WHEN THE WORLD WAS MADE.

Genesis 1.

LET us open our Bibles at the first chapter of Genesis. We are beginning a series of lectures on " Great Epochs of Sacred History," which, it is unnecessary to say, will be Biblical and expository in character, because from our point of view there is no sacred history outside of the Bible.

I.

The theme of this lecture is " When the World Was Made/' and without further preliminaries let us read the first verse:

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

If, for the first time, we had heard these words, certain questions would have arisen in our minds. For example, Who wrote them? Where did he obtain his information? How do we know it is true? When was the beginning? Who is God? How did He create the heaven and the earth?

In attempting to answer them, let me remind you that for thirty-five hundred years, more or less, the whole of the Christian church and the Jewish nation have believed that Moses, the great leader and legislator of the Hebrew people, was the human author of these words. These two witnesses, the Christian church and the Jewish nation, have had every reason and every facility for ascertaining the facts in the case, and therefore we may believe their testimony is true, and rest upon it.

WHERE MOSES GOT HIS FACTS.

Moses may have obtained his information by direct revelation from God; or from tradition, as handed down from generation to generation, for the long lives of the patriarchs would have permitted its transmission through not more than five or six men; or he may have obtained it by the comparison of other and earlier documents, for similar records of creation were in possession of other nations. But in any event, we know from other scriptures that he was guided and controlled by God in the record he has here made of it.

The Bible does not say when the beginning was. There is a chronology in the margin of our Bibles, and it says the earth is six thousand years old, but you doubtless know that it is a man-made chronology and not God-made. It is not part of the inspired text, and therefore we have a right to go back of it, if we will, and inquire concerning it.

The earth may be six thousand years old, or sixty thousand, or six hundred thousand, or it may be six hundred million years old, as some scientists believe. But if the latter should prove beyond a peradventure that the earth is so old, there is nothing in the Bible it would contradict, for the Bible says that " In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," but does not state when the beginning was.

THE BEING OF GOD.

Who is God? As we understand the Holy Scriptures, God is an infinite and a personal Being, above and independent of the universe He created. If such a God, personal and infinite, did not create the heaven and the earth, who did? Excuse the vulgarism, if I say that it is up to the disputer to say who did create the heaven and the earth, and how it was created, if God, and such a God, was not its creator.

I quote a sentence or two from Dr. A. T. Pierson, who reminds us of the axiom that nothing can be imparted to a work that is not first in the workman, or to a product that is not first in the producer. In this earth we see a work, a product, and we see one that has design and purpose stamped upon its every part; but design and purpose are always the products and the proofs of intelligence. Therefore, whoever designed this earth, whoever wrought out the work and the product must have had intelligence, and intelligence presupposes a personal being. We have here the whole argument for a divine Creator in a nutshell, and one which has never been answered, and never can be answered while the world lasts.

WHERE DID MAN COME FROM?

Let us follow Dr. Pierson a little further. There are those who would say concerning man for example, that he is developed from a monkey. But where did the monkey come from? He came from a codfish. But where did the codfish come from? It came from an oyster. But where did the oyster come from? It came from the original germ, or protoplasm. But where did the protoplasm come from? They would answer that it was spontaneously generated. In other words, it came from itself! Now they say:

"All is plain. The chain has been traced link by link to the very last."

"Yes, but that link has no staple, it has no fastening anywhere." " It makes no matter," they would reply, " the chain is hung somewhere."

We grant that, but to us the " somewhere " is God. He is the staple of the chain, He is the fastening, and no one and nothing else. Argue as you please, you are always arguing in a circle and coming back to the place whence you started, except as you begin where Moses begins, in the first verse of the first chapter of Genesis.

WERE THERE MEN BEFORE ADAM?

And here is a further interesting suggestion concerning that first verse of Genesis. There are devout scholars, who are at the same time devout Christians, who believe that it is separated by a long period from the verses which follow it.

They believe that it refers to a creation of heaven and earth prior to the creation of the earth as we now know it.

They hold that that long-ago earth was created good, and perfect and holy, and that there were men upon it before Adam, pre-Adamites, as they are called. But they hold that some great catastrophe occurred in it, brought about by sin through the same devil and Satan who is introduced to us a little later on.

They would claim further, that as the result of this catastrophe the earth fell into that condition of chaos described in the second verse.

If this hypothesis be true and it may be true perhaps it allows time enough for the formation of those geological strata of which scientists speak, and time enough to meet the demands of others who affirm that the creation of the earth must have been hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years ago.

II.

