Sunday Readings for the Month.
Read Job xxvi., and 1 Cor. xiii.
The Source of Unrest.
"Things too high for me."
We are apt to think and speak as if difficulty of faith were an experience peculiar to our age. It is indeed true that at particular periods speculative uncertainty has been more widely diffused than at others, and our own age may be one of them. But the real causes of perplexity in things religious are permanent and unchanging, having their roots deep-seated in the essential nature of man's relation to the world and to God. There has never been a time when men have not had to fight hard battles for their faith against the dark mysteries and terrors of existence, that pressed in upon their souls and threatened to enslave them. What is this brief Psalm, echoing like a sea-shell in its tiny circle the heart-beat of a vanished world, but the pathetic record of a soul's dread struggle with doubt and darkness, telling in its simple rhythm and quiet cadences the story how through the breakers of unbelief it fought its way to the firm shores of faith, and peace, and hope? It reads like a tale of yesterday. It is just what we are seeking, suffering, achieving. Yet more than two thousand years have come and gone since the brain that thought and the hand that wrote have mouldered into dust.
The poem must have been penned at a time when the poet's own misfortunes, or the general disorders of the age, were such as seemed to clash irreconcilably with his preconceived notions of God's goodness, character, and purposes. The shock of this collision between fact and theory shook to its foundations the structure of his inherited creed, and opened great fissures of questioning in the fabric of his personal faith. He was tempted to abandon the believing habits of a religious training and the confiding instincts of a naturally devout heart, and either to doubt the being and power of the Almighty, or to deny His wisdom and beneficence. For a long time he was tossed hither and thither on the alternate ebb and flow of questioning denial and believing affirmation, finding nowhere any firm foothold amid the unstable tumult of conflicting evidence and inconclusive reasoning. At last out of the confusion there dawned on his mind a growing persuasion of something clear and certain. He perceived that not only was the balance of evidence indecisive, but also that the issue never could but be indeterminate. For he saw that the method itself was impotent, and could never reach or unravel the themes of his agonised questioning. A settled conviction forced itself upon his mind that there are in life problems no human ingenuity can solve, questions that baffle man's intellect to comprehend, "great matters, and things too high" for him. It was a discovery startling, strange, and painful. But at least it was something solid and certain; it was firm land, on which one's feet might be planted. Moreover, it was not an ending, but a beginning, a starting-point that led somewhere. Perchance it might prove to be the first step in a rocky pathway, that should guide his footsteps to heights of clearer light and wider vision, where the heart, if not the intellect, might reach a solution of its questioning and enter into rest. The quest he had commenced had turned out a quest of the unattainable, but it had brought him to a real and profitable discovery. He had recognised and accepted once and for ever the fact of the fixed and final limitation of human knowledge.
It is an experience all men have to make, an experience that grows with age and deepens with wisdom, as we more and more encounter the mysteries of existence, and fathom the shallowness of our fancied knowledge. What do we know of God, the world, ourselves? How much, and how little! How much about them, how little of them! Who of us, for instance, has any actual conception of God in His absolute being? You remember how in dreamy childhood you would vainly strive to arrest and fasten in some definite image the vague vision of dazzling glory you had learned to call God, which floated before your soul, awing you with its majesty and immeasurable beauty, but evading every effort to grasp it. With gathering years and widening horizon you watched the world's changeful aspects and ceaseless movements, till nature seemed the transparent vesture of its mighty Maker, but it was all in vain that you tried to pierce the thin veil and behold the invisible Worker within. You took counsel with science, and it told you much concerning the properties of matter and the sequences of force, but the ultimate cause, that which is beneath, that which worketh all in all, it could not reveal. You turned to philosophy, and you traced the soaring thoughts of the sages, that rushed upward like blazing rockets, as if they would pierce and illuminate the remotest heaven; but you saw how, ere they reached that far goal, their fire went out, their light was quenched, and they fell back through the darkness, baffled and spent. You betook yourself to revelation, counting that at last you were entering the inner shrine, and you did indeed learn much that was new and precious; but soon came the discovery that here also we do but see through a glass darkly, and that our best knowledge of God is no more than a knowledge in part. "Lo, these are but the outskirts of His ways; and how small a portion we know of them! But the thunder of His power, who can understand?" We are, as it were, surrounded on every hand by mighty mountain peaks, whose rocky sides foil every effort to explore the pinnacles that lie hidden in distant cloud and mist. The achievements of the human intellect are many and marvellous, but above and beyond its realm remain, and doubtless ever shall remain, "great matters, and things too high" for us.
Read Ps. xxxvii., and Matt. xi.
The Secret of Rest.
"Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty."
