1.1.1. THE VISIBLE UNIVERSE.
AMONG those masses of cathedral sculpture which preserve so much of
medieval theology, one frequently recurring group is noteworthy for
its presentment of a time-honoured doctrine regarding the origin of
the universe.
The Almighty, in human form, sits benignly, making the sun, moon,
and stars, and hanging them from the solid firmament which supports
the "heaven above" and overarches the "earth beneath."
The furrows of thought on the Creator's brow show that in this work
he is obliged to contrive; the knotted muscles upon his arms show
that he is obliged to toil; naturally, then, the sculptors and
painters of the medieval and early modern period frequently
represented him as the writers whose conceptions they embodied had
done—as, on the seventh day, weary after thought and toil,
enjoying well-earned repose and the plaudits of the hosts of heaven.
In these thought-fossils of the cathedrals, and in other
revelations of the same idea through sculpture, painting,
glass-staining, mosaic work, and engraving, during the Middle Ages
and the two centuries following, culminated a belief which had been
developed through thousands of years, and which has determined the
world's thought until our own time.
Its beginnings lie far back in human history; we find them among
the early records of nearly all the great civilizations, and they
hold a most prominent place in the various sacred books of the
world. In nearly all of them is revealed the conception of a
Creator of whom man is an imperfect image, and who literally and
directly created the visible universe with his hands and fingers.
Among these theories, of especial interest to us are those which
controlled theological thought in Chaldea. The Assyrian
inscriptions which have been recently recovered and given to the
English-speaking peoples by Layard, George Smith, Sayce, and
others, show that in the ancient religions of Chaldea and Babylonia
there was elaborated a narrative of the creation which, in its most
important features, must have been the source of that in our own
sacred books. It has now become perfectly clear that from the same
sources which inspired the accounts of the creation of the universe
among the Chaldeo-Babylonian, the Assyrian, the Phoenician, and
other ancient civilizations came the ideas which hold so prominent
a place in the sacred books of the Hebrews. In the two accounts
imperfectly fused together in Genesis, and also in the account of
which we have indications in the book of Job and in the Proverbs,
there, is presented, often with the greatest sublimity, the same
early conception of the Creator and of the creation—the
conception, so natural in the childhood of civilization, of a
Creator who is an enlarged human being working literally with his
own hands, and of a creation which is "the work of his fingers." To
supplement this view there was developed the belief in this Creator
as one who, having
. . . "from his ample palm
Launched forth the rolling planets into space."
sits on high, enthroned "upon the circle of the heavens,"
perpetually controlling and directing them.
From this idea of creation was evolved in time a somewhat nobler
view. Ancient thinkers, and especially, as is now found, in Egypt,
suggested that the main agency in creation was not the hands and
fingers of the Creator, but his voice. Hence was mingled with the
earlier, cruder belief regarding the origin of the earth and
heavenly bodies by the Almighty the more impressive idea that "he
spake and they were made"—that they were brought into existence
by his word.
Among the early fathers of the Church this general view of creation
became fundamental; they impressed upon Christendom more and more
strongly the belief that the universe was created in a perfectly
literal sense by the hands or voice of God. Here and there sundry
theologians of larger mind attempted to give a more spiritual view
regarding some parts of the creative work, and of these were St.
Gregory of Nyssa and St. Augustine. Ready as they were to accept
the literal text of Scripture, they revolted against the conception
of an actual creation of the universe by the hands and fingers of
a Supreme Being, and in this they were followed by Bede and a few
others; but the more material conceptions prevailed, and we find
these taking shape not only in the sculptures and mosaics and
stained glass of cathedrals, and in the illuminations of missals
and psalters, but later, at the close of the Middle Ages, in the
pictured Bibles and in general literature.
Into the Anglo-Saxon mind this ancient material conception of the
creation was riveted by two poets whose works appealed especially
to the deeper religious feelings. In the seventh century Caedmon
paraphrased the account given in Genesis, bringing out this
material conception in the most literal form; and a thousand years
later Milton developed out of the various statements in the Old
Testament, mingled with a theology regarding "the creative Word"
which had been drawn from the New, his description of the creation
by the second person in the Trinity, than which nothing could be
more literal and material:
"He took the golden compasses, prepared
In God's eternal store, to circumscribe
This universe and all created things.
One foot he centred, and the other turned
Round through the vast profundity obscure,
And said, `Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds:
This be thy just circumference, O world!'"
So much for the orthodox view of the manner of creation.
