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 BS 651 .G62 1882 
 Godet, Fr ed eric Louis 
 
 1812-1900. 
 Studies of creation and lif, 
 
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STUDIES 
 
 OP 
 
 CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. F. GODET, D.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR IN THE COLLEGE, NEUCHATEL, SWITZERLAND. 
 
 American Etiiiian. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 CONGREGATIONAL PUBLISHING SOCIETY. 
 
 1882. 
 
Copyright, 1882, 
 By Congregational Publishing Society. 
 
 Boston Stereotype Foundry, 
 4 pearl street. 
 

 CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 Introduction . '5 
 
 The Six Days of Creation 7 
 
 I. Revelation 9 
 
 II. Science ^^ 
 
 III. The Two Compared 38 
 
 IV. Conclusion 6i 
 
 The History of Life 68 
 
 Angels 9^ 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 'THHE author of the following Essays was, in 1843 ^^^ 
 after, the preceptor of the Crown Prince of Prussia, 
 and was and still is highly honored by the royal family. 
 In his present professorship in the college at Neuchatel, 
 Switzerland, he has won a wide and high reputation as a 
 thorough and acute student of the Scriptures, an original 
 thinker, and a very suggestive and inspiring writer. He is 
 best known to American readers by his Biblical Studies. 
 These Essays first appeared, at different dates since 1864, 
 in the Revue Chretienne and Chretien Evangelique. Some 
 of them, revised by the author, were translated by Mrs. 
 E. Littelton and under the editorship of her husband, 
 the Hon. and Rev. W. H. Littelton, rector of Hagley, 
 England, were published in two separate volumes in London, 
 in 1868 and 1879. 
 
 No American reprint of Prof. Godet's Studies has, to 
 our knowledge, appeared. But their originality, rich sug- 
 gestiveness and tender Christian spirit deserve and ought 
 to give them a wide circulation. The present selection is 
 a tentative volume ; to be followed by other essays if a 
 demand shall require it. It includes topics especially 
 
 pertinent to the present themes of popular discussion ; and 
 
 5 
 
6 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 most attractively written for the reading of young people 
 who desire to know the conclusions of one of the keenest 
 and clearest thinkers. 
 
 In reply to a letter stating the wish of the Congregational 
 Sunday-School and Publishing Society to issue an American 
 edition of some of his Studies^ and inquiring particularly if 
 his theological and scientific investigations for the past ten 
 years since their publication had modified any of his con- 
 clusions, especially in his Study of the Creation^ Prof. Godet 
 writes, April 15, 1882 : "I cannot at this moment know 
 how to give the labor of a revision. And if I had the 
 time for it, the changes which I might suggest would be 
 without any importance," and he kindly adds: "Since it 
 is in a religious work that the Society is engaged, I sur- 
 render cheerfully all rights of authorship." *' We have the 
 assurance, therefore, that these Studies express the latest 
 religio-scientific theories. At a later date, July 13, Prof. 
 Godet has sent a note to be added to his essay upoti 
 the Creation, which will be found in its proper place. 
 
 These Studies are commended to the thoughtful study of 
 any who may be perplexed by plausible speculations upon 
 the origin of things as a reasonable solution of their 
 difficulties. 
 
 * '• Pour moi, je ne puis en ce moment savoir ce travail et le modifier. Et si 
 j'en avais le temps, les changements que j'y apporterais seraient sans impor- 
 tance. Puisque c' est dans un but religieux que travaille la societe, au nom de 
 laquelle vous m'ecrivez, j'abandorme sans peine touts droits d'auteur." — 
 Letter of April 15, 1882. 
 
STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. 
 
 AMONG all the records of Holy Scripture none has 
 been more variously estimated than that of the Cre- 
 ation, with which the Book of. Genesis opens. Cuvier, the 
 founder of the science of palaeontology, expresses himself 
 as follows : " Brought up in all the wisdom of the Egyp- 
 tians, but in advance of his age, Moses has left us a cos- 
 mogony, of which the accuracy verifies itself every day in 
 a marvellous manner. Recent geological researches are in 
 perfect agreement with the Book of Genesis as to the order 
 in which organized beings were successively created."* 
 On the other hand, one hears men of science declaring it 
 henceforth impossible to establish any agreement betAveen 
 the facts of geology and the picture given us in the Bible. 
 According to them, we must consider this narrative either 
 as the product of an ancient tradition, or as the result of 
 philosophical speculation ; in either case, as a composition 
 of purely human origin. And if we descend to more pop- 
 ular literature, we find such sentiments as these : " Accept 
 the Bible as the rule of belief ! Must we then believe with 
 Genesis, that God, after having created the light on the 
 first day rested for three nights before He produced the 
 
 * Discours sur les r^oltitions du globe. 
 
8 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 Stars which transmit it to us ? that the herbs of the field 
 and the trees of the forest, created on the third day, can 
 have grown without the heat of the sun, moon and stars, 
 which were not created till the fourth day?" * Had the 
 narrative of Genesis its origin simply in human tradition ? 
 But men hand down to one another, by means of traditional 
 records, the facts of which they have been witnesses. Now, 
 if it is true that man was present to the mind of God during 
 this work of creation, as the end and object of all this great 
 labor, it is equally true that no human eye contemplated 
 this unique spectacle, and that no human tongue can 
 have related its phases; "Where wast thou," says the 
 Eternal One to Job, " when I laid the foundations of the 
 earth ? and when the sons of God shouted for joy .? " f^ 
 Was this picture, then, the offspring of philosophy ? But 
 the idea of a creation, animal or vegetable, anterior to man, 
 and developed in regular course through its diverse phases, 
 had never entered the mind of any ancient philosopher. 
 The very notion of creation^ properly so called, is foreign 
 to all ancient thought. 
 
 These considerations bring us back to the idea which has 
 pressed itself upon many scientific minds of the first rank : 
 — it is, that as we contemplate this picture we may be really 
 in the presence of a Divine revelation. What then ? has 
 God really spoken to men ? Did He bring it about that 
 one of their race should be a spectator of some of those 
 scenes which preceded the existence of man here below ? 
 If so, in what form can such a communication have been 
 made to him ? And in what relation do its contents stand 
 to the actual results of science ? These are the impor- 
 tant but difficult questions which we now propose to examine. 
 
 * Le Progres, organe des liberaux du Jura, 15 Mars, 1872. 
 t Job xxxviii. 4, 7. 
 
 'r 
 
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. 9 
 
 I. 
 
 REVELATION. 
 
 Does the Jewish monotheism rest upon a revelation ? Is 
 the history of Israel, as a whole, a Divine work, designed 
 as a preparation for that moral creation which Jesus Christ 
 came to effect, and in foresight of which the first creation 
 had already been completed ? And may we suppose the 
 special revelations accorded to the patriarchs and to the 
 Jewish prophets to have been the commentary which ac- 
 companied this educational work, since all education should 
 rest upon instruction ? It is in this light that the Bible rep- 
 resents to us the Divine revelations of which it gives an 
 account. ^^ Shall I hide from Abraham," God says to 
 Himself, " shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I 
 do?"* When it is God's purpose to accomplish here 
 below a consecutive work, must He not of necessity, unless 
 He is to work an infinite series of miracles, associate with 
 Himself a certain number of free agents, who shall co- 
 operate with Him ? For that end He must first draw them 
 to Himself; then, in order that they may work intelligently 
 and freely. He must initiate them into His plan, so far at 
 least as they are to participate in its fulfilment ; which 
 presupposes one or more acts of revelation. 
 
 One of the prophets expressed in the following words 
 this fact, of which he felt himself the living proof : " Can 
 two walk together except they be agreed ? . . . surely the 
 Lord God will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto 
 His servants the prophets." t 
 
 Some have tried to explain the Jewish monotheism, and 
 all the train of convictions and hopes which accompany it, 
 
 * Gen. xviii. 17. f Amos iii. 3, 7. 
 
10 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 by an instinctive tendency in the Semitic family,* or by the 
 natural development of the human conscience, which should 
 have taken place more rapidly in that race than in any 
 other. But the illustrious writer who, in our time, has 
 scrutinized more deeply than all others the secrets of the 
 intellect and the conscience of man, by the help of the 
 indications offered by language, M. Max Miiller, has, in a 
 masterly manner, refuted this naturalistic theory. 
 
 " Is it possible to hold," he says, " that a monotheistic 
 instinct can have been bestowed upon all those nations who 
 worshipped Elohim, Jehovah Sabaoth, Moloch, Nisroch, 
 Rimmon, Nebo, Dagon, Ashtaroth, Baal, Baal-peor, Beel- 
 zebub, Chemosh, Milcom, Adrammelech, Anamelech, Nib- 
 haz and Tartak, Ashima, Nergal, Succothbenoth, the sun, 
 the moon, the planets, and all the stars of the firmament ? " f 
 All these names of divinities belong in fact to the pantheon 
 of the Se77iitic tribes. The same author again reminds us 
 that it is not allowable to argue from the example of an 
 Abraham, a Moses, an Elias, a Jeremiah, that such was the 
 general tendency of the Jewish people, since it is a fact 
 " that this nation provoked many a time the anger of the 
 Lord, by offering incense to other gods." X Histor}- attests 
 that Israel was inclined to the same polytheism, whether of 
 a refined or gross kind, into which all the other nations 
 fell ; and that it needed a continuous effort on God's part, 
 carried on through the instrumentality of a small number 
 of chosen men, and by a very severe discipline effecting 
 itself often by the most rigorous dispensations, to compel 
 this race to resist the downward current of idolatry, in which 
 it was by nature being carried away like all others. 
 
 * M. Renan. 
 
 t Essais stir Vhistoire des religions, par Max Miiller, traduit par Georges 
 Harris, 1872, p. 469. 
 X Muller, p. 472, 473. 
 
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. I I 
 
 Doubtless we must admit a primordial and natural rev- 
 elation to the human consciousness of the existence and of 
 the essence of the Godhead. But, as M. Miiller observes, 
 " this first intuition of God is neither monotheistic nor 
 polytheistic. ... It finds expression in this article of faith : 
 God is God, or there is a God ; which does not as yet imply 
 that there is ofie only God." * This last formula, which 
 contains in itself an express denial of polytheism, goes 
 beyond the contents of natural revelation. How are we to 
 explain the fact that the people of Israel alone were in pos- 
 session of this knowledge, and made it the basis of their 
 national existence ? Was this people gifted with high phil- 
 osophic genius ? By no means. M. Max Miiller here 
 reminds M. Renan of his own statements, in which he 
 denies to the Semitic nations " even that 7?iini?7mm of reli- 
 gious reflection which is necessary for the perception of 
 the Divine unitv." * 
 
 Inasmuch as it is historically certain that all nations have 
 raised themselves, by virtue of the religious organ with which 
 the human solil is endowed, to faith in Deity in general, so 
 is it equally true that Israel alone has reached to the con- 
 ception of the U7iity of that Deity w^hich is so universally 
 affirmed. So M. Miiller concludes by saying plainly : " per- 
 haps we shall be asked how it came to pass that Abraham 
 had not only that primordial intuition of Divinity, which is 
 common to the whole race, but had attained to the knowl- 
 edge of the one only God, — denying the existence of all 
 other gods ; we are ready to reply that it was owing to a spe- 
 cial Divine revelation. % We are not here making use of the 
 conventional language of theolog}^ ; we wish to give the 
 term we employ its full and complete meaning. The Father 
 of all truth chooses His prophets, and speaks to them in a 
 
 * Miiller, pp. 479, 481. t Ibid., p. 475. 
 
 X Ibid., p. 505 (the italics are our own). 
 
12 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 voice louder than thunder. . . . We cannot admit that the 
 expression Divine insti?ict is the fittest to use in describing 
 a grace or a gift granted only to a small number of man- 
 kind, nor that it is more scientific, that is, more intelligible, 
 than that of special revelation T * See in the prairie that 
 troop of wild horses disporting themselves at libert)'. Not 
 one of them has ever felt the painful pressure of the bit, 
 nor the overmastering hand of a strong and skilful rider. 
 Suddenly there appears in the midst of them another horse, 
 with disciplined paces, well-knit limbs, and measured, yet 
 rapid gallop. On his back is a rider, whose hand is armed 
 with the terrible lasso. He pursues these young, untamed 
 horses, throws the lasso, entangles them in the fatal noose, 
 and carries them away captive to his stud, where they are 
 in their turn put under training. Thus it was that Jehovah, 
 even while leaving the nations to walk after their own ways^ 
 prepared, and, as it were, trained for Himself in Israel a 
 people, by means of whom it was His purpose, when the 
 fulness of time should come, to draw all others to Himself. 
 Had He not said beforehand to Abraham, when he chose 
 him to be his ser\'ant, and his posterity to be his people : 
 " i7i thee shall all faiJiilies of the earth be blessed"^. " 
 
 Among all those whom God called to work with Him in 
 this special training of the Jewish nation Moses holds with- 
 out doubt the first place. It was through him that the 
 patriarchal revelation became a national religion and re- 
 ceived its historic character. It was through him that it 
 disengaged itself completely from those elements of polythe- 
 ism which still clung to it among the children and descend- 
 ants of Abraham himself. It was through him that the name, 
 already known but not generally used, Jehovah, was substi- 
 tuted for the ancient name El Shaddai, the Almighty, by which 
 they had before addressed the God who revealed Himself 
 
 * Miiller, pp. 505, 506. 
 