There is in the human intellect an insatiable eagerness and an indomitable energy of acquisitiveness. It carries in its consciousness an ineradicable instinct of domination, that spurs it to boundless enterprise and prompts it to spurn defeat. This lordly quality of the human mind is the natural outcome of its sovereignty over the physical creation, and the appropriate expression of its kinship with the Creator. It is part of man's Divine birthright, and the insignia of his nobility. But it brings with it the peril of all special prerogative, the inevitable temptation that accompanies the possession of power. It tends to breed a haughtiness that is restive of restraint, a self-sufficiency that forgets its own boundaries, and an arrogance that refuses to wield the sceptre of aught but an unlimited empire. So it comes to pass, when reason in its restless research is brought to a stop by the invisible but very actual confines of human knowledge, it resents the suggestion of limitation, and declines to accept the arrest of its onward march. The temptation that besets it is twofold. On the one hand, pride, irritated by the check, but too clear-sighted to ignore it, is tempted to refuse to admit any truths it cannot fathom or substantiate, and to deny the real existence of any realm of being beyond its natural ken. This is the characteristic error of Rationalism and Positivism. On the other hand, there is in the opposite direction a tendency, born equally of intellectual pride and self-will, to refuse the restriction, to ignore reason's incapacity, and so to venture to state and explain that which is inexplicable. Alike in the spheres of science and of religion men strive recklessly to remove from God's face the veil which His own hand has not drawn, and irreverently intrude into mysteries hopelessly beyond human thought to conceive or human speech to express. This is the transgression of rash speculation and of arrogant dogmatism, and it is in itself as sinful, and in its consequences as harmful, as are the blank negations of scepticism.
Each of these errors the author of our poem was fortunate enough to escape. Recognising the limitation of all earthly knowledge, he does not rage against the restrictions and beat himself against the environing bars. He does not take it on himself, by a foolish fiat of his finite littleness, to decree the non-existence of everything too subtle for his dim eyes to perceive, or too fine for his dull ear to hear. Where he fails to understand the wisdom or goodness of God's ways he does not intrude and try to alter them, neither does he wildly struggle to comprehend their meaning, nor madly refuse to submit to them. He adapts himself to the Divine dealing, and is content to obey without insisting on knowing the reason why. He curbs in the cravings of his mind, nor will suffer the swift stream of his thought to rush on like an impetuous torrent, dashing itself against obstructing rocks, and fretting its waters into froth and foam. He possesses his soul in patience, and does not "exercise" himself "in great matters, or in things too high" for him.
This attitude of acquiescence is the position imposed on us by necessity, and prescribed by wisdom. But, as a matter of fact, its practical possession depends on the presence of a certain inner mood or disposition. We have seen that the denials of scepticism and the excesses of dogmatism are alike the offspring of pride, and spring from an over-estimation of the potency of reason. Therefore, as we might expect, the poet's simple acceptance of limitation and contentment with partial knowledge are due to the fact that he has formed a modest estimate of himself. "Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty." His submission to restraint has its root in humility. He does not exaggerate his capacity. He takes the measure of his mind accurately. He does not expect to be able to accomplish more than his abilities are equal to. It seems to him quite natural that men should not be able to comprehend all God's ways. It is to be expected that there should be many things in God's operations beyond their knowledge, and in his thoughts passing their understanding. It is, therefore, no matter for surprise that men should encounter in God's universe "great matters," and "things too high" for them. Nay, the wonder and disappointment would be if there were no mysteries, no infinitudes, transcending our narrow souls. Would it gladden you if indeed God were no greater than our thoughts of Him? What if the sun were no brighter and no vaster than the shrunken, dim, and tarnished image of his radiance framed in a child's toy mirror? Alas for us if God and the universe were not immeasurably grander than mankind's most majestic conceptions of them! Measuring ourselves thus, in truth and lowliness, over against God, who will not say, with the poet of our Psalm, "Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me"?
Read Ps. lxxiii., and Heb. xii.
Calm after Storm.
"Surely I have behaved and quieted myself."
