Bible views of creation

Front matter

BIBLE YIE¥S

OF

CREATION.

Chapter I

I see here a blade of grass. I am curious to kuow what it is aud how it came here. Whether it is simple or compound. What are the elements in it ? How did it become a blade of grass ? I see that it is a material thing. What I see and feel are certainly matter, but where did it come from ? And what was the shape of this matter when it was being worked up into this blade of grass ?

Not seen here three days ago, and now such a clean, tiny thing it is ! I look another day, and lo ! my blade of grass is twenty times as high as it was when I saw it before, and I say : " How fast it grows.' ' What is it to grow ? It has twenty times as much matter in it now as it had before.

I cannot see one atom of this matter as it is taking its place in this spear of grass and causing it to grow. These materials are in some way being invisibly placed where we now see them. The matter itself could not be seen until it became grass. As a seen thing this grass has come from things unseen.

I look upon the carpet in my room and think of the wool in it as it was once seen growing on a sheep's back in the pasture. Our spear of grass may have helped this wool-making, but not until it was eaten up by the sheep and thoroughly digested and well circulated in the animal's fluids, and then by some invisible selections of the invisible atoms required to make the wool grow, it came out upon the surface of the sheep's body as a seen thing from atoms that a little time before were unseen.

I notice the paper upon which I am writing. What is it? It is fibrous material, wrought out in some way into these thin, smooth sheets of paper. Fiber is always a product of some living thing that grows ; it may have come from the cotton plant, or it may be of wood growth, or flax, or of some other growth of fiber made by a vegetable or animal life in some past time and in some other form than it now presents to us. As a seen thing all of its material atoms have once or more passed through a state of growing in which they were unseen.

I look upon the table I am using to write upon. Most of it is made of wood ; but there is no wood in the world, or knowledge that any has ever existed in it, that did not become a seen thing by growing as the trees about us are now doing, invisibly increasing their bulk as the blades of grass do.

If now we question any other visible thing simply to find the original state of its material atoms, our progress will be towards invisible fluids, and we shall find by exact history and careful analysis that the final material elements out of, and by which, all things seen are made have been in some previous time invisible atoms in a fluid state.

And no exception to be made to this statement as a universal truth. There is nothing in all the world about us, of things organized or unorganized, that does not bring to our minds the clear testimony that its visible form comes of the assembling or collecting of material atoms that somewhere existed before in a fluid and invisible state.

I am not speaking now of what it is that bas changed the fluid atoms and made some of them into visible things, but simply of the fact that they have been changed, or collected, and are now held together in making what is seen out of the unseen.

Our visible world has all come out to view by reason of changes from a former state of its own elements, in which it was an unseen existence and its elements were free in space and of such variety and number as Infinite Wisdom chose to use, or to provide for His intended use in the making of things visible for this world and probably for all worlds.

A perfect analysis of any solid shows its elements to be of fluid descent. The granulation and crystallization of rocks and metals bears witness to the same thing as clearly and certainly as a cake of ice bears witness to its former condition as water. There was liquid before crystallization and fluid before liquid. But without actual analysis we find the atoms singly are quite too small to be visible. No single atom of matter has ever been seen, hence by reason we know if they were liberated from cohesion and each one to go free in space, solids would again pass to a fluid state and be obedient to the law of repulsion. There would then be no visible things anywhere. The atoms of the world, in that state, would be spread out in space, floating among themselves and changing places with one another by diffusion, as atoms now do and doubtless have always done when free in space.

If now we think of the new made earth in that state, simply manifesting the law of repulsion, its atoms all spread out so as to be very nearly trauspareut, as they certainly must have been at the first, there will come to our minds the most fitting descriptive words that have ever been written, and these were written thousands of years ago, (Gen. 1:2,)

" And the earth was without form and void."

Yes, and not the earth only, but the material universe entire, as it first emanated from its Creator, invisible to the eyes of men.

I use the words fluids and solids in contrast with each other, so that the two words, fluids and solids, may include every atom of matter in the whole physical world with the ether beyond the skies. The two words relate to matter in exactly opposite conditions and in all possible measures of differences, from the least to the greatest.

