Lecture Fourth The Mosaic Vision of Creation
The history of creation is introduced into the “Paradise Lost” as a piece of narrative, and forms one of the two great episodes of the poem. Milton represents the common father of the race as “led on” by a desire to know
“What within Eden or without was done
Before his memory;”
and straightway Raphael, “the affable archangel,” in compliance with the wish, enters into a description of the six days’ work of the Divine Creator,—a description in which, as Addison well remarks, “the whole energy of our tongue is employed, and the several great scenes of creation rise up to view, one after another, in such a manner, that the reader seems present at this wonderful work, and to assist among the choirs of angels who are spectators of it.” In the other great episode of the poem,—that in which the more prominent changes which were to happen in after time upon the earth are made to pass before Adam, he is represented as carried by Michael to the top of a great mountain, lofty as that on which in a long posterior age the Tempter placed our Saviour, and where the coming events are described as rising up in vision before him. In the earlier episode, as in those of the Odyssey and Æneid, in which heroes relate in the courts of princes the story of their adventures, there is but narrative and description; in the later, a series of magnificent pictures, that form and then dissolve before the spectator, and comprise, in their vivid tints and pregnant outlines, the future history of a world. And one of these two episodes,—that which relates to the creation of all things,—must have as certainly had a place in human history as in the master epic of England. Man would have forever remained ignorant of many of those events related in the opening chapters of Scripture, which took place ere there was a human eye to witness, or a human memory to record, had he not been permitted, like Adam of old, to hold intercourse with the intelligences that had preceded him in creation, or with the great Creator himself, the Author of them all; and the question has been asked of late, both in our own country and on the Continent, What was the form and nature of the revelation by which the pre-Adamic history of the earth and heavens was originally conveyed to man? Was it conveyed, like the sublime story of Raphael, as a piece of narrative, dictated, mayhap, to the inspired penman, or miraculously borne in upon his mind? Or was it conveyed by a succession of sublime visions like that which Michael is represented as calling up before Adam, when, purging his “visual nerves with euphrasy and rue,” he enabled him to see, in a series of scenes, the history of his offspring from the crime of Cain down to the destruction of the Old World by a flood? The passages in which the history of creation is recorded give no intimation whatever of their own history; and so we are left to balance the probabilities regarding the mode and form in which they were originally revealed, and to found our ultimate conclusions respecting them on evidence, not direct, but circumstantial.
The Continental writers on this curious subject may be regarded as not inadequately represented by Dr. J.H. Kurtz, Professor of Theology at Dorpat,—one of the many ingenious biblical scholars of modern Germany. We find him stating the question, in his Bibel und Astronomie (second edition, 1849), with great precision and clearness, but in a manner, so far at least as the form of his thinking is concerned, strikingly characteristic of what may be termed the theological fashion of his country in the present day. “The source of all human history,” he says, “is eye-witness, be it that of the reporter, or of another whose account has been handed down. Only what man has himself seen or experienced can be the subject of man’s historical compositions. So that history, so far as man can write it, can begin with but the point at which he has entered into conscious existence, and end with the moment that constitutes the present time. Beyond these points, however, lies a great province of historic development, existing on the one side as the Past, on the other side as the Future. For when man begins to be an observer or actor of history, he himself, and the whole circumstantials of his condition, have already come historically into being. Nor does the flow of development stop with what is his present. Millions of influences are spinning the thread still on; but no one can tell what the compound result of all their energies is to be. Both these sorts of history, then, lie beyond the region of man’s knowledge, which is shut up in space and time, and can only call the present its own. It is God alone who, standing beyond and above space and time, sees backwards and forwards both the development which preceded the first present of men, and that which will succeed this our latest present. Whatever the difference of the two kinds of history may be, they hold the same position in relation both to the principle of the human ignorance and the principle of the human knowledge. The principle of the ignorance is man’s condition as a creature; the principle of the knowledge is the Divine knowledge; and the medium between ignorance and knowledge is objectively Divine revelation, and subjectively prophetic vision by man, in which he beholds with the eye of the mind what is shut and hid from the eye of his body.” From these premises Dr. Kurtz goes on to argue that the pre-Adamic history of the past being theologically in the same category as the yet undeveloped history of the future, that record of its leading events which occurs in the Mosaic narrative is simply prophecy described backwards; and that, coming under the prophetic law, it ought of consequence to be subjected to the prophetic rule of exposition. There are some very ingenious reasonings employed in fortifying this point; and, after quoting from Eichhorn a passage to the effect that the opening chapter in Genesis is much rather a creative picture than a creative history, and from Ammon to the effect that the author of it evidently takes the position of a beholder of creation, the learned German concludes his general statement by remarking, that the scenes of the chapter are prophetic tableaux, each containing a leading phase of the drama of creation. “Before the eye of the seer,” he says, “scene after scene is unfolded, until at length, in the seven of them, the course of creation, in its main momenta, has been fully represented.” The revelation has every characteristic of prophecy by vision,—prophecy by eye-witnessing; and may be perhaps best understood by regarding it simply as an exhibition of the actual phenomena of creation presented to the mental eye of the prophet under the ordinary laws of perspective, and truthfully described by him in the simple language of his time.
In our own country a similar view has been taken by the author of a singularly ingenious little work which issued about two years ago from the press of Mr. Constable of Edinburgh, “The Mosaic Record in Harmony with Geology.”17 The writer, however, exhibits, in dealing with his subject, the characteristic sobriety of the Anglo-Saxon mind; and while the leading features of his theory agree essentially with those of the Continental one, he does not press it so far. In canvassing the form of the revelation made to Moses in the opening of Genesis, he discusses the nature of the inspiration enjoyed by that great prophet; and thus retranslates literally from the Hebrew the passage in which the Divine Being is himself introduced as speaking direct on the point in the controversy raised by Aaron and Miriam. “And He [the Lord] said, hear now my words: If he [Moses] were your prophet [subordinate, or at least not superior, to the prophetess and the high priest], I, Jehovah, in the vision to him would make myself known: in the dream would I speak to him. Not so my servant Moses [God’s prophet, not theirs]; in all my house faithful is he. Mouth to mouth do I speak to him, and vision, but not in dark speeches; and likeness of Jehovah he beholds.” Moses, then, was favored with “visions without dark speeches.”