Peace bulks largely in all our dreams of ideal happiness. Without repose of heart we cannot conceive of perfect contentment. But we must not forget that the peace of inexperience is a fragile possession, and that the only lasting rest is the repose that is based upon conquest. We speak with languid longing and ease-seeking envy of the peace of Jesus, because we forget that His peace was a peace constituted out of conflict, maintained in the face of struggle, and made perfect through suffering. Therefore it was a peace strong and majestic, and the story of His life is the world's greatest epic. A life that commenced with effortless attainment, proceeded in easy serenity, and ended in tranquillity were a life without a history, pleasant but monotonous, devoid of dramatic interest, and destitute of significance. The young cadet, in his boyish bloom and unworn beauty, furnishes the painter with a fairer model, but the grizzled hero of a hundred fights, with his battered form and furrowed face, makes the greater picture. It means so much more. And it means more precisely because the tried valour of the veteran is so much more than the promise of the untested tyro. Innocence unsullied and untried has a loveliness all its own, but it lacks the pathos of suggestion, the depth of significance, and the strength of permanence that make the glory of virtue that has borne the brunt of battle, and has known the bitterness of defeat, the agony of retrieval, and the exultation of recovered victory. We talk proudly of the faith that has never felt a doubt, that has been pierced by no perplexity, and shows no mark of the sweat and stress of conflict. We look askance on difficulty of faith, have no mercy on lack of assurance, and reckon them happy who are convinced without trouble and believe without effort. That is not quite the Bible estimate. The Psalms echo with the prayers of hard-pressed faith, and throb with the cries of agonised doubt. The New Testament speaks of faith as a fight, counts them happy who endure, and pronounces blessed the man who encounters and overcomes temptation. If "strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life," how should faith be easy, since faith is that gate, that way? The truth is that we invert the Divine standard of values, and put last what God puts first. We count enviable the land-locked harbours of unthreatened belief, that are protected from assault by their very shallowness and narrowness. We are blind to the providential discipline which ordains that men should wrestle with difficulty, and in overcoming it attain a tried and tempered faith possible only to those who have passed through the furnace of temptation. For sinful men there can be no real strength that is not transmuted weakness, no permanent peace that is not a triumph over rebellion, no perfect faith that is not a victory over doubt. The saints that have most reflected the spirit of Christ formed their fair character, like their Master, in lives of which it may be said, "Without were fightings, within were fears." The way of the cross has ever been a way of conflict, and it is they who come out of great tribulation that enter into the rest that remaineth. The deep lakes that sleep in the hollows of high mountains, and mirror in their placid depths the quiet stars, have their homes in the craters of volcanoes, that have spent their fury, quenched their fires, and are changed into pools of perpetual peace.
There breathes through our Psalm an atmosphere of infinite repose—a subdued rest, like the hush of a cradle song. Nevertheless, if we listen closely enough to its music, we catch under its lullaby the low echo of a bygone anguish, the lingering sob of a vanished tempest. Nature's most exquisite embodiment of calm is the sweet fresh air that is left by a great storm; and the perfection of the Psalm's restfulness is that it consists of unrest conquered and transmuted. For the poet's peace is the result of a great struggle, the reward of a supreme act of self-subjection. "Surely I have behaved and quieted myself;" or, preserving the imagery of the words, "Surely I have calmed and hushed my soul." His submissiveness had not been native, but acquired. His lowliness of heart was not a natural endowment, but a laborious accomplishment. His acquiescence in God's mysterious ways was a thing not inborn and habitual, but was rather the calm that follows a storm, when the tempest has moaned itself into stillness, and the great waves have rocked themselves into unruffled rest. For his soul had once been rebellious, like a storm-lashed sea dashing itself against the iron cliffs that bounded its waves, and impetuous like a tempest rushing through the empty air, seeking to attain the unattainable, and spending its force vainly in vacancy. He had longed to flash thought, lightning like, athwart the thick darkness that surrounded Jehovah's throne, and to lay bare its hidden secrets. It was all in vain. Hemmed in on every hand, beaten back in his attempts to pierce the high heaven, baffled in every effort to read the enigma of God's ways, he had been tempted to revolt, and either to renounce his trust in the Almighty's goodness or to refuse to submit to His control. It cost him a hard and weary struggle to regain his reliance, to restore his allegiance, to calm and hush his soul.
There was nothing wonderful in this conflict, nor anything exceptional in the experience. It is the common lot of men. True, there are some natures for whom the tenure of faith is less arduous than it is for others. But in almost every life there come crises when this same battle has to be fought. For it is not always easy to be content to trust without seeing, and to follow God's leading in the dark, when the way seems all wrong and mistaken. There are things in life that rudely shake our faith from its dreamless slumber, and sweep the soul away over the dreary billows of doubt and darkness. There are times when, to our timorous hearts, it seems too terrible to be compelled just to trust and not to understand. Such conflicts come to us all more or less. Painful and protracted the struggle sometimes is, but not necessarily evil, not even harmful. For if we do but fight it out honestly and bravely the fruits will be, as they were with our poet, wholesome, good, and peaceable.
Read Ps. xlvi., and Phil. ii.
Victory by Surrender.
"As a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child."
It is good to cheer men on in a noble strife by speaking of the certainty of victory, and by the story of heroic deeds to nerve their arms for battle and stir their hearts to war. But that is not enough. They want more than that. They want to learn how to wage a winning war, how to secure the highest triumph, how out of conflict to organise peace. In the good fight of faith what is the secret of success? Has our Psalm any light on that point? By what method did the poet still the turmoil of his doubt and reach his great peace? The process is finely pictured in a homely but exquisite image: "Like a weaned child on its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me." What does that mean? Torn by an insatiable longing to know the meaning of God's mysterious ways, he had struggled fiercely to wring an answer from the Almighty. His heart was long the abode of unrest, and storm, and tempest. At length peace falls on the fray; there is no more clangour of contention: all is quietness and rest. How is this? Has he succeeded in solving the enigmas that pained him? Have his cravings for an answer from God been gratified? If not, how has he attained this perfect repose? His peace is the peace of a weaned child. Not, therefore, by obtaining that which he craved has he found rest; for the rest of a weaned child is not that of gratification, but of resignation. It is the repose, not of satisfied desire, but of abnegation and submission. After a period of prolonged and painful struggle to have its longings answered, the little one gives over striving any more, and is at peace. That process was a picture to our poet of what passed in his own heart. Like a weaned child, its tears over, its cries hushed, reposing on the very bosom that a little ago excited its most tumultuous desires, his soul, that once passionately strove to wring from God an answer to its eager questionings, now wearied, resigned, and submissive, just lays itself to rest in simple faith on that goodness of God whose purposes it cannot comprehend, and whose ways often seem to it harsh, and ravelled, and obscure. It is a picture of infinite repose and of touching beauty—the little one nestling close in the mother's arms, its head reclining trustfully on her shoulder, the tears dried from its now quiet face, and the restful eyes, with just a lingering shadow of bygone sorrow in them still, peering out with a look of utter peace, contentment, and security. It is the peace of accepted pain, the victory of self-surrender.