The next point developed in this theologic evolution had reference
to the matter of which the universe was made, and it was decided by
an overwhelming majority that no material substance existed before
the creation of the material universe—that "God created everything
out of nothing." Some venturesome thinkers, basing their reasoning
upon the first verses of Genesis, hinted at a different
view—namely, that the mass, "without form and void," existed
before the universe; but this doctrine was soon swept out of sight.
The vast majority of the fathers were explicit on this point.
Tertullian especially was very severe against those who took any
other view than that generally accepted as orthodox: he declared
that, if there had been any pre-existing matter out of which the
world was formed, Scripture would have mentioned it; that by not
mentioning it God has given us a clear proof that there was no such
thing; and, after a manner not unknown in other theological
controversies, he threatens Hermogenes, who takes the opposite
view, with the woe which impends on all who add to or take away
from the written word."
St. Augustine, who showed signs of a belief in a pre-existence of
matter, made his peace with the prevailing belief by the simple
reasoning that, "although the world has been made of some material,
that very same material must have been made out of nothing."
In the wake of these great men the universal Church steadily
followed. The Fourth Lateran Council declared that God created
everything out of nothing; and at the present hour the vast
majority of the faithful—whether Catholic or Protestant—are
taught the same doctrine; on this point the syllabus of Pius IX and
the Westminster Catechism fully agree.
Having thus disposed of the manner and matter of creation, the next
subject taken up by theologians was the time required for the
great work.
Here came a difficulty. The first of the two accounts given in
Genesis extended the creative operation through six days, each of
an evening and a morning, with much explicit detail regarding the
progress made in each. But the second account spoke of "the day"
in which "the Lord God made the earth and the heavens." The
explicitness of the first account and its naturalness to the minds
of the great mass of early theologians gave it at first a decided
advantage; but Jewish thinkers, like Philo, and Christian thinkers,
like Origen, forming higher conceptions of the Creator and his
work, were not content with this, and by them was launched upon the
troubled sea of Christian theology the idea that the creation was
instantaneous, this idea being strengthened not only by the second
of the Genesis legends, but by the great text, "He spake, and it
was done; he commanded, and it stood fast"—or, as it appears in
the Vulgate and in most translations, "He spake, and they were
made; he commanded, and they were created."
As a result, it began to be held that the safe and proper course
was to believe literally both statements; that in some mysterious
manner God created the universe in six days, and yet brought it all
into existence in a moment. In spite of the outcries of sundry
great theologians, like Ephrem Syrus, that the universe was created
in exactly six days of twenty-four hours each, this compromise was
promoted by St. Athanasius and St. Basil in the East, and by St.
Augustine and St. Hilary in the West.
Serious difficulties were found in reconciling these two views,
which to the natural mind seem absolutely contradictory; but by
ingenious manipulation of texts, by dexterous play upon phrases,
and by the abundant use of metaphysics to dissolve away facts, a
reconciliation was effected, and men came at least to believe that
they believed in a creation of the universe instantaneous and at
the same time extended through six days.
Some of the efforts to reconcile these two accounts were so
fruitful as to deserve especial record. The fathers, Eastern and
Western, developed out of the double account in Genesis, and the
indications in the Psalms, the Proverbs, and the book of Job, a
vast mass of sacred science bearing upon this point. As regards the
whole work of creation, stress was laid upon certain occult powers
in numerals. Philo Judaeus, while believing in an instantaneous
creation, had also declared that the world was created in six days
because "of all numbers six is the most productive"; he had
explained the creation of the heavenly bodies on the fourth day by
"the harmony of the number four"; of the animals on the fifth day
by the five senses; of man on the sixth day by the same virtues in
the number six which had caused it to be set as a limit to the
creative work; and, greatest of all, the rest on the seventh day by
the vast mass of mysterious virtues in the number seven.
St. Jerome held that the reason why God did not pronounce the work
of the second day "good" is to be found in the fact that there is
something essentially evil in the number two, and this was echoed
centuries afterward, afar off in Britain, by Bede.
St. Augustine brought this view to bear upon the Church in the
following statement: "There are three classes of numbers—the more
than perfect, the perfect, and the less than perfect, according as
the sum of them is greater than, equal to, or less than the
original number. Six is the first perfect number: wherefore we must
not say that six is a perfect number because God finished all his
works in six days, but that God finished all his works in six days
because six is a perfect number."
Reasoning of this sort echoed along through the mediaeval Church
until a year after the discovery of America, when the Nuremberg
Chronicle re-echoed it as follows: "The creation of things is
explained by the number six, the parts of which, one, two, and
three, assume the form of a triangle."