Let us, then, passing from the first verse, read the work of the first day of what we may call our era, and come face to face with the picture of the earth in its condition of chaos. Verses 2 to 5:

"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day."

The word " was " in verse 2 might be translated " became/' in which event verses 1 and 2 would read: " In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth became without form, and void," as though the condition indicated there was the result of something that had happened to the earth of verse 1.

Notice the description of the earth in verse 2. Formless and empty, dark and deep. " And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." To get the sense of this, we need to know that the word " earth " as here used does not mean the earth as we now know it, and as it is referred to in the work of the third day, but merely the material, " the cosmic matter," as some call it, out of which the earth was made. Also, the word " waters " in this verse does not mean the liquid of our seas and oceans, but rather the gaseous condition of this cosmic matter out of which the earth was made.

PANTHEISM CONTRADICTED.

"The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. It does not say that He moved within them. Significant this. Pantheism would say He moved within the waters. Christian Science probably would say this, and Theosophy and the New Thought would say it, for these are only different forms of pantheism, which denies the personality of God.

All the god pantheism knows is what it describes as " the impersonal soul of the universe." The god of pantheism is in this book, or this desk, or the material of this building, or in any other thing or part of the universe that can be named, but it is not above, or beyond or separated from it as an independent and self-conscious being. But the only and true God meets this false philosophy at the very beginning of His revelation in the use of that particular preposition, saying that He moved upon the waters, and not within them. The word " moved " might be rendered " brooded." It is the picture of a bird brooding over her nest. As the result of the brooding there is vibration in the gaseous matter, and as the result of the vibration, light; hence the significance of the words: " And God said, Let there be light: and there was light."

III.

THE HEAVEN OF THE SECOND DAY.

Let us now read the story of the second day, verses 6 to 8:

"And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day."

To understand this day's work, keep in mind the gaseous condition of the matter out of which' the earth was made. It is vibrating, and light is presiding over it. The step that God now takes is to make a division in it. He separates it so that some of it is above, and some below, and the space between the two He calls the firmament, or, as it might be rendered, the expanse, which He subsequently designates as heaven.

By this " heaven " is meant the great space chamber that surrounds our earth, not only that, however, in which the birds fly and the clouds float, but that still greater space in which the sun, and moon, and stars find their habitation. This is the firmament, or expanse, or heaven of the second day.

IV.

We are now ready for the revelation of the third day. See verses 9 to 13:

"And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day."

Now and throughout the rest of our chapter we are concerned simply with the lower half of this gaseous matter already spoken of. It is divided from the upper half by the expanse of heaven. It ib a ball of fire, vibrating and rotating with a velocity we cannot apprehend. And as it rotates it throws off great rings which vibrate and rotate in their turn. Each of them at length is rolled up into a ball, and one of them becomes the nucleus or beginning of our earth.

As it vibrates and rotates, now far away from the greater ball of fire which threw it off, it gradually cools; and as it cools chemical affinities are formed, hydrogen and oxygen come together, with water as the result, the water we speak of as that of our oceans and seas. Thus this great rolling ball of fire is now swathed in a covering of water.

LIKE A BAKED APPLE.

But it continues to cool still further, and as it cools its crust hardens, and becomes wrinkled, like the skin of a baked apple when it comes upon the table. The hollows on the surface are the places into which the water runs and which form the basins of the oceans and seas, while the projecting parts are the mountain ranges and uplands. Hence the significance of the words:

"And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so."

But something else was done on the third day. Now that the dry land appears, it is ready for vegetation, and the command goes forth, " Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind." Observe the wording of the language here.

THE EGG OR THE HEN FIRST?

Scientists have been interested for generations over the question, " Which was first, the egg or the hen? The seed or the plant?" And latterly, they have come to the conclusion that the hen was before the egg, and the plant before the seed.

But behold! Moses, thirty-five hundred years ago revealed this order. Where did he get his information? What an evidence of the inspiration of the Bible! He tells us that God made the herb first, yielding seed, and the fruit tree first, yielding fruit after its kind.

The Bible does not claim to teach science, or to be a scientific book in the technical sense of the term, but there is no conclusion of science which, in the slightest degree, contradicts any statement the Bible has ever made concerning any scientific fact.

V.

We have another illustration of this in the story of the fourth day, in verses 14 to 19:

"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day."

MOSES VS. VOLTAIRE.

Two hundred years ago, the French philosopher and atheist, Voltaire, raised a laugh against Moses for saying that God made the sun upon the fourth day.

"Why!" he exclaimed, " does not everybody know that the sun is the source of light? Therefore God must have made the sun upon the first day. In the face of this fact, how can one affirm that the Bible is inspired, and that it is a revelation from God?"

