to reptiles, birds, 
 
 * R. v., the great sea-monsters. "It seems, on the 
 whole, most probable, that the creatures here said to have 
 been created were serpents, crocodiles, and other huge 
 saurians, though possibly any large monsters of sea or 
 river may be included" (Bp. Browne in /^^., " Speak- 
 er's Commentary "). Possibly a word meaning, whether 
 wholly or inter alia^ crocodiles would convey a pretty 
 clear idea to the mind of the Hebrews, after their sojourn 
 in Egypt. 
 
THE CREATION STORY. ^^ 
 
 and beasts. But there remains a great un- 
 covered ground, and a great unsolved 
 question. It is this. Given the facts as 
 the geologist is led to state them, given 
 the Hebrew tongue as the instrument 
 through which the relator has to work, 
 what are the terms, and what is the order 
 and adjustment of terms, through which 
 he can convey most of truth and force, 
 with least of incumbrance and of im- 
 pediment, to the mind of man, in the con- 
 dition in which he had to deal with it? 
 Let me be permitted to say that the only 
 specialism, which can be of the smallest 
 value here, is that of the close observer 
 of human nature; of the student of human 
 action, and of the methods which Divine 
 Providence employs in the conduct of its 
 dealings with men. Certainly I can lay no 
 claim to be heard here more than any other 
 person. Yet will I say, that any man whose 
 labor and duty for several scores of years 
 has included as their central point the study 
 of the means of making himself intelligible 
 to the mass of men, is pro tanto perhaps in 
 a better position to judge what would be 
 the forms and methods of speech proper for 
 the Mosaic writer to adopt, than the 
 most perfect Hebraist as such, or the most 
 consummate votary of natural sciences as 
 such. 
 
22 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 I will now endeavor to try some portions 
 of the case which turn upon verbal difficulty. 
 At the outset of the narrative the relator 
 says, that " the earth was without form and 
 void'* (Gen. i. 2) and that " thespirit of God 
 moved upon the face of the waters.'* Nay, 
 how is this, says the Hebraist ? The He- 
 brew word for earth means earth, and the 
 word used for water never means anything 
 except water. But according to the beauti- 
 ful theory, which has during the last half- 
 century won so largely the adhesion of the 
 scientific world, and which seems to be 
 mainly called the nebular theory, at the 
 commencement of the process which Gene- 
 sis describes, and in its early stages, there 
 was no earth, and there were no waters. Is 
 the relator here really at fault ? It seems 
 to me that it might be quite as easy to cavil 
 at the phrase nebular theory, though it be 
 one in use among scientific men, as it is to 
 find fault with these words of Genesis. For 
 nothing can be more different than a 
 nebula or cloud from a vast expanse of 
 incandescent gaseous matter. In truth, we 
 seem to have for our point of departure a 
 time when all the elements and all the 
 forces of the visible universe were in cha- 
 otic mixture, whereas there could hardly be 
 any sort of nebula until they had begun 
 to be disengaged from one another. How 
 
THE CREATION STORY. ^^ 
 
 then are we to judge of the use of the word 
 *' earth " by the Mosaic writer ? Is it not 
 thus? He is deahng with an Adam, or 
 with a primitive race of men, who have 
 the earth under their eyes. He wants to 
 give them an idea of its coming into exist- 
 ence. And he says what we may fairly 
 paraphrase in this way : that which has 
 now become earth, and was then becoming 
 earth, the soHd well-defined form you see, 
 was as yet without form and void; epithets 
 which I am told might be improved upon, 
 but this is a matter by the way. 
 
 So again with respect to water. The 
 men for whom the relator wrote knew, per- 
 haps, of no fluid except water, at any rate 
 of none vast and practically measureless in 
 volume. What was the idea he had to 
 convey? It was not the special and dis- 
 tinctive character of the liquid called 
 water ; it was the broad separation between 
 solid as such, familiar, firm, immovable 
 under his feet, and fluid as such, movable 
 and fluctuating at large in space. No 
 doubt the idea conveyed by the word 
 waters is an imperfect idea, although waters 
 are still waters at times when they may be 
 holding vast quantities of solid in solution. 
 But it was an idea easy, clear, and familiar 
 up to the point of expressing forcibly the 
 contrast between the ancient state of things, 
 