The transition from doubt to belief, from strife to serenity, is remarkable. We want to know what produced this startling change of mood, what influences fostered it, what motives urged it, what reasons justified it. Perhaps a glimpse, a suggestion of the process is hinted in the simile chosen from child life. The infant takes its rest on the breast of its mother—of its mother, whose refusal of its longings caused it all the pain and conflict, whose denial of its instinctive desires seemed so unnatural and so cruel. How is it, then, that instead of being alienated, the child turns to her for solace in the sorrow she caused, and reposes on the very breast that so resolutely declined to supply its wants? It is because over against this single act of seeming unkindness stand unnumbered deeds of goodness and acts of fondness, and so this one cause of doubt and of aversion is swallowed up in a whole atmosphere of unceasing tenderness and love. Besides, rating the apparent unmotherliness at the very highest, still there is no other to whom the child can turn that will better help it and care for it than its mother. So, since it cannot get all it would like, the little one is content to take what it may have—the warmth, and shelter, and security of its mother's breast.
This process of conflict between doubt and trust, rebellion and resignation, which half-unconsciously takes place in the child, is a miniature of the strife that had surged to and fro in the poet's soul. Pained and perplexed by the mystery of God's ways, foiled in his efforts to fathom them, denied all explanation by the Almighty, he was beset by the temptation to abandon faith and cast off his allegiance to his heavenly Friend. But he saw that that would not solve any enigma or lighten the darkness. Rather it would confront him with still greater difficulties, and leave the world only more empty, dark, and dreary. Then, benumbed and tired out, he gave over thinking and arguing, and was content for a little just to live in the circle of light and sunshine that ever is within the great darkness. Gradually it dawned upon him that in the world of men's experience there was much, very much, of goodness that could only be the doing of the God that moves in the mystery and in the darkness. The warmth of the thought crept into his heart, softer feelings woke, love and lowliness asserted themselves, and at length he became content to just trust God, spite of all perplexities, partly because there was so much undeniable proof of His tenderness, and partly because there was more of rest and comfort in this course than in any other.
Read Gen. xxxii., and Rev. vii.
The Recompense of Faith.
"Let Israel hope in the Lord from henceforth and for ever."
Who has not wondered why there is so much mystery in the universe, such perplexity in our life, and in revelation itself why so many doubts are permitted to assail our souls and make it hard for us to be Christians? Is this wisely or kindly ordered? Perchance it is necessary, but is it not evil? Can warfare ever be aught but loss and not gain? The question is natural, but the answer is not uncertain. The fight of faith is a good fight. Success means no bare victory, but one crowned with splendid spoil. We shall be the better for having had to fight. The gain of the conflict shall out-weigh all the loss, and in the final triumph the victors shall manifestly appear more than conquerors. This is no paradox, but the common law of life. The same principle rules in the homely image of the child. Weaning is not needless pain, is not wasted suffering. It is a blessing in disguise. The distressing process is in truth promotion. It is the vestibule of pain that leads to a maturer and larger life. In like fashion the struggles of doubt are inevitable, if faith is not to remain feeble and infantile. Only in the furnace of affliction does it acquire its finest qualities. Were there no clouds and darkness around God's throne, how should men learn humility and practise reverence? Human nature is too coarse a thing to be entrusted with perfect knowledge. A religion of knowledge only were a hard and soulless thing, devoid of grace, and life, and love; for sight and reason leave nothing for the imagination, and rob affection of its sweet prerogative to dream and to adore. Without the discipline of toil and the developing strain of antagonism, how should faith grow strong, and broad, and deep? Most of us start in the life religious with an inherited, fostered, unreasoning belief, which therefore is weak, puny, and unstable. It is the storms of doubt and difficulty that rouse it to self-consciousness, stir it to activity, urge it by exertion to growth and expansion, and compel it to strike deep roots in the soil of reality. For in such conflict the soul is driven in upon God. It is forced to make actual proof of its possessions, to realise and employ properties that hitherto were known to it only through the title-deeds or as mere assets available in case of necessity. With wonder faith discovers the rare value of its inheritance, and enters for the first time into actual enjoyment of its spiritual treasures. It is no longer faith about God, but is now faith in God. In its agony and helplessness the soul is compelled to press close up to God, to take tighter hold of His hand, to fling itself on Him for help and comfort, just as a sick child clings to its mother. And ever after such a struggle there are a fresh beauty and sacredness in its relation to God. There is that pathetic tenderness of affection friends have who by some misunderstanding were well-nigh sundered, but having overcome it, are nearer and dearer to each other than ever before. There are a quiet community of knowledge, and a restful confidentiality of affection, that were not there before, that come of having had to fight that you might not be severed from each other. The recoil of joy from the dread of loss, and the memory of the agony that thought was to you, make God dearer to you now than ever. Out of the very strife and doubt there is born a new assurance of your love, in the consciousness you have acquired of the pain it would be to you to be deprived of your Divine Friend.