Now, as implied in the passage thus retranslated, there is a grand distinction between symbolic and therefore dark visions, and visions not symbolic nor dark. Visions addressed, as the word indicates, to the eye, may be obviously of a twofold character,—they may be either darker than words, or a great deal clearer than words. The vision, for instance, of future monarchies which Daniel saw symbolized under the form of monstrous animals had to be explained in words; the vision of Peter, which led to the general admission of the Gentiles into the Christian Church, had also virtually to be explained in words; they were both visions of the dark class; and revelation abounds in such. But there were also visions greatly clearer than words. Such, for instance, was the vision of the secret chamber of imagery, with its seventy men of the ancients of Israel given over to idolatry, which was seen by the prophet as he sat in his own house; and the vision of the worshippers of the sun in the inner court of the temple, witnessed from what was naturally the same impossible point of view; with the vision of the Jewish women in the western gate “weeping for Thammuz,” when, according to Milton’s noble version,
“The love tale
Infected Sion’s daughters with like heat,
Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch
Ezekiel saw, when, by the vision led,
His eye surveyed the dark idolatries
Of alienated Judah.”
Here, then, were there visions of scenes actually taking place at the time, which, greatly clearer than any merely verbal description, substituted the seeing of the eye for the hearing of the ear. And visions of this latter kind were enjoyed, argues the writer of this ingenious treatise, by the prophet Moses.
One of the cases adduced may be best given in the author’s own words. “Moses,” he says, “received directions from God how to proceed in constructing the Tabernacle and its sacred furniture; and David also was instructed how the Temple of Solomon should be built. Let us hear Scripture regarding the nature of the directions given to these men:—
‘According unto the appearance [literally sight, vision] which the Lord had showed unto Moses, so he made the candlestick.’—(Num. 5:4.)
‘The whole in writing, by the hand of Jehovah upon me, he taught; the whole works of the pattern.’—(1 Chron. 28:19.)
“There was thus a writing in the case of David; a sight or vision of the thing to be made in that of Moses.”
So far the author of the Treatise. He might have added further, that from the nature of things, the revelation to Moses in this instance must have been “sight or vision,” if, indeed, what is not in the least likely, the peculiar architecture and style of ornament used in the Tabernacle was not a borrowed style, already employed in the service of idolatry. An old, long established architecture can be adequately described by speech or writing; a new, original architecture can be adequately described only by pattern or model, that is, by sight or vision. Any intelligent cutter in stone or carver in wood could furnish to order, though the order were merely a verbal one, a Corinthian or Ionic capital; but no such mechanic, however skilful or ingenious, could furnish to order, if unprovided with a pattern or drawing, a facsimile of one of the ornately sculptured capitals of Gloucester Cathedral or York Minster. To ensure a facsimile in any such case, the originals, or representations of them, would require to be submitted to the eye,—not merely described to the ear. Nay, from the example given in the text,—that of the golden candlestick,—we have an instance furnished in recent times of the utter inadequacy of mere description for the purposes of the sculptor or artist. Ever since copperplate engravings and illustrated Bibles became comparatively common, representations of the branched candlestick taken from the written description have been common also. The candlestick on the arch of Titus, though not deemed an exact representation of the original one described in the Pentateuch, is now regarded,—correctly, it cannot be doubted,—as at least the nearest approximation to it extant. Public attention was first drawn to this interesting piece of sculpture in comparatively modern times; and it was then found that all the previous representations taken from the written description were widely erroneous. They only served to show, not the true outlines of the golden candlestick, but merely that inadequacy of verbal description for artistic purposes which must have rendered vision, or, in other words, optical representation, imperative in the case of Moses. Some of our most sober minded commentators take virtually the same view of this necessity of vision for ensuring the production of the true pattern of the Tabernacle. “The Lord,” says Thomas Scott, “not only directed Moses by words how to build the Tabernacle and form its sacred furniture, but showed him a model exactly representing the form of every part, and the proportion of each to all the rest.” There must have been clear optical vision in the case,—“vision without dark speeches.” Such, too, was the character of other of the Mosaic visions, besides that of the “pattern” seen in the Mount. The burning bush, for instance, was a vision addressed to the eye; and seemed to come so palpably under the ordinary optical laws, that the prophet drew near to examine the extraordinary phenomena which it exhibited.
The visual or optical character of some of the revelations made to Moses thus established, the writer goes on to inquire whether that special revelation which exhibits the generations of the heavens and earth in their order was not a visual revelation also. “Were the words that Moses wrote,” he asks, “merely impressed upon his mind? Did he hold the pen, and another dictate? Or did he see in vision the scenes that he describes? The freshness and point of the narrative,” he continues, “the freedom of the description, and the unlikelihood that Moses was an unthinking machine in the composition, all indicate that he saw in vision what he has here given us in writing. He is describing from actual observation.” The writer remarks in an earlier portion of his treatise, that all who have adopted the theory advocated in the previous lecture,—the “Two Records,” which was, I may state, published in a separate form, ere the appearance of his work, and which he does me the honor of largely quoting,—go upon the supposition that things during the Mosaic days are described as they would appear to the eye of one placed upon earth; and he argues that, as no man existed in those distant ages, a reason must be assigned for this popular view of creation which the record is rightly assumed to take. And certainly, if it was in reality a view described from actual vision, the fact would form of itself an adequate reason. What man had actually seen, though but in dream or picture, would of course be described as seen by man: like all human history, it would, to borrow from Kurtz, be founded on eye-witnessing; and the fact that the Mosaic record of creation is apparently thus founded, affords a strong presumption that it was in reality revealed, not by dictation, but by vision.