24 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 with its weltering waste, and the recent and 
 defined conditions of the habitable earth. 
 Could we ask of the relator more than that 
 he should employ, among the words at his 
 disposal, that which would come nearest to 
 conveying a true idea ? And had he any 
 word so good as water for his purpose, 
 though it was but an approximation to the 
 actual fact? Dr. Driver describes the 
 scene as that of a " surging chaos.'^ Aa 
 admirable phrase, I make no doubt, for our 
 modern and cultivated minds ; but a phrase 
 which, in my judgment, would have left the 
 pupils of the Mosaic writer exactly in the 
 condition out of which it was his purpose 
 to bring them ; namely, a state of utter 
 ignorance and total darkness, with possibly 
 a little rufiSe of bewilderment to boot. An- 
 other description claiming high authority 
 is, an " uncompounded, homogeneous, 
 gaseous condition" of matter; to which the 
 same observation will apply. Even now, 
 it is only by rude and bald approximations 
 that the practised intellects of our scientists 
 can bring home to us a conception of the 
 actual process by which chaos passed into 
 kosmos^ or, in other words, confusion 
 became order, medley became sequence, 
 seeming anarchy became majestic law, and 
 horror softened into beauty. Before cen- 
 suring the Mosaist, who had to deal with 
 
THE CREATION STORY, 
 
 35 
 
 grown children, let the adverse critic try 
 his hand upon some little child. I believe 
 he will find that the method and language 
 of this relator are not only good, but super- 
 latively good, for the aim he had in view, if 
 once for all we get rid of standards of in- 
 terpretation other than the genuine and 
 just one, which tests the means employed 
 by their relation to the end contemplated 
 and sought. 
 
 I now approach a larger head of objec- 
 tion, which is usually handled by the Con- 
 tradictionists in a tone of confidence rising 
 into the paean of triumph. But let me, be- 
 fore presuming to touch on objections to 
 particulars of the Creation Story, guard 
 myself against being supposed to put for- 
 ward any portion of what follows as un- 
 conditional assertion, or final comment on 
 the text. The general situation is this. 
 Objectors do not hesitate to declare dog- 
 matically that the Great Chapter is in con- 
 tradiction with the laws and facts of nature, 
 and that attempts to reconcile them are 
 futile and irrational. It is thus sought to 
 close the question. My aim is to show 
 that the question is not closed, and that the 
 condemnation pronounced upon the Mosa- 
 ist is premature. For this purpose I offer 
 conjecturally, and in absolute submission 
 to all that biology and geology, or other 
 
^5 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 forms of science, have established, repHes 
 which are strictly provisional; but replies 
 which I consider that the Contradictionist 
 ought, together with other and weightier 
 replies, to confute, or legitimately to con- 
 sider, before he can be warranted in assert- 
 ing the contradiction. But I proceed. 
 
 How hopeless, is the cry, to reconcile 
 Genesis with fact, when, as a fact, the sun 
 is the source of light, and yet in Genesis, 
 light is the work of the first day, and vege- 
 tation of the third, while sun, moon, and 
 stars appear only on the fourth ! Nay, 
 worse still. Whereas the morning and the 
 evening depend wholly on the rotation of 
 the earth upon its own axis as it travels 
 round the sun, the Mosaist is so ignorant 
 that he gives us not days only, but the 
 mornings and the evenings of days before 
 the sun is created. And so his narration 
 explodes, not by blows aimed at it from 
 without, but by its own internal self-contra- 
 dictions. It is hissed, like a blundering 
 witness, out of court. Not that this is the 
 opinion of astronomers in general. Mr. 
 Lockyer,* for example, cites with appar- 
 ent approval a passage from his very dis- 
 tinguished predecessor in the science, Hal- 
 ley, who says that the diffused lucid me- 
 dium he had found disposed of the diffi- 
 
 * Nineteenth Century ^ Nov. 1889, p. 788. 
 
THE CREATION STORY, ^7 
 
 culty which some have moved against the 
 description Moses gives of the Creation, al- 
 leging that light could not be created with- 
 out the sun. 
 