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. 1 3 
 
 to the Father of the race, — the name by which God had 
 most frequently designated Himself in addressing the patri- 
 archs. This substitution was nothing less than the starting- 
 point of a great religious revolution. The name El Shaddai, 
 the Almighty, left room for the existence of other powers 
 by the side of God, subject, indeed, to His supremacy, but 
 still able in some sort to compete with Him. This name 
 signifies nearly the same as that which a certain class of 
 religious persons still like to use ; the Bei?tg of beings, the 
 Supreme Bei?ig. 'But Jehovah signifies He who is and shall 
 be. Jehovah, therefore, does not only mean the most powerful 
 of beings, but the one only self-existent Being ; the absolute 
 Being, absorbing in Himself the idea of existence ; the Being 
 existing by his own Power ; the Being as subject, noun and 
 attribute in one. By the side of El Shaddai there is room 
 for others inferior to Him ^outside of Jehovah there is but 
 nonentity. If anything does exist outside of Him, it is only 
 through His power, and in consequence of His creative will. 
 The worship of El Shaddai did not then expressly include 
 polytheism. But the adoration of Jehovah is, in its prin- 
 ciple, what it has become more and more in fact, the abso- 
 lute divorce of the conscience from all forms of paganism, 
 actual or conceivable. We have in Exod. iii. and vi. the 
 simple and solemn narrative of the vision granted to Moses, 
 in which God for the first time revealed himself in the char- 
 acter of Jehovah. At that moment was laid the founda- 
 tion of the Jewish monotheism,* and of the definitive religion 
 of mankind. But it was not only against polytheism but 
 against its hidden principle, materialism, theoretical and 
 practical, that the worship of Jehovah was to be thenceforth 
 
 * Exod. vi. 2, 3 : " And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am 
 the Lord. And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the 
 name of God Abnighty (El Shaddai), but by My name Jehovah was I not 
 known to them." 
 
14 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 an insuperable barrier. In presence of the self-existent 
 Being, the independent I am, absolute, perfectly conscious 
 of and master of Himself* — of Him who is that which 
 He wills to be, and because He so wills, just as truly as 
 He wills to be that which He is, and because He is such, 
 — how could Matter claim to possess any self-determining 
 existence whatever ? This obscure principle, akin to fate 
 un-selfconscious, — this brute fact without will and impen- 
 etrable by intelligence, this amorphous essence which all 
 nations, and indeed all the wise men of old, regarded as 
 co-existing eternally with God and independent of Him, if 
 not in form, at least in substance, — this uncreated matter 
 is at once and forever set aside by the revelation of God as 
 Jehovah, / a77i. t Not only every individual being, but even 
 the substance out of which ever)' being is formed, has no 
 existence but that which it pleases the free will of God to 
 give it. And here we have the idea which was to serve as 
 the foundation for the establishment of the kingdom of God 
 upon earth. With this sublime conception, the reign of 
 real spiritualism, of holiness, was founded in the heart of 
 humanit^^ 
 
 Does matter exist eternally and by itself ? That, in the 
 universe, which resists all the efforts of God to subdue it 
 to Himself, how should it not defy all our endeavors to 
 gain the mastery over it in ourselves ? It hinders forever 
 the designs of the Creator, whose will it is to realize on 
 this earth the perfect Good, — the ideal of the True, the 
 Just, the Beautiful, — and who fails to reach his object 
 because He meets in matter an insuperable limit to his 
 beneficent action ; and shall we, poor feeble human beings, 
 
 * Exod. iii. 14: '■'■ I am that I ami''' This is the grammatical paraphrase of 
 the name Jehovah ; this name is in the future. [See French Bible : "yV serai 
 celui que je serai." — Tr.] 
 
 t " / am " (as a proper name) " has sent me unto you." 
 
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. 1 5 
 
 claim the power to realize the ideal of morality, notwith- 
 standing the resistance of flesh and blood ? God, accord- 
 ing to this, has had to limit Himself to the arrattging of 
 matter as well as possibility allowed, and the world, not- 
 withstanding the Divine breath which He infused into it, 
 is for him but 2, pis-aller ; and can He require of me that, 
 in my small sphere, I should do better than He ? No, if 
 the power of matter is insuperable in the great All, it must 
 be so also in my individual life. Let us, then, break our- 
 selves of the folly of wishing to subjugate our senses ! 
 Let us obey without scruple the blind power before which 
 even the Divine Majesty itself must bow ! And since it 
 must be so, let brute nature reign in the lower regions of 
 human life ! 
 
 It needs no great effort of intelligence to understand the 
 logic which, from the principle of the eternity of matter, 
 deduces practical materialism, the excesses of sensuality, and 
 degradations of egoism. This is the fatal extreme to which 
 man is driven, when not enlightened by the revelation of 
 Jehovah. The picture w^hich S. Paul has drawn of the life 
 of the nations of antiquity, * is a frightful testimony to the 
 irresistible force of this logical and moral chain of conse- 
 quences. 
 
 Opposite to this incline, down which all the pagan 
 nations, ancient and modem, are step by step descending, 
 we see another, up which one nation, one alone, is glo- 
 riously ascending; which, in the Person of its last and 
 supreme representative, succeeds at last in realizing the 
 purest spirituality, absolute holiness. By the fruit we can 
 recognize the tree, or, if you will, the root. This name 
 Jehovah, inscribed by Moses in letters of fire on the Jewish 
 consciousness — it is this which has worked this prodigy. 
 It dissipated for Israel the seductive charm of a sensual 
 
 * Rom. i. 
 
1 6 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 life, and secured the preponderance of spirit over matter. 
 If God alone exists, and matter only through Him, it must 
 be entirely subject to Him. Man is no more a slave to it 
 than God Himself. While spelling out the name Jehovah 
 man has recovered the knowledge of his own greatness. 
 Made in the image of this absolute Being, of this pure 
 Spirit, he can and he must become like Him ; and hence- 
 forth the royal road is opened which leads from Moses up 
 to Jesus Christ. Holiness is no longer an unattainable 
 ideal ; the Kingdom of God, instead of being an empty 
 sound, becomes the one true word of history. God's plan 
 is revealed together with His Name Jehovah. The end 
 and aim of human life, both individual and collective, can 
 only be the dominion of the Holy Spirit over those spirits 
 who have freely accepted His dominion. A Jew of our 
 own time has expressed the same thought in these words : 
 " The eternity of matter is up to this day the foundation of 
 the pagan idea. This principle is not only a metaphysical 
 falsehood ; it is the denial of liberty to God and man, a 
 denial which makes an end of all morality. If any matter 
 whatever was necessary to the Creator, He could not have 
 formed a world absolutely good, but only the best world 
 possible ; and man can be just as little master over his own 
 body, as God over matter .... But this night of darkness 
 and of gloom which overshadows the conception of God, of 
 the world, and of man, is dispersed at the first word of 
 Divine revelation : ' i?i the beginning God created.'' Every- 
 thing, substance and form, came into being -at the fiat of 
 the creative will, which is free and omnipotent. And as 
 the Creator governs the world freely. He can, by communi- 
 cating to man a spark of His own life, grant to him the 
 dominion over his own bodv and its forces. The created 
 world is no longer only the best that was possible, but the 
 only good .... Its very capacity for deterioration belongs 
 
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. ij 
 
 to its perfection, for without it there would have been no 
 moral liberty .... And the same God who has assigned 
 the world its purpose will know how to make it reach its 
 end, by means of the same free will by which He created 
 it." * 
 
 We see, then, how inevitably the preparation of the sal- 
 vation of the world by Israel required as its starting-point 
 the revelation of this fundamental verity, " I am that I am," 
 to which the natural intelligence of mankind could not of 
 itself attain. Accordingly God, after having revealed to 
 Moses this sublime idea, inscribed it on Mount Sinai at the 
 head of the national law : " I, Jehovah, am thy God. " f 
 The fulfilment of the ancient promises made to Abraham 
 by El Shaddai, the present work entrusted to the ministry 
 of Moses, the future salvation of mankind to be effected by 
 Christ, all rested definitively upon this doctrine, as the 
 entire building, from the lowest to the highest storey, rests 
 upon the foundation laid once for all. 
 
 We have affirmed the reality of the Mosaic revelation, 
 and we have seen the necessity there was for it. It remains 
 for us to learn in what for7n it was to be clothed in order 
 to attain its end ; which was to make intelligible and living 
 to the Israelite consciousness this idea of the absolute exist- 
 ence of God, mysteriously set forth under the Name Jehovah. 
 Was God to make of this dogma of the Divine self-existence 
 and the creation of matter, an answer in a catechism which 
 the Israelitish youth would have to learn from generation 
 to generation ? 
 
 But we know too well how feeble is the barrier which 
 such a method of teaching can offer to the torrents of error 
 and sin. Especially with the mass of mankind, if we wish 
 to act upon their will, or even upon their mind, it is not to 
 
 * Der Pentateuch iibersetzt und erklart, von Raphael Hirsch. 
 t ExoA XX. 2. 
 
1 8 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 the intelligence only that we must address ourselves, but 
 also to the imagination and the heart. We must not confine 
 ourselves to teaching truth, we must also picture it. Or 
 instead of a dogmatic formula, was God to have recourse 
 to scientific demonstration, — to give to Moses, and through 
 Moses to Israel, a lesson on the origin of the universe, to 
 construct a complete and consecutive system of astronomy 
 and geology, of physics and chemistry, of botany and 
 zoology ? Such a method would have had the double dis- 
 advantage of at the same time making science useless and 
 faith impossible. What would be the use of study, when 
 the revelation of all things had been made once for all by 
 God Himself ? And suppose Moses had descended from 
 Mount Sinai, not only with the tables of the Ten Command- 
 ments, but with a thoroughly exact and complete knowledge 
 of the causes, and of the laws, which governed the formation 
 of the universe, — as, for instance, the Copernican system 
 in detail, — who would have believed so incredible a revela- 
 tion ? The power of sensible phenomena, the authority of pre- 
 vailing prejudices, for a moment, perhaps, overcome, would 
 soon have regained the mastery, and this inopportune 
 revelation would have gone down to the grave with him 
 who announced it. Faith should be a moral act, and not 
 merely the submission of the intellect. 
 
 There remained one method, that of which God made 
 use when He revealed the future to the prophets. What 
 did He do, for instance, in order to give Daniel an idea of 
 the four phases through which the history of mankind was 
 to pass before the coming of the Messiah ? Did He give 
 him an historical lecture upon the Assyrians, the Babylon- 
 ians, the Medes and Persians, the Greeks and Romans? 
 No, He caused to pass before him five pictures, or images, 
 of which the remembrance remained indelible : a winged 
 lion, symbol of the Babylonish power ; a bear, with slow 
 
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. JQ 
 
 and heavy tread, emblem of the Persian majesty ; a leopard 
 with four heads, traversing the earth as on the wing, the 
 visible representation of the Alexandrian monarchy, so 
 rapidly founded, so speedily divided into four distinct 
 states ; then, lastly, a monster with nothing corresponding 
 to him in the terrestrial creation, trampling and devouring 
 ever}'thing that comes in its way, image of the Roman 
 empire, that state which has borne no resemblance to any- 
 thing before known, and which absorbed everything into 
 itself ; and finally, as the last of these apparitions, the form 
 of a Son of Man coming upon the clouds, emblem of the 
 only really human power, of the love which comes down 
 from heaven to found here below the kingdom of liberty 
 and of truth. This is the manner in which God teaches 
 history, when He thinks good to make it known beforehand 
 to His servants the prophets. He does not discuss, He 
 does not catechise. He pictures. 
 
 This method has the double advantage of making its 
 appeal to man in his whole being, consequently not per- 
 verting the nature of faith, and of not rendering science 
 superfluous by anticipating its future labors. All the 
 researches of historians, all the discoveries of the investi- 
 gators of ruins and of buried palaces, instead of being 
 made useless by such revelation, only serve to make more 
 exact, and to enrich the pictures by means of which it was 
 accomplished. 
 