Nor, be it remembered, has the recognition of a purely optical character in the revelation been restricted to the assertion of any one theory of reconciliation. It was as certainly held by Chalmers and Dr. Pye Smith, as by Dr. Kurtz and the author of this treatise; nay, it has been recognized by not a few of their opponents also. Granville Penn, for instance, does not scruple to avow his belief, in his elaborate “Estimate of the Mineral and Mosaic Geologies,” that both sun and moon were created on the first day of creation, though they did not become “optically visible” until the fourth. “In truth, that the fourth day only rendered visible the sidereal creation of the first day, is manifested,” he says, “by collating the transactions of the two days. On the first day, we are told generally, ‘God divided the light, or day, and the darkness, or night;’ but the physical agents which he employed for that division are not there declared. On the fourth day, we are told referentially, ‘God commanded the lights [or luminaries] for dividing day and night, to give their light upon earth.’ Here, then, it is evident from the retrospective implication of the latter description, that the lights or luminaries for dividing day and night, which were to give their light upon the earth for the first time on the fourth day, were the unexpressed physical agents by which God divided the day and night on the first day.” Now, whatever may be thought of Mr. Penn’s argument here, there can be no doubt that it demonstrates at least his own belief in the purely optical character of the Mosaic account of the sidereal creation. It is an account, he held, not of what God wrought on the first day in the heavens, but of what a human eye would have seen on the fourth day from the earth. And Moses Stuart, in his philological assault on the geologists, is scarce less explicit in his avowal of a similar belief. “Every one sees,” he says, “that to speak of the sun as rising and setting, is to describe, in common parlance, what appears optically, that is, to our sensible view, as reality. But the history of creation is a different affair. In ONE RESPECT, indeed, there is a resemblance. The historian everywhere speaks as an optical observer stationed on a point of our world, and surveying from this the heavens and the earth, and speaking of them as seen in this manner by his bodily eye. The sun, and moon, and stars, are servants of the earth, lighted up to garnish and to cheer it, and to be the guardians of its times and seasons. Other uses he knows not for them: certainly of other uses he does not speak. The distances, magnitudes, orbicular motions, gravitating powers, and projectile forces of the planets and of the stars, are all out of the circle of his history, and probably beyond his knowledge. Inspiration does not make men omniscient. It does not teach them the scientific truths of astronomy, or chemistry, or botany, nor any science as such. Inspiration is concerned with teaching religious truths, and such facts or occurrences as are connected immediately with illustrating, or with impressing them on the mind.” Thus far Dr. Stuart and Mr. Penn,—men whose evidence on this special head must be sufficient to show that it is not merely geologists who have recognized an optical or visual character in the Mosaic history of creation. And certainly the inference deduced from the admitted fact, that is, the inference that the optical description must have been founded on a revelation addressed to the eye,—a revelation by vision,—does seem a fair and legitimate one. The revelation must have been either a revelation in words or ideas, or a revelation of scenes and events pictorially exhibited. Failing, however, to record its own history, it leaves the student equally at liberty, so far as external evidence is concerned, to take up either view; while, so far as internal evidence goes, the presumption seems all in favor of revelation by vision; for, while no reason can be assigned why, in a revelation by word or idea, appearances which took place ere there existed a human eye should be optically described, nothing can be more natural or obvious than that they should be so described, had they been revealed by vision as a piece of eye-witnessing. It seems, then, at least eminently probable that such was the mode or form of the revelation in this case, and that he who saw by vision on the Mount the pattern of the Tabernacle and its sacred furniture, and in the Wilderness of Horeb the bush burning but not consumed,—types and symbols of the coming dispensation and of its Divine Author,—saw also by vision the pattern of those successive pre-Adamic creations, animal and vegetable, through which our world was fitted up as a place of human habitation. The reason why the drama of creation has been optically described seems to be, that it was in reality visionally revealed.
