important.

(Gen. i. 1; ii. 2) are make and create (Gen. i. 26, 27); form seems equivalent (in ii. 7) to make and create (in i. 26, 27); nevertheless, in Scripture the highest possible meaning is always the dominant, and passes by gradations into lower forms. We may safely say: "The Hebrew word > is limited, in its primary meaning, to the working of God, and is never used in Scripture (where it is used in Kal thirty-five times) to describe the works of man, and presents an instance of the exactitude and precision with which the Holy Spirit writes.”1

We are told-the Bible account of Creation "is discredited by its barbarous origin, and by the absurd or impossible assumptions which it would require us to make:"2 "we may with equal propriety speak of the creation of cholera, of a conflagration, of a railway station, as of the creation of man."3 In order to get rid of Special Creation, we are asked to believe that God did not create anything, or, at most, only little things; say-nothing larger than an infusorial point; and that a few clever men trace their pedigree from cosmic dust to sea-slime, from sea-slime to protoplasm, and from protoplasm, by successive evolutions, to the philosopher who weaves the hypothesis with scientific imagination and mends all breaks in the web with threads of fancy. For our own part, we cannot believe that the world, an unconscious thing, unconsciously developed itself-bringing things that are out of things which were not: we hold that "Nature's great progression from the formless to the formed, from the inorganic to the organic, from blind force to conscious intellect and will," must be accounted as God's way of doing things. It is absolutely and for ever inconceivable that carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen atoms, should be otherwise than indifferent as to their position and motion-past, present, or future. Are we, "the cunningest of nature's clocks," to believe that there is no Intelligence at the heart of things? Are we to set our time as if it were more philosophical to regard unconscious, unintelligent energies as creators and guides than to have faith in God?

1 Wordsworth's "Commentary."

2 "Cosmic Philosophy," vol. i., p. 464, John Fiske.

3 "Natural History of Creation," vol. i., p. 66, Dr Hæckel.

Conception of Creation.

III

We are assured-"It is impossible to think of creation; and to prove it is the impossible task of establishing an equation between something and nothing." We reply—It is as easy to think of creation as of matter or space, of time or eternity; and the world is full of equations impossible to man and incomprehensible by human reason. The conception of matter acting upon matter is essentially incapable of being construed in our consciousness. Whether we regard the atom as divisible or indivisible, we cannot get rid of mastering difficulties, and the hypothesis of attractive and repulsive energies lands us in insoluble contradiction. The æther, the interstellar medium, in which the phenomena of light are displayed, surrounds and enters every solid liquid and gaseous substance; is imponderable, impalpable, cannot be isolated, nor compressed, nor attenuated, nor excluded from any space or substance; "its properties are those of a solid rather than gas, it resembles jelly rather than air.” It seems hardly credible that men knowing of these mysteries should refuse the Divine Mystery. Aware that their own. mind, correlated with a complex nervous system, possessing minute particulars of organization, modifies surrounding agencies; yet, they tell us that Supreme Wisdom does nothing of the kind-"there is no intrusion of creative power in any series of phenomena;" "it is beneath a philosopher to examine the evidence for miracles." We are to accept the government of La Madre Natura, let her again have altars and groves; we must live simply for the moment's sakeimmortality being a dream; free-will, virtue, responsibilityfond delusions. Why, Martin Luther would be very rude and say “I would rather be in hell with Jesus Christ than in heaven with men like you."

"1

"God created," The Hebrew noun is plural: nomen majestatis. The mind of the Church discerns in this a threefold Divine self-consciousness in inseparable and co-eternal unity. Jehovah the personal God, covenanting with men; the Son of God, incarnate, is Christ, very God of very God, neither made nor created, but begotten; the Holy Ghost, proceeding, is the Spirit moving upon the waters. 1 "Fragments of Science," p. 4: Prof. Tyndall.

Trinity in unity is a transcendental doctrine. It began to be revealed when God created; it was further unfolded when the Spirit moved on the face of the deep; it was proclaimed in the counsel-words, "Let us make man;" it was formulated in the triplicate mention, "God created man in His own. image, in the image of God created He him, male and female created He them." Trinity of name and person-Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: the trinity of work-Creation, Redemption, Regeneration.