Matter in a solid state is always visible and capable of being examined by our senses, always has some cohesion of atoms, and is capable of being acted upon by gravitation and many other laws of coherent matter. But in a fluid state, free from the law of cohesion, we find it manifesting only the opposite ; that is, the law of repulsion of all its atoms. Every atom repels every other atom, so that the mass, in the infinity of its numbers, spreads abroad as the fluids of the air are now doing. In this condition all atoms are out of sight, because each one is too small to be seen ; but when these same atoms are combined and brought under the law of cohesion, and any two or more of them are chemically united and made one — as, for example, oxygen and hydrogen gas, each one invisible by itself, but when the two are joined by electricity or heat, the product is water, a plainly visible liquid — I do not say fluid, for, by our definition of fluids and solids, water and all liquids are on the side with solid9. Some cohesion is manifested in its formation of drops, which is not discoverable in fluids or atoms free in space. In this state, the fluid, repulsion of atoms is the law manifested ; in the other cohesion of atoms is the law manifested. The one force makes things visible and many atoms to occupy a small space, in the other matter is invisible and many atoms spread themselves out over a very large space. So it is evident that no microscope can ever show to us an isolated atom of matter. We - class water and all other liquids with solids because they are visible and have cohesion in a slight degree. Air and all the gases of every kind, however many there may be, while free in space, the light ether in the skies in which the stars are seen, electricity, magnetism, heat, light and whatever in matter is either matter, or a property or a force manifested in matter and known to move in it as a force without being organized in it as a living thing, we will regard as a fluid.

The practical distinction thus made in all the material things in the whole world is between the seen and the unseen.

The seen things are solids, the unseen are fluids. The heaviest of solids, as gold, may be made volatile by heat, and we often see it in a semi-fluid state giving a golden hue to the smoke that rises skyward from the tall chimney at the mint where gold is fused and liquified for manufacture and coinage.

^Electricity has long been called a fluid, and there is no reason for withholding the name from other occult forces exclusive of life and spirit. Let material elements in invisible form be fluids if we speak of them as things, and the same elements when in seen things be solids, and our definition will be easily understood and applied to all material existences as belonging, at the time we are speaking of them, to one or the other of these two classes —

The material world, as now understood, by itself consists of many kinds of matter, seventy or more, the exact number not yet known. All these simple kinds of matter are capable of existence and can be found in space free from cohesion, and in that state we can think of them as a vast expanse of misty matter, enough for a world it may be, but without objective form, or gravitation, or manifested, orbital, or axial motions.

But a change came, and art-like a visible world appeared within the invisible ; objective form, cohesion and gravitation, orbital and axial motions, and numerous other laws of matter were manifested ; and still the law of repulsion continues its manifestations as it did from the beginning and as now seen in the air.

The aggregate work of repulsion is seen now in all existing space not taken up with solids, and the aggregate work of cohesion in the world is seen in all the solids thus far made. To the eye of reason the latter must have come in time relations after the former.

There is a likeness to this truth in the relation of letters to the words in our printed language. A few letters (26) are the elements out of which all the words are made. Bach letter had an existence before it had a place in any word in which it is now found. And we do not think of a dictionary with its many thousands of w r ords as coming into existence otherwise than by collection, arrangements and contribution of letters from the alphabet. First the mass of letters, then the words, sentences and discourses tobe put in due form for priutiug. So in like manner we think of all solids as made of atoms of matter selected from pre-existing matter in a fluid state, but now assembled, arranged and combined so as to cohere together in the beautiful forms we see in greater numbers, thousands of times more in number than the words of the largest dictionary unabridged. To think of one such object as existing before the atoms of which it is made would be to break away from logical thinking, and to bow a leavetaking from our own common sense. Reason stands on the ample evidence that the genesis of every visible thing, and therefore of all the world, was in fluid atoms too small to be seen by the human eye, even with the microscope, and when so crowded as to be faintly visible in places it was a nebulous cloud, "without form and void," incapable in that state of acting conformably to the law of gravitation or of performing any of the distinctive functions of a solid,, body.