This view of the creation of the universe as instantaneous and also
as in six days, each made up of an evening and a morning, became
virtually universal. Peter Lombard and Hugo of St. Victor,
authorities of Vast weight, gave it their sanction in the twelfth
century, and impressed it for ages upon the mind of the Church.
Both these lines of speculation—as to the creation of everything
out of nothing, and the reconciling of the instantaneous creation
of the universe with its creation in six days—were still further
developed by other great thinkers of the Middle Ages.
St. Hilary of Poictiers reconciled the two conceptions as follows:
"For, although according to Moses there is an appearance of regular
order in the fixing of the firmament, the laying bare of the dry
land, the gathering together of the waters, the formation of the
heavenly bodies, and the arising of living things from land and
water, yet the creation of the heavens, earth, and other elements
is seen to be the work of a single moment."
St. Thomas Aquinas drew from St. Augustine a subtle distinction
which for ages eased the difficulties in the case: he taught in
effect that God created the substance of things in a moment, but
gave to the work of separating, shaping, and adorning this
creation, six days.
The early reformers accepted and developed the same view, and
Luther especially showed himself equal to the occasion. With his
usual boldness he declared, first, that Moses "spoke properly and
plainly, and neither allegorically nor figuratively," and that
therefore "the world with all creatures was created in six days."
And he then goes on to show how, by a great miracle, the whole
creation was also instantaneous.
Melanchthon also insisted that the universe was created out of
nothing and in a mysterious way, both in an instant and in six
days, citing the text: "He spake, and they were made."
Calvin opposed the idea of an instantaneous creation, and laid
especial stress on the creation in six days: having called
attention to the fact that the biblical chronology shows the world
to be not quite six thousand years old and that it is now near its
end, he says that "creation was extended through six days that it
might not be tedious for us to occupy the whole of life in the
consideration of it."
Peter Martyr clinched the matter by declaring: "So important is it
to comprehend the work of creation that we see the creed of the
Church take this as its starting point. Were this article taken
away there would be no original sin, the promise of Christ would
become void, and all the vital force of our religion would be
destroyed." The Westminster divines in drawing up their Confession
of Faith specially laid it down as necessary to believe that all
things visible and invisible were created not only out of nothing
but in exactly six days.
Nor were the Roman divines less strenuous than the Protestant
reformers regarding the necessity of holding closely to the
so-called Mosaic account of creation. As late as the middle of the
eighteenth century, when Buffon attempted to state simple
geological truths, the theological faculty of the Sorbonne forced
him to make and to publish a most ignominious recantation which
ended with these words: "I abandon everything in my book respecting
the formation of the earth, and generally all which may be Contrary
to the narrative of Moses."
Theologians, having thus settled the manner of the creation, the
matter used in it, and the time required for it, now exerted
themselves to fix its date.
The long series of efforts by the greatest minds in the Church,
from Eusebius to Archbishop Usher, to settle this point are
presented in another chapter. Suffice it here that the general
conclusion arrived at by an overwhelming majority of the most
competent students of the biblical accounts was that the date of
creation was, in round numbers, four thousand years before our era;
and in the seventeenth century, in his great work, Dr. John
Lightfoot, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, and one
of the most eminent Hebrew scholars of his time, declared, as the
result of his most profound and exhaustive study of the Scriptures,
that "heaven and earth, centre and circumference, were created all
together, in the same instant, and clouds full of water," and that
"this work took place and man was created by the Trinity on October
23, 4004 B. C., at nine o'clock in the morning."
Here was, indeed, a triumph of Lactantius's method, the result of
hundreds of years of biblical study and theological thought since
Bede in the eighth century, and Vincent of Beauvais in the
thirteenth, had declared that creation must have taken place in the
spring. Yet, alas! within two centuries after Lightfoot's great
biblical demonstration as to the exact hour of creation, it was
discovered that at that hour an exceedingly cultivated people,
enjoying all the fruits of a highly developed civilization, had
long been swarming in the great cities of Egypt, and that other
nations hardly less advanced had at that time reached a high
development in Asia.
But, strange as it may seem, even after theologians had thus
settled the manner of creation, the matter employed in it, the time
required for it, and the exact date of it, there remained virtually
unsettled the first and greatest question of all; and this was
nothing less than the question, WHO actually created the universe?
