must have existed for ages before, in order that their light might at this time have become visible. But there is in all this no conflict with the account in Genesis, if we remember that the language of this narrative is popular and not scientific. The description is optical or phenomenal, that is, of things as they would have appeared, or may be imagined to have appeared, to a human observer, could one then have been stationed on the earth. Vegetation of course required light, and the existence of light has already been announced from the first day. There was cosmical light even when the shining of the sun and other heavenly bodies was not apparent. Let us suppose a human observer (though we well know that man could not have existed in that primitive condition of the globe) to have been stationed on the earth during the period of the vegetation which produced the coal deposits-when the globe was wrapped in dense steaming mists. The sun would have been no more visible than through a London fog! If after a long experience of this condition of the earth and its atmosphere the observer had seen these mists rolling away, the atmosphere gradually clearing up, the light beginning to break in from above-his first glimpse of the sun shining in the distant heavens would appear to him as a new creation, and in optical or popular language he would properly describe the sun, the moon, the stars, then first made visible, as created upon that day.

How was this language understood by those to whom it was originally addressed? By disregarding that principle of interpretation which seeks the meaning of an author in the familiar conceptions of his own age, and forcing upon his words ideas derived from later discoveries and other modes of thought, great violence has been done to the text and teaching of Moses. "The great majority of readers," says Max Muller, "transfer without hesitation the ideas which they connect

OUTLINE OF CREATION IN GENESIS.

19

with words as used in the nineteenth century to the mind of Moses or his contemporaries, forgetting altogether the distance which divides their language and their thought from the thoughts and language of the wandering tribes of Israel." *

Without going further into details, it is enough to say that a principle of order and of progress runs through the narrative, whose main features correspond wonderfully with the best results of Geology. We must bear in mind that Geology, one of the newest of sciences, has already many times changed its own theories of the order and method of the structure of our globe; but that order which is now generally accepted by the most accomplished geologists-of whom Guyot, Dana, and Agassiz may be taken as types-is substantially as follows:that the first movement toward the present condition of things was the beginning of activity in matter, as this was already diffused in a chaotic, perhaps a gaseous, state. This activity was attended with the evolution of light. Next, the earth was divided from the fluid that surrounded it, and assumed a condition of solidity. Next, its features began to appear in outline; then vegetable life, characterized in Gen. i. 11 as “having seed in itself," organic matter in distinction from inorganic substances of which the earth was previously composed. Fourth, there came in light from the sun, having reference to higher systems of life, then about to appear upon the globe. Fifth, the lower orders of animals were introduced in a successive series, and finally appeared the mammals— and man, the crown and end of the whole. This outline, sketched by science, is in remarkable correspondence with that given in the first chapter of Genesis; for what we have in Genesis is simply an outline. The writer does not give the processes of creation, but the succession of phenomena, and

*"Chips from a German Workshop," i., p. 133.

his object at every step is to exhibit the power of God. Each central thought, each advancing step in the series, is brought out with simplicity and boldness to illustrate the glory of the Creator.

How came the writer of this account by such a doctrine of the origin of things? Here is a phenomenon in literature, in the history of the human mind, that the skeptic must account for. Moses knew nothing of Geology; perhaps he did not even apprehend the full meaning of that which he recorded as a vision of the six days. How came it to pass that, in that far antiquity, he laid down a basis of the creation which is in such wondrous harmony with that which science now reveals? Compare this narrative with the cosmogonies of the leading nations of antiquity. There are certain general points of resemblance which only render more striking and impressive the characteristic features in which this differs from those. For instance, the cosmogony of the Babylonians represents the beginning of things as in darkness. and water, where nondescript animals, hideous monsters, half-men and half-beasts, appeared, and after this, a womanwho personates the creative spirit or principle-was split into two parts, and the heaven and the earth produced by the division. Then Belus, the supreme divinity, cut off his own head, and his blood trickling down and mingling with the dust of the earth, produced human creatures having intelligence and spiritual life. According to the Phoenician cosmogony, that which first appeared was an ether or a mist diffused in space. Then arose the wind, the representative of motion, and from this agitation proceeded a spiritual God, from whom again in turn proceeded an egg-which is so common a feature of the cosmogonies of antiquity-the division of which, as in the case of the woman, produced the heavens and the earth. The noise of thunder awakened

ANCIENT COSMOGONIES.

21

beings into spiritual life. The Egyptian cosmogony was in general harmony with the Phoenician. Its principal divinity was Ptah, the world-creating power, who shaped the cosmic egg, which again appears here, as in the Phoenician. There followed from Ptah a long succession of gods, with various offices and powers-solar, telluric, psychical—from whom at length proceeded demigods, and from these again heroes, until the link of our common humanity was established.

The bare statement of these systems must convince one that Moses borrowed nothing from them, though he was probably familiar with their common conception of the origin of the universe; and the question remains, How was it that he avoided their errors and extravagances, and gave with such severe simplicity a description of the creation, which, for popular uses, no rhetoric could improve and no science can gainsay? It will not meet this question to bring down the date of the composition of Genesis, as Ewald proposes, to the time of Solomon, for the physical history of the globe as now deciphered by Geology was not comprehended in the wisdom of Solomon, and the record that lay hidden in the rocks was no more suspected then than when Moses wandered in the rocky wilderness of Sinai. Besides, at that period, we find no improvement in the prevalent conception of the origin of the universe; but comparing the narrative in Genesis with the cosmogony of Homer and Hesiod, are still compelled to ask, Whence came that unique, exact, sublime account of the creation contained in this book?

1

According to Grote, "the mythical world of the Greeks opens with the gods, anterior as well as superior to man; it gradually descends, first to heroes, and next to the human. race. Along with the gods are found various monstrous natures, ultra-human and extra-human, who can not with propriety be called gods, but who partake with gods and

man in the attributes of free-will, conscious agency, and susceptibility of pleasure and pain-such as the Harpies, the Gorgons, the Sirens, the Sphinx, the Cyclops, the Centaurs, etc."* After violent contests among these gigantic creatures and forces, there arises a stable government of Zeus, the chief among the gods. First appears Chaos, then the broad, firm, flat Earth, with deep and dark Tartarus below, and from these proceed various divinities and creatures, some grand and terrible, some simply monstrous; their relations to each other violate all notions of decency and morality; their wars and slaughters, their gross and abominable crimes, issue in successive creative products upon the earth, which terminate at last in the appearing of man. We can not suffer the mythology of the Greeks to be read in our schools, except in expurgated editions; and although at the original basis of this was much poetic beauty of conception and even a sublime spirituality of thought, the representation in the concrete is so gross and offensive, and the details are so contrary to the known facts of science, that both our moral sense and our intelligence repudiate it as an account of the origin of the world and of man.

In like manner, should we analyze the cosmogonies of all antiquity, we should find in them certain elements of spiritual thought, grand and imposing, an approximation to the truth as the highest religion and philosophy now give it, but intermingled with this much that is puerile, grotesque, absurd or gross-the intervention of the egg, of the tortoise, of the elephant, of a variety of mundane or monstrous creatures and powers in evolving the principles of nature. The defect of all these systems is, that in attempting to describe the process of creation, first, metaphysically, they introduce some defec

*"History of Greece," vol. i., chap 1.