The earth in that condition would manifest supremely the law of repulsion, while all the other laws of matter would for the time being be hidden from our view. We do not imagine they were not in existence, only they could not be manifested to outside observers. It is true that gravitation is discoverable in the air and in gases, but the air is a compound fluid and presumably has some cohesion. It is not entirely invisible for its blue gives us the sky over our heads. There is a strong probability that the fluid ether beyond the sky has no cohesion, and is therefore invisible and the law of repulsion alone is there manifested, and that light is not there obstructed by any atmospheric color.

Notice now that we can see no reason in science or in law why matter might not have remained in that state of repulsion of atoms unchangeably forever, as it was at the creation, an unorganized quantity of material, and there left for eternity. So far as reason is concerned it says nothing against it. But the Creator of the universe had not so intended. He started what He had made to become visible on a great career of changes not yet, if ever, to be completed. The Divine word to the world as a material creation was that it should take up its work and not stay one moment in one state, place and condition; and it did not, but is still progressing onward in its system of orderly changes. But let us think a moment of that marvelous condition of a world all afloat in atoms too small to be seen, some of them to be made into light, and what microscope is there that can show to the eye of man one isolated atom of light ? Only the Creator, we believe, has ever seen an ultimate atom of matter. Hence we can never know any difference in the atoms of different substances until, in the laboratory of nature, or art they are brought together, each after its own kind, in sufficient quantities to be appreciable. No single atom ever reflects light or produces any impression upon the most delicate of our sense organs. Yet in such infinitesimal atoms did God create the * 'heaven and the earth.' * From this new heaven and earth, in such a state, visible things were eventually made to come forth ; and we now see uncounted millions of objects about us free from the manifestation of repulsion and obedient to the law of cohesion.

The field of repulsion is still as vast as it was at the beginning, but there is now a comparatively small field within it in which the law of cohesion is exhibiting in contrast a wonderful world of visible things, and the two laws are now co-acting harmoniously together, but in exact contrast. Reason asks whence came this transference of so many of the atoms of matter and yet not of all of them ? Why did not the law or force of cohesion w T hich holds some of all kinds of atoms together in solids, a law which is confessedly everywhere present with power to act, why did it not make a complete victory over repulsion and so hold all the atoms of matter together in solids ?

Transforming them from fluidity to solids, or even to one solid mass and nothing more. If cohesion among atoms had been a spontaneity, an inheritance of force in the atoms themselves, such a result would be our reasonable expectation.

But the law of cohesion that has part in all the solids in the world and preserves their integrity, giving to us all the variety and beauty there is in things seen, that law was not a spontaneity. If by any chance thought of ours we might imagine atoms of matter in long time becoming in some way magnetized so as to stick together of themselves, there would be no reason why all atoms should not go right on in like manner accreting together until all should become one mineral mass, an unspeakably worthless thing, and nothiug more.

We* read of the creation, that "the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy," (Job. 38: 7,) and we may be very certain that the unfolding plans of God, the Father, were seen from above before such thrills of admiration vibrated down upon the work from its high witnesses in heaven. But our question remains — Why did not the force of cohesion take in all the matter of which it did take some ? Science has no answer. Philosophy hints no solution. We can see no reason in the laws themselves, and we have not advanced enough in world reading to find an answer. So we must look upwards to the Divine Creator's will. There we find the adequate and ultimate cause of all causes. As our minds are constituted, it is unavoidable that we turn to the personal being who knows, when no other cause can be given, as in this case. We find the law of cohesion acting within certain limitations, just the limitations Infinite beneficence would advise, and we believe God decreed those limitations ; but no man can tell why some atoms were taken and some were left. As we can see no reason beforehand, but Our Father's own will, why He made the world, so the adjustments of all the laws of nature, one with another, takes us back to the same fouutain of causes.