 The first triad of days, says Professor 
 Dana,* sets forth the events connected with 
 the inorganic history of the earth. The 
 second triad, from the fourth day to the 
 sixth, is occupied with the events of the 
 organic history, from the creation of the 
 first animal to man. He finds in the gen- 
 eral structure of the narrative a consider- 
 able degree of elaboration, an arrangement 
 full of art. The passage from ver. 14 to 
 ver. 19 is, in one sense, a qualification of 
 the order he thinks to have been laid down, 
 inasmuch as the heavenly bodies belong to 
 the inorganic division of the history. From 
 another point of view, however, this arrange- 
 ment contributes in a marked manner to the 
 symmetry of the narrative. The first triad 
 of days begins with the first and gradual 
 detachment of light from the ** surging 
 chaos"; the second, at the stage in which 
 light has reached its final distribution. The 
 central mass had now assumed with a cer- 
 tain amount of regularity (for according to 
 heliologists the process does not even yet 
 appear to be absolutely completed) its spher- 
 ical and luminous figure, after shedding off 
 * Dana's •* Creation," p. 207. 
 
^8 THE CREATION STORY, 
 
 from itself the minor masses, each to find 
 for itself its own orbit of rotation. Or, if 
 we are to assume that the photosphere or 
 vapor-envelope of the earth itself had ob- 
 structed the vision of the sun, we have, 
 further, to assume* that this obstacle had 
 now disappeared, and the visibility of the 
 sun was established. So that hght, or the 
 h'ght-power, while diffused, ushers in the 
 first division of the mighty process; the 
 same light-power, concentrated by the 
 operation of the rotatory principle, and for 
 practical purposes become such as we now 
 know it, is placed at the head of the second 
 division, the division that deals with organic 
 life. 
 
 It is remarkable, that the subject of light 
 is the only one which is dealt with in two 
 separate sections of the narrative. The 
 gradual severance, or disengagement, of the 
 earth from its present vesture, the atmos- 
 phere, and of the solid land from the ocean, 
 are continuously handled in verses 6-10. 
 Each of the processes is summed up into 
 its grand result, as if it had been a violent, 
 convulsive, instantaneous act. The avoid- 
 ance of all attempt to explain the process 
 seems to me only a proof of the wisdom 
 which guided the formation of the tale. To 
 the primitive man it would have become a 
 * Guyot, ** Creation," ch. xi. p. 92. 
 
THE CREATION STORY. ^q 
 
 barren puzzle ; the wood must have been 
 lost in the trees. As it now stands, mental 
 confusion is avoided, and definite ideas are 
 conveyed. 
 
 There seems, however, to be a special 
 reason for the introduction of the heavenly- 
 bodies at this particular place. It was evi- 
 dently needful at some place or other to 
 give a specific account of the day, or com- 
 partment of time, which is employed to 
 mark the severance of the different stages 
 of creation from each other. At what point 
 of the narrative could this account be most 
 properly and most accurately introduced? 
 In order to answer this question, let us con- 
 sider the situation rather more at large. 
 
 The supposition is, that we set out with 
 a seething mass that contains all the ele- 
 ments which are to become the solids and 
 liquids, the moist and dry, the heat and the 
 non-heat or cold, the light and the non-light 
 or darkness, that so largely determine the 
 external conditions of our present existence. 
 By degrees, as, according to the rarity or 
 density of parts, the centripetal or the cen- 
 trifugal force prevails, the huge bulk of the 
 sun consolidates itself in the centre, and 
 aggregations of matter (rings, according to 
 Guyot,* which afterwards become, or may 
 become, spheres), are detached from it to 
 
 * " Creation," pp. 67, 73. 
 
40 
 
 THE CREATION STORY, 
 
 form the planets, under the agency of the 
 same mechanical forces; all or some of 
 them, in their turn, dismissing from their 
 as yet ill-compacted surfaces other subaltern 
 masses to revolve around them as satellites, 
 or otherwise, according to the balance of 
 forces, to take their course in space. Mean- 
 time, the great cooling process, which is 
 still in progress at this day, has begun. It 
 proceeds at a rate determined for it by its 
 particular conditions, among which mass 
 and motion are of essential consequence; 
 for, other things being equal, a small body 
 will cool faster and a large body will cool 
 slower; and a body moving more rapidly 
 through space of a lower temperature than 
 its own will cool more rapidly ; while one 
 which is stationary, or more nearly station- 
 ary, or which diffuses heat less rapidly from 
 its surface into the colder space, will retain 
 a high temperature longer. Owing to these 
 perhaps with other causes, the temperature 
 of the earth-surface has been adapted to 
 the conditions of human life, and of the 
 more recent animal life, for a very long time; 
 to those of the earlier animals, and of vege- 
 tation in its different orders, for we know 
 not how much longer; while the sun, though 
 gradually losing some part of his stock of 
 caloric, still remains at a temperature inordi- 
 
THE CREATION STORY. .^ 
 
 nately lilgli, and with a formation compara- 
 tively incomplete. 
 