 Why should not God, in making known past events which 
 no eye had seen, have adopted the same method .'' Why 
 should He not have brought before the eyes of Moses a 
 series of pictures summarizing that work, into the principles 
 of which He wished to initiate him ? By causing to pass 
 before him the image of those different classes of beings, 
 deified by paganism, and which came each in succession 
 out of nothing at the call of God, did He not give to His 
 
20 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 people a better commentary on the Name Jehovah, in the 
 sense which we have given to it, than He could have done 
 by any other means ? When we wish to give a nation an 
 idea of some great victory which her sons have gained, we 
 are not contented with a mere bulletin, which sums it up in 
 a few lines, nor do we have recourse to a learned account 
 of the strategic reasons for it ; but we employ the most 
 eminent artist we can find, and ask him to paint two or 
 three of the principal scenes, which may serv^e as samples 
 of thousands of others. 
 
 Such, as it appears to us, was the nature of those repre- 
 sentations of which the record of the Creation is composed. 
 We are told * that during the forty days and forty nights 
 which Moses passed upon the mount, God showed him the 
 model of the tabernacle which he would soon have to con- 
 struct. Perhaps at the same time it was granted to him 
 to contemplate the construction of that grand edifice — the 
 Universe, of which the tabernacle was the type.f 
 
 The pictures which God caused to pass before him, and 
 of which he has preserved to us in the Genesis record such 
 admirable photographs, could not contradict the researches 
 of science. Revelation and Science are two rays which 
 proceed from different sources, the one from heaven, the 
 other from earth, but which in combination produce perfect 
 light. The one pictures to us the idea in the mind of the 
 great Worker, the other brings to our sight the concrete 
 image of the work. Just in the same way that all historical 
 discoveries only serve to enrich and complete the prophetic 
 pictures of Daniel, so the discoveries of geology find in the 
 retrospective pictures of Moses a frame ready fitted to 
 
 * Heb. viii. 5. 
 
 t The outer court, the holy place, and the holy of holies, correspond to the 
 earth, the heavens, and that supreme abode where God more immediately mani- 
 fests His Presence. 
 
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. 2 1 
 
 receive them, and give them their right place. The Bible 
 does not relieve science of the necessity of bringing to light 
 the immense wealth of the facts, the relations of cause and 
 effect, the means employed and the ends aimed at which 
 make up their unity, and of discovering the laws which 
 govern them. Science, on the other hand, does not enable 
 us to dispense with — on the contrary, it demands as 
 necessary, — that Word from on high which shall convey 
 to us the real meaning of this magnificent whole. 
 
 It is most important to seize the exact point of converg- 
 ence of these two rays, so that the image may be formed 
 clear and complete for the eye of human intelligence. This 
 ideal can never be completely realized until geology on the 
 one hand, and exegesis on the other, shall have finished 
 their work. But it is allowable to ascertain the amount 
 of reconciliation already reached, and to tr}' to make one 
 step further on the path which leads to this end. 
 
 II. 
 SCIENCE. 
 
 We must confine ourselves to summing up briefly the 
 results which seem most probable, or which are most com- 
 monly received, of modern investigations relating to the 
 formation of the globe and the appearance of organized 
 beings. Science brings to light, as it seems to us, ten gen- 
 eral phases of this development. We will first briefly in- 
 dicate these, and then endeavor to give some explanations 
 on these points, while holding ourselves free to question 
 the truth of some of them. 
 
 I. These principal phases appear to have been the fol- 
 lowins: : — 
 
22 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 1. The primitive gaseous state, and the formation of the 
 solar system. 
 
 2. The condensation of the gaseous matter, and the con- 
 stitution of the globe. 
 
 3. The disengagement of the primeval light. 
 
 4. The formation of the continents, and their separation 
 from the waters. 
 
 5. The first great development of vegetable life on the 
 continents. 
 
 6. The sun becoming visible to our earth. 
 
 7. The first great breaking forth of animal life. 
 
 8. The second great manifestation of that life. 
 
 9. The apparition of man. 
 
 10. The cessation of the creative work. 
 
 We will develop briefly each of these points. 
 
 Science commonly accepts the theory of _La Place, ac- 
 cording to which our solar system — and one may even say, 
 the universe — originated in a gaseous matter of extreme 
 rarity and tenuity. This substance must have been anal- 
 ogous to that of the nebulae which the telescope even to this 
 day discovers in the profound depths of the firmament, and 
 which are probably only new systems in process of forma- 
 tion. By means of the rotator}^ movement with which this 
 matter was endowed, or which had been impressed upon it, 
 rings were successively detached from the equatorial sur- 
 face of the primitive mass. By breaking up, and then fold- 
 ing back upon themselves, these rings would become so 
 many distinct systems, like our own solar system. Within 
 these again would have been produced, on a smaller scale, 
 the same phenomenon. So that our planets would be only 
 rings successively disengaged from the central mass, and 
 become so many distinct globes, arranged round the sun 
 according to the dates at which they were severally de- 
 tached. The satellites of the planets would themselves 
 
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. 23 
 
 have been detached from them by the same process. And 
 Saturn's ring would, according to this, still remain as a 
 silent witness to this process in the formation of the worlds. 
 
 This would explain, at the same time, the distinctness of 
 our solar system from the universe as a whole, and its 
 internal organization. 
 
 This gaseous matter was in an incandescent state, as is 
 shown by all the facts which prove that our earth must have 
 been formed under the action of a slow and gradual cool- 
 ing. Whence arose this cooling .'* From two causes ; on 
 the one hand, the separation of the earth from the central 
 mass — the sun ; on the other, the radiation of part of its 
 own heat into the surrounding spaces. 
 
 No condensation of matter could have taken place at so 
 high a temperature. The size of the gaseous globe must 
 consequently have been infinitely greater than that of the 
 present earth. 
 
 This theory of La Place on the formation of the earth, 
 presents, on reflection, some difficulties, and some omis- 
 sions. We will now ask the attention of the reader to these 
 two points. 
 
 I. Whence arose this rotatory movement found in mat- 
 ter ? Was it inherent in its essence ? Why, in this case, were 
 not its effects displayed from all eternity .? How does it 
 come to pass that we are not at this day witnessing the suc- 
 cession of phenomena which have resulted, and which still 
 result, from it ? If the cause was eternal, it would seem 
 that the effect produced must be eternal also. The theory 
 of the self-movement of matter leads logically to the system 
 of absolute immutability. The end and the middle must 
 be as ancient as the beginning. Or, shall we say this move- 
 ment was impressed from without upon matter ? Then we 
 should have to point out the agent to which so decisive an 
 intervention is due, and to indicate the Hand which set the 
 
24 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 universe in motion, or — to use a familiar expression — 
 gave it 2l fillip. 
 
 2. As in each particular system, after the successive dis- 
 engagements of the rings which formed the planets, there 
 remained a central mass, which became the sun of that 
 system, so it would seem, it must have been with the uni- 
 verse. We should have to find in the celestial spaces a 
 great central sun, to which all the other suns would stand 
 in the relation of planets. Science has not yet answered to 
 this demand. The hypotheses hitherto proposed have not 
 been confirmed. The simultaneous movement of the stars 
 seems to be due less to the attraction of one central 7naterial 
 point than to the influence of the reciprocal attraction of 
 these bodies, one upon the other. 
 
 May we not suppose that, like the organic cell which ex- 
 plains ever}thing but which nothing can explain, and which 
 possesses in itself all the elements of its life, so the nebula, or 
 aggregation of cosmical matter, emanates immediately from 
 the creative force, with its rotator}^ movement and its heat, 
 containing in its gaseous mass all the materials of its future 
 organization ? They are there — these simple elements, 
 these gases and metals, just as the vital forces exist latent 
 in the cell. But they are not yet there as stick. They 
 are the ultimate atoms. Condensation alone, resulting 
 from the process of cooling, will make them emerge from 
 this primitive confusion. 
 
 II. Now we are at home. Our earth, detached from the 
 sun and distinct from the other planets, forms a globe by 
 itself, which organizes itself henceforth according to its own 
 laws. The cooling process, of which we have pointed out 
 the causes, begins, and with it the work of condensation. 
 One part of the materials of which the primitive mass is 
 composed passes from the gaseous into the liquid state, 
 but boiling. Then, the cooling process still continuing, a 
 
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. 25 
 
 solid crust forms itself on the surface of the liquid, which 
 may be compared to the thin skin which appears on the 
 surface of boiling milk when exposed to the contact of cold 
 air. Here we have the beginning of that ground on which 
 W'e live, and to which we give the name terra-firma. 
 
 Below this solid surface, the elements, still in a state of 
 fusion, were stratifying themselves in the order of their dens- 
 ity, the heaviest in the centre, the less dense in superpo- 
 sition above each other up to the surface. 
 
 An atmosphere of gaseous matter surrounded the globe 
 thus constituted. But it was entirely different from our 
 present atmosphere. For it contained, in a state of vapor, 
 a number of elements now condensed ; first, the metals 
 which were to form the stratum nearest to the solid enve- 
 lope : then bodies more easily vaporizable, such as silica, 
 lime, sulphur ; finally, those substances which are still more 
 easily volatilized, such as the enormous mass of waters which, 
 together with the gases that enter into their composition, 
 form our seas. 
 
 The floor of the earth at this time had not become quite 
 solid. Very closely submitted to the action of the internal 
 furnace and of the gases which escaped therefrom, it must 
 have been often agitated, lifted up, rent asunder, engulfed 
 by that fiery sea, from the action of whose convulsions it is 
 even now, in spite of its greater thickness, by no means 
 altogether freed. Yet by the continual process of cooling, 
 the solidification of matter was going on both within and 
 without the envelope. Outside, the vapors, by condensing, 
 formed a sea saturated with all kinds of materials, which 
 covered this fragile floor ; and on the inside, the crust gath- 
 ered bulk by the condensation of those substances in a state 
 of fusion which were the nearest to it. After each rending 
 of the crust, it compacted itself together again with greater 
 solidity, as the ranks of an army close up after a discharge 
 of artillery. 
 
26 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 What was the earth Hke at this period of its formation ? 
 It must have been an immense globe, of which the centre 
 was occupied by a fiery furnace surrounded by three en- 
 velopes ; the first solid, — a thin crust ; the second liquid, — 
 a sea of boiling water ; the third gaseous, — an ocean of 
 vapors. The earth would, at this time, have presented to 
 the spectator the appearance of one of those powerful 
 locomotives which traverse space, carr}dng within them a 
 furnace, and provided with a reservoir for water, and iron 
 walls, enveloped in an atmosphere charged with vapors. 
 
 3. All this violent working could not be carried on with- 
 out evoking a great disengagement of electricity, and, con- 
 sequently, of light. As a scientific man of the first rank 
 lately wrote to us, — one whose labors have placed him at 
 the very head of this department of science : " There could 
 not fail to be a light produced by the powerful and 
 numerous chemical processes which must have been at that 
 time in operation on the surface of the earth ; processes 
 which engender electricit}', and Call forth luminous vibra- 
 tions In the ether." 
 
 The aurora borealis is, perhaps, in our day, the phe- 
 nomenon best fitted to give us an idea of this electric light, 
 independent of the action of the sun. 
 
 The admirable experiments by which M. de la Rive has 
 succeeded in producing, on a small scale, in his laboratory, 
 all the phenomena of the aurora borealis are well known. 
 It seems to be demonstrated by these experiments, that 
 these magnificent appearances are only the result of the 
 neutralization, in the polar regions, of the two opposing 
 currents of electricity. The principal source of all this 
 mass of electricity is the contact which takes place, at the 
 bottom of the ocean, between the water of the sea and the 
 internal fire of the globe, and which occurs especially near 
 the equator. Two currents are formed and directed 
 
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. 2/ 
 
 toward% the poles, one travelling underground, the other 
 by the vapors which rise from the sea, and by way of the 
 atmosphere. The aurora borealis is the method of their 
 neutralization. 
 
 If, in the present state of the world, things of this kind 
 take place, let us imagine the time when the sea was only 
 separated from the subterranean fire by a thin and fragile 
 partition, and when, consequently, the communications 
 between the two elements must have been much more fre- 
 quent and more abundant than they are now. It is easy to 
 form an idea of the incomparably greater and more powerful 
 disengagement of electricity which must have taken place 
 under those conditions, and consequently of the splendor 
 and frequency of those luminous appearances, which more or 
 less periodically dispersed the darkness which reigned on 
 the earth ; all the more so since, as the author I have just 
 quoted adds, " because of the elevation and uniformity of 
 the temperature," these luminous appearances " would not 
 have been confined to the neighborhood of the poles, but 
 would have formed a kind of atmospheric aureole round 
 the whole globe." 
 
 As the process of cooling continued, the volatilized 
 substances which enveloped the globe were successively 
 condensed ; the densest first, and these must certainly 
 have been the metallic vapors. Other lighter materials, 
 such as aqueous vapors, which occupied the higher reo-ions 
 of space, were then condensed by contact with the colder 
 regions, and formed a canopy of clouds, floating at a certain 
 height above the globe. In the intervening space between 
 this aerial ocean driven by the winds, and the liquid plain 
 which formed nearly the whole of the terrestrial surface, 
 and which was kept in a boiling state by the emanations 
 from the internal furnace, was spread the atmosphere, 
 such as we now have it, a stratum of respirable air, which 
 
28 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 had become more and more free from all the materials 
 with which it had been until then saturated. 
 