Various theories more or less nebulous, but all centred in texts of
Scripture, had swept through the mind of the Church. By some
theologians it was held virtually that the actual creative agent
was the third person of the Trinity, who, in the opening words of
our sublime creation poem, "moved upon the face of the waters." By
others it was held that the actual Creator was the second person of
the Trinity, in behalf of whose agency many texts were cited from
the New Testament. Others held that the actual Creator was the
first person, and this view was embodied in the two great formulas
known as the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, which explicitly assigned
the work to "God the Father Almighty" Maker of heaven and earth."
Others, finding a deep meaning in the words "Let us make," ascribed
in Genesis to the Creator, held that the entire Trinity directly
created all things; and still others, by curious metaphysical
processes, seemed to arrive at the idea that peculiar combinations
of two persons of the Trinity achieved the creation.
In all this there would seem to be considerable courage in view of
the fearful condemnations launched in the Athanasian Creed against
all who should "confound the persons" or "divide the substance of
the Trinity."
These various stages in the evolution of scholastic theology were
also embodied in sacred art, and especially in cathedral sculpture,
in glass-staining, in mosaic working, and in missal painting.
The creative Being is thus represented sometimes as the third
person of the Trinity, in the form of a dove brooding over chaos;
sometimes as the second person, and therefore a youth; sometimes as
the first person, and therefore fatherly and venerable; sometimes
as the first and second persons, one being venerable and the other
youthful; and sometimes as three persons, one venerable and one
youthful, both wearing papal crowns, and each holding in his lips
a tip of the wing of the dove, which thus seems to proceed from
both and to be suspended between them.
Nor was this the most complete development of the medieval idea.
The Creator was sometimes represented with a single body, but with
three faces, thus showing that Christian belief had in some pious
minds gone through substantially the same cycle which an earlier
form of belief had made ages before in India, when the Supreme
Being was represented with one body but with the three faces of
Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva.
But at the beginning of the modern period the older view in its
primitive Jewish form was impressed upon Christians by the most
mighty genius in art the world has known; for in 1512, after four
years of Titanic labour, Michael Angelo uncovered his frescoes
within the vault of the Sistine Chapel.
They had been executed by the command and under the sanction of the
ruling Pope, Julius II, to represent the conception of Christian
theology then dominant, and they remain to-day in all their majesty
to show the highest point ever attained by the older thought upon
the origin of the visible universe.
In the midst of the expanse of heaven the Almighty Father—the
first person of the Trinity—in human form, august and venerable,
attended by angels and upborne by mighty winds, sweeps over the
abyss, and, moving through successive compartments of the great
vault, accomplishes the work of the creative days. With a simple
gesture he divides the light from the darkness, rears on high the
solid firmament, gathers together beneath it the seas, or summons
into existence the sun, moon, and planets, and sets them circling
about the earth.
In this sublime work culminated the thought of thousands of years;
the strongest minds accepted it or pretended to accept it, and
nearly two centuries later this conception, in accordance with the
first of the two accounts given in Genesis, was especially enforced
by Bossuet, and received a new lease of life in the Church, both
Catholic and Protestant.
But to these discussions was added yet another, which, beginning in
the early days of the Church, was handed down the ages until it had
died out among the theologians of our own time.
In the first of the biblical accounts light is created and the
distinction between day and night thereby made on the first day,
while the sun and moon are not created until the fourth day. Masses
of profound theological and pseudo-scientific reasoning have been
developed to account for this—masses so great that for ages they
have obscured the simple fact that the original text is a precious
revelation to us of one of the most ancient of recorded
beliefs—the belief that light and darkness are entities
independent of the heavenly bodies, and that the sun, moon, and
stars exist not merely to increase light but to "divide the day
from the night, to be for signs and for seasons, and for days and
for years," and "to rule the day and the night."
Of this belief we find survivals among the early fathers, and
especially in St. Ambrose. In his work on creation he tells us: "We
must remember that the light of day is one thing and the light of
the sun, moon, and stars another—the sun by his rays appearing to
add lustre to the daylight. For before sunrise the day dawns, but
is not in full refulgence, for the sun adds still further to its
splendour." This idea became one of the "treasures of sacred
knowledge committed to the Church," and was faithfully received by
the Middle Ages. The medieval mysteries and miracle plays give
curious evidences of this: In a performance of the creation, when
God separates light from darkness, the stage direction is, "Now a
painted cloth is to be exhibited, one half black and the other half
white." It was also given more permanent form. In the mosaics of
San Marco at Venice, in the frescoes of the Baptistery at Florence
and of the Church of St. Francis at Assisi, and in the altar
carving at Salerno, we find a striking realization of it—the
Creator placing in the heavens two disks or living figures of equal
size, each suitably coloured or inscribed to show that one
represents light and the other darkness. This conception was
without doubt that of the person or persons who compiled from the
Chaldean and other earlier statements the accounts of the creation
in the first of our sacred books.