A further question still remains: If the revelation was by vision, that circumstance affords of itself a satisfactory reason why the description should be optical; and, on the other hand, since the description is decidedly optical, the presumption is of course strong that the revelation was by vision. But why, it may be asked, by vision? Can the presumption be yet further strengthened by showing that this visual mode or form was preferable to any other? Can there be a reason, in fine, assigned for the reason,—for that revelation by vision which accounts for the optical character of the description? The question is a difficult one; but I think there can. There seems to be a peculiar fitness in a revelation made by vision, for conveying an account of creation to various tribes and peoples of various degrees of acquirement, and throughout a long course of ages in which the knowledge of the heavenly bodies or of the earth’s history, that is, the sciences of astronomy and geology, did not at first exist, but in which ultimately they came to be studied and known. We must recognize such a mode as equally fitted for the earlier and the more modern times,—for the ages anterior to the rise of science, and the ages posterior to its rise. The prophet, by describing what he had actually seen in language fitted to the ideas of his time, would shock no previously existing prejudice that had been founded on the apparent evidence of the senses; he could as safely describe the moon as the second great light of creation, as he could the sun as its first great light, and both, too, as equally subordinate to the planet which we inhabit. On the other hand, an enlightened age, when it had come to discover this key to the description, would find it optically true in all its details. But how differently would not a revelation have fared, in at least the earlier time, that was strictly scientific in its details,—a revelation, for instance, of the great truth demonstrated by Galileo, that the sun rests in the centre of the heavens, while the apparently immoveable earth sweeps with giddy velocity around it; or of the great truth demonstrated by Newton, that our ponderous planet is kept from falling off into empty space by the operation of the same law that impels a descending pebble towards the ground! A great miracle wrought in proof of the truth of the revelation might serve to enforce the belief of it on the generation to whom it had been given; but the generations that followed, to whom the miracle would exist as a piece of mere testimony, would credit, in preference, the apparently surer evidence of their senses, and become unbelievers. They would act, all unwittingly, on the principle of Hume’s famous argument, and prefer to rest rather on their own experience of the great phenomena of nature, than on the doubtful testimony of their ancestors, reduced in the lapse of ages to a dim, attenuated tradition. Nor would a geological revelation have fared better, in at least those periods intermediate between the darker and more scientific ages, in which ingenious men, somewhat skeptical in their leanings, cultivate literature, and look down rather superciliously on the ignorance and barbarism of the past. What would skeptics such as Hobbes and Hume have said of an opening chapter in Genesis that would describe successive periods,—first of molluscs, star-lilies, and crustaceans, next of fishes, next of reptiles and birds, then of mammals, and finally of man; and that would minutely portray a period in which there were lizards bulkier than elephants, reptilian whales furnished with necks slim and long as the bodies of great snakes, and flying dragons, whose spread of wing greatly more than doubled that of the largest bird? The world would assuredly not receive such a revelation. Nor, further, have scientific facts or principles been revealed to man which he has been furnished with the ability of observing or discovering for himself. It is according to the economy of revelation, that the truths which it exhibits should be of a kind which, lying beyond the reach of his ken, he himself could never have elicited. From every view of the case, then, a prophetic exhibition of the pre-Adamic scenes and events by vision seems to be the one best suited for the opening chapters of a revelation vouchsafed for the accomplishment of moral, not scientific purposes, and at once destined to be contemporary with every stage of civilization, and to address itself to minds of every various calibre, and every different degree of enlightenment.
The statement of Dr. Kurtz, that as vision of pre-Adamic history comes under the same laws as vision of history still future, it ought therefore to be read by the same rules, craves reflection. “Since the source of knowledge for both kinds of history,” we find him saying, “and not only the source, but the means, and manner, and way of coming to know, is the same, viz., the eye-witness of the prophet’s mental eye, it follows that the historical representation which he who thus comes to know, projects [or portrays], in virtue of this eye-witnessing of his, holds the same relation to the reality in both the cases we speak of, and must be subjected to the same laws of exposition. We thus get this very important rule of interpretation, viz., that the representations of pre-human events, which rest upon revelation, are to be handled from the same point of view, and expounded by the same laws, as the prophecies and representations of future times and events, which also rest upon revelation. This, then, is the only proper point of view for scientific exposition of the Mosaic history of creation; that is to say, if we acknowledge that it proceeded from Divine revelation, not from philosophic speculation or experimental investigation, or from the ideas of reflecting men.” There is certainly food for thought in this striking and original view; and there is at least one simple rule of prophetic exposition which may be applied to the pre-Adamic history, in accordance with the principle which it suggests. After all that a scientific theology has done for the right interpretation of prophecy, we find the prediction always best read by the light of its accomplishment. The event which it foretold forms its true key; and when this key is wanting, all is uncertainty. The past is comparatively clear. The hieroglyphic forms which crowd the anterior portions of the prophetic tablet are found wonderfully to harmonize (men such as the profound Newton being the judges) with those great historic events, already become matter of history, which they foreshadowed and symbolized; but, on the other hand, the hieroglyphics which occupy the tablet’s posterior portion,—the hieroglyphics that symbolize events still future,—are invincibly difficult and inexplicable. I have read several works on prophecy produced in the last age, in which the writers were bold enough to quit the clue with which history furnishes the student of fulfilled prophecy, and, with the prophecies yet unfulfilled as their guide, to plunge into a troubled sea of speculation regarding the history of the future. And I have found that in every instance they were deplorably at fault regarding even the events that were nearest at hand at the time. History is thus the surest interpreter of the revealed prophecies which referred to events posterior to the times of the prophet. In what shall we find the surest interpretation of the revealed prophecies that referred to events anterior to his time? In what light, or on what principle, shall we most correctly read the prophetic drama of creation? In the light, I reply, of scientific discovery,—on the principle that the clear and certain must be accepted, when attainable, as the proper exponents of the doubtful and obscure. What fully developed history is to the prophecy which of old looked forwards, fully developed science is to the prophecy which of old looked backwards. Scarce any one will question whether that portion of the creation drama which deals with the heavenly bodies ought to be read in the light of established astronomic discovery or no; for, save by perhaps a few of Father Cullen’s monks, who can still hold that the sun moves round the earth, and is only six feet in diameter, all theologians have now received the astronomic doctrines, and know that they rest upon a basis at least as certain as any of the historic events symbolized in fulfilled prophecy. And were we to challenge for the established geologic doctrines a similar place and position with respect to those portions of the drama which deal with the two great kingdoms of nature, plant and animal, we might safely do so in the belief that the claim will be one day as universally recognized as the astronomic one is now.