 Considering, then, what are the relations 
 between the conditions of heat and those 
 of moisture, and how the coatings of vapor, 
 **the swaddUng-band of cloud,"* might 
 affect the visibility of bodies, may it not be 
 rash to affirm that the sun is, as a definite 
 and compact body, older than the earth ? or 
 that it is so old ? or that the Mosaist might 
 not properly treat the visibility of the sun, 
 in its present form, as best marking for man 
 the practical inception of his existence ? or 
 that, with heat, light, soil, and moisture 
 ready to its service, primordial vegetation 
 might not exist on the surface of a planet 
 like the earth, before the sun had fully 
 reached his matured condition of sufficiently 
 compact, material, and well-defined figure, 
 and of visibility to the eye ? May not, once 
 for all, the establishment of the relation of 
 visibility between earth and sun be the most 
 suitable point for the relator in Genesis to 
 bring the two into connection ? And here 
 again I would remind the reader that the 
 Mosaic days may be chapters in a history; 
 and that, not in despite of the law of series, 
 but with a view to its best practicable applica- 
 tion, the chapters of a history may overlap. 
 
 The priority of Earth to Sun, as given in 
 
 * Dana, p. 210. 
 
43 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 the narrative, carries us so far as this, that 
 vegetative work (of v^hat kind I shall pres- 
 ently inquire) is stated to be proceeding on 
 the surface of the earth before any relation 
 of earth with sun is declared. It is then 
 declared in the terms, "and God made two 
 great lights" (ver. l6). Now the making oi 
 earth is nowhere declared, but only im- 
 plied. And who shall say that there is 
 some one exact point of time in the con- 
 tinuous process which (according to the 
 nebular theory) reaches from the first begin- 
 ning of rotation down to the present condi- 
 tion of the solar system, to which point, 
 and to which alone, the term making must 
 belong? But, unless there be such a point, 
 it seems very difficult to convict the Mo- 
 saic writer of error in the choice he has 
 made of an opportunity for introducing the; 
 heavenly bodies into his narrative. 
 
 I suppose that no apology is needed for 
 his mentioning the moon and the stars as 
 accessories in the train of the sun, and com- 
 bining them all without note of time, 
 although their several ** makings " may have 
 proceeded at different speeds. But here 
 again we find exhibited that principle of 
 relativity to man and his uses, by which the 
 writer in Genesis appears so wisely to steer 
 his course throughout. We are told of 
 **two great lights" (ver. i6); and one of 
 
THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 43 
 
 them is the moon. The formation of the 
 stars is interjected soon after, as if compara- 
 tively insignificant. But the planet-stars 
 individually are in themselves far greater 
 and more significant than the moon, which 
 is denominated a great light. In what sense 
 is the moon a great light? Only in virtue 
 of its relation to us. For its magnitude, as 
 it is represented on the human retina, is far 
 larger than that of the stars, approaching 
 that of the sun ; and its office also makes it 
 the queen of the nocturnal heaven. So, 
 then, the general upshot is, that the mention 
 of the sun is introduced at that point in the 
 cosmogonic process when, from the condi- 
 tion of our form and atmosphere, or of his, 
 or of both, he had become so definite and 
 visible as to be finally efficient for his office 
 of dividing day from day, and year from 
 year ; that the planets, being of an altogether 
 secondary importance to us, simply appear 
 as his attendant company ; and that to the 
 moon, a body in itself comparatively insig- 
 nificant, is awarded a rather conspicuous 
 place, which, if objectively considered, is 
 out of proportion, but which at once falls 
 into line when we acknowledge relativity as 
 the basis of the narrative, by reason of the 
 great importance of the functions, which 
 this satellite discharges on behalf of the 
 inhabitants of the earth. 
 
A. THE CREATION STORY, 
 
 Next, it is alleged that we have days with 
 an evening and a morning before we have a 
 sun to supply a measure of time for them. 
 Doubtless there could be no approach to 
 anything like an evening and a morning, so 
 long as light was uniformly diffused. But 
 under the nebular theory, the work of the 
 first day implies an initial concentration of 
 light; and, from the time when light began 
 to be thus powerfully concentrated, would 
 there not be an evening and a morning, 
 though imperfect, for any revolving solid 
 of the system, according as it might be 
 turned towards, or from, the centre of the 
 highest luminosity? 
 