Thus, down to a period almost within living memory, it was held,
virtually "always, everywhere, and by all," that the universe, as
we now see it, was created literally and directly by the voice or
hands of the Almighty, or by both—out of nothing—in an instant
or in six days, or in both—about four thousand years before the
Christian era—and for the convenience of the dwellers upon the
earth, which was at the base and foundation of the whole structure.
But there had been implanted along through the ages germs of
another growth in human thinking, some of them even as early as the
Babylonian period. In the Assyrian inscriptions we find recorded
the Chaldeo-Babylonian idea of an evolution of the universe out of
the primeval flood or "great deep," and of the animal creation out
of the earth and sea. This idea, recast, partially at least, into
monotheistic form, passed naturally into the sacred books of the
neighbours and pupils of the Chaldeans—the Hebrews; but its growth
in Christendom afterward was checked, as we shall hereafter find,
by the more powerful influence of other inherited statements which
appealed more intelligibly to the mind of the Church.
Striking, also, was the effect of this idea as rewrought by the
early Ionian philosophers, to whom it was probably transmitted from
the Chaldeans through the Phoenicians. In the minds of Ionians like
Anaximander and Anaximenes it was most clearly developed: the first
of these conceiving of the visible universe as the result of
processes of evolution, and the latter pressing further the same
mode of reasoning, and dwelling on agencies in cosmic development
recognised in modern science.
This general idea of evolution in Nature thus took strong hold upon
Greek thought and was developed in many ways, some ingenious, some
perverse. Plato, indeed, withstood it; but Aristotle sometimes
developed it in a manner which reminds us of modern views.
Among the Romans Lucretius caught much from it, extending the
evolutionary process virtually to all things.
In the early Church, as we have seen, the idea of a creation
direct, material, and by means like those used by man, was
all-powerful for the exclusion of conceptions based on evolution.
From the more simple and crude of the views of creation given in
the Babylonian legends, and thence incorporated into Genesis, rose
the stream of orthodox thought on the subject, which grew into a
flood and swept on through the Middle Ages and into modern times.
Yet here and there in the midst of this flood were high grounds of
thought held by strong men. Scotus Erigena and Duns Scotus, among
the schoolmen, bewildered though they were, had caught some rays of
this ancient light, and passed on to their successors, in modified
form, doctrines of an evolutionary process in the universe.
In the latter half of the sixteenth century these evolutionary
theories seemed to take more definite form in the mind of Giordano
Bruno, who evidently divined the fundamental idea of what is now
known as the "nebular hypothesis"; but with his murder by the
Inquisition at Rome this idea seemed utterly to
disappear—dissipated by the flames which in 1600 consumed his body
on the Campo dei Fiori.
Yet within the two centuries divided by Bruno's death the world was
led into a new realm of thought in which an evolution theory of the
visible universe was sure to be rapidly developed. For there came,
one after the other, five of the greatest men our race has
produced—Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton—and
when their work was done the old theological conception of the
universe was gone. "The spacious firmament on high"—"the
crystalline spheres"—the Almighty enthroned upon "the circle of
the heavens," and with his own lands, or with angels as his agents,
keeping sun, moon, and planets in motion for the benefit of the
earth, opening and closing the "windows of heaven," letting down
upon the earth the "waters above the firmament," "setting his bow
in the cloud," hanging out "signs and wonders," hurling comets,
"casting forth lightnings" to scare the wicked, and "shaking the
earth" in his wrath: all this had disappeared.
These five men had given a new divine revelation to the world; and
through the last, Newton, had come a vast new conception, destined
to be fatal to the old theory of creation, for he had shown
throughout the universe, in place of almighty caprice,
all-pervading law. The bitter opposition of theology to the first
four of these men is well known; but the fact is not so widely
known that Newton, in spite of his deeply religious spirit, was
also strongly opposed. It was vigorously urged against him that by
his statement of the law of gravitation he "took from God that
direct action on his works so constantly ascribed to him in
Scripture and transferred it to material mechanism," and that he
"substituted gravitation for Providence." But, more than this,
these men gave a new basis for the theory of evolution as
distinguished from the theory of creation.