On this principle there may, of course, be portions of the prophetic pre-Adamic past of as doubtful interpretation at the present time, from the imperfect development of physical science, as is any portion of the prophetic future from the imperfect development of historic events. The science necessary to the interpretation of the one may be as certainly still to discover as the events necessary to the interpretation of the other may be still to take place. Three centuries have not yet passed since astronomic science was sufficiently developed to form a true key to the various notices of the heavenly bodies which occur in Scripture; among the others, to the notice of their final appearance on the fourth day of creation. Little more than half a century has yet passed since geologic science was sufficiently developed to influence the interpretation given of the three other days’ work. And respecting the work of at least the first and second days, more especially that of the second, we can still but vaguely guess. The science necessary to the right understanding of these portions of the prophetic record has still, it would seem, to be developed, if, indeed, it be destined at all to exist; and at present we can indulge in but doubtful surmises regarding them. What may be termed the three geologic days,—the third, fifth, and sixth,—may be held to have extended over those Carboniferous periods during which the great plants were created,—over those Oolitic and Cretacious periods during which the great sea monsters and birds were created,—and over those Tertiary periods during which the great terrestrial mammals were created. For the intervening or fourth day we have that wide space represented by the Permian and Triassic periods, which, less conspicuous in their floras than the period that went immediately before, and less conspicuous in their faunas than the periods that came immediately after, were marked by the decline, and ultimate extinction, of the Palæozoic forms, and the first partially developed beginnings of the Secondary ones. And for the first and second days there remain the great Azoic period, during which the immensely developed gneisses, mica schists, and primary clay slates, were deposited, and the two extended periods represented by the Silurian and Old Red Sandstone systems. These, taken together, exhaust the geologic scale, and may be named in their order as, first, the Azoic day or period; second, the Silurian and Old Red Sandstone day or period; third, the Carboniferous day or period; fourth, the Permian and Triassic day or period; fifth, the Oolitic and Cretaceous day or period; and sixth, the Tertiary day or period. Let us attempt conceiving how they might have appeared pictorially, if revealed in a series of visions to Moses, as the successive scenes of a great air-drawn panorama.
During the Azoic period, ere life appears to have begun on our planet, the temperature of the earth’s crust seems to have been so high, that the strata, at first deposited apparently in water, passed into a semi-fluid state, became strangely waved and contorted, and assumed in its composition a highly crystalline character. Such is peculiarly the case with the fundamental or gneiss deposits of the period. In the overlying mica schist there is still much of contortion and disturbance; whereas the clay slate, which lies over all, gives evidence, in its more mechanical texture, and the regularity of its strata, that a gradual refrigeration of the general mass had been taking place, and that the close of the Azoic period was comparatively quiet and cool. Let us suppose that during the earlier part of this period of excessive heat the waters of the ocean had stood at the boiling point even at the surface, and much higher in the profounder depths, and further, that the half-molten crust of the earth, stretched out over a molten abyss, was so thin that it could not support, save for a short time, after some convulsion, even a small island above the sea level. What, in such circumstances, would be the aspect of the scene, optically exhibited from some point in space elevated a few hundred yards over the sea? It would be simply a blank, in which the intensest glow of fire would fail to be seen at a few yards’ distance. An inconsiderable escape of steam from the safety-valve of a railway engine forms so thick a screen, that, as it lingers for a moment, in the passing, opposite the carriage windows, the passengers fail to discern through it the landscape beyond. A continuous stratum of steam, then, that attained to the height of even our present atmosphere, would wrap up the earth in a darkness gross and palpable as that of Egypt of old,—a darkness through which even a single ray of light would fail to penetrate. And beneath this thick canopy the unseen deep would literally “boil as a pot,” wildly tempested from below; while from time to time more deeply seated convulsion would upheave sudden to the surface vast tracts of semi-molten rock, soon again to disappear, and from which waves of bulk enormous would roll outwards, to meet in wild conflict with the giant waves of other convulsions, or return to hiss and sputter against the intensely heated and fast foundering mass, whose violent upheaval had first elevated and sent them abroad. Such would be the probable state of things during the times of the earlier gneiss and mica schist deposits,—times buried deep in that chaotic night or “evening” which must have continued to exist for mayhap many ages after that beginning of things in which God created the heavens and the earth, and which preceded the first day. To a human eye stationed within the cloud, all, as I have said, must have been thick darkness: to eyes Divine, that could have looked through the enveloping haze, the appearance would have been that described by Milton, as seen by angel and archangel at the beginning of creation, when from the gates of heaven they looked down upon chaos:—
“On heavenly ground they stood, and from the shore
They viewed the vast immeasurable abyss,
Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild,
Up from the bottom turned by furious heat
And surging waves, as mountains to assault
Heaven’s height, and with the centre mix the pole.”
At length, however, as the earth’s surface gradually cooled down, and the enveloping waters sunk to a lower temperature,—let us suppose, during the latter times of the mica schist, and the earlier times of the clay slate,—the steam atmosphere would become less dense and thick, and at length the rays of the sun would struggle through, at first doubtfully and diffused, forming a faint twilight, but gradually strengthening as the latter ages of the slate formation passed away, until, at the close of the great primary period, day and night,—the one still dim and gray, the other wrapped in a pall of thickest darkness,—would succeed each other as now, as the earth revolved on its axis, and the unseen luminary rose high over the cloud in the east, or sunk in the west beneath the undefined and murky horizon. And here again the optical appearance would be exactly that described by Milton:—
“‘Let there be light,’ said God, and forthwith light
Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure,
Sprung from the deep, and from her native east
To journey through the airy gloom began,
Sphered in a radiant cloud, for yet the sun
Was not: she in a cloudy tabernacle
Sojourned the while. God saw the light was good,
And light from darkness by the hemisphere
Divided: light the day, and darkness night,
He named. This was the first day, even and morn.”