 But we have not yet emerged from the 
 net of the Contradictionist, who lays hold 
 on the vegetation verses (ii, 12) to im- 
 peach the credit of the Creation Story. 
 The objection here becomes twofold. First,- 
 we have vegetation anterior to the sun; and 
 secondly, this is not merely an aquatic 
 vegetation for the support of aquatic life, 
 nor merely a rude and primordial vegeta- 
 tion, such as that of and before the coal- 
 measures, but a vegetation complete and 
 absolute, including fern-grass, then the herb 
 yielding seed, and lastly the fruit-tree, yield- 
 ing fruit after its kind, whose seed is in 
 itself. Here is the food of mammals and 
 even of man provided, when neither of them 
 
THE CREATION STORY, ^r 
 
 was created, or was even about to exist 
 until after many a long antecedent stage of 
 lower life had found its way into creation 
 and undertaken its office there. 
 
 First, as regards vegetation before the 
 sun's performance of his present function in 
 the heavens is announced. There were 
 light and heat, atmosphere with its con- 
 ditions of moist and dry, soil prepared to do 
 its work in nutrition. Can there be ground 
 for saying that, with such provision made, 
 vegetation could not, would not, take place? 
 Let us, for argument's sake, suppose that 
 the sun could now recede into an earlier 
 condition, could go back by some few stages 
 of that process through which he became 
 our sun ; his material less compact, his form 
 less defined, his rays more intercepted by 
 the " swaddling-band " of cloud and vapor. 
 Vegetation might be modified in character, 
 but must it therefore cease? May we not 
 say that a far more violent paradox would 
 have been hazarded, and a sounder objec- 
 tion would have lain, had the Mosaic writer 
 failed to present to us at least an initial 
 vegetation before the era at which the sun 
 had obtained his present degree of definite- 
 ness in spherical form, and the conditions 
 for the transmission of his rays to us had 
 reached substantially their present state? 
 
 But, then, it is fairly observed that the 
 6 
 
^6 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 vegetation as described is not preparatory 
 and initial, but full-formed ; also, that any 
 tracing of vegetation anterior to animal 
 life in the strata is ambiguous and obscure. 
 In the age of Protozoa, the earliest living 
 creatures, the indications of plants are not 
 determinable, according to the high author- 
 ity of Sir J. W. Dawson. It is observed by 
 Canon Driver " that the proof from science 
 of the existence of plants before animals is 
 inferential and h priori'' * Guyot, however, 
 holds a directly contrary opinion, and says 
 the present remains indicate a large pres- 
 ence of infusorial protophytes in the early 
 seas.f But suppose the point to be con- 
 ceded. Undoubtedly, all ^ priori assump- 
 tions ought in inquiries of this kind to be 
 watched with the utmost vigilance and jeal- 
 ousy. Still there are limits, beyond which 
 vigilance and jealousy cannot push their 
 claims. Is there anything strange in the 
 supposition that the comparatively delicate 
 composition of the first vegetable structures 
 should have given way, and become indis- 
 cernible to us, amidst the shock and pres- 
 sure of firmer and more durable material ? 
 The flesh of the mammoth has, indeed, 
 been preserved to us, and eaten by dogs 
 
 * " The Cosmogony of Genesis," in The Ex^ositor^ 
 |nnuary 1886, p. 29. ' 
 
 f " Creation," x. p. 90. 
 
THE CREATION STORY. .« 
 
 in our own time, though coming down 
 from ages which we have no means of 
 measuring; but then it was not exposed 
 to the same pressure, and it subsisted 
 under conditions of temperature which 
 were adequately antiseptic. But has all 
 palaeozoic life been ascertained by its 
 flesh, or do we not owe our knowledge of 
 many among the earlier forms of animated 
 life altogether to their osseous structures ? 
 And, in cases where only bone remains, is 
 it an extravagant use of argument ^ priori 
 to hold that there must have been flesh 
 also ? And, if flesh, why should not vege- 
 table matter have subsisted, and have dis- 
 appeared? Canon Driver, indeed, observes* 
 that from a very early date animals preyed 
 upon animals. Still the first animal could 
 not prey upon himself; there must have 
 been vegetable pabulum, out of which an 
 animal body was first developed. " Before 
 the beasts," says Sir George Stokes, " came 
 the plants, plants which are necessary for 
 their sustenance."t 
 
 Next, with respect to the objection that 
 the vegetation of the eleventh and twelfth 
 verses is a perfected vegetation, and that 
 there existed no such vegetation before 
 animal life began. But why are we to sup- 
 
 * The Expositor, January, 1886, p. 29. 
 t Letter to Mr. Elflein, Aug. 14, 1883. 
 
