The garden of Eden and the flood

Front matter

THt'

of Eoen

AND

Contents

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Preface vii

General Introduction xv

Preface

Under the prestige of high scholarship and honest inquiry, a most dangerous body of unbelievers in divine inspiration have assailed the five books of Moses, denying their authorship and invalidating their genuineness as the true history of God's dealing with Israel. Men of weight, in high position, affecting to know theology as well as statecraft, Greek as well as Hebrew, have thrown themselves into this controversy, as once before they doubted the unity and authorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey.

By the grinding word-by-word process of Professor Green, of Princeton, N. J., there is absolutely nothing left of these classical doubters but the chaff of a summer's threshing floor. Whatever might seemingly yet remain of them has been sifted out by the Bishop of Ely, until not a single grain of truth can be found in this heap of wellthreshed straw.

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viii Preface.

These books of Moses are books of history, of law, of journeys and campings, of numbers, of names, of mighty acts, of wonders of the deep and of the clouds, of a divine commissariat for the feeding of a million of armed men, and camp followers, in long marches over sandy wastes, with daily bread from heaven and quails from over the sea; and of streams in the desert, which, like a pursuing Providence, quenched the thirst of Israel for forty years.

But beyond all else they are the books of God; in the might of his creative glory, evolving worlds, angels, spirits out of his own will, by the one Word, through the eternal Spirit. Of all which they, and they only, are the revealed record.

We cannot in silence afford to see these inspired books invaded by critics who, under the plea of searching after truth, throw a cloud over every paragraph, \>y mere statement of cited versions, but which in fact they are not able to read. Dean

Preface. ix

Burgon, in his great work, " Revision Revised," states that but one man existed in England (Scrivener) capable of critically weighing versions with which these critics professed to be familiar. (Pages 231, 234.) The Bible holds its place in the hearts of men as the Word of God, by its history, its prophecy, and its vitality. Its history is the only absolutely true history ever written. The Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, the Kings, and Chronicles give us the facts that occurred in the various changes of the fortunes of Israel, and the secret springs which shaped the policy of its kings and counselors; motives open only to the eye of Omniscience. Besides this, there is an outside history of nations contemporaneous, recorded on tablets of stone, in cuneiform cipher, in hieroglyphic writing, on papyrus, or on the linen wrappings of mummies, which are being brought to light at the present time, all confirmatory of the sacred Scriptures. ^ x Preface.

The second line of supporting evidence is that of prophecy; for none but God could read the history of nations in advance; the fate of the Jews, scattered but not destroyed; recognized everywhere, though without nationality; the fate of the great empires of Syria, Media, Persia, and Macedonia, long since foretold and fulfilled. Above all, the announcement of the Messiah, his sufferings, resurrection, and kingdom, all wonderfully portrayed and fulfilled.

And yet if a third element, a concurring vitality, were wanting, the word would soon pass out of sight, or remain only as one of the marvelous products of human genius and intellect of past ages; venerable and curious, but as the leaves of the forest, fallen and withered by the frosts of time. Such, however, is not the case with the Bible, as evidenced in the number of volumes of the Holy Scriptures printed hourly in England, America, and in all civilized

Preface. xi

countries; in many islands, and once barbarous coasts, in native languages. This vitality awakens and quickens the consciences of men, and transforms them from the power of darkness into the kingdom of God's dear Son. It reveals to the yearning spirit of man " the mystery which was hidden from the generations and ages past," but is now made known in all its wealth; " which is Christ in you the hope of glory." But there is also a fourth line of evidence confirmatory of the Bible that comes from an unexpected source; that of geology. The recent discovery of enormous beds of fossils in the Carolinas proves incontestably that the continent of America before the flood was a great center of life, possibly the first. And these opportune discoveries providentially meet the latest stages of unbelief, so that by the light of His presence, as the mariners by stars, the Church of God still sails heavenward, amid deflecting currents and devouring waves, over fathomxii Preface.

less depths, taking many reckonings, but always consulting the one divine chart, perfected by Him who made the sky, the sea, and the dry land.

How words could make worlds was the problem which St. Paul declared could alone be solved by faith ; that the mind was incapable of understanding that great fact of creation, that worlds were framed by the word of God; that phenomena, " things seen," were not preceded by phenomena — that they were made of that which no thought, argument, or imagination could detect or depict. Hence science was nonplussed in its efforts at the first hour to apprehend the mighty work, as much as at any subsequent moment of time. Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, but he could not pass this limit of human thought. Had he been present when the morning stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for ]oy, had he heard the prelude attending the laying of

Preface. xiii

earth's foundations, the wonder would have appealed in vain to his understanding. The disciples saw Christ feed the multitudes with bread as from the oven, and took up basketfuls of fragments, but they saw not in him the One Word that made all that ever was made.