Especially worthy of note is it that the great work of Descartes,
erroneous as many of its deductions were, and, in view of the lack
of physical knowledge in his time, must be, had done much to weaken
the old conception. His theory of a universe brought out of
all-pervading matter, wrought into orderly arrangement by movements
in accordance with physical laws—though it was but a provisional
hypothesis—had done much to draw men's minds from the old
theological view of creation; it was an example of intellectual
honesty arriving at errors, but thereby aiding the advent of
truths. Crippled though Descartes was by his almost morbid fear of
the Church, this part of his work was no small factor in bringing
in that attitude of mind which led to a reception of the thoughts
of more unfettered thinkers.
Thirty years later came, in England, an effort of a different sort,
but with a similar result. In 1678 Ralph Cudworth published his
Intellectual System of the Universe. To this day he remains, in
breadth of scholarship, in strength of thought, in tolerance, and
in honesty, one of the greatest glories of the English Church, and
his work was worthy of him. He purposed to build a fortress which
should protect Christianity against all dangerous theories of the
universe, ancient or modern. The foundations of the structure were
laid with old thoughts thrown often into new and striking forms;
but, as the superstructure arose more and more into view, while
genius marked every part of it, features appeared which gave the
rigidly orthodox serious misgivings. From the old theories of
direct personal action on the universe by the Almighty he broke
utterly. He dwelt on the action of law, rejected the continuous
exercise of miraculous intervention, pointed out the fact that in
the natural world there are "errors" and "bungles," and argued
vigorously in favour of the origin and maintenance of the universe
as a slow and gradual development of Nature in obedience to an
inward principle. The Balaks of seventeenth-century orthodoxy might
well condemn this honest Balaam.
Toward the end of the next century a still more profound genius,
Immanuel Kant, presented the nebular theory, giving it, in the
light of Newton's great utterances, a consistency which it never
before had; and about the same time Laplace gave it yet greater
strength by mathematical reasonings of wonderful power and extent,
thus implanting firmly in modern thought the idea that our own
solar system and others—suns, planets, satellites, and their
various movements, distances, and magnitudes—necessarily result
from the obedience of nebulous masses to natural laws.
Throughout the theological world there was an outcry at once
against "atheism," and war raged fiercely. Herschel and others
pointed out many nebulous patches apparently gaseous. They showed
by physical and mathematical demonstrations that the hypothesis
accounted for the great body of facts, and, despite clamour, were
gaining ground, when the improved telescopes resolved some of the
patches of nebulous matter into multitudes of stars. The opponents
of the nebular hypothesis were overjoyed; they now sang paans to
astronomy, because, as they said, it had proved the truth of
Scripture. They had jumped to the conclusion that all nebula must
be alike; that, if some are made up of systems of stars,
all must
be so made up; that none can be masses of attenuated gaseous
matter, because some are not.
Science halted for a time. The accepted doctrine became this: that
the only reason why all the nebula are not resolved into distinct
stars is that our telescopes are not sufficiently powerful. But in
time came the discovery of the spectroscope and spectrum analysis,
and thence Fraunhofer's discovery that the spectrum of an ignited
gaseous body is non-continuous, with interrupting lines; and
Draper's discovery that the spectrum of an ignited solid is
continuous, with no interrupting lines. And now the spectroscope
was turned upon the nebula, and many of them were found to be
gaseous. Here, then, was ground for the inference that in these
nebulous masses at different stages of condensation—some
apparently mere pitches of mist, some with luminous centres—we
have the process of development actually going on, and observations
like those of Lord Rosse and Arrest gave yet further confirmation
to this view. Then came the great contribution of the nineteenth
century to physics, aiding to explain important parts of the vast
process by the mechanical theory of heat.
Again the nebular hypothesis came forth stronger than ever, and
about 1850 the beautiful experiment of Plateau on the rotation of
a fluid globe came in apparently to illustrate if not to confirm
it. Even so determined a defender of orthodoxy as Mr. Gladstone at
last acknowledged some form of a nebular hypothesis as probably true.
Here, too, was exhibited that form of surrendering theological
views to science under the claim that science concurs with
theology, which we have seen in so many other fields; and, as
typical, an example may be given, which, however restricted in its
scope, throws light on the process by which such surrenders are
obtained. A few years since one of the most noted professors of
chemistry in the city of New York, under the auspices of one of its
most fashionable churches, gave a lecture which, as was claimed in
the public prints and in placards posted in the streets, was to
show that science supports the theory of creation given in the
sacred books ascribed to Moses. A large audience assembled, and a
brilliant series of elementary experiments with oxygen, hydrogen,
and carbonic acid was concluded by the Plateau demonstration. It
was beautifully made. As the coloured globule of oil, representing
the earth, was revolved in a transparent medium of equal density,
as it became flattened at the poles, as rings then broke forth from
it and revolved about it, and, finally, as some of these rings
broke into satellites, which for a moment continued to circle about
the central mass, the audience, as well they might, rose and burst
into rapturous applause.