.g THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 pose that the Mosaic writer intended to say 
 that such a vegetation did exist before 
 animal hfe began ? For no other reason 
 than this : having mentioned the first intro- 
 duction of vegetable life, he carries it on, 
 without breaking his narrative, to its com- 
 pletion. In so proceeding, he does ex- 
 actly what the historian does when, for the 
 sake of clearer comprehension, he brings 
 one series of events from its inception to 
 its close, although in order of time the be- 
 ginning only, and not the completion, be- 
 longs to the epoch at which he introduces 
 it. What I have called the rule of relativ- 
 ity, the intention, namely, to be intelligible 
 to man, seems to show the reason of his 
 arrangement If his meaning was, " The 
 beautiful order of trees, plants, and grasses 
 which you see around you had its first be- 
 ginnings in the era when living creatures 
 were about to commence their movements 
 in the waters and on the earth, and all this 
 was part of the fatherly work of God on your 
 behalf" — suoh meaning was surely well ex- 
 pressed, expressed after a sound and work- 
 manlike fashion, in the text of the Creation 
 Story as it stands. 
 
 I will next notice the objection that the 
 Mosaic writer takes (according to the re- 
 ceived version) no notice of the great age 
 of reptiles, but proceeds at once from the 
 
THE CREATION STORY, 
 
 49 
 
 creation of marine animals (ver. 20) to the 
 fowl that may " fly above the earth in the 
 open firmament of heaven." He thus 
 passes over without notice the amphibians, 
 the reptiles proper, the insects, and the 
 marsupial or early mammals, on his way to 
 the birds. It is added that he brackets the 
 birds with the fishes, and thus makes them 
 of the same date. 
 
 It is requisite here to observe, with re- 
 spect to birds, that Professor Dana * writes 
 of the narrative \\\ Genesis as follows : 
 speaking of the relation between the Mo- 
 saic narrative and the ascertained facts of 
 science, he uses these words : ** The accord- 
 ance is exact with the succession made out 
 for the earliest species of these grand di- 
 visions, if we except the division of birds, 
 about which there is doubt." 
 
 Owen, however, in his '* Palaeontology,'* f 
 places animal life in six classes, according 
 to the following order, namely — 
 
 I. Invertebrates. 4, Birds. 
 
 a. I'ishes. 5. Maiumals. 
 
 3. Reptiles. 6. Man. 
 
 In the more recent ** Manual " of Profes- 
 
 * *• Creation," as before, p. 215. 
 t Second edition, 1S61, p. 5. 
 
CO THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 sor Prestwich (1886) the order of seniority 
 stands as follows : — 
 
 1. Cryptogamous Plants. 4. Mammals. 
 
 2. Fishes. 5. Man. 
 
 3. Birds. 
 
 In the " Manual " * of Etheridge we are 
 supplied with the following series, after 
 fishes: I. Fossil reptiles. 2. Ornithosauria; 
 ^^ flying animals, zvhicJi combined the charac- 
 ter of reptiles with those of birds y 3. The 
 first birds of the secondary rocks, with 
 ** feathers in all respects similar to those of 
 existing birds." 4. Mammals. 
 
 It thus appears that much turns on the 
 definition of a bird, and that, in this point 
 as in others, it is hard, on the evidence 
 thus presented, seriously to impeach the 
 character of the Creation Story. Largely 
 viewed, the place of birds, as an order in 
 creation, is given us by our scientific teach- 
 ers, or, as I have shown, by many and rec- 
 ognized authorities among them, between 
 fishes and the class of mammals. It is a 
 gratuitous assumption that the Mosaist in- 
 tends to assign to them the same date as 
 fishes ; he places them in the same day, but 
 then we have to bear in mind that he more 
 than once gives several actions to the same 
 
 * Phillips's ** Manual of Geology," part ii., by R. 
 Etheridge, F. R. S., chap. xxv. pp. 511-520. 
 