 4. The floating masses, more or less solid, which had 
 formed themselves on the surface of the fused coagulated 
 sea of fire, had combined themselves into one continuous 
 pavement. This first layer of the earth's crust had, by the 
 increasing condensation of vapor, become entirely covered 
 with water. The globe presented the appearance of an 
 immense sea. Only a few solitar}' peaks and domes of 
 granite raised their heads here and there above the surface 
 of this boundless ocean. These were the first rudiments 
 of our continents. But the rocks which emersred were soon 
 no longer completely bare ; their first clothing was a stratum 
 of sedimentary deposits. Whence arose these deposits ? 
 From the debris of the first-formed rocks, which had been 
 rapidly dissolved or worn away by the hot waters of this 
 primitive sea. These, the most ancient stratified rocks, are 
 still to be seen in several places in Europe and America, 
 wherever, not having been covered at a later age by the sea, 
 they have not become the ground on which more recent 
 strata have been deposited. They may be known by the 
 absence of all remains of vegetable or animal life preser^^ed 
 within them. These are the monuments of the time when 
 no organized being existed upon our globe. And, indeed, 
 how could the evolution of life under any form have borne 
 the degree of heat which then prevailed, or the physical 
 and chemical conditions of such a state of things ? 
 
 But we are soon brought face to face with a new and 
 most important phenomenon. The fossils enclosed in the 
 latter stratified rocks reveal to us the first appearance of 
 organic life on our globe. These were principally vege- 
 tables, — algae, and some other species of marine plants ; 
 then also some species belonging to the animal kingdom, — 
 crustaceans and molluscs, some kinds of echini, corals, 
 
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. 29 
 
 or bivalves, humble pioneers of life upon this stage of the 
 world. This fact puts to science the most formidable 
 question which she can ever have to answer, that of the 
 origin of organized life. 
 
 All life, vegetable or animal, has for its starting-point the 
 organic cell ; that is a fact which no man of science now 
 disputes. But whence comes the cell itself ? Is it the 
 result of some happy combination of the elements of 
 inorganic matter? or is it a sudden apparition in the 
 midst of this,— a phenomenon entirely inexplicable without 
 the act of a creator ? 
 
 The beautiful experiments of MM. Pasteur, Pouchet and 
 Bastian are well known. The result of their labors has 
 been recently formulated by the President of the Naturalist 
 Society in England, Sir William Thomson, in his opening 
 address to the assembly at Edinburgh (187 1). These are 
 
 his words : — 
 
 " A very ancient way of thinking, to which many natural- 
 ists still hold fast, admits that by means of certain 
 meteorological conditions, different from the present, inani- 
 mate matter may have cr^^stallized or fermented in such a 
 manner as to produce living germs, or organic cells, or 
 protoplasms. But science affords us a number of inductive 
 proofs against this hypothesis of spontaneous generation, as 
 you have already heard from my predecessor in this chair 
 (Mr. Huxley). A minute examination has not, up to this 
 time, discovered any power capable of originating life but 
 life itself. Inanimate matter cannot become living except 
 under the influence of matter already living. This is a 
 fact in science which seems to me as well ascertained as 
 the law of gravitation .... And I am ready to accept as 
 an article of faith in science, valid for all time and in all 
 
 space, THAT LIFE IS PRODUCED BY LIFE, AND ONLY BY 
 
 LIFE." 
 
30 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 If, as a consequence of this candid and weighty declara- 
 tion, the author supposes that the first germs of organic Hfe 
 may have reached our globe by means of aerolites which 
 should have imported them from higher spheres, few readers 
 would not smile at such a solution of the difficulty. Who 
 would not say that such a solution, even supposing that the 
 observed facts were in its favor (which they are not), is not 
 really a solution at all ; that the main difficulty is only 
 removed a step further back, since we should still have to 
 explain the first appearance of life in these globes from 
 which the aerolites are supposed to have come ? 
 
 Might we not rather admit that, since the Creator has 
 caused primitive matter to come into existence, not as one 
 uniform substance, but composed of a certain number of 
 irreducible elements, or " siitiple bodies,^'' which, entering into 
 the composition of the nebulas, at once develop their 
 various properties, he may also have endowed it from the 
 beginning with a certain number of organic cells, contain- 
 ing within themselves the latent principles of the fundamen- 
 tal forms of life, and destined to develop themselves in 
 many various directions, as circumstances favored this 
 evolution. 
 
 5. Earthquakes and contortions of the earth's crust became 
 more frequent. On the one hand, the interior mass, dimin- 
 ishing in bulk as it condensed, the solid envelope, being 
 no longer sufficiently supported from below, either C7'iimpled 
 itself or gave way and sank. On the other hand, the sub- 
 terranean fire continued to act upon it, and to split it into 
 fissures. The mass of condensed vapors became continually 
 greater ; the quantity of water was always on the increase. 
 Substances held in suspension were deposited in abundance 
 on the sea-bottom ; then they were brought up again, borne 
 upon their granite pavement. It is in the midst of these new 
 settlements that we come upon traces of the first girat 
 
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. 3 1 
 
 evolution of organic life, — the relics of the carboniferous 
 flora. Every one knows that our industry is mainly sus- 
 tained by the enormous deposits of coal contained in certain 
 strata of the earth's crust. It was at the period of which 
 we are now speaking that these masses were deposited. It 
 was then that that flora of luxuriant abundance developed 
 itself, of which we are even now reaping the fruits. It im- 
 presses us not so much by the varieties of species or the 
 richness of its coloring, as by the grandeur of its proportions. 
 The coal-beds do not contain more than 800 species of 
 plants, instead of the 80,000 to 100,000 of which our pres- 
 ent flora is composed. But of what enormous size ! Gras;;es, 
 of kinds which are now but small marsh plants, attained to 
 the thickness of a man's body, and to a height of 60 or 
 70 feet : mosses and ferns in the same proportion relatively 
 to the corresponding plants in the present state of things ; 
 but there was not one flower of brilliant color, not one fruit- 
 bearing tree. This carboniferous flora had no adornment 
 but its verdure. What conclusion can w^e draw from this, 
 but that the sun's light at that time only reached our globe 
 through a thick veil, and that this vegetation owed its power 
 less to this solar heat than to that which came forth from 
 the earth itself ? Accordingly, the carboniferous flora was 
 spread uniformly over the whole globe. There was at that 
 time neither torrid nor frigid zone. The difl^erence of cli- 
 mates, which is caused by the different degrees of incli- 
 nation of the sun's rays to the earth's surface, did not as 
 
 yet exist. 
 
 But how, it will be asked, could such a vegetation thrive 
 without the action of the sun's rays ? Recent experiments 
 have completely solved this difficulty. It has now been 
 proved that electric light possesses all the qualities needed 
 for the development of the green parts of plants. M. Fam- 
 inzin, in all his experiments upon algae, has never made use 
 
32 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 of any light but that of a gas lamp."* The author whom 
 we have already twice quoted, also declares that electric 
 light possesses, equally with the light of the sun, " all prop- 
 erties essential to vegetation." 
 
 The flora of the carboniferous strata must have displayed 
 itself through long ages on the surface of the globe. It has 
 been calculated that some coal-beds must have required from 
 700 to 800 years to form themselves, and as they often 
 stratify themselves one over the other to a very great height, 
 there are some carboniferous rocks, the formation of which, 
 taken all together, must have required no less than nine 
 millions of years. We may picture to ourselves this long 
 period as a series of hot, damp days, like those in which 
 agriculturists delight in the spring, at the time of the 
 development of the young shoots. Imagine a greenhouse 
 heated to a high degree, its glass walls blackened in such a 
 manner as to intercept the sun's rays, and of which the 
 principal light should be that of an electric flame ; what 
 would be the products of the vegetation under such con- 
 ditions ? Colossal plants, but without brilliant coloring ; 
 gigantic forms of greenish hue. Such was the carboniferous 
 vegetation. 
 
 6. At this period there was, as it were, a pause in the 
 development of organic life. The strata immediately above 
 the carboniferous deposits prove that the world was, to a 
 singular degree, stripped of animal and vegetable life. 
 " Compared to the wealth of the carboniferous period," says 
 the botanist Karl Muller,t " this new creation is infinitely 
 poor." The great evolution of vegetable life is on the 
 decline, and animal life has not yet taken its mighty spring. 
 
 The ages following witnessed a slow but total transfor- 
 mation in the kingdom of plants. "Then," says the same 
 
 * Kerasin-lampe, — Der Naturforscher, 1871, No. 4. 
 
 t Les merveilles du monde vegetal (translation), vol. i., p. 133. 
 
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. 33 
 
 author, "began the transition between the carboniferous 
 vegetation and the new plant world." This new evolution 
 of vegetable life extends throughout the triassic, Jurassic, 
 and cretaceous eras, up to the tertiary period (molassic,) 
 when it reaches its completeness. It was brought about 
 under the influence of different agents. But the principal 
 one which we have to mentign here was the direct influence 
 of the sun's rays, which seem from this time to have acted 
 powerfully upon the earth. In speaking of the tertiary flora 
 and of the immense progress seen in it, M. Miiller says ; " 1 
 believe we must attribute this result to the solar light 
 which by the help of the transformation of an insular cli- 
 mate — misty, cloudy and dark — into a continental climate, 
 was enabled to penetrate more freely and to act with greater 
 intensity. Beneath a tropical sun, vegetable life takes new 
 developments with much greater power than under a north- 
 ern and veiled sun. . . . It was, then, in the tertiar>' period 
 alone that the more graceful flowers made their appearance, 
 faithful reflections of the new era, of its azure sky, and its 
 radiant sun. " * 
 
 As this transformation of vegetation was gradual, and, 
 according to M. Miiller himself, began in the ages which 
 followed the carboniferous period, we have in this fact a 
 most important revelation of the part which the sun be^an 
 to play, at the end of the carboniferous era, in the devel- 
 opment of life on our planet. The thick covering of clouds 
 which had veiled the lamp of day during the preceding 
 ages had been torn asunder ; its rays had now free access 
 to the earth ; henceforward it shone regularly upon our globe. 
 And it is this great painter of Nature who, from this time 
 using his brushes freely here below, is to begin to clothe 
 the plants, the children of the light, with those brilliant 
 colors which had hitherto been wanting to them. 
 
 * Miiller, pp. 163, 164. 
 
34 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 7. The carboniferous vegetation had done a great ser- 
 vice to the earth. It had absorbed an enormous quantity of 
 carbonic acid, which it had converted into fuel, while, at 
 the same time, purifying the atmosphere from that ingredi- 
 ent so injurious to animal life. It had thus prepared the 
 way for the first great outbreak of this latter form of life. 
 The masses of rock which formed the mighty layers of the 
 Jurassic and cretaceous strata are the sepulchres of an 
 innumerable animal population. They are not only the 
 work of mvriads of these livins: creatures, but these colossal 
 :stratifications, lifted later on in time into the light, are 
 entirely composed of their remains. Ehrenberg has counted 
 up as many as ten million minute shells in one single pound 
 of chalk ; and, as Mr. Alfred Maury says, the soldier, when 
 he cleans his helmet with a cubic inch of tripoli, has in his 
 hands no less than forty-one millions of animalcules ; at 
 ever}' rub he pulverizes from ten to twelve millions of fossil 
 animals. 
 
 But in these masses of rock lie buried also the remains 
 vof other animal populations, both marine and amphibious. 
 
 By the side of the corals and the infusoria, those innu- 
 Tnerable prolific creatures who filled the ocean and labored 
 unceasingly to form this ground upon which we are now 
 ourselves working, there lived already, in the Jurassic and 
 cretaceous eras, some species of a higher order, the ''petite 
 bourgeoisie'' oi the time, more particularly represented by 
 those wonderful molluscs which bear the name of ammon- 
 ites, belemnites, etc. Higher still in the scale of animals, 
 there crawled by the banks of the oceans and rivers, 
 multitudes of tortoises and lizards, the " higher gentry " of 
 the time. At last came the " aristocracy " of this middle 
 age of Nature, who preyed upon these "lower orders," and 
 made war amongst them. These were gigantic reptiles, 
 armed with terrible weapons for attack. Such was the 
 
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. 35 
 
 plesiosauriis, a lizard forty feet long, with a head like a 
 serpent, and a jaw six feet long, a swan's neck from fifteen 
 to twenty feet long, a body provided with four paws in the 
 shape of paddles, like those of the wheels in our steam- 
 vessels, which it used as oars, and with a thick tail, shorter 
 than that of a crocodile, for a rudder. Then the ichthyosaurus, 
 thirty feet long, with a slender ^nout like a' dolphin, its jaws 
 armed with one hundred and eighty teeth, preying, as is 
 proved by the remains found inside its body, not only upon 
 tortoises and molluscs, but upon creatures of its own kind. 
 Then a still stranger creature, the pterodactyl, a real flying 
 dragon, like those of the dreams of our superstitious fore- 
 fathers, which to an elongated beak-like snout, crocodile 
 teeth, and tiger-like claws, added wings like those of a bat. 
 There were some of all sizes, from that of a canary bird to 
 an eagle. One has been found in England, whose extended 
 wings measured no less than twenty feet across, while those 
 of the great Alpine eagle do not exceed eleven feet. Later 
 on we come to the megalosaurus, whose gigantic body, fifty 
 feet long, lifted itself to a greater height above the sea 
 than the elephant does above the ground. " Its teeth," 
 says Figuier, " combine the characteristics of a sword, a 
 knife, and a saw." Notice again the iguanodoii, the most 
 colossal of the saurians, remarkable for its nasal horn ; this 
 was an herbivorous animal. 
 