Probably the first chapter of Genesis was as astounding to Moses in its ten words as were the thunders of Sinai to the children of Israel. There can be no clearer evidence that he wrote by inspiration than the record of this chapter. All its wonders — the creation of light on the first day, the creation of sun and moon on the fourth day, the evening and the morning for each day, the measured cadence of every sublime word, as it unrolled into a sublimer expression of some new world of flora or fauna; the magnificent pauses, and silences, as if to wait upon the recognition and response of listening hierarchies — all this far transcended the natural powers of the lawgiver.

xiv Preface.

He wrote it because the Spirit of Truth revealed it, and then wondered as when he saw the bush in the desert on fire, but unconsumed, and heard the greater word, "I am that I am."

General Introduction.

The facts which this book proposes to establish are:

i. That all life was destroyed by the flood in the western and in the eastern continents; that before the flood the western were the centers of animal life, but ceased to be at the flood; that life began after the flood in the eastern only, and that by miracle.

2. That every creature has been fossilized; those species that were in the ark and those out of it; that therefore we have a full record of the original creation ; that all that now live are also found fossilized as first made ; that all species were fossilized at one and the same time, and by the same electrical current, which was universal, instant, and directly upon the catastrophe of the flood — while dying their tombstones were set up.

3. That America is the great Eden con-

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xvi General Introduction.

tinent. Before the flood Noah would continue near the site of the garden of Eden; and all animated nature springing from that center would for a long period annually return to it; which in part accounts for the gathering of the so-called Pliocene creatures, of both land and water, at the flood, "as if they had been summoned there to die."

4. That there is no fossil older than man; that bones and teeth of man have been fossilized, which gives an overwhelming support to the Pentateuch of Moses.

5. That creation was in time, and that time not very long ago ; thus agreeing with Cuvier's estimate of the age of the human race.

6. That since the flood, for a period of four thousand years, the two Americas, North and South, remained silent as an old * graveyard, and were, in fact, God's Burial Mound ; a superlative record of human disaster; more wonderful than those discov-

ered by Rawlinson in the mounds of Mesopotamia, or those discovered by Schliemann at Hasirlik, Troja, and Mycenae; or those of Egypt that sleep in the ribs of the mountains or beneath the sands of the desert.

That full one-half of the world should have been ordered back into oblivion, after sixteen hundred years of abounding life — which filled plains, mountains, rivers, and lakes of these continents with herds of oxen, horses, sheep, goats, and all other tribes of birds and beasts, so necessary to the domestic life of man — is the great, if not the greatest, discovery of the nineteenth century.

That these bones and teeth, which were fossilized at the flood, should reveal to us the wealth of creation, as it came fresh from the hand of the Creator, shows the care that God has taken to secure a monument of those mighty works which declared his wisdom and benevolence, and w r hich awakened throughout the universe xviii General Introduction.

the high anthems of the sons of God at the laying of earth's foundation.

7. As to the site of Eden. It is probable that the garden of Eden was on a veryhigh table-land, and was surrounded by a wall of rock, difficult to scale, and guarded by angels; that it inclosed a large area of diversified surface of fertile, well watered woodland; that it remained, from the fall to the flood, in sight, but unapproachable; that it was the last point to give way under the terrible storm that swept the whole earth of its life — possibly remaining until, by earthquake or volcano, earth's surface took its present outline.

Who has not tried to realize the beautiful home and the sublime history of our first parents, as described in Genesis? It certainly is the poetry of truth to which the Scriptures introduce us in recounting the eventful year of man's innocency.

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I. The Mosaic Record

There is a certain firm grandeur in the first chapter of Genesis that declares its origin. Out of each verse He speaks whom no man hath seen or can see. Every line, every syllable, has in it the commanding precision of the words spoken on Sinai.

There are human spaces, angelic spaces, and spaces which belong only to the Godhead. Out of these regions of the Infinite there has been given to us through Moses a revelation exact, fixed, which shows the sublime work and unity of God, when by the Son and by the Spirit he created the heavens and the earth in six days, and rested on the seventh.