THE CREATION STORY, j-j 
 
 day. He sets them after the fishes ; and the 
 fairer construction surely is, not that they 
 were contemporaneous, but that they were 
 subsequent. He forbears, it is true, to 
 notice amphibious reptiles, insects, and 
 marsupials. And why? All these, va- 
 riously important in themselves, fill no 
 large place, some of them no place at all, 
 in the view and in the concerns of primitive 
 man ; and, having man for his object, he 
 forbears, on his guiding principle of rela- 
 tivity, to incumber his narrative with them. 
 
 If it be true that the demarcation of the 
 order of birds in creation is less sharply 
 drawn than that (for example) of fishes and 
 of mammals, may we not be permitted to 
 trace a singular propriety in the diminution, 
 so to speak, of emphasis with which the 
 Mosaist gives to their introduction a more 
 qualified distinctness of outline, by simply 
 subjoining them (ver. 20) to the aquatic 
 creation. 
 
 I have now made bold to touch on 
 the principal objections popularly known. 
 They run into details which it has not been 
 possible fully to notice, but which seem to 
 be without force, except such as they de- 
 rive from the illegitimate process of hold- 
 ing down the Mosaic writer in his narra- 
 tion, so short, so simple, so sublime, by 
 restraints which the ordinary historian, 
 
^2 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 though he has plenty of auxiliary expedi- 
 ents, and is under no restraint of space, 
 finds himself obliged to shake off if he 
 wishes to be understood. On the intro- 
 duction of the great or recent mammals, 
 and of man, as the objector is silent, I re- 
 main silent also. 
 
 It would be uncandid, however, not to 
 notice the " creeping thing" of verses 24, 25, 
 and 26. In these verses the ** creeping 
 thing" is distinguished from cattle, and un- 
 doubtedly appears upon the scene as if it 
 were a formation wholly new. If the 
 Mosaist really intended to convey that this 
 was the first appearance of the creeping 
 thing in creation, there is I suppose no 
 doubt that he is at war with the firmly 
 established witness of natural science. 
 Guyot. indeed, says* that these creeping 
 things are not reptiles, but are the smaller 
 mammals, rats, mice, and the like. If, how- 
 ever, the common rendering be maintained, 
 it may be just worth while to suggest a 
 possible explanation. It is as follows. 
 These creeping things were a very minor 
 fact in the scheme of creation ; so that the 
 purpose of the relator, and the comparative 
 importance of the facts may here, as else- 
 where, govern his mode of handling them. 
 It is fit to be observed that he never men- 
 
 * ** Creation," p. 120. 
 
THE CREATION STORY. ^^ 
 
 tions insects at all, as if they were too insig- 
 nificant to find a place among the larger 
 items of his account; as if he advisedly 
 selected his materials, and sifted off the less 
 important among them. And there does 
 seem to be some license or looseness in his 
 method of treating these creeping things; 
 for while he severs them from fish, fowl, and 
 beast, in the verses I have named, and again 
 in verse 30 from fowl and from beast, yet in 
 verse 28, when the great charter of dominion 
 is granted to man, he sums up in three 
 divisions only, and makes man the lord 
 *' over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl 
 of the air, and over every living thing that 
 moveth upon the earth." Reptiles appear 
 to have passed out of his view, either wholly, 
 or so far as not to deserve separate mention, 
 and it may seem likely that he did not think 
 their importance such as to call for a par- 
 ticular and defined place, and, while accord- 
 ing to them incidental mention, did not 
 mean to give them such a place, in the chron- 
 ological order of creation. Let the Contra- 
 dictionist make the most he can out of this 
 secondary matter: it will not greatly avail. 
 If, on the whole, such be a fair statement 
 of arguments and results, we may justly 
 render our thanks to Dana, Guyot,* Davv- 
 
 * In the preface to Guyot's " Creation " will be found 
 some account of the recent literature of this subject. I 
 
54 
 
 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 son, Stokes, and other scientific authorities, 
 who seem to find no cause for supporting 
 the broad theory of contradiction. I am 
 well aware of my inabihty to add an atom 
 of weight to their judgments. Yet I have 
 ventured to attempt applying to this great 
 case what I hold to be the just laws of a 
 narrative intended to instruct and to per- 
 suade, and thus finding a key to the true 
 construction of the Chapter. For myself, 
 I cannot but at present remain before and 
 above all things impressed with the profound 
 and marvellous wisdom, that has guided 
 the human instrument, whether it were pen 
 or tongue, which was first commissioned 
 from on high, to hand onwards for our ad- 
 miration and instruction this wonderful, this 
 unparalleled relation. If I am a ** recon- 
 ciler," I shall not call myself a mere apolo- 
 gist, for I aim at a positive, not merely a 
 defensive result, and claim that my reader 
 should feel how true it is that in this brief 
 relation he possesses an inestimable treasure. 
 And I submit to those, who may have 
 closely followed my remarks, that my words 
 