 It is also to the beginning of this saurian era that we trace 
 the first appearance of birds. It is believed that in the 
 same strata, footprints of gigantic wading birds, and fossils 
 of great birds of the ostrich kind are to be found. But up 
 to this time, with the exception of a tiny insectivorous 
 rodent, and later on (in the chalk) a kind of opossum, no 
 mammal nor any terrestrial animal, properly so called, 
 makes its appearance. 
 
 8. The race of amphibious monsters dies out by degrees 
 
36 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 at the close of the Jurassic and cretaceous formations. 
 Deposits of an entirely new sort soon covered all that part 
 of those strata which lay at the bottom of the sea. These 
 are the molassic beds which form so large a part of our 
 present soil, and in which are preserved the remains of a 
 whole new creation of animal life. Terrestrial animals, 
 quadrupeds small and great, and domestic animals, at last 
 make their appearance. This is the era when the dmothe- 
 riu77i, a species of seal or elephant, armed with two hooked 
 tusks under the lower jaw, grubs in the earth to dig up the 
 roots and bulbs on which he feeds ; when the aquatic 
 salamander, six feet long (whose remains were for a 
 long time mistaken for a human skeleton), peoples the 
 bays of the continents ; when the massive megatherium^ 
 and the mylodon, slightly smaller — both species of the ai 
 or sloth — with snout-like muzzles and enormous claws, 
 grub in the earth, or crawl upon the trees ; when finally, as 
 the king of that age, the gigantic elephant of America, the 
 mastodon, with a body longer than that of the present 
 elephant, and thicker limbs, feeding upon roots and other 
 vegetables, prowls by the side of the rivers in the marshy 
 lands. At this time also the first species of monkeys came 
 into being. 
 
 A little later, at the period of transition between the 
 tertiary and the modern age, animal life, although still 
 different from that of our own time, continues to assume 
 more and more of its characteristics. This is the age of 
 the mam77ioth, another elephant, with long spiral tusks bent 
 backwards, pendent ears tufted with hair, and a long black 
 mane. The specimen of this creature found at the mouth 
 of one of the rivers of Siberia in a mass of ice, in which it 
 had been imprisoned, exhibited its flesh and hair in perfect 
 preservation, and the contents of its stomach bore evidence 
 to its favorite food, the leaves of the Siberian meleze. The 
 
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. IJ 
 
 primeval massive-headed ox then inhabited the prairies. 
 The hippopotamus and two-horned rhinoceros, the great 
 elk, with his magnificently spreading antlers of which the 
 two extremities were some ten feet apart, the cave-bear, 
 troops of lions, tigers, hyenas, tapirs, peopled the forests 
 and the plains. 
 
 9. Man did not yet exist ; but all these forms, becoming 
 more and more like those known to us, announce that his 
 arrival upon the scene is not far off. In fact, the era of 
 those great mammals, of whom we have just given an idea, 
 leads us up to that solemn moment when this visible king 
 of Nature made his appearance upon his domain. The 
 first traces of his presence which have been discovered 
 place his arrival at the end of the period when the gigantic 
 quadrupeds buried themselves in those beds of mud or 
 of ice in which they have been preserved for us. 
 
 With man appear the first traces of intelligent activity — 
 of industry. Tools of different kinds, made evidently for 
 2i purpose, announce the presence of Intelligence and of 
 Liberty on this earthly stage. A new world opens itself, 
 as that of Nature closes. The being whose creation was 
 the goal and aim of all the work that had preceded — whose 
 bodily organization had been the standard and rule for all 
 those anterior to him, the model to which they had gradually 
 approached * — has now appeared ; History — the develop- 
 ment of a free being — begins. 
 
 10. One fact, remarkable above the rest in the history 
 of Nature, clearly signalized this appearance of man as the 
 intended end oi all the development of which we have just 
 sketched a picture ; that is, the cessation of all production 
 of new species in the field of vegetable or animal life, from 
 the moment of the creation of man. The efforts of Nature 
 
 * K. Miiller : " The creation of the first vegetable cell is the first step 
 towards the future creation of man." 
 
38 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 seem to cease, and her productiveness to be exhausted. 
 Thenceforward there is no further development of vegeta- 
 ble life except by cultivation and grafting ; nor of animal 
 life but by training and education. Nature seems to have 
 yielded her sceptre to man, who not only sees no new crea- 
 ture arrive upon the scene superior to himself or who could 
 be his rival, but who gradually extends his power over all 
 those whom Nature had produced before him. The world 
 may be compared to a country-house which a mother's lov- 
 ing hand had built, ornamented and furnished, in prospect 
 of the expected arrival of her beloved son. Man, the being 
 thus expected, has no sooner appeared than all creatures 
 throughout Nature hasten to pay him their tribute, and ren- 
 der homage to him as their lord. 
 
 III. 
 THE TWO COMPARED. 
 
 Having now set forth the general results of the study of 
 geology with regard to the general question before us, let 
 us look at the picture drawn by Moses, and note the points 
 upon which it seems to diverge from, and those upon which 
 there is no difficulty in harmonizing it with, these scientific 
 deductions. 
 
 Every one knows the story of the Creation in the first 
 chapter of Genesis. Nevertheless, it may be well to 
 summarize it here, in order to indicate its gradual progress, 
 and to observe carefully its tendency. 
 
 Moses begins by a word of a general character, and which 
 comprehends in itself all that follows : " In the beginning 
 God created the heavens and the earth." This verse, how- 
 ever is not a mere heading of a chapter ; it indicates also an 
 
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. 39 
 
 actual fact. The proper meaning of the word " to create " 
 (barah) is to cause that which existed only in the inner to 
 pass into the outer world, — to give objective existence to 
 that which had before been only present to the mind. * 
 This word created marks, then, in all cases the fundamen- 
 tal act, the preliminary condition of all that follows ; the 
 production of primeval and universal matter, out of which 
 have been formed, by means of successive steps of organi- 
 zation, both the heavens and the earth. 
 
 Immediately after this general statement, the narrative 
 takes leave of the subject of the heavens ; the creation of 
 which must certainly, in the mind of the author, have taken 
 place simultaneously with the work to be accomplished on 
 the earth. If he speaks again, later on, of the heavens, 
 it is not till the fourth day, when their organization has been 
 completed, and they have entered into their normal relations 
 with the earth and the living creatures upon it. It is from 
 this point of view only that such a narrative could be con- 
 cerned with them ; for it does not include any system of 
 cosmogony ; it is always man whom it keeps in view. 
 
 Here, then, we have, in the first place, a denial of the 
 independent existence of Matter, which all the systems of 
 antiquity made to co-exist eternally with the Deity, and 
 which, as an obstacle not to be overcome, hindered all the 
 efforts both of God and man for realizing the perfect good. 
 
 After the second verse, it is of the earth, and of the 
 earth only, that the narrative speaks. The earth did 
 exist, but in the form of chaos {tohoii vabahoii). This 
 expression does not mean a state of disorder and confu- 
 sion, but that state of primitive matter in which no crea- 
 ture had as vet a distinctive existence, and no one element 
 stood out in contradistinction with others, but all the forces 
 and properties of matter existed, as it were, undivided. 
 
 * See Raphael Hirsch, Der Pentateuch, vol. i., p. 4. 
 
40 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 The materials were, indeed, all there, but not as such, — 
 they were only latent. However, the Creative spirit, the 
 principle of order and life, brooded over this matter, which, 
 like a rich organic cell, comprehended in itself the condi- 
 tions, and, up to a certain point, the elementary principles 
 of all future forms of existence. This Spirit was the efficient 
 cause, not of matter itself, but of its organization, which 
 was then to begin. He was the executant of each of those 
 Divine commands which from this time were to succeed 
 each other, stroke after stroke, till this chaos should be 
 transformed into a world of wonders. By the " waters " 
 upon which this Divine virtue is said to have moved, must 
 be meant either cosmical matter in its primitive and gaseous 
 state (the Hebrew has no special word by which to express 
 a gas), or else the sea, properly so called, which already, 
 like a vast sheet, enveloped the whole globe. 
 
 The work of the first three days consists only in prepar- 
 ing the stage upon which Life was to appear and to exhibit 
 itself. That of the last three will be the appearance and 
 development of life itself — that is, of life properly so called, 
 animal and human life. On the first day, darkness gives 
 way to light ; on the second, the waters to respirable air ; 
 on the third, the universal sea to dry land. These are the 
 three necessary preliminary conditions for the appearance 
 of vegetation, which crowns the work of the third day, and 
 opens the way for animal life. 
 
 The first " God said'' produces Light. The mention of 
 this Divine command is sufficient to make the reader under- 
 stand that this element, which was an object of worship to 
 so many oriental nations, is neither an eternal principle 
 nor the product of blind force, but the work of a free and 
 intelligent will. It is this same thought which is expressed 
 in the division of the work of creation into six days and six 
 nights. The Creation is thus represented under the image 
 
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. 4 1 
 
 of a week of work, during which an active and intelligent 
 workman pursues his task, through a series of phases, grad- 
 uated with skill and calculated with certainty, in view of 
 an end definitely conceived from the first. 
 
 When it is stated expressly (verses 4, 5), that God 
 divided the light, which He called da}\ from the darkness, 
 which He called night, the author intends us to understand 
 by that, that God, immediately after creating the light, 
 established a periodicity in its appearance and disappear- 
 ance. The day is not the light ; it is a space of time illu- 
 minated, and intended for active work. The 7iight differs 
 in the same way from darkness ; it is an interval of time 
 darkened, and intended for repose, that is to say, for a new 
 concentration of the forces of life. From the first appear- 
 ance of light, God ordained this alternation, of which the con- 
 sequences are seen to be so infinitely beneficial to all crea- 
 tures, as long as they are in the condition of gradual 
 development. 
 
 The belief has been imputed to Moses (because of the 
 y^oxA firmament, which is used in some translations inverses 
 6, 8), that the heavens formed a solid vault above the earth. 
 But the Hebrew word rakijah (from rakah, " to extend ") 
 indicates, on the contrary, an element capable of expansion ; 
 the word extensio?i, therefore, is a much more accurate ren- 
 dering of the Hebrew term. We may apply the word exten- 
 sion in our narrative to the Infinity of Space, and under- 
 stand by " the waters above," the gaseous matter out of 
 which the stars were formed, and by "the waters below," 
 that out of which the terrestrial globe is formed. But it is 
 more natural to give here to the word heavens the more 
 restricted meaning of the terrestrial atmosphere, and to 
 apply the expression, " the waters above,'' to that mass of 
 vapor which floats in the air in the form of clouds ; and 
 the expression, " the waters below,'' to those masses of liquid 
 
42 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 which cover a large portion of the globe. This meaning 
 appears to be that most naturally indicated by the oppo- 
 sition between the waters and the land in the following 
 verses. 
 
 The apparition of the land, and its separation from the 
 water, is the work of the third day (verses 9, 10). No 
 sooner are these three conditions — light, air, and sunshine 
 — given, than the first form of organized existence makes 
 its appearance (verses 11, 12); the land is covered with 
 a carpet of grass, and richly adorned with shrubs and seed- 
 bearing trees. On the one hand, it is to the command of 
 God that this new form of existence is due, — " And God 
 said ;'' and on the other, it is from the earth itself that it 
 proceeds, — " Let the earth bring forth T 
 
 The production of plants forms the transition from the 
 work of the first three days to that of those which follow. 
 
 At the head of the work of the last three days is placed 
 (verses 14- 18) the appearance of the sun, moon, and stars. 
 The mention of this fact explains to us why, in the first 
 words of the narrative, the author had spoken of the crea- 
 tion of the heavens as well as of that of the earth. Is this 
 the moment when, to his mind, the organization of the stars, 
 or at least that of our solar system, was completed? Or 
 does he only mean that this was the time when these stars 
 first exerted their illuminating and life-giving power upon 
 our earth, when they began to enter into relations with her 
 as cefitres of light ? This second sense appears to be more 
 consistent with the general tendency of the narrative, and 
 particularly with these words : " Let there be lights in the 
 firmament of heaven.'' Everything is connected with the 
 development of animal life, and chiefly with the appear- 
 ance and future activity of man : " lights which shall be for 
 sig?is afid for seasons, and for days and years'' If light in 
 general is the condition of the work of the first three days, 
 
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. 43 
 
 the relation of the earth to the stars, and particularly to 
 the sun and moon, is the condition, not less indispensable, 
 of the work of the last three days. 
 