The human mind could never have known how to begin or where to end such a drama, affecting as it did the universe, moral and natural. But in the opening chapter of the mighty record there is no hesitation, no speculation; but all is prompt, full, ever-enduring law, written upon freshly created matter. Comparatively, how childish are all other conceptions of this huge labor! The superhuman vision of Job gives a conception of creative energy and law that can only be conveyed in the lofty reaches of the Spirit: " Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth ? Who hath laid the measures thereof, or who hath stretched over it a line? Upon what are the foundations thereof settled? who hath laid the corner stone of it, when the morning stars all sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Or who shut the doors against the sea, when it burst forth as from a womb; when I put a cloud upon it, as a garment, and thick clouds as a swaddling band; and appointed for it my bound, and set bars and doors, and said, Here to this place shalt thou come, and here let thy proud waves stop?"

In the Mosaic account there is more than

The Mosaic J?ecord. 5

the mere labor of the great Architect. A hallowing thought reigns everywhere. All through the dry work of creating there was a blessing upon the floods and the light, and a beneficent purpose to be seen in the elements of nature. Thought-relations w 7 ere imprinted upon every creature, and upon every clod; and much more, which God discerns if we do not, but which we do if our hearts are full of his love.

The pauses of God were to contemplate and approve these benign ends; and to mix with the acts of creation the element of time, without which the human mind would be incapable of its least conception. The extravagant periods which speculative geologists have assigned to the earth — some as much as eighteen hundred thousand years, and others going into the millions — are of course in the face of all inspiration. Fortunately the recent discoveries of the fossil deposits on this continent have limited the range of all such speculators. The fact that bones of the mammoth and of man are found side by side, and with them innumerable remains of the ichthyosaurus, megatherium, and extinct monsters of the shark species, and of squalodons, has confirmed the Mosaic record of the creation and of the flood. It would appear by these deposits that animal life was richer in variety and finish at its beginning than at any subsequent period of which we have knowledge.

Wherever Eden was originally planted, it is now certain that in America are found fossilized remains far more varied and extensive than have as yet been discovered in either Europe, Asia, or Africa; and that they indicate a long, undisturbed period of production before the flood.

The enormous cemetery of marine and land animals in South Carolina tells its own story.

The question as to where the ark grounded may be considered as correctly settled —

The Mosaic Record. *j

Mount Ararat in Armenia ; but the yet more interesting one, as to whence the ark took its departure, as still open. And to its solution we contribute this volume, presenting many important facts which cannot be set aside by any fair-minded person. Meanwhile the corroboration of the Mosaic record is of much greater moment than the discovery of the latitude or longitude of either Ararat or Eden.

II. Creation and Time

What can science do in describing the first moment of creation? It cannot even conceive of the first creative word, which is so accurately recorded in the Mosaic account, and which of all the words was the most pregnant in glory and power. Nor can it conceive of an}^ the least, connection between speech and the creative act itself. Was it by an idea in the divine mind, or by a movement of the divine hand, or by some divine syllable, that substance came out of nothing — this huge bulk out of that which did not appear? The orderly statement which preceded each day's work; then, afterwards, the fact itself as having transpired; and then the final stamp placed upon it by the Creator, expressive of its fitness and of its contribution to the good purposes of his will, would not have entered the human mind. (S)

Creation and Time. 9

Nor would the time which accompanied the act have been stated had not time entered essentially into the work itself. It must be remembered that each act transpired along with one distinct revolution of the earth; that it was this turn in space that put upon it the first notch of time, terrestrial. And that the needed space itself was created along with the moving earth, as well as the time; that they first existed, not as outside and distinct from the creating acts, but as part of them.

Nor is the work represented as long delayed by vast interruptions of space and time, but when once begun as going through with .short pauses of divine purpose; each day's work being brought within the compass of an " evening" and a " morning," and completed under the divine eye with a divine benediction. The time element, the night, the day, the daily finish, and the daily approval of His own work, would not have entered into any conio The Flood.

ception or history of creation save that of the inspired penman.

Let the reader try to think how he would create one grain of sand — and he is as apt to think sensibly as any other uninspired person. He will find that the method of creating contradicts his ideas as much as the fact itself transcends them. One could scarcely expect to turn a log over by mere thought, much less a world; and certainly not to make it. The power to create sand, or matter of any kind, by speech, would be quite as far from the ideas of man. Indeed, thought would seem to be the more probable instrument for working with the invisible elements of nothing, in a mere void, and in the utter absence of light. But God "spake' where there was no room for echo; and the word made its own room, and filled the space with its own glory. The first utterance of the mighty will surpassed all other creative wealth, and in extent held all that came after in all its

Creation and Time. II

unwasted strength and beauty, outstreaming to the utmost bounds of the stellar universe.