In those days Christians were unable to answer Voltaire from the scientific point of view, and must simply hold their peace and bide their time. But now, within seventy-five years, perhaps, von Humboldt has discovered that there was light before the sun, and hence that the latter is not the source of it. In other words, the earth is self-luminous.

LIGHT ON THE COUNTRY ROAD.

Indeed a child may discover this for himself on a dark night, especially if he lives in the country, where there are no lamps upon the roads.

You have gone out sometimes on such a night, so dark that you could not see your hand before you, and yet after you had journeyed a little way, you became conscious that there was light, you were seeing something, after all.

Whence came the light? There was no moon in the sky and no stars, and yet, you were able to see the path before you, and the hedge on either side; and as you looked up between the trees you could see the sky, dark and cloudy, but still the sky.

Whence came the light? The answer of the scientist is the answer of the Word of God, the light came from the earth itself.

Here again as I have said, we find a testimony to the inspiration of the Mosaic record, for how could he have written these things which the world has only now discovered, except as God revealed them?

Notice the reason for which God made the sun and moon and stars. They are not the light itself, but the holders of it. Why made He them to hold it? To divide the day from the night, is one reason; which is secured by the rotation of the earth on its axis. To be for signs and for seasons, and for days and for years is another reason. This is secured by the earth's annual revolution around the sun, for as every day it is turning on its axis and giving us day and night, so is it making a revolution around the sun, and we have winter and summer, and seed-time and harvest*

HALLEY'S COMET.

Our secular papers recently spoke of the greatness of Dr. Halley, who discovered the comet that has visited us again; and of his greatness in being able so accurately to calculate the time of its return, so that we knew to a day when in the period of seventy-four years it might be seen.

Great, indeed, is the astronomer whose brain can perform a mathematical feat like that, but greater still, the God Who made the man, and the brain and the comet, too! Let us ascribe greatness unto Him to Whom it belongeth, and especially now, when through the machinations of the prince of darkness man is becoming more and more a god unto himself.

"The spacious firmament on high,

With all the blue, ethereal sky,

And spangled heav'ns, a shining frame,

Their great Original proclaim:

The unwearied sun,. from day to day,

Does his Creator's pow'r display;

And publishes to every land

The work of an Almighty hand."

VI.

We hasten on to the work of the last day, verses 26 to 28:

"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."

Four things I would call your attention to, very briefly. One is, the use again of the word " create." Only three times in the chapter is the word used; when God brings into being the world of matter, the world of animal life and the world of spiritual life, as represented by man, made in His image.

THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY.

The second thing I would emphasize is the word " us." Notice the plural pronoun as an intimation at the very beginning of revelation of the tri-personality in the Godhead, the fundamental doctrine of Christendom, the doctrine of the Trinity.

Our Unitarian neighbors would answer this by saying that the plural is used here only in the sense of the plural of majesty, just as kings and emperors of the present day say " we " when referring to themselves. But we reply with Dr. Murphy, that such was not the usual style of monarchs in the ancient East. Pharaoh never used this word, nor Nebuchadnezzar, nor Cyrus, nor Darius. Nor does God Himself use it, except in instances like the present where He would emphasize the great truth that in the " I " there is also " us " and " our."

We need to bear constant and definite testimony to to the great truth of the trinity in the Godhead, involving as it does, the deity of Jesus Christ and the personality of the Holy Ghost, for when we let go of one of these fundamentals we let go of every one.

In illustration of this, in the last national Unitarian convention, one of their speakers from the Pacific coast declared that it was not right " to pray to a monarch in the skies," but that " prayer should rather be addressed to a universal god that was in man."

MAN IN GOD'S IMAGE.

The third thing I would call attention to is this: " God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness."

What is meant by the image or the likeness of God in which man was made? The next chapter indicates its meaning. We find in the creation of man a kind of trinity, for it is said that God formed him of the dust of the ground, breathing into his nostrils the breath of life, so that he became a living soul. And henceforward in Holy Scripture man is referred to as possessing body, soul, and spirit.

The distinction between the soul and the spirit is before us for consideration in the next chapter, but now I want to emphasize the fact that man is made in the image of God as to his nature, a kind of trinity in himself.

But he is made in the image of God, not only as to his nature, but as to his character, for we read in Paul's letter to the Colossians that believers on Jesus Christ have been renewed in knowledge after the image of God. (Colossians 3:10).

In other words, the great element which differentiates man from the rest of animal life, and makes him to be a spirit, is the religious element, the capability to know God, and to have fellowship with Him in life, and service, and perfection.