 The description of the fifth day (verses 20-22) brings 
 before, us the first appearance of animal life. This takes 
 place under two principal forms,— that of the marine 
 animals which the waters bring forth at the command of 
 God, and that of birds. By the first must be intended, 
 principally, fish and amphibious creatures : " God created 
 great whales, and every living creature that moveth;' (romeseth 
 from ramas, literally, ''to advance by crawling''). 
 
 Thus the two first elements, air and water, are opened 
 to life. The third, the earth, is put in possession of this 
 gift on the sixth day (verses 24, 25), by the production of 
 domestic animals {behemah, " cattle "), reptiles {rentes, " that 
 which creeps upon the earth "), and the beasts of the field 
 {chajath haerets, " the wild beasts of the earth "). 
 
 Finally, on the same day, in the second part of this day, 
 God created man, Adam, His representative here below.* 
 His body is no doubt taken out of the ground, like those of 
 the animals ; but God forms it with His own hand, and 
 inspires it with a life which emanates from His own breath. 
 Here is the master-work of that Spirit who, in the begm- 
 ning, moved upon the face of the waters. He worked upon 
 and elaborated matter, only to make it serve, under the 
 the form of a human body, as an organ for a spirit which 
 proceeds from Himself ; for in man the Spirit reproduces 
 Himself in the form of a creature. 
 
 This last-mentioned being is the aim and end in particular 
 of the work of the last three days, and, at the same time, 
 
 * Hirsch, in the work before quoted, instead of seeing in the word Adam 7, 
 derivative from Adamah, "the earth/' inverts the relation of the two words, 
 and that for very good philological and logical reasons. He derives it from the 
 word adam, " red-colored." 
 
44 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 that of the whole work taken together. Under the former 
 head, the appearance of man in the second part of the 
 sixth day, corresponds to the creation of plants in the 
 second part of the third day. As plants are the ornaments 
 of the newly-formed dry land, so man is the crown of that 
 animal life which had gradually developed itself. 
 
 After that, the work is complete, and the rest of the 
 seventh day puts an end, not to the Divine activity in 
 general, but to the creative activity, properly so called. 
 The Sabbath, the great " thus fa?-, afid no further,^* which 
 puts an end to the Divine work in Nature, gives a solemn 
 confirmation to the truth already set forth in the repeated 
 words, ^'' and God said^^'' — the truth, namely, that the earth 
 is not the result of blind and ungoverned powers — no 
 Sabbath was to put an end to the ferment and activity of 
 forces like these — but it is the work of an intelligent and 
 self-governing Being, who does all things by measure, who 
 sets before Himself, while working, a definite object to be 
 attained, and who, as soon as that object is attained, sets 
 at rest again those productive forces which He had put in 
 motion. 
 
 Such is the record of Genesis in its majestic simplicity. 
 If this record is true, which admits of no doubt in the mind 
 of any Israelite, it follows that neither Onnuzd (light), nor 
 Vulcan (fire), nor Zeus (the air), nor Cybele (the earth), nor 
 Apollo (the sun), nor Diana (the moon), nor the ox Apis, nor 
 any animal, reptile, bird, or quadruped, nor any man (pre- 
 tended representative of Ormuzd, or Brahma, or Osiris), 
 has any right to Divine honors. The supreme attribute, 
 self-existence. Deity, belongs to Jehovah alone. 
 
 What relation, then, does the Mosaic picture, thus under- 
 stood, bear to the results hitherto reached bv science ? 
 
 To begin by the points of difference ; there are two which 
 strike us at the first glance,^ 
 
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. 45 
 
 1. Genesis speaks of days; but the periods implied by 
 the stratifications and the fossils they contain must each 
 have consisted of millions of centuries. 
 
 2. According to Genesis, animal life did not begin upon 
 the earth till after the appearance of the plants, whereas 
 the oldest strata that contain vegetable remains exhibit 
 already some debris of crustaceans and of corals — monu- 
 ments of an animal life which must have existed contem- 
 poraneously with that primitive vegetation. At the same 
 time that the rich carboniferous flora developed itself, there 
 existed also different species of fish, and one breathing ver- 
 tebrate (the labyrinthodoji). 
 
 These are differences of which we are not to deny the 
 importance ; and if we are to consider the record of Gene- 
 sis as the result of Divine dictation, we must own that we 
 should be not a little embarrassed to account for these two 
 points, on which there seems to be a clear disagreement 
 between the Bible narrative and the facts of science. 
 
 On the other hand, the points of resemblance are still 
 more striking, — all the more so, because on many of these 
 points, what is told us in the Bible being, as if designedly, 
 in contradiction to that which we see, there would seem to 
 be no other reasonable mode of explaining their origin. 
 
 The resemblances are these : — 
 
 1. According to verse 2, the earth, from the moment 
 when it may be, said to have had an existence of its own, 
 was surrounded by water. Now, science affirms that the 
 strata of which the crust of the earth is composed, were 
 deposited in water, and that consequently, in the first ages 
 of its organization, the globe must have presented the 
 appearance of a surface entirely liquid. 
 
 2. In verse 3, Genesis assigns the creation of light to 
 the first day, while the appearance of the sun did not take 
 place till the fourth. It thereby defies the visible appear- 
 
46 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 ances which seem to make of Light an emanation from the 
 sun. But Genesis goes still further ; it assigns to the same 
 date the commencement of the regular succession of days 
 and nights, a succession which, nevertheless, according to 
 the observation of all men, depends upon the daily appear- 
 ance and disappearance of the sun. Accordingly, all super- 
 ficial minds, from Voltaire, the genius of sarcasm, to the 
 pygmies of the Progres of De'lemont, can never sufficiently 
 ridicule the follies of the Mosaic record. If they were more 
 dispassionate, they would perhaps say that however ignorant 
 Moses may have been of their heights of science, he had 
 two eyes as well as they ; and they would ask how came he 
 to compose a story so contrary to the most obvious prob- 
 abilities. The fact is, that the results of modern science, 
 still ignored by the savants of De'lemont, render a striking 
 testimony to the truth of the Mosaic record, and to the 
 astonishing wisdom which characterizes it. 
 
 It is noiv, in fact, an established truth, that Light is in its 
 nature entirely independent of the sun. It is a vibration 
 of the ether, in which the sun is, in our time, no doubt, the 
 chief agent, but which may be produced by the action of 
 many causes. Just as a tightly-stretched wire or string 
 does not vibrate only under the action of the bow specially 
 adapted for that purpose, but may be made to do also with- 
 out a bow, and before any bow had been invented — by 
 the action of a simple current of air, for instance — so the 
 etherwhich now vibrates regularly under the periodic action 
 of the sun, may have formed and propagated its waves of 
 light without the sun and before the sun. The sound of 
 the Eolian harp bears the same relation to that of the string 
 touched by the bow that primitive light does to the sun. 
 How could Moses have known what Science has only 
 recently discovered, and have perceived that the sun, instead 
 of being the source of light, is only the present and tempo- 
 
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. 4/ 
 
 rary instrument for its diffusion ? But the other fact we 
 have mentioned ought perhaps to astonish us still more. 
 How can Genesis speak of an alternation of days and nights 
 as a phenomenon anterior to the appearance of the sun ? 
 There is nothing to object to, as we have seen, in this pre- 
 cedence in itself. Modern science explains the fact. If 
 ante-solar, primitive light was, like our present aurora bore- 
 alis, the effect of the neutralization, throughout the whole 
 atmosphere, of the two opposing kinds of electricity, this 
 light must have had its hours of dawn, of mid-day splendor, 
 of decline, and of complete cessation. Consequently, accord- 
 ing to the expression in the Bible narrative, there may have 
 been, and must have been, days and nights, evefimgs and 
 morniftgs, before ever the sun rose and set on our horizon. 
 But at the time when Moses wrote, how was it possible 
 for him to affirm anything of the sort ? That is a question 
 for an answer to which we may wait, and shall wait a long 
 time. Yet the fact of the Bible narrative is here before our 
 eyes in all its undeniable and paradoxical clearness. 
 
 Genesis tells us (verse 9) that the dry land appeared in 
 the midst of the waters, and that thus the separation was 
 made between the land and the sea. If there is one fact 
 more certainly proved by modern science than another, it 
 is that the centinents were gradually lifted up from the 
 bottom of the sea. 
 
 4. Genesis speaks of a great vegetable creation, which 
 covered the lands then just emerged. Science has ascer- 
 tained, by the discovery of the carboniferous strata, that a 
 period of colossal vegetation followed the upheaval of those 
 primitive rocks of which the terrestrial envelope is composed. 
 Of this the coal-beds which we work are the monuments. 
 And if the gentlemen of the Progres amuse themselves 
 at the expense of Moses, for being such a simpleton as to 
 place the growth of plants before the creation of the sun, 
 
48 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 science proves that Moses, who lived fifteen centuries before 
 Christ, knew more about the subject than they do, Uving in 
 the nineteenth century of our era. For it proves that there 
 is a light, other than that of the sun, which possesses all 
 the properties required by vegetation, and that this light 
 existed at the beginning of the world. 
 
 5. Genesis makes the appearance of the sun, moon, and 
 stars on our horizon to take place after this great evolution 
 of vegetation. Now what has Science demonstrated .'' It 
 acknowledges, in the person of M. Karl Miiller, who can- 
 not be suspected of partiality in favor of the Scriptures, that 
 during the periods which followed that of the carboniferous 
 vegetation there was effected, by degrees, a transformation 
 more and more complete in the vegetation ; which could 
 only have been produced under the immediate action of the 
 solar rays, hindered during the carboniferous era. A ver}^ 
 strange hypothesis has been lately put forward, namely, 
 that the moon may be simply that fraction of the earth's 
 crust which originally filled up the immense basin of the 
 Pacific ocean. If it should ever be proved that there is 
 any truth in this bold conjecture, we might allow, not only 
 that the solar system became visible to the earth at the time 
 of which we are now speaking, but that it then only really 
 reached its present organization, and had its relations with 
 our globe definitely settled. 
 
 6. To the rich development of vegetable life on the 
 third day. Genesis makes to succeed a no less mighty burst- 
 ing forth of animal life, in the waters and in the air, on the 
 fifth day. Now Science has proved, by the remains of 
 organized beings found in the strata of the triassic, Jurassic, 
 and cretaceous periods, which followed at some distance 
 upon that of the carboniferous strata, that a development 
 of animal life, of marvellous richness, had taken place in the 
 oceans at that epoch. And, more astonishing still, it is also 
 
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. 49 
 
 to this age that geology assigns the date of the appearance 
 of birds. How was Moses able thus to afhrm the priority 
 of marine and amphibious to terrestrial animals ? And how 
 can he have known the contemporaneousness of the appear- 
 ance of birds and of the inhabitants of the sea ? 
 
 7. Next after the appearance of life in the waters and in 
 the air, Genesis places the creation of terrestrial animals, 
 of cattle, wild beasts, and reptiles. Now Science has proved 
 that it was at the time of the molassic or tertiary formations, 
 which were deposited immediately after the Jurassic and 
 cretaceous strata, that precisely these three classes of 
 animals did make their appearance. According to the very 
 exact data of M. Heer, * the Swiss 7nolasse has comprehend- 
 ed three sorts of serpents, eighteen kinds of beasts of prey 
 and of rodents, and forty-eight species of pachyderms (her- 
 bivorous animals), and ruminants. This, then, was indeed 
 the first great introduction into the world of terrestrial ani- 
 mals and mammals. It seems as if a whole multitude of his 
 future subjects whether independent or prepared before- 
 hand to submit to him, hastened to appear upon the globe 
 to meet the sovereign who was approaching. 
 
 8. The appearance of all these forms, so infinitely various, 
 of organic life, animal and vegetable, is attributed in 
 Genesis to a series of Divine commands: ''and God 
 j^/^;'_ without, however, thereby either denying or even 
 omitting expressly to notice the instrumentality of natural 
 agents, as witness the expression : ''let the waters brmg 
 
 forth, . . , let the land bring forth r What says Science 
 upon this point? We make no attempt here to treat the 
 question of the permaneiice of species. Certainly, Moses 
 seems to affirm this great principle, which Darwin is far 
 from having succeeded in overturning. But from a still 
 more general point of view, what is it that Science has in 
 
 * Die Urwelt der Schweiz. 
 