The experience is of general application. It is the secret of serenity amid the world's mystery and life's pain and perplexity. Therefore, when at any time the clouds gather around you, and their blackness seems to darken on the very face of God, do not turn away in terror or anger, but cling the faster to Him, even if it be by the extreme hem of His garment. What wonder if your feeble eye fails to read clear and true each majestic feature of that Divine face which is so infinitely high above you? What matter if sometimes its radiance is obscured by the chill fogs and creeping vapours of earth's mingled atmosphere? The darkness is not on God's face, but beneath it. One day you shall rise higher, and you shall see Him as He is. Meantime, in your gloomiest hour, when overwhelming doubts, like hissing waves, wind and coil around your heart, and seek to pluck it from its hold, then do but let all other things go, and with your last energy cling to this central, sovereign certainty, that whatever else is true, this at least is sure, that God is good, and that He whose doings you cannot comprehend is your Father. And so, weary of dashing yourself vainly against the bulwarks of darkness that girdle His throne, be content to lay yourself down humbly as a tired child on the breast of your heavenly Father. Thus, with your questionings unanswered, with the darkness not rolled away, with a thousand problems all unsolved, be quieted, be hushed, be at peace. Lay down your head, your weary, aching head, on the great heart of God, and be at rest.
Doing this, you shall reach not merely passive resignation, but joy, and peace, and trust. For of humble submission hope is born. "Let Israel hope in the Lord from henceforth and for ever." Perchance all you can do now is just, in weariness, more out of helpless despair than active expectancy, to fall back on a faint, broken-hearted trust in God's goodness. It is an act of faith, poor enough, in truth, but it holds in it the promise and potency of a better confidence. For it is into the arms of God that it carries you. Resting there in the lap of His infinite love, you shall feel the warmth of His great heart penetrating softly into yours. The weary, throbbing pain will slowly pass away. Deep rest and quiet peace will steal into your spirit. And at length, out of a helpless, compelled, and well-nigh hopeless surrender, there shall be born within you fearless trust and winged reliance, and you shall hope in the Lord from henceforth and for ever.
There is in many people's minds a painful uneasiness about the relation of the Bible to modern science and philosophy. The appearance of each new theory is deprecated by believers with pious timidity, and hailed by sceptics with unholy hope. On neither side is this a dignified or a wholesome attitude. Its irksome and intrusive pressure promotes neither a robust piety nor a sober-minded science. It is worth while inquiring whether there is any sufficient foundation for either alarm or expectancy in the actual relations of the Bible to scientific thought. We shall work out our answer to the question on the historical battle-field of the 1st chapter of Genesis. Results reached there will be found to possess a more or less general validity.
There are two records of creation—one is contained in the Bible, which claims to be God's Word; the other is stamped in the structure of the world, which is God's work. Both being from the same Author, we should expect them to agree in their general tenour; but in fact, so far from being in harmony, they have an appearance of mutual contradiction that demands explanation.
In studying the problem certain considerations must be borne in mind. There is a loose way of talking about antagonism between the natural and the revealed accounts of creation. That is not quite accurate. Conflict between these there cannot be, for they never actually come into contact. It is not they, but our theories, that meet and collide. The discord is not in the original sources, but in our renderings of them. That is a very different matter, and of quite incommensurate importance.
The Bible story is very old. It is written in an ancient and practically dead language. The meaning of many of the words cannot be fixed with precision. The significance of several fundamental phrases is at best little more than conjecture. Since it was penned men's minds have grown and changed. The very moulds of human thought have altered. Current impressions, conceptions, ideas are different. It is hard to determine, with even probability, what is said, still harder to realise what was thought. Certainty is impossible. No rendering should be counted infallible, not even our own. Every interpretation ought to be advanced with modest diffidence, held tentatively, revised with alacrity, and adjusted to new facts without timidity and without shame. This has not been the characteristic attitude of commentators. The exegesis of the 1st chapter of Genesis presents a long array of theories, propounded with authority, defended dogmatically, and ignominiously discredited and deserted. Had a more lowly spirit presided over their inception, maintenance, and abandonment, the list would perhaps not have been shorter, but the retrospect would have been less humiliating. As it is, we can hardly complain of the sting of satire that lurks in Kepler's recital of Theology's successive retreats: "In theology we balance authorities; in philosophy we weigh reasons. A holy man was Lactantius, who denied that the earth was round. A holy man was Augustine, who granted the rotundity, but denied the antipodes. A holy thing to me is the Inquisition, which allows the smallness of the earth, but denies its motion. But more holy to me is truth. And hence I prove by philosophy that the earth is round, inhabited on every side, of small size, and in motion among the stars. And this I do with no disrespect to the doctors."