Man lost this image when he fell into sin in the garden of Eden. He did not merely deface it, but lost it. But, thanks be unto God, there is such a thing as the renewal of man in that image, which takes place when he believes on the Lord Jesus Christ as his Saviour, and confesses Him before men as his Lord.

MAN'S DOMINION.

The fourth and last thing I name in the work of the sixth day, is the dominion God gave to man over all the rest of created nature.

This dominion man has lost, in a great measure, through sin, but this also is to be restored to him again in that great day for which the whole creation waiteth. (Romans 8:22, 23). The 8th Psalm seems to teach us the same truth from the Old Testament point of view..

How glorious to know that those who have believed on Jesus Christ are heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ; and that as joint-heirs with Him there is restored to us that dominion He Himself has over the whole of created nature!

It pays to be a Christian, and it also pays to know what it is to be a Christian!

O the height, and depth, and length and breadth of that love of God toward us, in Christ, that passeth knowledge!

VII.

THE WORLD CREATED OUT OF NOTHING.

Two questions I would raise, and answer briefly.

First, Did God create the world out of nothing? The answer is that He did.

That answer is found first., in what has been said concerning the design and purpose in creation, and it is found again in the peculiar use of the word " create " in this first chapter of Genesis.

That word does not of itself always and necessarily mean a creation out of nothing, but as it is used here it does mean that, and nothing else.

It is used so discriminatingly here. In verses 1, 21 and 27, at the introduction of material life, at the introduction of animal life, and at the introduction of spiritual life you find it; but in every other case in this chapter where mere transformations are referred to, or where new species of animal life are mentioned, another word is used, and which is translated " made " and not " created."

Now the fact that God uses the word " create " in these particular instances is an evidence that when it comes to a question of the bringing into being of these three spheres of existence, which are the only spheres of existence which we know, the creation of them was a creation absolutely out of nothing.

WHAT ABOUT EVOLUTION?

But what of evolution? What is evolution? It is the theory, speaking in general terms, that God created matter, giving to it certain inherent and necessary laws, and then left it to itself in order that, by the operation of those laws, without any special interposition of His, the whole universe, including man, should be created.

Man in this way, according to evolution theories, has come up from the lower animals, as they in turn have come from the plant world, and the plant world from protoplasm, or fire mist, or whatever you may please to call it. (See note on page 26).

The answer to evolution has been given in what has been said concerning the design and purpose everywhere seen in the universe. But that is not to say that there may not be a certain kind of evolution within each one of these systems, or spheres of life, of which I have spoken.

For example, matter may evolve itself into various forms of matter, or animal life various forms of animal life, or spiritual life into various forms of spiritual life, but if this is proven and as yet it is not proven it is something entirely different from that other kind of evolution which would make man the descendant of an ape, and drive God out of the universe that He has made.

JOHN BURROUGHS AND THE BIRDS.

In closing, let me bring again to your attention what I referred to a moment ago, viz: the man in his natural state has lost the image of God, and that it can never be restored to him except as he comes to God through Jesus Christ.

John Burroughs, the great naturalist, was seated one day on the veranda of his hostess, whose residence overlooked the Hudson River, when she complained to him of the scarcity of bird-life in her locality.

Said Mr. Burroughs, in surprise: " While I have been sitting here I have counted not less than twelve different species of birds."

"What," she replied, " is it possible that I have been here all summer and have seen so few, and you, in the course of half an hour, have seen so many?"

His reply has a lesson in it for the spiritual sphere: "Ah, madam, you must have the bird in your heart before you can have it in your eye!"

The knowledge of God, which is the restoration in man of God's image, is not the knowledge of the head, but of the heart.

Our Lord and Saviour said: " This is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." The knowledge of God in that sense is not intellectual but moral.

"Marvel not that I said unto thee, ye must be born again."

NOTE.

The evolution theory has been associated chiefly with the name of Darwin, but modern philosophers, especially among the Germans, believe it has seen its best days. Even in the last decade of the nineteenth century a few timid expressions of doubt and opposition were heard, to quote "The Literary Digest," and these have gradually swollen into a great chorus of voices aiming at the overthrow of the theory altogether.

Prof. Fleischmann in a recent book upon the subject affirms that:

"The Darwinian theory of descent has not a single fact to confirm it in the realm of nature. It is not the result of research, but purely the product of the imagination."

"The Other Side of Evolution," by Rev. Alexander Patterson, an inexpensive book of less than 150 pages, is recommended to those who would like to see something of both sides in a condensed form. A still smaller publication, and of much value, is "The Collapse of Evolution " by Prof. Luther T. Townsend, D. D.