The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity rescues us from what Spinoza says "To define God is to deny Him, Determinatio negatio est; rescues us from the error that thought and volition, as known to us, are the very nature and essence of the Infinite; and enables us to see that the personality is not a limitation, but an ineffable reality raising us from the error of regarding the Eternal as mere infinitude; and giving knowledge of Him as the all-pervading and all-sustaining Power. It meets, so far as possible, the difficulties of men like Goethe "Since the great Being, whom we name the Deity, manifests Himself not only in man, but in a rich and powerful nature, and in mighty world events; a representation of Him, framed from human qualities, cannot be adequate; and the thoughtful observer will soon come to imperfections and contradictions, which will drive him to doubt-nay, even to despair; unless he be little enough to let himself be soothed by an artful evasion, or be great enough to rise to a higher point of view." Thus, though we cannot by searching find out God, we may know all that concerns us, as intelligent and responsible beings, to know. We have revelation of Him, in a symbolic way, as the Source of all things, as the Power who is disclosed in every throb of the mighty rhythmic life of the universe, as the One from whom proceeds that moral law, obedience to which is our only guarantee of incorruptible happiness.

The going forth of creative energy is revealed under the symbol of a Word. The Word of God must have the highest power and meaning attributed to it of which our thoughts are capable, as representing an effluence of Divine will and energy

1 66 Eckermann," vol. ii., p. 357.

Mediative Element in Divine Action.

113

to fashion the universe out of chaos. Science represents this operation as an evolution "in accordance with discernible physical laws," but Scripture reveals that laws exist and act by a "Divine power immanent in the cosmos." The Word, or that which it represents, entered chaos, gave capacity to assume beauty of form, and energy of life. That the Word was not a sound, nor a voice of articulate words, is evident from the fact of our Lord being called this Word (Jno. i. 1-3). Word is the expression of thought, that by which our ideas become known to others: hence, doubtless, "Word" and "Said" are used for the creative acts which gave outward expression in matter to the types in the Infinite Mind. God's Words are the potential seeds from which spring into actuality that which Divine wisdom had eternally prefigured, even as our own thoughts and will are the ground-plan of our conduct, and the essence of our character.

Word, means or represents the mediative element or outward expression of Divine action, as wisdom is the mediative element of Divine presence, vivifying and uniting all things. The Word, as understood in Palestine, was the complement to wisdom-the Divine thought. The Greek λóyos (sermo, ratio) mingled the two ideas. "According to the later distinction of Philo, wisdom corresponds to the immanent word λóyos évôiάberos; while the Word, strictly speaking, was defined as enunciative λόγος προφορικός. The one prepared man for the revelation of the Son of God; the other for the revelation of the Holy Spirit." " The correctness of this distinction may be called in question-λoyos ivdiáberos, p is the immanent reason, in the Holy Trinity, viewed ontologically; but viewed deontologically (as here, Gen. i.) the hoyoc popopinós is the mediative principle (person) by which God expresses Himself in creation.

I

.The heavens and the earth הַשְׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ

TT

How long

The heavens were created before the earth. before no man knows. The heavens mean, doubtless, heavenly bodies and the angels. Much stress cannot be laid on the words spoken to Job (xxxviii. 7), as to angels presid

1 Smith's "Dictionary of the Bible,"-Wisdom.

H

ing at the creation of the earth; the former half is obviously figurative, the latter may be also. There is an analogue of relation in creation to the Creator; creation is the Divine mirror and the life of God, complete and hidden in Himself, is that internal source whence all things have sprung. We may count the external glory of the heavenlies, manifested in time, as a symbol of the inner and eternal glory.

The creation of heaven and earth, recorded in the first verse of the inspired account, is possibly separated by an interval too vast for human measurement, from the wasteness and emptiness described in the second verse; nevertheless, to regard the first verse as stating a fact-God created the heavens and the earth, and then to take the remainder as a narrative of the order in which the earth was framed, seems simpler and agrees with the Fourth Commandment. We obtain, moreover, a natural and consistent meaning by taking , thus, "Now, as for the earth, it was wasteness and emptiness," as the initial state, or condition precedent to the moving of the Spirit.

7: T

TT:

Whether space was furnished at once by the fiat of Omnipotence with burning orbs and glorious spirits, "the man of science, if he confine himself within his own limits, will have no answer." Nevertheless, we may regard the time-world as the historical realisation of God's eternal design. This realisation was everlastingly decreed, but did not begin until the moment of living effectual interference: indeed, there was no time until creation, when the finite began to be; but after that were stages, intervals and processes of Divine effectuation. Angels preceded the earth, and rejoiced at its foundation. Wasteness and emptiness were moved upon by the Spirit, light shone, the firmamental tenuity was stretched out, there was a progression from the formless to the formed, from the inorganic to the organic, from animal instinct to human intellect and will. "There is nothing incompatible with the belief that all exercises of God's power, whether ordinary or extraordinary, are effected through the instrumentality of means-that is to say, by the

1 "The Constitution of Nature;" Professor Tyndall.