The Diviue beneficence, His love of moral beings, the Fatherhood of God to angels and men, is becoming plainer and plainer as the world's career is better known and the use of its changes better understood. The law of repulsion as first seen was a marvelous display of Divine Power, but it did not then show any moral quality or any good will to men, or that it was to be for the use of men. But now it has an exalted place of usefulness in the world. It has now a moral work, a work of beneficence not exceeded by any other law of physical nature. If we think of what it now does in keeping the air fit for us to breathe, in keeping it in a fit condition to bear the light to our open eyes, in a fit condition for the bright shining orbs of distant worlds to be seen by us, and with all in a fit condition tomake life real and joyous and hopeful; whoever will consider the contrast between pure air and malaria, and then behold all the indications of the Divine plan to improve the atmosphere of our world by all the geological changes He appointed for it from the first, will not be wanting in proofs of the beneficence of the Divine Will. All advances in science and religion show this. Compared with the very first this is now a new earth and heaven, and the old is ever vanishing away to give place to the new. We feel that our Heavenly Father intended good results, and provided for them by an ascending scale of creative progress into the future of the world to come. This is our abiding confidence in our Creator Father. It is quite impossible for us who live in a Christian land to feel that the will of God is not beneficent and the safest guide to us for our own well being. Whatever we may fear from our own ill deservings, we do not fear any injustice from the Creator Almighty — 41 Our Father in Heaven." No other court of final appeal can be opened to us, and no other could compare with this in " Wisdom, Holiness, Justice, Goodness and Truth.' ' The will of Him who is the " King Eternal, Immortal, Invisible — the only wise God" — holds the scepter of Righteousness and Good Will to men.

It is rather a boast of science to explore all known things to their original elements or sources, to a point where we can know no more of them at present. And such a vanishing point of human knowledge is always present in the final analysis of any created thing, when we must needs refer to the Divine Will and stand upon the Omnipresent line that distinguishes the created thing from its Creator — God.

As we now understand the known things of the creation of the world, as we now read the world, the Supreme Act of Original Creation included nothing in itself to be seen of men, and nothing in itself known to men.

No one atom of matter in all the universe, furnished as it now is with atoms made visible in the heaven and the earth, was at first made large euongh to be seen of men. And this plan of the Creator's work has never changed. It is now as then, first the unseen then the seen.

u No man hath seen God at any time. The only Begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him." — John 1:18.

All life is from the unseen, and all its normal physical works begin in the use of atoms in an unseen manner; in the use of atoms in such a manner it makes for itself bodies, the seen from the unseen.

We may marvel at such a plan and wonder if God could make a world out of such unstable things, and so great a world without being seen in doing it. But God's ways not as our ways and His thoughts as our thoughts, and His works are not performed as our works are. In World Reading our eyes must look patiently upon the thiugs He has made for us to look upon in the " heaven and in the earth" — seen and unseen.

Behold the witnesses for God ! The sun by day leads the train and the moon and stars by night, forever singing as they shine, the hand that

" Made Us Is Divine."

Truly the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them hath He set a tabernacle for the Sun, which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it, and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof. The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlighteningthe eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea than much fine gold. Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb . Moreover, by them is thy servant warned, and in keeping* of them there is great reward. Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults. Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins ; let them not have dominion over me; then shall I be upright and I shall be innocent from the great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, " O Lord, My Strength and My Redeemer." — Ps. 19.

" And darkness was upon the face'of

the deep.' 1

—Genesis, 1:2.

SOLIDS AND FLUIDS.

Chapter II

We have defined the words, fluids and solids ; names of all the matter in the world in opposite conditions of atoms and revealing to us the opposite laws, repulsion and cohesion.

As long as the world consisted of atoms, all in a state of repulsion of one another, no human conception of a solid earth coming out of them could reasonably be formed. Hence the outcome of a visible world in the midst of those created atoms, " without form and void," was a transformation, on its first appearance, truly wonderful beyond expression. As things are now manifested around us the number of atoms held together in solids, the visible world, gains our first attention. And we are liable to think of the invisible world as a place pretty far away and not as a place into which we are born, and in which we are still living, though it be at the lower border of it where it broods on the visible.