 must also mention a valuable pamphlet entitled ** The 
 Hijjher Criticism," by Mr. Rust, Rector of Westerfield, 
 Suffolk. It sets forth the scope of the negative criticism 
 at large, and recommends (p. 30) to " have patience for 
 a while, and wait to see the issue." Similar advice has, 
 I understand, been given in the recent Charge of the 
 learned Bishop of Oxford. 
 
THE CREATION STORY. r- 
 
 were not wholly idle words, when, without 
 presuming to lay down any universal and 
 inflexible proposition, and without question- 
 ing any single contention of persons specially 
 qualified, I said that the true question was 
 whether the words of the Mosaic writer, in 
 his opening chapter, taken as a whole, do 
 not stand, according to our present knowl- 
 edge, in such a relation to the facts of nature 
 as to warrant and require, thus far, the con- 
 clusion that theOrdainer of Nature, and the 
 Giver or Guide of the Creation Story, are 
 One and the Same. 
 
 Postscript to the Creation Story. 
 
 [Mankind have travelled not by one but 
 by several roads into polytheism. It took 
 a thousand years from the institution of the 
 Mosaic legislation to place the chosen peo- 
 ple in a state of security from this insidious 
 mischief. But all along a powerful appara- 
 tus of means had been at work, which was 
 strengthened from time to time as Divine 
 Providence saw fit. The foundation, how- 
 ever, had been laid in the Creation Story. 
 It was impossible for those who received it 
 either to travel or to glide into polytheism 
 by either of the widest roads then open, the 
 
c6 THE CREATION STORY. 
 
 system of Nature-worship, and the deifica- 
 tion of heroes. No one could make the 
 Sun his God, who really believed that there 
 was a God who created the Sun. Even 
 more perhaps was it needful that the line 
 should be clearly and sharply drawn between 
 Deity and humanity, and that a barrier not 
 capable of being surmounted should exclude 
 kings and heroes from deification. In the 
 Homeric or Olympian system, the worship 
 of inanimate nature was studiously shut 
 out ; but the beginnings of deification are 
 visible in the case of Heracles,* whose very 
 self (auroj) sits at the banquets of the Im- 
 mortals, and of the twin brothers, Castor 
 and Pollux, who live and die on alternate 
 days, and who, when they live, receive 
 honors like the gods. In the height of 
 their civilization the Romans set up their 
 living Emperors as divinities. But neither 
 they nor the Greeks believed in the creation 
 of man by the Almighty. The old cosmog- 
 onies of the heathen placed matter and 
 other impersonal entities in a position of 
 priority to their gods, who merely take 
 their turn to come upon the scene. Only 
 (I believe) in the Hebrew story is the Deity 
 anterior, without which condition He cannot 
 be supreme. 
 
 Besides being anterior, He is separate. 
 
 * Od. xi. 302-5. 
 
THE CREATION STORY. ry 
 
 Did we find in the pages of the Old Testa- 
 ment a story of deification, we should at 
 once know it to be spurious, because in 
 contradiction, alike as to letter and as to 
 spirit, of the entire context. 
 
 It is, I hope, not presumptuous to proceed 
 a step further and to say that this broad and 
 effectual severance was necessary not only 
 for the Old dispensation, but for the New : 
 not only for the exclusion of idolatry in all 
 its forms, but for the establishment of the 
 Incarnation. A marriage would be no 
 marriage, unless the individuality of the 
 parties to it were determinate and inefface- 
 able. The Christian dogma of the two 
 natures in one Person would be in no sense 
 distinctive, if it had been habitual in the 
 preparatory dispensation, as in some of the 
 religions outside it, for man properly so- 
 called to pass into proper deity. Reunion 
 was to be effected between the Almighty 
 and His prime earthly creature by the bridge 
 to be constructed over that flood, the flood 
 of sin, which parted them ; and, to sustain 
 that bridge, it was needful that the natures 
 to be brought into union should stand apart 
 like piers perfectly defined, each on its own 
 separate and solid foundation. And the 
 firm foundations of those piers were laid, to 
 endure throughout all time, by the great 
 Creation Story.] 
 
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