Thereupon a well-to-do citizen arose and moved the thanks of the
audience to the eminent professor for "this perfect demonstration
of the exact and literal conformity of the statements given in Holy
Scripture with the latest results of science." The motion was
carried unanimously and with applause, and the audience dispersed,
feeling that a great service had been rendered to orthodoxy.
Sancta simplicitas!
What this incident exhibited on a small scale has been seen
elsewhere with more distinguished actors and on a broader stage.
Scores of theologians, chief among whom of late, in zeal if not in
knowledge, has been Mr. Gladstone, have endeavoured to "reconcile"
the two accounts in Genesis with each other and with the truths
regarding the origin of the universe gained by astronomy, geology,
geography, physics, and chemistry. The result has been recently
stated by an eminent theologian, the Hulsean Professor of Divinity
at the University of Cambridge. He declares, "No attempt at
reconciling genesis with the exacting requirements of modern
sciences has ever been known to succeed without entailing a degree
of special pleading or forced interpretation to which, in such a
question, we should be wise to have no recourse."
The revelations of another group of sciences, though sometimes
bitterly opposed and sometimes "reconciled" by theologians, have
finally set the whole question at rest. First, there have come the
biblical critics—earnest Christian scholars, working for the sake
of truth—and these have revealed beyond the shadow of a reasonable
doubt the existence of at least two distinct accounts of creation
in our book of Genesis, which can sometimes be forced to agree, but
which are generally absolutely at variance with each other. These
scholars have further shown the two accounts to be not the
cunningly devised fables of priestcraft, but evidently fragments of
earlier legends, myths, and theologies, accepted in good faith and
brought together for the noblest of purposes by those who put in
order the first of our sacred books.
Next have come the archaeologists and philologists, the devoted
students of ancient monuments and records; of these are such as
Rawlinson, George Smith, Sayce, Oppert, Jensen, Schrader,
Delitzsch, and a phalanx of similarly devoted scholars, who have
deciphered a multitude of ancient texts, especially the
inscriptions found in the great library of Assurbanipal at Nineveh,
and have discovered therein an account of the origin of the world
identical in its most important features with the later accounts in
our own book of Genesis.
These men have had the courage to point out these facts and to
connect them with the truth that these Chaldean and Babylonian
myths, legends, and theories were far earlier than those of the
Hebrews, which so strikingly resemble them, and which we have in
our sacred books; and they have also shown us how natural it was
that the Jewish accounts of the creation should have been obtained
at that remote period when the earliest Hebrews were among the
Chaldeans, and how the great Hebrew poetic accounts of creation
were drawn either from the sacred traditions of these earlier
peoples or from antecedent sources common to various ancient nations.
In a summary which for profound thought and fearless integrity does
honour not only to himself but to the great position which he
holds, the Rev. Dr. Driver, Professor of Hebrew and Canon of Christ
Church at Oxford, has recently stated the case fully and fairly.
Having pointed out the fact that the Hebrews were one people out of
many who thought upon the origin of the universe, he says that they
"framed theories to account for the beginnings of the earth and man";
that "they either did this for themselves or borrowed those of
their neighbours"; that "of the theories current in Assyria and
Phoenicia fragments have been preserved, and these exhibit points
of resemblance with the biblical narrative sufficient to warrant
the inference that both are derived from the same cycle of tradition."
After giving some extracts from the Chaldean creation tablets he
says: "In the light of these facts it is difficult to resist the
conclusion that the biblical narrative is drawn from the same
source as these other records. The biblical historians, it is
plain, derived their materials from the best human sources
available.... The materials which with other nations were combined
into the crudest physical theories or associated with a grotesque
polytheism were vivified and transformed by the inspired genius of
the Hebrew historians, and adapted to become the vehicle of
profound religious truth."