The second day’s work has been interpreted variously, according to the generally received science of the times of the various commentators who have dealt with it. Even in Milton, though the great poet rejected the earlier idea of a solid firmament, we find prominence given to that of a vast hollow sphere of “circumfluous waters,” which, by encircling the atmosphere, kept aloof the “fierce extremes of chaos.” Later commentators, such as the late Drs. Kitto and Pye Smith, hold that the Scriptural analogue of the firmament here—by the way, a Greek, not a Hebrew idea, first introduced into the Septuagint—was in reality simply the atmosphere with its clouds. “The historian” [Moses], says Dr. Kitto, “speaks as things would have appeared to a spectator at the time of the creation. A portion of the heavy watery vapor had flown into the upper regions, and rested there in dense clouds, which still obscured the sun; while below, the whole earth was covered with water. Thus we see the propriety with which the firmament is said to have divided the waters from the waters.” It is certainly probable that in a vision of creation the atmospheric phenomena of the second great act of the creation drama might have stood out with much greater prominence to the prophetic eye placed in the circumstances of a natural one, than any of its other appearances. The invertebrate life of the Silurian period, or even the ichthyic life of the earlier Old Bed Sandstone period, must have been comparatively inconspicuous from any sub-ærial point of view elevated but a few hundred feet over the sea level. Even the few islets of the latter ages of the period, with their ferns, lepidodendra, and coniferous trees, forming, as they did, an exceptional feature in these ages of vast oceans, and of organisms all but exclusively marine, may have well been excluded from a representative diorama that exhibited optically the grand characteristics of the time. Further, it seems equally probable that the introduction of organized existence on our planet was preceded by a change in the atmospheric conditions which had obtained during the previous period, in which the earth had been a desert and empty void. We know that just before the close of the Silurian ages terrestrial plants had appeared, and that before the close of the Old Red Sandstone ages, air-breathing animals had been produced; and infer that the atmosphere in which both could have existed must have been considerably different from that which lay dark and heavy over the bare hot rocks, and tenantless, steam-emitting seas, of the previous time. Under a gray, opaque sky, in which neither sun nor moon appear, we are not unfrequently presented with a varied drapery of clouds,—a drapery varied in form, though not in color: bank often seems piled over bank, shaded beneath and lighter above; or the whole breaks into dappled cloudlets, which bear—to borrow from the poetic description of Bloomfield—the “beauteous semblance of a flock at rest.” And if such ærial draperies appeared in this early period, with the clear space between them and the earth which we so often see in gray, sunless days, the optical aspect must have been widely different from that of the previous time, in which a dense vaporous fog lay heavy upon rock and sea, and extended from the earth’s surface to the upper heights of the atmosphere.
The third day’s vision seems to be more purely geological in its character than either of the previous two. Extensive tracts of dry land appear, and there springs up over them, at the Divine command, a rank vegetation. And we know that what seems to be the corresponding Carboniferous period, unlike any of the preceding ones, was remarkable for its great tracts of terrestrial surface, and for its extraordinary flora. For the first time dry land, and organized bodies at once bulky enough, and exhibited in a medium clear enough, to render them conspicuous objects in a distant prospect, appear in the Mosaic drama; and we still find at once evidence of the existence of extensive though apparently very flat lands, and the remains of a wonderfully gigantic and abundant vegetation, in what appear to be the rocks of this period. The vision of the fourth day, like that of the second, pertained not to the earth, but to the heavens; the sun, moon, and stars become visible, and form the sole subjects of the prophetic description. And just as, during the second period, the earth would in all probability have failed to furnish any feature of mark enough to divert a human eye placed on a commanding station from the conspicuous atmospheric phenomena of the time, so it seems equally probable that during this fourth period it would have failed to furnish any feature of mark enough to divert a human eye from the still more conspicuous celestial phenomena of the time. As has been already incidentally remarked, the Permian and Triassic periods were “epochs”—to employ the language of the late Professor Edward Forbes—“of great poverty of production of generic types.” On the other hand, the appearance for the first time of sun, moon, and stars, must have formed a scene well suited to divert the attention of the seer from every other. Nor (as has been somewhat rashly argued by Dr. Kitto and several others) does it seem irrational to hold that three very extended periods should have elapsed ere the sidereal heavens became visible on earth. Addison’s popular illustration, drawn from one of the calculations of Newton, made in an age when comets were believed to be solid bodies, rendered the reading public familiar, considerably more than a century ago, with the vast time which large bodies greatly heated would take in cooling. “According to Sir Isaac Newton’s calculation,” said the exquisitely classical essayist, “the comet that made its appearance in 1680 imbibed so much heat by its approaches to the sun, that it would have been two thousand times hotter than red hot iron had it been a globe of that metal; and that, supposing it as big as the earth, and at the same distance from the sun, it would be fifty thousand years in cooling before it recovered its natural temper.” Such was an estimate of the philosopher, that excited no little wonder in the days of our great grandfathers, for the vast time which it demanded; and, now that the data on which such a calculation ought to be founded are better known than in the age of Newton, yet more time would be required still. It is now ascertained, from the circumstance that no dew is deposited in our summer evenings save under a clear sky, that even a thin covering of cloud,—serving as a robe to keep the earth warm,—prevents the surface heat of the planet from radiating into the spaces beyond. And such a cloud, thick and continuous, as must have wrapped round the earth as with a mantle during the earlier geologic periods, must have served to retard for many ages the radiation, and consequently the reduction, of that internal heat of which it was itself a consequence. Further, the rocks and soils that form the surface of our globe would be much more indifferent conductors of heat than the iron superficies of Newton’s ball, and would serve yet more to lengthen out the cooling process. Nor would a planet covered over for ages with a thick screen of vapor be a novelty even yet in the universe. It is doubtful whether astronomers have ever yet looked on the face of Mercury: it is at least very generally held that hitherto only his clouds have been seen. Even Jupiter, though it is thought his mountains have been occasionally detected raising their peaks through openings in his cloudy atmosphere, is known chiefly by the dark shifting bands that, streaking his surface in the line of his trade winds, belong not to his body, but to his thick dark covering. It is questionable whether a human eye on the surface of Mercury would ever behold the sun, notwithstanding his near proximity; nor would he be often visible, if at all, from the surface of Jupiter. Nor, yet further, would a warm steaming atmosphere muffled in clouds have been unfavorable to a rank, flowerless vegetation like that of the Coal Measures. There are moist, mild, cloudy days of spring and early Summer that rejoice the heart of the farmer, for he knows how conducive they are to the young growth on his fields. The Coal Measure climate would have consisted of an unbroken series of these, with mayhap a little more of cloud and moisture, and a great deal more of heat. The earth would have been a vast greenhouse covered with smoked glass; and a vigorous though mayhap loosely knit and faintly colored vegetation would have luxuriated under its shade.
