Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 10.djvu/109

Rh Then the earth is "without form," without the order which it subsequently assumed; and "void," that is, without inhabitant. Light appears, and an alternation of day and night. There is a separation of the lighter matter from the grosser, of the aërial expanse from the earth proper. Then a separation of the sea from the land. Life now appears, and we have grass and trees. As yet the sun and moon have not appeared as formed bodies. Now, on the fourth day, they might be seen, and become dividers of times and regulators of seasons. All this is in accordance with science, which says that the earth is older than the sun; that the earth was formed out of an original matter and that there must have been light before the sun was condensed into its present form. Animals now appear first in the waters, swarming creatures and fishes, then reptiles and birds. On the sixth day we have animals—herbivorous and carnivorous. Finally, we have man. All this is very much the same order as is disclosed in geology, and was written there in that volume three thousand years before geology made its discoveries.

But we are most concerned with what, after all, is the most important to us, and that is the creation of man. There is a twofold record, the parts not contradictory but supplementary the one of the other. Chapter ii. 7: "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living soul." This is expanded in a passage full of meaning: Psalm cxxxix. 15, "My substance was not hid from thee when I was made in secret and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth," seeming to indicate a process and a preparation; "thine eyes did see my substance being yet imperfect, and in thy book all my members were written while yet there was none of them." Such is the one side, the animal side. But then we have the other side, chapter i. 26: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our image, after our likeness. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he them." All this corresponds to our experience. We feel that we have an animal part cleaving to the dust, and allying his to the brutes. But we feel also that we have a divine nature, a power of distinguishing between good and evil, a longing for something higher, a seeking after God. The Bible tells, thirdly, that this image of God has been defaced. These truths have been combined in an eloquent passage by the profound Pascal: "The greatness and the misery of man being alike conspicuous, religion, in order to be true, must necessarily teach us that he has in himself some noble principles of greatness, and at the same time some profound source of misery. . . . The philosophers never furnish men with sentiments suitable to these two states. They inculcated a notion either of absolute grandeur or of hopeless degradation, neither of which is the true condition of man. . . . So manifest is it that we were once in a state of perfection from which we are now unhappily fallen. It is astonishing