This orderly substance of earth must have had an orderly beginning. Speech implies the Presence of a Person. It is the highest perfection of creative skill. Only such a creature could hold the divine purpose. God "spake," not to the void merely, but in the hearing of the heavenly hierarchies, and "it was done." The syllables holding his wisdom, power, and love revealed to them his highest form of communion with his intelligent creatures. Until then they knew not the ineffable fullness of the divine word. It was the revelation of a power which, by and by, was to be employed in the creation of sons of God.

The principle of growth that had essentially a large place in creation was very distinct from it. It requires the element of time in all its working. Its laws had first to be framed, and then lodged permanently in substances, as a continuous vitality. Creation and growth cannot be mixed; creation goes before everything except the word. If we subtract the idea of growth from that of creation, we shall find its demand for the element of time greatly moderated.

He had made all things, whether visible or invisible, whether angels, principalities or powers, thrones or dominions, is called the Word of God, because by his syllables they were created. The ninetieth Psalm, "the prayer of Moses, the man of God/' gives us the grandeur of the creative hour, as compared with which the idea of a growth is unutterably meager: "Before the mountains were born, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from eternity to eternity, thou art God." "The birth-travail in the production of a world, in its suddenness — for emotional grandeur," says Tayler Lewis, "for the feeling that comes from the ' Living Word,'

Creation and Time. 13

and without which thought and knowledge are dead — what are miocene, and pliocene, and eocene, and the frigid decimals of the geological notation, to the power of language like this? " In the twent} r -eighth chapter of Job the sea has its natal period, as in this Psalm the mountains had theirs.

The difficulty with us inheres in that we cannot conceive either of ourselves or of creation as outside of both time and space; but, in fact, they all came together. It is wonderful to see the earnestness of some evangelical writers as they plead for "room" in creation; that is, for more time. As if the periods asked for could in the slightest degree relieve the work of creation. But nothing can make creation easy; only revelation can present it intelligibly to the mind. There is less difficulty in accepting it as a command than as the result of a law feebly started by God on its way to a growth of expression, and which involves an infinite period of time for its completion. The mind has no "room" in it for creation, apart from faith in the "Word of God"; by which we understand that " the worlds were framed," "so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." (Heb. xi. 3.)

As creation is itself the greatest of all miracles, atheists are uniformitarians, arguing that creation is still going on, as at first, and was therefore no more wonderful at any time than it is at present. But can any believe that the ages have added a single fleck of gold to the breast of the humming bird? Many strong beasts and fearful creatures of the land and of the sea, which were marvelous in their build, have faded out, but none have been added to the animal kingdom. Their huge vertebra and powerful teeth tell the story of an extinct grandeur. Their majesty and hegemony have been fossilized and let into the rock forever. Man, too, has lost his original stupendous reach of vitality, stretching on and

Creation and Time. 15

on over whole centuries; but his years have dwindled to the period of fourscore as their latest boundary. Now we ask, What has gained, of all that ever was, by the lapse of time, whether in the heavens above or in the earth beneath? Has any achievement of the mind surpassed or equaled Job, the first epic ? And if the intellect has not advanced in its power of thought, sentiment, or imagination, or in the divine quality of speech, we surely may not expect anything new in departments of creation lying much farther out from God.

III. The First Great Whales

"A?id God created great zvhales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind; and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth." (Genesis i. 21, 22.)

It will be seen that they were made — finished. They were ready to multiply, to fill the waters in the seas; that is, to stock the seas with fish, and the earth with fowl. A special blessing was pronounced upon this food-providing creation. This was on the fifth day; on the sixth, man is presented with "dominion over the fish of the seas and over the fowl of the air." Their creation was therefore an accomplished work; finished the day before — for man.