The fifth and sixth days,—that of winged fowl and great sea monsters, and that of cattle and beasts of the earth,—I must regard as adequately represented by those Secondary ages, Oolitic and Cretaceous, during which birds were introduced, and reptiles received their greatest development, and those Tertiary ages during which the gigantic mammals possessed the earth and occupied the largest space in creation. To the close of this latter period,—the evening of the sixth day,—man belongs,—at once the last created of terrestrial creatures, and infinitely beyond comparison the most elevated in the scale; and with man’s appearance on the scene the days of creation end, and the Divine Sabbath begins,—that Sabbath of rest from creative labor of which the proper work is the moral development and elevation of the species, and which will terminate only with the full completion of that sublime task on the full accomplishment of which God’s eternal purposes and the tendencies of man’s progressive nature seem alike directed. Now, I am greatly mistaken if we have not in the six geologic periods all the elements, without misplacement or exaggeration, of the Mosaic drama of creation.
I have referred in my brief survey to extended periods. It is probable, however, that the prophetic vision of creation, if such was its character, consisted of only single representative scenes, embracing each but a point of time; it was, let us suppose, a diorama, over whose shifting pictures the curtain rose and fell six times in succession,—once during the Azoic period, once during the earlier or middle Palæozoic period, once during the Carboniferous period, once during the Permian or Triassic period, once during the Oolitic or Cretaceous period, and finally, once during the Tertiary period. Dr. Kurtz holds, taking the Sabbath into the series, that the division into seven scenes or stages may have been regulated with reference to the importance and sacredness of the mythic number seven,—the symbol of completeness or perfection; but the suggestion will perhaps not now carry much weight among the theologians of Britain, whatever it might have done two centuries ago. It is true, that creation might have been exhibited, not by seven, but by seven hundred, or even by seven thousand scenes; and that the accomplished man of science, skilled in every branch of physics, might have found something distinct in them all. But not the less do the seven, or rather the six, exhibited scenes appear to be not symbolic or mystical, at least not exclusively symbolic or mystical, but truly representative of successive periods, strongly distinctive in their character, and capable, with the three geologic days as given points in the problem, of being treated geologically. Another of the questions raised, both by the German doctor and the writer in our own country, must be recognized as eminently suggestive. “We treat the history of creation,” says Dr. Kurtz, “with its six days’ work, as a connected series of so many prophetic visions. The appearance and evanishing of each such vision seem to the seer as a morning and an evening, apparently because these were presented to him as an increase and decrease of light, like morning and evening twilight.” And we find the Scottish writer taking essentially the same view. “Each day contains,” he says, “the description of what he [Moses] beheld in a single vision, and when it faded it was twilight. There is nothing forced in supposing that, after the vision had for a time illumined the fancy of the seer, it was withdrawn from his eyes, in the same way that the landscape becomes dim on the approach of evening.... From this point of view, a ‘day’ can only mean the period during which the Divinely enlightened fancy of the seer was active. When all continued bright and manifest before his entranced but still conscious soul, it was ‘day’ or ‘light.’ When the dimness of departing enlightenment fell upon the scene, it was the evening twilight.” The days, then, are removed, we find, by the holders of this view, altogether from the province of chronology to the province of prophetic vision; they are represented simply as parts of the exhibited scenery, or rather as forming the measures of the apparent time during which the scenery was exhibited. We must also hold, however, that in the character of symbolic days they were as truly representative of the lapse of foregone periods of creation as the scenery itself was representative of the creative work accomplished in these periods. For if the apparent days occurred in only the vision, and were not symbolic of foregone periods, they could not have been transferred with any logical propriety from the vision itself to that which the vision represented, as we find done in what our Shorter Catechism terms “the reason annexed to the Fourth Commandment.”18 The days must have been prophetic days, introduced, indeed, into the panorama of creation as mayhap mere openings and droppings of the curtain, but not the less symbolic of that series of successive periods, each characterized by its own productions and events, in which creation itself was comprised. Nothing more probable, however, than that even Moses himself may have been unacquainted with the extent of the periods represented in the vision; nay, he may have been equally unconscious of the actual extent of the seeming days by which they were symbolized. “Visions without dark speeches,”—visions, not of symbolic apparitions, but of actual existences and events, past or present,—may, nay must, have differed from what may be termed the dark hieroglyphic visions; but we find in all visions an element of mere representative value introduced when they deal with time, and that they occur as if wholly outside its pale. These creation “days” seem, in relation to what they typify, to have been, if I may so express myself, the mere modules of a graduated scale.
Such a description of the creative vision of Moses as the one given by Milton of that vision of the future, which he represents as conjured up before Adam by the archangel, would be a task rather for the scientific poet than for the mere practical geologist or sober theologian. Let us suppose that it took place far from man, in an untrodden recess of the Midian desert, ere yet the vision of the burning bush had been vouchsafed; and that, as in the vision of St. John in Patmos, voices were mingled with scenes, and the ear as certainly addressed as the eye. A “great darkness” first falls upon the prophet, like that which in an earlier age fell upon Abraham, but without the “horror;” and, as the Divine Spirit moves on the face of the wildly troubled waters, as a visible aurora enveloped by the pitchy cloud, the great doctrine is orally enunciated, that “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Unreckoned ages, condensed in the vision into a few brief moments, pass away; the creative voice is again heard, “Let there be light,” and straightway a gray diffused light springs up in the east, and, casting its sickly gleam over a cloud-limited expanse of steaming, vaporous sea, journeys through the heavens towards the west. One heavy, sunless day is made the representative of myriads; the faint light waxes fainter,—it sinks beneath the dim, undefined horizon; the first scene of the drama closes upon the seer; and he sits awhile on his hill-top in darkness, solitary but not sad, in what seems to be a calm and starless night.
