"Speaking is the revelation of thought; Creation is the realisation of Divine thought."--KEIL AND Delitzsch, Pentateuch. "According to Fichte, there is a 'Divine Idea' pervading the visible Universe; which visible Universe is indeed but its symbol and sensible manifestation, having in itself no meaning, or even true existence independent of it. To the mass of men this Divine Idea of the world lies hidden: yet to discern it, to seize it, and live wholly in it, is the condition of all genuine virtue, knowledge, freedom; and the end, therefore, of all spiritual effort in every age."-THOMAS CARLYLE, State of German Literature. WE pass to the Record of Creation in Holy Scripture. This demands expository treatment, and leads to some of those most practical truths which the Gospel proclaims. Our main object is, in all fairness, to harmonise the Record with the true conclusions of science. How do we know that words written very long ago have to do with us now? We know by it inspiring us. Knowledge of it, brings inspiration. The Word lives. The Book is a living Book, not dead like other books. It lives by making men, good, patient, useful through life; peaceful and joyous in the prospect of death. Science confesses that the world is inexplicable without "the omnipresent existence (ignored by positivism), whereof the phenomenal world is the multiform manifestation." "1. Our previous studies show that there have been breaks of continuity in the visible universe which were bridged from an external source-"all portions of our science, and especially that beautiful one, the Dissipation of Energy, point to a beginning, to a state of things incapable of being derived by present laws (of tangible matter and its energy) from any conceivable previous arrangement." This fact science, Cosmic Philosophy," pref., p. x.: John Fiske. "Recent Advances in Physical Science," p. 26: P. G. Tait, M.A. whose province is the discoverable, has revealed. What saith Scripture? "In the beginning," ni, "of old;" èv äpx?, LXX.; am Anfang, Luther; is to be taken as the head of all time, preceding every kind of existence; when the ideal, fundamental, eternal plan of God, gathered all worlds into one view; for with God past, present, future, are an eternal now. The Bible in its first Hebrew word states a fact which it is the glory of physical science to affirm. The earth and all things therein, the heavens and all their host, "are phenomena the very nature of which demonstrates that they must have had a beginning, and that they must have an end."1 There is no older event, for in the generation of the Son of God (John i. 1-3) the same word is used to show that Christ is co-eternal with the Father. In the beginning, being God and with God, He acted as the Creative Power. Creation was in the beginning, originated time, there never was a time without Creation. In carrying the mind to a conception of the age of our own earth and planetary system, it must be remembered that physical statements, like those in the Study on Rudiments of the World," pp. 74-79, are made, and rightly, on the ground of our belief as to the progressive order and continuance of things. It is not necessary as theologians, physicists, geologists, so far as faith in God and Holy Scripture is concerned, to accept calculations which assign very great antiquity to our own world. Reckoned backwards-on scientific principles of progression from the past, and forwards-according to the doctrine of continuance, they are affirmed by science not as absolute but highly probable facts. It was possible for God to act in any other way and by quicker process; and He may, as to the future, change all things in a moment. Knowing this, chastened in mind by Scripture, we apply science as a light to the meaning of sacred statements that intellect and pious emotion may be alike content. "God knows, can, and wills all together; wills at once the ends and the means the end by an antecedent, the means by a consequent volition." 2 , create, is the proper word to denote Divine produc 1 “Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge:" Prof. Huxley. 2 "Final Causes," p. 438: Paul Janet. Both Comprehensive and Definite. 105 tion. Our faith pierces the phenomenal externality of the world to its supernatural and essential source, and has power to understand that the worlds were framed (Heb. xi. 3). Fuerst states, in his Concordance, that "create" has not essentially the meaning of making things out of nothing: ", non habet producendi ex nihilo vim." The LXX. version is “ ἐποίησεν ὁ θεός τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γήν.” 17, create, y, make, y, form, interchange in use; for example, create" and "make" (Gen. i. 1, ii. 2) are make" and "create" (Gen. i. 26, 27); "form" seems equivalent (in ch. ii. 7) to "make" and "create" (in ch. i. 26, 27); nevertheless, in Scripture the highest possible meaning is always the dominant, and passes by gradations into lower forms. Again, is work which none but God can do; making, indefinitely, as a table; is to form, fashion, make in shape, say a round or a square table. 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 means We are told by unbelievers-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: "1266 we may with equal propriety speak of the creation of cholera, of a conflagration, of a railway accident, as of the creation of man." 3 We are assured that God did not create anything, or, at most, only little things; say-nothing larger than an infusorial point; that a few clever men can trace their pedigree from cosmic dust to sea-slime, from seaslime to protoplasm, and from protoplasm to the philosopher who weaves the hypothesis with scientific imagination and mends all breaks in the web with threads of fancy. We prefer the grand old Faith; 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 con 1 Wordsworth's "Commentary." 2 "Cosmic Philosophy," vol. i. p. 464: John Fiske. "Natural History of Creation," vol. i. p. 66: Dr. Haeckel. scious intellect and will," is God's way of doing things. It is 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 wise creators and intelligent guides, than to have faith in God? We will not sell ourselves and God for nought. There is a synthetic philosophy very foolish, the professors know that by changes all phenomena came from a different past, and are going to an unlike future; yet they would have us take the co-existence and sequence of phenomena at large as a law irreversible and universal. It is not: the so-called law changes every moment in its working and in its effects. The wonderfulness of creation is perverted into a plea for unbelief; that-"It is impossible to think of creation; and to prove it is the impossible task of establishing an equation between something and nothing." We replyscience tries every day to divest matter and force of all their properties. Having made them like nothing, from this nothing they try to create the world. 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 is a bewildering contradiction. 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."1 It seems hardly credible that men, knowing of these mysteries, refuse the Divine Mystery. Their own mind, correlated with a complex nervous system possessing minute particulars of organisation, modifies surrounding agencies; yet, they 'Fragments of Science," p. 4: Prof. Tyndall. 1 66 The Holy Trinity. 107 tell us Supreme Wisdom does nothing of the kind-" there is no intrusion of creative power in any series of phenomena." Martin Luther would be very rude and say—“I would rather be in hell with Jesus Christ than in heaven with men like you." "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 coeternal 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. Trinity in unity 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: Trinity of work-Creation, Redemption, Regeneration. 66 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; 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 gives knowledge of Him as the all-pervading and allsustaining Power. It meets, as 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." The Great Cause is that which had no beginning; the "I Am that I Am," the transcendental in all existence, may well be called "Three in One;" seeing that the past, present, future Eckermann," vol. ii. p. 357. 1 66 |