We a re not told in simple words in what way or by what means the earth, <f without form and void," was made ready to evolve the visible world out of its midst, or so to divide its atoms that some of them should be made to evolve from the invisible to the visible state and thus to manifest the law of cohesion, while others remained as they were, spread abroad to the outer boundaries of creation as far as the law of repulsion has dominion. But we are furnished with the most graphic picture ever written of what the world looked like wheu that change was in progress. " And darkness was upon the face of the deep." Gen. i : 2. This, like the first view of the earth after its creation, was taken by an outside observation. The darkness was seen objectively as a visible thiug, and thus cohesion was manifested as a law acting upon material atoms in solids. We must know, however, that cohesion acts only between atoms at an insensible distance apart and never directly upon matter in a ■state of repulsion of atoms. Cohesion does not collect atoms ; it holds them together when they touch each other ; hence we do not meau to say in any case that cohesion alone makes solids, but that solids always do manifest that law to us as a constant law of their existence.

It is reasonable for us therefore to ask how the atoms so situated in space became disposed to a simultaneous act of self assembling in readiness to cohere ? How were they removed from their first situation abroad and apart and so drawn together as to become visible, becoming obedient to a new law and to many new laws besides the law of cohesion ? The atoms now cohering in the earth and all the solids of the same must have spread out in a state of repulsion millions of miles around and away from any common centre. The question is, who gave so many of them a rallying impulse, a simultaneous mobility towards a common centre ? In a general way they moved up to each other and all towards a common centre. The existence of the visible earth is proof that something of that kind has taken place ; atoms did come together, for here they are under the law of cohesion, many of them solid rocks, and every one of them has the true character of a transformation from a fluid state. Whatever may have been the distance apart of these atoms in the atomic world before they were collected, at the time appointed they arrived at the places where we now find them in this small central part of the first created atomic world. We here notice a well-known and universal law of matter, which is, that motion with compression of atoms always produces heat in proportion to the rapidity of motion and intensity of pressure combined. We judge therefore that the motion and compression of atoms concerned in this first stage of the world evolution, by which the solids came forth, must have produced a volume of heat of such intensity as to stagger arithmetical calculations.

Heat by chemical action was, of course, one of the forces in this compression, as well as electricity ; but that does nothing to solve the question, or to tell how the atoms were made ready for that special, electrical and chemical action, either alone or with other forces.

The compression of matter by whatever means from a volume so immense as the earth was in its nebulous form, and is now in its unseen part, to a sphere so small as 8000 miles in diameter, must have produced an enormous amount of heat in the compressed materials ; while at the same time the outlying and surrounding space would "be so rarefied by the matter withdrawn from it as to occasion a high degree of cold in all the space so rarefied. The compression of atoms would generate fervent heat and the rarefaction of the outlying atoms from which they were taken the most intense cold. So we may, for the time, think of a fiery centre all aglow with consuming heat, inclosed in a hollow sphere of vaporous fluid of intensest cold. The two states of matter, hot and cold, are placed in the strongest contrast and their battle grouud is now between them.

If we stop here we shall not get the world's true appearance as it must have been at that time. A glowing ball of fire was not what an outside observer at a distance would have seen, for we find that the elements of the solids of the earth are not all capable of being solidified by heat alone. Some of them cannot be so solidified. Water, the largest of all the external solids, cannot, though heat is generated in its production by the union of the gases in the chemical and electrical fire that forms it; when thus formed into water it is by heat turned into steam, and wafted by heat force into the cold air surrounding it, where it becomes a dense cloud of vapor and cooling returns to water aud ice. When we think of all the liquids, with their respective properties, as carbon and other materials that heat would turn into smoke and steam to be condensed on reaching the outside cold circle above, yet somewhat nearer the fiery mass than the circle of extreme cold, we shall see at once that it was not the fiery ball that an outside observer would see far away from without, but rather the darkness of the steam and smoke inclosing the globe of fire within it. This outside wrapper that the consumption of gases must have produced could have been nothing else than a globe of darkness. When a great city is on fire it is not the fire that is seen afar off, but the smoke. When Abraham looked away upon the burning Sodom and Gomorrah, the cities of the plain, " Lo, the smoke . of the country went up as a furnace," (Gen. 19:28.)