Not less honourable to the sister university and to himself is the
statement recently made by the Rev. Dr. Ryle, Hulsean Professor of
Divinity at Cambridge. He says that to suppose that a Christian
"must either renounce his confidence in the achievements of
scientific research or abandon his faith in Scripture is a
monstrous perversion of Christian freedom." He declares: "The old
position is no longer tenable; a new position has to be taken up
at once, prayerfully chosen, and hopefully held." He then goes on
to compare the Hebrew story of creation with the earlier stories
developed among kindred peoples, and especially with the
pre-existing Assyro-Babylonian cosmogony, and shows that they are
from the same source. He points out that any attempt to explain
particular features of the story into harmony with the modern
scientific ideas necessitates "a non-natural" interpretation; but
he says that, if we adopt a natural interpretation, "we shall
consider that the Hebrew description of the visible universe is
unscientific as judged by modern standards, and that it shares the
limitations of the imperfect knowledge of the age at which it was
committed to writing." Regarding the account in Genesis of man's
physical origin, he says that it "is expressed in the simple terms
of prehistoric legend, of unscientific pictorial description."
In these statements and in a multitude of others made by eminent
Christian investigators in other countries is indicated what the
victory is which has now been fully won over the older theology.
Thus, from the Assyrian researches as well as from other sources,
it has come to be acknowledged by the most eminent scholars at the
leading seats of Christian learning that the accounts of creation
with which for nearly two thousand years all scientific discoveries
have had to be "reconciled"—the accounts which blocked the way of
Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and Laplace—were simply
transcribed or evolved from a mass of myths and legends largely
derived by the Hebrews from their ancient relations with Chaldea,
rewrought in a monotheistic sense, imperfectly welded together, and then
thrown into poetic forms in the sacred books which we have inherited.
On one hand, then, we have the various groups of men devoted to the
physical sciences all converging toward the proofs that the
universe, as we at present know it, is the result of an
evolutionary process—that is, of the gradual working of physical
laws upon an early condition of matter; on the other hand, we have
other great groups of men devoted to historical, philological, and
archaeological science whose researches all converge toward the
conclusion that our sacred accounts of creation were the result of
an evolution from an early chaos of rude opinion.
The great body of theologians who have so long resisted the
conclusions of the men of science have claimed to be fighting
especially for "the truth of Scripture," and their final answer to
the simple conclusions of science regarding the evolution of the
material universe has been the cry, "The Bible is true." And they
are right—though in a sense nobler than they have dreamed.
Science, while conquering them, has found in our Scriptures a far
nobler truth than that literal historical exactness for which
theologians have so long and so vainly contended. More and more as
we consider the results of the long struggle in this field we are
brought to the conclusion that the inestimable value of the great
sacred books of the world is found in their revelation of the
steady striving of our race after higher conceptions, beliefs, and
aspirations, both in morals and religion. Unfolding and exhibiting
this long-continued effort, each of the great sacred books of the
world is precious, and all, in the highest sense, are true. Not one
of them, indeed, conforms to the measure of what mankind has now
reached in historical and scientific truth; to make a claim to such
conformity is folly, for it simply exposes those who make it and
the books for which it is made to loss of their just influence.
That to which the great sacred books of the world conform, and our
own most of all, is the evolution of the highest conceptions,
beliefs, and aspirations of our race from its childhood through the
great turning-points in its history. Herein lies the truth of all
bibles, and especially of our own. Of vast value they indeed often
are as a record of historical outward fact; recent researches in
the East are constantly increasing this value; but it is not for
this that we prize them most: they are eminently precious, not as
a record of outward fact, but as a mirror of the evolving heart,
mind, and soul of man. They are true because they have been
developed in accordance with the laws governing the evolution of
truth in human history, and because in poem, chronicle, code,
legend, myth, apologue, or parable they reflect this development of
what is best in the onward march of humanity. To say that they are
not true is as if one should say that a flower or a tree or a
planet is not true; to scoff at them is to scoff at the law of the
universe. In welding together into noble form, whether in the book
of Genesis, or in the Psalms, or in the book of Job, or elsewhere,
the great conceptions of men acting under earlier inspiration,
whether in Egypt, or Chaldea, or India, or Persia, the compilers of
our sacred books have given to humanity a possession ever becoming
more and more precious; and modern science, in substituting a new
heaven and a new earth for the old—the reign of law for the reign
of caprice, and the idea of evolution for that of creation—has
added and is steadily adding a new revelation divinely inspired.
In the light of these two evolutions, then—one of the visible
universe, the other of a sacred creation-legend—science and
theology, if the master minds in both are wise, may at last be
reconciled. A great step in this reconciliation was recently seen
at the main centre of theological thought among English-speaking
people, when, in the collection of essays entitled Lux Mundi,
emanating from the college established in these latter days as a
fortress of orthodoxy at Oxford, the legendary character of the
creation accounts in our sacred books was acknowledged, and when
the Archbishop of Canterbury asked, "May not the Holy Spirit at
times have made use of myth and legend?"