The physical record is also very old. Its story is carved in a script that is often hardly legible, and set forth in symbols that are not easy to decipher. The testimony of the rocks embodies results of creation, but does not present the actual operations. Effects suggest processes, but do not disclose their precise measure, manner, and origination. You may dissect a great painting into its ultimate lines and elements, and from the canvas peel off the successive layers of colour, and duly record their number and order; but when you have done you have not even touched the essential secret of its creation. In determining the first origin of things the limitation of science is absolute, and even in tracing the subsequent development there is room for error, ignorance, and diversity of explanation. Of certainties in scientific theory there are few. For the most part, all that can be attained is probability, especially in speculative matters, such as estimates of time, explanations of formation, and theories of causation. As in exegesis, so in geology, all hypotheses ought to be counted merely tentative, maintained with modesty, and held open at every point to revision and reconstruction. The necessity of caution and reserve needs no enforcing for any one who knows the variety and inconsistency of the phases through which speculative geology has passed in our own generation. In this destiny of transitoriness it does but share the lot of all scientific theory. Professor Huxley was once cruel enough to call attention to the fact that "extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science, as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules." The statement is a graphic, if somewhat ferocious, reminder of a melancholy fact, and the fate of these trespassing divines should warn their successors—as the Professor means it should—not to stray out of their proper pastures. But has it fared very differently with the mighty men of science who have essayed to solve the high problems of existence and to make all mysteries plain? Take up a history of philosophy, turn over its pages, study its dreary epitomes of defunct theories, and as you survey the long array of skeletons tell me, are you not reminded of the prophet who found himself "set down in the midst of the valley which was full of dry bones: and, behold, there were very many in the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry"?
If it is human to err, theology and geology have alike made full proof of their humanity. That in itself is not their fault, but their misfortune. The pity of it is that to the actual fact of fallibility they have so often added the folly of pretended infallibility. The resultant duty is an attitude of mutual modesty, of reserve in suspecting contradiction, of patience in demanding an adjustment, of perseverance in separate and honest research, of serenity of mind in view of difficulties, coupled with a quiet expectation of final fitting. The two accounts are alike trustworthy. They are not necessarily identical in detail. It is enough that they should correspond in their essential purport. It may be that the one is the complement of the other, as soul is to body—unlike, yet vitally allied. Perchance their harmony is not that of duplicates, but of counterparts. They were made not to overlap like concentric circles, but to interlock like toothed wheels. In the end, when partial knowledge has given way to perfect, they will be seen to correspond, and nothing will be broken but the premature structures of adjustment with which men have thought to make them run smoother than they were meant to do.
To attempt anew a task that has proved so disastrous, and is manifestly so difficult, must be admitted to be bold, if not even foolhardy. But its very desperateness is its justification. To fall in a forlorn hope is not ignoble. To miss one's way in threading the labyrinth of the 1st chapter of Genesis is pardonable, a thing almost to be expected. If in seeking to escape Scylla the traveller should fall into Charybdis, no one will be surprised—not even himself. It is in the most undogmatic spirit that we wish to put forward our reading of the chapter. It is presented simply as a possible rendering. What can be said for it will be said as forcibly as may be. It is open to objection from opposite sides. That may be not altogether against it, since truth is rarely extreme. Difficulties undoubtedly attach to it, and defects as well. At best it can but contribute to the ultimate solution. Perchance its share in the task may be no more than to show by trial that another way of explanation is impossible. Well, that too is a service. Every fresh by-way proved impracticable, and closed to passage, brings us a step nearer the pathway of achievement. For the loyal lover of truth it is enough even so to have been made tributary to the truth.
The business of a theologian is, in the first instance at least, with the Scriptural narrative. To estimate its worth, and determine its relation to science, we must ascertain its design. Criticism of a church-organ, under the impression that it was meant to do the work of a steam-engine, would certainly fail to do justice to the instrument, and the disquisition would not have much value in itself. Before we exact geology of Genesis we must inquire whether there is any in it. If there be none, and if there was never meant to be any, the demand is as absurd as it would be to require thorns of a vine and thistles of the fig-tree. Should it turn out, for instance, that the order of the narrative is intentionally not chronological, then every attempt to reconcile it with the geological order is of necessity a Procrustean cruelty, and the venerable form of Genesis is fitted to the geological couch at the cost of its head or its feet. Either the natural sense of the chapter is sacrificed or the pruned narrative goes on crutches. If we would deal fairly and rationally with the Bible account of creation, our first duty is to determine with exactness what it purposes to tell, and what it does not profess to relate. We must settle with precision, at the outset of our investigation, what is its subject, method, and intention. The answer is to be found, not in à priori theories of what the contents ought to be, but in an accurate and honest analysis of the chapter.