50 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 our day to do ? Is it not to establish the harmony of those 
 two equally received principles, — one, that Life cafi 07ily be 
 produced by Life (p. 92), the other, that this engendering of 
 life by life is governed by second causes, and requires the 
 co-operation of the natural elements ? Moses has not, it is 
 true, given us the exact formula for this harmonization. To 
 work at discovering it is one of the highest tasks of Science. 
 But has he not erected, with a bold and firm hand, the two 
 pillars of the arch which is to form that bridge so difficult 
 of construction? ^'' And God said,'' — there we see the 
 principle that life alone is capable of begetting life. " Let 
 the earth, ... let the waters bring forth," — there we see 
 the co-operation of Nature freely granted. The defenders 
 of the creative principle must not allow themselves to be 
 drawn into denying the truth contained in these last words ; 
 on the other hand, no possible discovery in the direction 
 of Darwinism can go beyond it. 
 
 9. According to Genesis, the creation of man was the 
 close of the work of creation ; and this supreme act was 
 accomplished on the same day as that of the creation of 
 the terrestrial animals. Now modern science shows that 
 the first vestiges of the existence of man do not make their 
 appearance till the most recent stratifications, at the end 
 of the tertiar}^ period ; but nevertheless they do appear in 
 the course of that period. The sixth day did then really 
 witness, as the Scripture tells us, the contemporaneous 
 existence of man and of the representatives of that great 
 animal creation which immediately preceded his arrival. 
 There was not here the closing of one epoch and the 
 beginning of another ; it was the continuation of the same 
 period. 
 
 10. And now let us bring out, with regard to man, one 
 special point. Genesis affirms the creation of a single pair, 
 from whom all mankind descended. It is not long since 
 
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. 5 1 
 
 Science protested with all its strength against this dogma 
 of the unity of the human race. It urged the anatomical 
 and physiological differences of races ; and affirmed in its 
 most trenchant tones the absolute impossibility of deriving 
 them from a single pair. And now we have this same 
 Science not shrinking from the far more hazardous attempt 
 of deriving from one and the same organic cell .... is it 
 all mankind ? No, that is not enough. Or is it all mankind 
 and all animals together ? That is still too little. It is all 
 organized beings, even plants, — all from one single source 
 of organized life ! 
 
 O Science ! 
 
 The object at that time was to play tricks with Scripture 
 upon one particular point — the unity of the human race. 
 It is now to clear away the Divine element out of our theory 
 of Nature. They are as ready now to swallow a camel as 
 they were then to strain at a gnat ! And Science lends 
 herself easily to all these contradictor}^ services demanded 
 of her. Docile servant, preached up in public as the queen 
 of the world, and made in private the slave of all our 
 caprices ! 
 
 However it may be, we are now assuredly allowed by 
 Mr. Darwin and his disciples, to maintain that the unity of 
 the human race, proclaimed by Genesis, is no longer open 
 to any insuperable scientific objection. The theor}" of the 
 transmutation of species has indeed many another mountain 
 to get over ! 
 
 II. Genesis speaks of a Divine sabbath, a full stop 
 placed by God Himself to His creative work ; a day 
 assigned to God's well-beloved child, just created, for 
 rejoicing in God and becoming one with Him. And 
 Science proves that, as a fact, with the appearance of man, 
 the creation of all new species ceased, and that in the 
 midst of this repose of Nature, bought at the price of such 
 
52 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 prolonged labors, that purely moral work at once began 
 of man seeking his Creator, and transferring to God, by 
 worship, this world which God had set up for him by the 
 creative act. All this present age is the sabbath, in which, 
 the work being now completed, the master-work and the 
 worker meet and greet one another in love. 
 
 What are we to think of such a series of points of agree 
 ment ? Are they the result of accident ? As well might 
 we say that the fitting together of two cog-wheels is a mere 
 chance. Are they the result of observation of Nature, or 
 of philosophical speculation well directed ? But what 
 philosophical labor could have led us to the idea of light 
 appearing and disappearing periodically, independently of 
 the sun ? And even if it had been possible to argue con- 
 clusively from simple observation that the appearance of 
 the vegetable kingdom must have preceded that of animals, 
 what experience could have led to the idea that the marine 
 animals and birds appeared simultaneously, and that they 
 preceded the terrestrial animals and reptiles ; and that 
 finally, the appearance of these last had bordered imme- 
 diately upon that of man ? 
 
 It has been thought by some that there is a logical 
 symmetry in the account of the work of the six days, 
 sufficient to account for it. On the first day, light ; on the 
 fourth, the luminaries : on the second, the waters and the 
 atmosphere ; on the fifth, marine animals and birds : on the 
 third, the land and plants ; on the sixth, land animals and 
 man. But whatever may be thought of this parallelism 
 which, in order to make it more complete, would require 
 that birds only should have appeared on the fifth day 
 (corresponding with the creation of the atmosphere on the 
 second day), and that the marine animals should not have 
 come in till the sixth day, together with the land animals 
 (corresponding with the separation of the land and waters 
 
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. 53 
 
 on the third day), the coincidence of these arrangements 
 with the actual order o£ creation demands, none the less 
 It have seen, some explanation other than that whtch 
 any of the rationalistic hypotheses are able to give. Th 
 delired explanation we believe we have sketched out a 
 the beginning of this essay. We must acknowledge tn the 
 Mosaf record a revelation, but not in the form of a dicta- 
 don It is, as we expected beforehand, know edge give, 
 under the form of pictures, analogous to those o the 
 prophetic visions. And from this point of view, the two 
 difficulties which we mentioned at A^^'?^?-"'"^ fJ^^J^ 
 explained. Moses speaks of days, and ,t w.s -a > P ^j 
 of millions of years which were required. We will not urge 
 here the very^ indefinite sense often given to the word ^^ 
 in Scripture, but we will say : If it was the purpose of God 
 to cause Moses to contemplate in an abridged form the 
 principal phases through which the work of creation passed 
 Hs gradual development, would not the best way of 
 .iving him an idea of it have been to paint each period in 
 
 : single picture, which should -P-^^^V^t^'/T f theTe 
 the stage which the work had then reached? Each of these 
 pictures was to the eye of Moses one day; but in this one 
 day were represented all the analogous days of that same 
 period The interval which separated this picture from 
 that which followed it was a night ; and in this night were 
 figured all other nights of the same period, during which 
 the period which was to follow was being slowly prepared 
 for Thus there passed before his eyes these six pictures, 
 representing the most characteristic phases of the entire 
 work He has preserved for us a memorial of these phases, 
 but without having himself penetrated into their meanings 
 in detail, any more than the prophets were able clearly to 
 understand the intuitions excited in them by the Divine 
 
54 STUDIES O'^ CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 Spirit.* He only comprehended in each picture the central 
 idea, the only one practically wanted, — that of Jehovah as 
 the One Being, the author of each separate part of the 
 work, as well as of the work as a whole. 
 
 We can see also from the nature of this mode of instruc- 
 tion, that it would be only the salient features of each 
 period which could be admitted into these pictures and 
 strike the eye of the seer. The vegetable and animal life, 
 for instance, which developed itself from the first at the 
 bottom of the sea, remained concealed from him. It was 
 only when the vegetable life made that mighty and colossal 
 outburst of which the carboniferous strata bear evidence, 
 that he discerned it ; for then it became the essential 
 feature of the picture. Just so with regard to the appear- 
 ance of the great marine animals and of birds, in the 
 following ages ; and so again with reference to the ap- 
 pearance of the terrestrial animals and of man in the 
 last period. We are looking upon a pictorial work, and 
 not at the work of a naturalist or man of science. Placing 
 ourselves at this point of view, we see those difficulties 
 vanish which hindered us from finding in this record that 
 which so many reasons make us wish to recognize in it — 
 the result of a revelation. 
 
 To put the seal to the agreement which we have just 
 established between the contents of the pictures in Genesis, 
 and the results of scientific investigation, it only remains to 
 set these latter in the frame given us by the former, and so 
 to combine these two kinds of results into one and the 
 same intuition, similar to that which was produced at the 
 moment of the vision in the mind of the seer.f 
 
 * I Pet. i. 10-12. 
 
 t The following passage is borrowed in great measure from the admirable 
 work of an English workingman, Hugh Miller, who became both one of the best 
 geologists and one of the most brilliant writers of his country : T/ie Testimony 
 of the Rocks, pp. 1 87-1 91. 
 
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. 55 
 
 We must imagine ourselves seated with the man of God 
 upon the mountain. Darkness surrounds us. About us 
 and within us reigns the silence which is the precursor of 
 Divine revelations. The prophetic sense with which all 
 men are endued by Nature, awakes in us, and just as St. 
 John contemplates, in his trance on the rock in Patmos, 
 the last ages of the world, and in some sort the passage of 
 time into eternity, so we contemplate- the first days of the 
 universe, the river of time springing forth out of eternity. 
 In the midst of the solemn darkness, our ear perceives a 
 muffled sound, like that of the sea agitated by a mighty 
 wind, of which the surface rises and falls in vast undulations, 
 and the waves at times meet and break one against the 
 other. This is the ocean in which our earth is still 
 enveloped as in a winding-sheet. The breath which moves 
 it is that of the Spirit of the Creator, which broods over 
 this mysterious egg in order to bring out of it a world of 
 wonders, a Humanity, a Christ ! We feel that this darkness 
 is not the darkness of the grave, but that of the fertile 
 Night, which serves as a cradle for all life. And in this 
 darkness of a moment are concentrated centuries without 
 number, all the ages which elapsed from the creation of 
 matter up to the formation of the solid crust of the globe, 
 and the condensation of the waters upon its surface. 
 
 Suddenly, a voice breaks the silence of this long 
 night : — 
 
 "Let there be Light." 
 
 At once a luminous jet, followed by dazzling rays which 
 radiate towards all the points of the horizon, illumines 
 the scene. It is a radiant light, like that which from time 
 to time illumines the inhabitants of the polar regions 
 during their long nights of many months. By its light we 
 discern, through the thick vapors which cover the earth, 
 the liquid shoreless plain which surrounds us. From time 
 
555 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 to time, gases, disengaging themselves from the interior 
 furnace of the globe, make the waters surge and boil, and 
 lift up to their surface a plain, which soon sinks down 
 again, and is once more swallowed -up. The jets of light 
 lose by degrees their brilliancy, and, paling more and 
 more, end in being altogether extinguished. We now hear 
 nothing but the roar of the mighty waters on every side of 
 us. Darkness surrounds us. And in this single day we 
 have contemplated the representative of millions of days, 
 which lit up our earth before any eye of man was there to 
 discern them. 
 
 The voice sounds once more : — 
 
 "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the 
 waters, and let it divide the waters from the 
 
 WATERS." 
 
 Once more it is day ; our eyes wander still over a liquid 
 plain which mingles on all sides with the horizon. Per- 
 haps there may be life in the midst of this sea, life both 
 animal and vegetable, but we do not perceive it. That 
 which now absorbs our attention is the gradual transforma- 
 tion taking place in the space above the ocean. Before, 
 the vapors rose from the sea as out of a caldron of 
 boiling water, and the glittering light furrowed these dark 
 water-spouts. Now the sea appears more calm ; a thicker 
 partition separates it, no doubt, from the subterranean fire. 
 Its tepid waters, moved by a gentle breeze, rise and fall in 
 regular undulations. The less dense vapors rise more 
 lightly into the higher regions, and when they there 
 encounter a colder temperature they form themselves into 
 thick clouds, which remain suspended all round the globe. 
 Below this dark covering, between it and the sea, appears 
 for the first time the transparent atmosphere, the azure fir- 
 mament which divides the aerial sea from the liquid plain. 
 Such was the second day, in the picture of which is con- 
 centrated the imaire of millions of davs. 
 
 o ^ 
 
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. 5/ 
 
 We are once more plunged into darkness, but not with- 
 out a presentiment of the approach of a greater work still. 
 The voice says : — 
 
 " Let the waters under the heaven be gathered 
 together into one place, and let the dry land 
 appear ! " 
 
 For the third time the scene is lighted up. The canopy 
 of thick clouds suspended around the globe is not yet 
 dissipated. But upon the stage below, what changes have 
 taken place ! The ocean is no longer one uniform sheet in 
 which our eyes sought in vain for a point to rest upon 
 The waves dash themselves against rocks, some pointed, 
 some dome-like. Long lines of white foam indicate the 
 presence of coral islands, on a level with the surface of the 
 water, against which the waves are breaking. We even per- 
 ceive in the distance vast marshv lowlands. This is because, 
 at the command of the Creator, the bottom of the sea has 
 lifted itself up, and continents have appeared. And these 
 new-born lands array themselves, as we look at them, with a 
 covering of green and fresh verdure. Mosses, marsh- 
 plants, reeds, ferns, forests of pines, and palm-trees make 
 their appearance. These reeds, as tall as our oaks, these 
 ferns, as large as our horse-chestnuts, wave upon the banks 
 of rivers of dark waters, and of lakes still and shallow. 
 Here, then, we have before our eyes, in all its luxuriant 
 wealth, that mighty tropical vegetation, which God has pre- 
 served to our times under the form of coal. 
 