As the fish and the fowl were made complete in their generations, and the laws of (16)

production made inherent and perfect in the moment of their creation, so were the great whales. They, too, began complete, and came in for their share of divine approval. Had they been merely " whales," they would have become "great' in the course of a thousand years, it may be: not made great, but "grown " great. But these were "created great" — great at once, by the creative Word that made all fish. This one creative Word has put a period to all theories of evolution. Great whales do not go on to produce great whales; though after the lapse of a thousand years every whale becomes great. But these started great. In the Washington Territory, on the Pacific coast, a whale was stranded in 1892, supposed to be within fourteen j^ears of being a thousand years old — probably the hugest creature that ever grew. Its jawbone was at Chicago, in the World's Columbian Exhibition, in the Fishery building. It was placed as the door to the exhibit from

Washington Territory — twenty-four feet high, An admirable plate of it can be seen in the " Book of the Fair " (Bancroft Company), Part xiv., page 523. The following statement of the dimensions of this huge creature and history of its death is given in the South Bend Herald, Washington Territory — Mr. H. J. Hubler, editor:

A Whale Whose Age is Computed at Nearly One Thousand Years.

The largest whale that ever entered this harbor and one of the largest ever seen on this coast, washed ashore recently at Tokelund. The fish came in on the high tide, and lies just a little below Charles Fisher's bath-houses. It was alive and kicking, and did not finally surrender its lease on existence until the following day about noon. County attorney M. D. Egbert had taken along a tapeline and carefully measured the monster. The line showed an extreme length of one hundred and seventy-four feet and eight inches, with a "waist measure" of one hundred and sixty-one feet and six inches. County surveyor L. C. Vickrey figured on the weight of the "animile," and pronounced this member of the balaanoidea family to weigh forty-seven and a half tons, and the blubber and whalebone to be worth, at current

JAWS OF WHALE, SECTION ENTRANCE,

[This plate is in the " Book of the Fair," published at Chicago, and is inserted here by special consent of the publishers. The jaw of this whale was twenty-four feet 'long. Part of the inscription refers to another whale in the Washington exhibit.]

prices: oil, $9,795; bone, $1,000 — making a net total of $10,975.

Attorney L. E. Ginn attempted to compute the age of the subject under consideration, and concluded from the transverse lines on the baleen that his fish had existed for nine hundred and eighty-six years, lacking but fourteen years of having lived the longest term of whale life. The pectoral fins are twelve feet long and seven feet broad. The mouth is twenty-four feet long, the blow holes fifteen inches long; and the half-hundred bathers in the water at the time it came ashore say the noise of spouting water was deafening, and the spray ejected ascended at least fifty feet in the air. The thrashing of the tail on the water in the struggle to regain the channel was heard at McGowan's cannery at the mouth of North River, four miles away.

County school superintendent L. W. Fanscher furnished some historical facts in regard to the whale. Alfred the Great had been dead but six years when his whaleship first began to navigate the, waters of the earth. The old boy was one hundred and twenty years old when William the Conqueror was born, and may have been playing off English shores when he was crowned king. He was on earth at the time of the making of the Great Charter at Runnymede; he was middle-aged when the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, and probably looked upon the wars of Napoleon, the American Revolution and Civil War, with many a sad sigh and shake of the head for the ruthless slaughter of humanity.

A taxidermist secured the jawbone for the Columbian Exhibition. This description proves that with time and growth all whales could become one hundred and seventy-four feet eight inches long, and have a " waist measure" of one hundred and sixty-four feet six inches. Probably this was the largest creature that ever grew, and illustrates those first creatures that were created on the fifth day. It is one among many illustrations that "one day" is with God as "a thousand years," and a thousand years as one day. Time with the Creator of time is without measure. " He speaks, and it is done; he commands, and it stands fast." Whales are among animals such as the behemoth, and among fish such as the leviathan — the largest in size, in strength, and in possibility of growth; not, however, as large at first as after a thousand years of growth. But these whales of the fifth day began great — so great that it w 7 as recorded as a special instance of creative power. The size of the largest whale is set down in the Britannica as measuring eighty-five feet. 1 In Genesis no mention is made of " great" leviathans, or " great" elephants, or " great" behemoths, though all had put in them a law of enormous growth. These " great whales " were the statement of an instant creative act, not of a creative law.

2 The "blue whale," the largest of all known animals, attains a length of eighty, or even sometimes eighty-five, feet. Its color is a dark blueish gray, with small whitish spots on the breast; the baleen is black; the flippers are larger proportionably than in other eorquals, measuring one-seventh of the total length of the body; and the dorsal fin is small, and placed very far back. This whale has usually sixty-four vertebras, of which sixteen bear ribs. Like the others of the genus, this species seems to pass the winter in the open seas, and approaches the coast of Norway at the end of April or the beginning of May. {Encyclopedia Britannica^ vol. xxiv., page 524, note.)