The narrative of creation is marked by an exquisite symmetry of thought and style. It is partly produced by the regular use of certain rubrical phrases, which recur with the rhythmical effect of a refrain. There is the terminal of the days—"and there was evening, and there was morning, day one," etc.; the embodiment of the Divine creative will in the eightfold "God said;" the expression of instant fulfilment in the swift responsive "and it was so;" and the declaration of perfection in the "God saw that it was good." But the symmetry of the chapter lies deeper than the wording. It pervades the entire construction of the narrative. As the story proceeds there is expansion, variety, progression. Yet each successive paragraph is built up on one and the same type and model. This uniformity is rooted in the essential structure of the thought, and is due to the determination with which one grand truth is carried like a key-note through all the sequences of the theme, and rings out clear and dominant in every step and stage of the development. Our first duty is to follow, and find out with certainty, this ruling purpose, and then to interpret the subordinate elements by its light and guidance.
The narrative distributes the operation of creation over six days, and divides it into eight distinct acts or deeds. This double divergent arrangement of the material is made to harmonise by the assignment of a couple of acts to the third day, and another couple to the sixth—in each case with a fine and designed effect. We shall take a bird's-eye view of the contents of these divisions.
The chapter opens with a picture of primeval chaos, out of which God commands the universe of beauty, life, and order. Nothing is said of its origin. The story starts with it existent. It is painted as an abyss, dreary and boundless, wrapped in impenetrable darkness, an inextricable confusion of fluid matter, destitute of character, structure, or value, without form and void. It is the raw material of the universe, passive and powerless in itself, but holding in it the promise and potency of all existence. For over it nestles, like a brood fowl, the informing, warming, life-giving Spirit of God, sending through its coldness and emptiness the heat and parental yearnings of the Divine heart, that craves for creatures on which to pour out its love and goodness. This action of the Spirit is, however, no more than preparative, and waits its completion in the accession of a personal fiat of God's will, in which the Divine Word gives effect and reality to the Divine Wish. This is a feature of supreme importance, for in it consists the uniqueness of the Bible narrative. In the Pagan accounts of creation we find the same general imagery of dull, dead matter, stirred and warmed into life and development by the action of an immaterial effluence of "thought," "love," or "longing." But in them the operation is cosmic, impersonal, often hardly conscious; in the Bible it is ethical and intensely personal. In them the language is metaphysical, materialistic, or pantheistic; here it is moral, human, personal, to the point of anthropomorphism. They show us creative forces and processes; the Bible presents to us, in all His infinite, manifold, and glorious personality, the thinking, living, loving "God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth."
The result of the first day and the first Divine decree is the production of light. The old difficulty about the existence of light before the sun was made, as it was invented by science, has been by science dispelled. The theory of light as a mode of motion, which for the present holds the field, knows no obstacle to the presence of light in the absence of the sun. But this harmony is not due to any prescience of modern science in the writer of Genesis. His idea of light is not undulatory, and not scientific, but just the simple popular notion found everywhere in the Bible. Light is a fine substance, distinct from all others, and it appears first in the list of creation, as being the first and noblest of the elements that go to make up our habitable world. The emergence of the light is presented as instantaneously following the Divine decree. That is manifestly the literary effect designed in the curtness of the sequence, "Let there be light, and there was light." The light is pronounced good, is permanently established in possession of its special properties and powers, and is set in its service of the world and man by having assigned to it its place in the "alternate mercy of day and night." There is a very fine touch in the position of the declaration of goodness. It stands here earlier than in the succeeding sections. Darkness is in the Bible the standing emblem of evil. It would have been discordant with that imagery to make God pronounce it good, though as the foil of light it serves beneficent ends. The jarring note is tacitly and simply avoided by introducing the assertion of the goodness of light before the mention of its background and negation, darkness. The picture of the first day of creation is subscribed with the formula of completeness—"There was evening, and there was morning, one day," or "day first"—and has for its net result the production of the element or sphere of light.
The second day and the second Divine decree are devoted to the formation of the firmament. All through the Old Testament the sky is pictured as a solid dome or vaulted roof, above which roll the primeval waters of chaos. The notion is of course popular, a figment of the primitive imagination, and quite at variance with the modern conception of space filled by an interastral ether; though it is well to remember that this same ether is no more ascertained fact than was the old-world firmament, and is in its turn simply an invention of the scientific imagination. It is of more moment to note that the real motive and outcome of the day's work is not the firmament. That is not an end, but a means, precisely as a sea-wall is not an object in itself, but merely the instrument of the reclamation of valuable land. What the erection of the firmament does towards the making of our world is the production of the intervening aërial space and the lower expanse of terrestrial waters. Since this last portion of the work is not complete prior to the separation of the dry land, the declaration of goodness or perfection is, with exquisite fineness of suggestion, tacitly omitted. The net result of the day is, therefore, the formation of the realms of air and water as elements or spheres of existence.