The light again brightens,—it is day; and over an expanse of ocean without visible bound the horizon has become wider and sharper of outline than before. There is life in that great sea,—invertebrate, mayhap also ichthyic, life; but, from the comparative distance of the point of view occupied by the prophet, only the slow roll of its waves can be discerned, as they rise and fall in long undulations before a gentle gale; and what most strongly impresses the eye is the change which has taken place in the atmospheric scenery. That lower stratum of the heavens occupied in the previous vision by seething steam, or gray, smoke-like fog, is clear and transparent; and only in an upper region, where the previously invisible vapor of the tepid sea has thickened in the cold, do the clouds appear. But there, in the higher strata of the atmosphere they lie, thick and manifold,—an upper sea of great waves, separated from those beneath by the transparent firmament, and, like them too, impelled in rolling masses by the wind. A mighty advance has taken place in creation; but its most conspicuous optical sign is the existence of a transparent atmosphere,—of a firmament, stretched out over the earth, that separates the waters above from the waters below. But darkness descends for the third time upon the seer, for the evening and the morning have completed the second day.
Yet again the light rises under a canopy of cloud; but the scene has changed, and there is no longer an unbroken expanse of sea. The white surf breaks, at the distant horizon, on an insulated reef, formed mayhap by the Silurian or Old Red coral zoophytes ages before, during the bygone yesterday; and beats in long lines of foam, nearer at hand, against a low, winding shore, the seaward barrier of a widely spread country. For at the Divine command the land has arisen from the deep,—not inconspicuously and in scattered islets, as at an earlier time, but in extensive though flat and marshy continents, little raised over the sea level; and a yet further fiat has covered them with the great carboniferous flora. The scene is one of mighty forests of cone-bearing trees,—of palms, and tree-ferns, and gigantic club mosses, on the opener slopes, and of great reeds clustering by the sides of quiet lakes and dark rolling rivers. There is deep gloom in the recesses of the thicker woods, and low thick mists creep along the dank marsh or sluggish stream. But there is a general lightening of the sky over head; as the day declines, a redder flush than had hitherto lighted up the prospect falls athwart fern covered bank and long withdrawing glade. And while the fourth evening has fallen on the prophet, he becomes sensible, as it wears on, and the fourth dawn approaches, that yet another change has taken place. The Creator has spoken, and the stars look out from openings of deep unclouded blue; and as day rises, and the planet of morning pales in the east, the broken cloudlets are transmuted from bronze into gold, and anon the gold becomes fire, and at length the glorious sun arises out of the sea, and enters on his course rejoicing. It is a brilliant day; the waves, of a deeper and softer blue than before, dance and sparkle in the light; the earth, with little else to attract the gaze, has assumed a garb of brighter green; and as the sun declines amid even richer glories than those which had encircled his rising, the moon appears full orbed in the east,—to the human eye the second great luminary of the heavens,—and climbs slowly to the zenith as night advances, shedding its mild radiance on land and sea.
Again the day breaks; the prospect consists, as before, of land and ocean. There are great pine woods, reed-covered swamps, wide plains, winding rivers, and broad lakes; and a bright sun shines over all. But the landscape derives its interest and novelty from a feature unmarked before. Gigantic birds stalk along the sands, or wade far into the water in quest of their ichthyic food; while birds of lesser size float upon the lakes, or scream discordant in hovering flocks, thick as insects in the calm of a summer evening, over the narrower seas, or brighten with the sunlit gleam of their wings the thick woods. And ocean has its monsters: great “tanninim” tempest the deep, as they heave their huge bulk over the surface, to inhale the life-sustaining air; and out of their nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a “seething pot or cauldron.” Monstrous creatures, armed in massive scales, haunt the rivers, or scour the flat rank meadows; earth, air, and water are charged with animal life; and the sun sets on a busy scene, in which unerring instinct pursues unremittingly its few simple ends,—the support and preservation of the individual, the propagation of the species, and the protection and maintenance of the young.
Again the night descends, for the fifth day has closed; and morning breaks on the sixth and last day of creation. Cattle and beasts of the fields graze on the plains; the thick-skinned rhinoceros wallows in the marshes; the squat hippopotamus rustles among the reeds, or plunges sullenly into the river; great herds of elephants seek their food amid the young herbage of the woods; while animals of fiercer nature,—the lion, the leopard, and the bear,—harbor in deep caves till the evening, or lie in wait for their prey amid tangled thickets, or beneath some broken bank. At length, as the day wanes and the shadows lengthen, man, the responsible lord of creation, formed in God’s own image, is introduced upon the scene, and the work of creation ceases forever upon the earth. The night falls once more upon the prospect, and there dawns yet another morrow,—the morrow of God’s rest,—that Divine Sabbath in which there is no more creative labor, and which, “blessed and sanctified” beyond all the days that had gone before, has as its special object the moral elevation and final redemption of man. And over it no evening is represented in the record as falling, for its special work is not yet complete. Such seems to have been the sublime panorama of creation exhibited in vision of old to
“The shepherd who first taught the chosen seed,
In the beginning how the heavens and earth
Rose out of chaos;”
and, rightly understood, I know not a single scientific truth that militates against even the minutest or least prominent of its details.