COSMOGONY OF THE VEDA.

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tive and even repulsive conception of the Deity and of the spiritual world; and next that, physically, they contravene the simplest facts of science. How came it to pass, then, I repeat, that the writer or compiler of this narrative in Genesis, confessedly one of the most ancient cosmogonies of the world, himself familiar with the cosmogony of Egypt, and probably with those of Phoenicia and of other nations farther East, wrote an account which is not only entirely free from the frivolous, absurd, and monstrous representations of parallel cosmogonies, but is in essential accord with the discoveries and developments of modern science? and that throughout he holds the thought steadily to the conception of one supreme, absolute, eternal, spiritual Creator? In its clear and positive conception of God as the creator, this Mosaic cosmogony far surpasses the sublime but mystic hymn of the Veda upon the same theme-one of the earliest relics of Hindu thought and devotion.

"Nor Aught nor Naught existed; yon bright sky

Was not, nor heaven's broad woof outstretched above.
What covered all? what sheltered? what concealed?
Was it the water's fathomless abyss?

There was not death-yet was there naught immortal;
There was no confine betwixt day and night;
The only One breathed breathless by itself;
Other than It there nothing since has been.
Darkness there was, and all at first was veiled
In gloom profound-an ocean without light.
The germ that still lay covered in the husk
Burst forth, one nature, from the fervent heat.
Then first came love upon it, the new spring
Of mind-yea, poets in their hearts discerned,
Pondering, this bond between created things
And uncreated. Comes this spark from earth
Piercing and all-pervading, or from heaven?
Then seeds were sown, and mighty powers arose—
Nature below, and power and will above.
Who knows the secret? who proclaimed it here,
Whence, whence this manifold creation sprang?

The gods themselves came later into being.
Who knows from whence this great creation sprang?
He from whom all this great creation came,
Whether his will created or was mute,

The Most High Seer that is in highest heaven,

He knows it or perchance even He knows it not." *

This passage, though free from grotesque and absurd combinations of the spiritual and the material, is pantheistic throughout, and while it places the manifoldness of the material creation before the creation of spiritual powers, it hardly concedes to "the One," "the IT" whose breath interpenetrates all existence, a consciousness of the beginning of the creation that somehow proceeded from Itself. Contrast with this the conception of the personal Creator and the description of His work with which Genesis opens. Think how much is asserted in the very first sentence of this book. "It assumes," says Dr. Murphy, "the existence of God, for it is He who in the beginning creates. It assumes His eternity, for He is before all things; and as nothing comes from nothing, He himself must have always been. It implies Ilis omnipotence, for He creates the universe of things. It implies His absolute freedom, for He begins a new course of action. It implies His infinite wisdom; for a kosmos, an order of matter and mind, can only come from a being of absolute intelligence. It implies His essential goodness, for the Sole, Eternal, Almighty, All-wise, and All-sufficient Being has no reason, no motive, and capacity for evil. It presumes Him to be beyond all limit of time and place, as He is before all time and place. * This simple sentence denies atheism; for it assumes the being of God. It denies polytheism, and, among its various forms, the doctrine of two eternal principles, the one good

*

*

*

*

*

*

* The Rig-Veda, Book X., Hymn 129; translated in Max Muller's "Chips from a German Workshop," vol. i., p. 76.

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THE GENESIS OF THINGS REVEALED BY GOD. and the other evil; for it confesses the one Eternal Creator. It denies materialism, for it asserts the creation of matter. It denies pantheism, for it assumes the existence of God before all things, and apart from them. It denies fatalism, for it involves the freedom of the eternal being."

Again I call upon the skeptic to answer, Whence came this sublime conception of God, which has never been exceeded by any philosophy since? Whence this wondrously true and accurate outline of the course of creation, in an age of the world when there was no philosophy nor science equal to such conceptions and discoveries-in an age when all the wisdom of the world upon such matters has shown itself to have been utterly and hopelessly at fault? Whence came this account of the creation but from God himself, by direct communication to man?

If it be asked how such a communication was made, we can answer only by conjecture. A probable conjecture is, that what here is given in narrative passed before the mind of the original narrator in a series of retrospective visions; that it was a panoramic optical presentation; as in a prophetic vision, future events are made to pass before the mind in a scenic form. As, for instance, the grand series of events described by John in the Apocalypse moved before him in a succession of visions, so this series of phenomena in the course of creation may have been pictorially represented to the mind of the historian in the inverted order of prophecy, and at each shifting of the scene appeared the hand of God!

Moses has not attempted to teach astronomy or geology, nor to anticipate the deductions of any science, physical or metaphysical. But he has here laid down the first fundamental truth in all theology-a personal Creator: "In the

*Commentary on Genesis," i. 1.

beginning God created the heaven and the earth." The existence of God is assumed, yet the universe here contemplated as the work of creative intelligence becomes a convincing argument for the being of God. Can a man walk this earth so manifestly prepared for his abode, enjoy its beauties, appropriate its uses, analyze its mysteries, and not feel that there is a God? Can a man look upon these heavens, measure the distance, the density, the capacity of each star, prescribe the motions of the planets, and summon to light new worlds to explain the aberrations of the old, and not feel that there is a hand divine that binds the sweet influences of Pleiades and looses the bands of Orion, that brings forth Mazzaroth in his season, and guides Arcturus with his sons?

Shall a man look upon himself, and behold how fearfully and wonderfully he is made, and not know that he is God's workmanship? Shall he make a watch, and not perceive that a superior intelligence must have made the delicate organ that keeps time within his own breast? Shall he make a telescope, and not perceive how much higher skill was requisite to make the eye which he so rudely imitates, and without which his telescope would be a worthless tube of tin? Shall he imagine that matter has done for itself what he with all his intelligence and ingenuity can not do with matter? Shall he bring down light from the stars, and not see that it is God's light?

Or shall he look within himself? Shall the thinking I, the living soul, which knows that it is not self-existent, that it has not existed from eternity, shall that soul ask itself whence it came, and not feel the spontaneous, glowing response, "I am the offspring of God?" "How can a man be an atheist ? be an atheist, and yet be a man? Can he know himself and not know God? God is seen and felt in all His works, whether

OUTLINE OF CREATION IN GENESIS.

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man will see Him or no. We have no need to say, "Oh, that I knew where I might find Him!" If we feel after Him, we shall surely find Him, "seeing He is not far from every one of us-for in Him we live, and move, and have our being." "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God."

We wander back in quest of the origin of our race and of the world we inhabit, till we meet this sublime declaration, In the beginning, GOD. We traverse the whole field of speculative philosophy, and reach the same sublime result, In the beginning, GOD. We roam through the interminable ages and cycles of ages in the eras of geology, and the weary mind comes at length to the same terminus, In the beginning, GOD. We take the nebular theory, and melt down the earth to a fluid mass, and evaporate this into the thinnest ether diffused in space, and requiring age upon age of motion to give it solidity and form; we ask whence came the ether? IN THE BEGINNING, GOD. Everywhere it is written, There is a God-a living God, a personal God, a present God. Can there be a higher object of thought than to know such a God? Can there be a higher privilege of love than to know God as a friend?