The third day includes two works—the production of the solid ground, and of vegetation. The dead, inert soil, and its manifold outgrowth of plant life, are strikingly distinct, and yet most intimately related. Together they make up the habitable earth. They are therefore presented as separate works, but conjoined in the framework of one day. Two sections of the vegetable kingdom are singled out for special mention—the cereals and the fruit-trees. It is not a complete or a botanical classification, and manifestly science is not contemplated. Those divisions of the plant-world that sustain animal and human life, and minister to its enjoyment, are drawn out into pictorial relief and prominence. The intention is practical, popular, and religious. The net result of the day is the production of the habitable dry land.
The fourth day and the fifth decree call into being the celestial bodies—the sun, moon, and stars. They are called luminaries; that is to say, not masses or accumulations of light, but managers and distributers of light, and the value of this function of theirs, for the religious and secular calendar, for agriculture, navigation, and the daily life of men, is formally and elaborately detailed. Were this account of the heavenly bodies intended as a scientific or exhaustive statement of their Divine destination and place in the universe, it would be miserably inadequate and erroneous. But if the whole aim of the narrative be not science, but religion, then it is absolutely appropriate, exact, and powerful. In the teeth of an all but universal worship of sun, moon, and stars, it declares them the manufacture of God, and the ministers and servants of man. For this practical religious purpose the geocentric description of them is not an accident, but essential. It is not a blunder, but a merit. It is true piety, not cosmical astronomy, that is being established. In the words of Calvin, "Moses, speaking to us by the Holy Spirit, did not treat of the heavenly luminaries as an astronomer, but as it became a theologian, having regard to us rather than to the stars." The net result of the fourth day is the production of the heavenly orbs of light.
The fifth day and the sixth work issue in the production of birds and fishes, or, more accurately, all creatures that fly or swim. It is evidently a classification by the eye—the ordinary popular division—and it makes no attempt at scientific pretension or profundity. As having conscious life, these new creatures of God's love are blessed by Him, and have their place and purpose in the order of being defined and established. The net result of the day is the formation of fowls and fishes.
The sixth day, like the third, includes two works—the land animals and man. The representation admirably expresses their intimate relationship, and yet essential distinction. The animals are graphically divided into the domestic quadrupeds, the small creatures that creep and crawl, and the wild beasts of the field. The classification is as little scientific in intention or substance as is the general arrangement into birds, fishes, and beasts, which of course traverses radically alike the historical order of palæontology and the physiological grouping of zoology. The narrative simply adopts the natural grouping of observation and popular speech, because that suffices, and best suits its purpose. With a wonderful simplicity, yet with consummate effect, man is portrayed as the climax and crown of creation. Made in the image and likeness of God, he is clothed with sovereign might and dominion over all the elements and contents of Nature. The personal, conscious counterpart and child of God, he stands at the other end of the chain of creation, and with answering intelligence and love looks back adoringly to his great Father in the heavens. Mention is made of lesser matters, such as sex and food; but manifestly the supreme interest of the delineation is ethical and religious. Science is no more contemplated as an ingredient in the conception than prose is in poetry. With the making of man the circle of creation is complete, and the finished perfection of the whole, as well as the parts, is expressed in the superlative declaration that "God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good." The net result of the sixth day is the formation of the land animals and man.
The six days of creative activity are followed by a seventh of Divine repose. On the seventh day God rested; or, as it is more fully worded in Exodus (xxxi. 17), God "rested and was refreshed." It is a daring anthropomorphism, and at the same time a master-stroke of inspired genius. What a philosophical dissertation hardly could accomplish it achieves by one simple image. For our thought of God the idea performs the same service as the institution of the Sabbath does for our souls and bodies. The weekly day of rest is the salvation of our personality from enslavement in material toil. During six days the toiler is tied, bent and bowed, to his post in the vast machinery of the world's work. On the seventh all is stopped, and he is free to lift himself erect to the full stature of his manhood, to expand the loftier elements of his being, to reassert his freedom, and realise his superiority over what is mechanical, secular, and earthly. What in the progressive portraiture of creation is the effect of this sudden declaration that the Creator rested? Why, an intensely powerful reminder of the free, conscious, and personal nature of His action. And this impression of such unique value is secured precisely by the anthropomorphism, as no philosophical disquisition could have done it. The blot and blemish of all metaphysical delineation is that personalities get obliterated and swallowed up in general principles and impersonal abstractions. In all other cosmogonies of any intellectual pretension the process of creation is presented as passive, or Necessitarian, or Pantheistic, and invariably the free personality of the Creator becomes entangled in His work, or entirely vanishes. By this stroke of inspired imagination the Bible story rescues from all such risks and degradations our thought of the Creator, and at its close leaves us face to face with our Divine Maker as free, personal, living, loving, and conscious as we are ourselves.