 At the bottom of these waters, life begins to stir ; coral 
 insects are building ; innumerable molluscs crawl in the 
 mud upon these low shores. But the prominent feature in 
 the picture is that wonderful vegetation which we have just 
 described ; all the rest is as nothing compared to that 
 unparalleled apparition. But in the forests there still 
 reigns the silence of death ; no living creature animates 
 
58 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 them by his presence. No movement is to be seen but 
 that of the long branches swaying in the wind, and of the 
 thick mists creeping along the marshy lands. Such was 
 the third day, the sample of millions of other days. 
 
 And while darkness again descends upon us, something 
 extraordinary in the state of the atmosphere announces 
 some new and decisive step about to be made in the 
 divine work. 
 
 The voice of the Lord proclaims : — 
 
 " Let there be Lights in the firmament of the 
 
 HEAVEN." 
 
 It is night ; our attention is directed towards the heavens. 
 The canopy of clouds breaks, and in the intervals made by 
 these rents, our sight reaches for the first time into im- 
 penetrable depths. New and unparalleled spectacle ! The 
 stars shine out in the firmament. As the sky disengages 
 itself from the vapors which concealed it these stars 
 multiply. Soon their light gleams on all sides. The 
 vault of heaven is unveiled in its completeness, shining 
 without cloud over our heads. The morning-star beams, 
 radiant as a queen in the midst of her court, and casts her 
 pure image for the first time upon our globe. But soon she 
 begins to pale. The vapors, scattered in light masses 
 over the horizon, begin to glow ; they pass from gray to 
 bronze, from bronze to gold ; the gold changes into fire ; 
 . . . one brilliant point appears above the waters ; the 
 Sun is come, and has celebrated his first rising. Darting 
 into the azure sky, he enters boldly upon his course. The 
 waters, ruffled by the morning breeze, glitter beneath his 
 splendors. Under the influence of his brilliant rays, a 
 new kind of vegetation makes its appearance, adorned with 
 a thousand colors unknown to the preceding flora. 
 A carpet of verdure, thicker and more varied, covers the 
 dark soil of the continents. Soon we perceive the heavenly 
 
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. 59 
 
 ■ luminary descend towards the western horizon in a glory- 
 even more magnificent than that which surrounded his 
 rising ; and for the first time, at the opposite point of the 
 horizon, appears the second luminary of the terrestrial 
 creation. Rising silently into the azure vault, the moon 
 sheds her gentle light over land and sea. Such was the. 
 fourth day, an image of millions of other days. Why w^ere. 
 the angels alone to witness it ? — But through the eyes of 
 the Seer, we, too, have been just contemplating something 
 of its sublime beauties. 
 
 For the fifth time, night covers the picture. But the voice 
 has again proclaimed : — 
 
 " Let the waters bring forth abundantly the mov- 
 ing CREATURE THAT HATH LIFE, AND FOWL THAT MAY FLY 
 ABOVE THE EARTH IN THE OPEN FIRMAMENT OF HEAVEN." 
 
 Daylight appears. Like a bride prepared for her bride- 
 groom, the earth is adorned with flowers of varied colors. 
 But what do I hear ? For the first time a voice other than 
 that of the Lord God, and than the sound of the mighty 
 waters strikes upon my ear. It is as the cry of discordant 
 voices. Birds in close ranks, like insects on a summer 
 evening, fly above the lakes, or traverse the forests, while 
 others of their kind, of gigantic size, as if mounted on stilts,, 
 wade through the reedy ponds, pursuing the fish. 
 
 But they themselves soon become the prey of formidable 
 enemies. For this is also the age of the amphibious reptiles, 
 whether swimming or flying : monsters covered with thick 
 scales, armed with murderous teeth, haunt the long-winding 
 rivers, or crawl upon the wet meadows, or hang suspended 
 on the trees and rocks ready to pounce upon their prey. 
 The ocean also is full of life. There disport themselves 
 the giants of the age ; they stir its depths with the strokes 
 of their mighty fins, and lift above its surface their enor- 
 mous forms and terrible heads. The water, the air, the; 
 
60 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 land (still marshy), all are crowded with animal life. For 
 has not the Eternal One said : " Let the waters bring forth 
 abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl 
 that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of 
 heaven ? " At this word of command all these new and 
 unknown creatures have come into being ! — And now upon 
 this scene, full of light and movement, the sun sets, and 
 night veils from sight the mystery of these innumerable lives. 
 The fifth day is over, and in this single picture we have 
 before our eyes the spectacle of millions of days, whose 
 light did actually shine upon our globe. 
 
 Again we are plunged into night. For the sixth time 
 the voice proclaims : — 
 
 " Let the earth bring forth the living creature 
 after his kind." 
 
 And when the light again illumines this stage upon 
 which the work of God was by degrees accomplishing itself, 
 what a scene meets our eyes ! The marine monsters have 
 disappeared. Of all these horrible amphibious creatures 
 there remains only a small number of species, less colossal 
 and less formidable. In their place, over the verdant 
 plains, cattle and beasts of the field are grazing ; great herds 
 of mastodons and mammoths seek their pasture in the fresh 
 herbage of the forest. Ranging the woods are troops of 
 stags and elks ; the bear watches over her young in the 
 cave ; the hippopotamus crouches among the reeds, or 
 plunges majestically into the river ; the rhinoceros sports 
 in the marshes, while the lion, the leopard, and other wild 
 animals, lie in wait amongst the dark thickets, ready to 
 spring upon the herds of antelopes hurrying to the water. 
 At last, at the hour when the sun sinks, and the day declines, 
 a supreme last word is heard : — 
 
 "Let us make man in our image." 
 
 And the responsible lord of this creation, Man, formed 
 
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. 6l 
 
 in the actual image of God, comes forth at the command 
 of his Creator upon this scene which has been arranged, 
 adorned, and peopled to receive him. 
 
 At this moment the work of Creation ceases. The rest 
 of God begins ; but in this rest is included a r^ew kind of 
 work — that of the moral education of man, of his redemp- 
 tion and final glorification. The work of this seventh day- 
 still continues ; a day sanctified by God above all the rest, 
 but profaned by man, as none of those that preceded it 
 was, or could be, by the creatures whose existence they 
 illumined. A day of which we have now perhaps reached 
 the eleventh hour, and which will be followed for some by 
 a day without an evening, for others by a night which shall 
 have no morning. In this Divine Sabbath which we are 
 contemplating in the company of the man of God upon the 
 mount, we see also the sample of millions of other days — 
 of all those in w^hich we ourselves are living, of all the mil- 
 lions of Sabbaths of which God makes use in our time for 
 the sanctification of the human race, and which the human 
 race so often misuses to the dishonor of the Creator. 
 
 IV. 
 
 CONCLUSION. ' 
 
 Let us now sum up and conclude. 
 
 Moses had said, contrar}- to all probability, that light 
 had existed long before the appearance of the sun ; Science 
 has proved that the world may, and must, have been illu- 
 mined, long before the appearance of the sun. 
 
 Moses had said, no less paradoxically, that the world of 
 vegetation had appeared before the sun had shone ; Science 
 
62 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 has proved that a rich Hfe of vegetation spread over the 
 the earth before the direct inter^'ention of the sun's rays. 
 
 Moses had spoken of three principal appearances of 
 organic hfe, one vegetable, two animal ; the Science of our 
 day discerns three great epochs of organic life — that of 
 the carboniferous age, and those of the great amphibious 
 creatures and mammals. 
 
 Moses had represented man as the latest-born of the 
 creation ; Science declares that man is the one, of all the 
 inhabitants of the earth, who closed the series of new 
 creations upon our globe. 
 
 But let us admit that all these coincidences of detail are 
 only accidental, or that they are about to be overturned by 
 some new step in advance, either in exegesis or in geology ; 
 there still remain three principal features in the Mosiac 
 picture which will ever claim attention from all thoughtful 
 men : — 
 
 I. - The cause of all things : God. 
 
 II. The order of things : a continual progress. 
 
 III. TheJiJial object of things : man. 
 
 I. ^'' And God mid !^^ This is the word which gives the 
 key-note to the narrative, the burden ten times repeated, 
 of this magnificent poem. To say is both to think and to 
 will. In this speaking of God, there is both the legislative 
 power of His intelligence, and the executive power of His 
 will ; this one word dispels all notion of blind matter, and 
 of brute fatalism ; it reveals an enlightened Power, an 
 intelligent and benevolent Thought, underlying all that is. 
 
 And at the same time that this word, " And God said,''^ 
 appears to us as the veritable truth of things, it also reveals 
 to us their true value and legitimate use. Beautiful and 
 beneficent as the work may be, its real worth is not in 
 itself ; it is in the thought and in the heart of the Author 
 to whom it owes its existence. Whenever we stop short in 
 
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. 63 
 
 the work itself, our enjoyment of it can only be superficial, 
 and we are, through our ingratitude, on the road to an 
 idolatry more or less gross. Our enjoyment is only pure 
 and perfect when it results from the contact of our soul 
 with the Author himself. To form this bond is the true 
 aim of Nature, as well as the proper destination of the life 
 
 of man. 
 
 Behind this veil of the visible universe which dazzles me, 
 behind these blind forces of which the play at times terror- 
 strikes me, behind this regularity of seasons and this fixed- 
 ness of laws, which almost compel me to recognize in all 
 things only the march of a fixed Tate, this word, ''And 
 God said;' unveils to me an Arm of might, an Eye which 
 sees, a Heart full of benevolence which is seeking me, a 
 Person who loves me. This ray of light which, as it 
 strikes upon my retina, paints there with a perfect accuracy, 
 upon a surface of the size of a centime, a landscape of 
 many miles in extent — He it is who commanded it to 
 shine. This atmosphere which my lungs breathe, and which 
 is fonned of two gases, either of which, by itself, would be 
 a deadlypoison to me — He it is who commanded it to 
 give me life. This ground upon which I walk, labor, build, 
 plant, and under which, at a very small depth, the terrible 
 central furnace is boihng — He it is who makes it firm 
 beneath my feet. These flowers and fruits which I gather 
 in succession during the greatest part of the year, which 
 delight me with their perfume, charm me with their taste, 
 or heal me with their juices — He it is who sowed their 
 seeds for me in this fair garden of the earth. This sun 
 which measures out for me my years, my days, and my 
 hours ; this moon which divides my years into months, and 
 my months into weeks — His finger it is which causes them 
 to move through the vault of the sky like the two hands on 
 the dial of a watch. These various creatures which fill with 
 
64 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 life the waters, the air, and the land, and these domestic 
 animals which make company for me even in my home — 
 He it is who has surrounded me with them, whether to 
 stimulate my activity by their resistance and manifold 
 antagonisms, or to redouble it by their docile and powerful 
 co-operation. And if, finally, I myself am here as the 
 master-work of this creation, able to stand apart from it in 
 thought, to rend asunder, by adoration, this chequered veil 
 which surrounds me on all sides, and to penetrate to the 
 heart which beats for me in a sphere at once inexpressibly 
 exalted above me, and inexpressibly near to me ; if I can 
 greet with the title of Father, Him who counts the 140,000 
 hairs of my head as well as the myriads of stars which run 
 their course in the firmament —^ it is because He has 
 designed to make me in His own image, and to set within 
 me a ray of His own Spirit. 
 
 God has said ! In these words is, for my heart as well as 
 for my intellect, the true worth of everything, — of my own 
 existence. 
 
 2. The second principal feature in the Mosaic record is 
 the homage rendered to the great law of progress. It was 
 towards the end of the Middle Ages that men first began to 
 inquire into the meaning of those marine shells which they 
 discovered upon the high grounds of the earth. Men of 
 science started many different hypotheses on that subject. 
 Some said they were freaks of Nature {lusus iiaturcB) ; some 
 saw in them reflections of the stars ; some, vestiges of the 
 deluge ; others, imperfect efforts of the creative power. 
 The idea of a creation which, having preceded man, had 
 advanced by degrees from stage to stage, up to the crown 
 of the whole work, did not occur to any one. And yet, 
 there it was, laid up three thousand years back, in the 
 Mosaic record ! 
 
 And if this law of progress, already revealed by Moses, 
 
THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION. 6^ 
 
 reigned with sovereign power over all the developments of 
 that unconscious existence which we call Nature, how 
 should it not continue to control the progress, moral and 
 spiritual, of history' ? Why should not a new series of ''And 
 God said" succeed the series to which Moses listened in 
 his vision, and which was the spring and source of the work 
 of the Creation ? And if man does not actually perceive 
 this by his senses, do not facts bear clear testimony to this 
 succession of Divine commands ? It is true that the creative 
 Will has to deal in history with a new and often invincible 
 power, that of free-will — that precious spring which it will 
 not break, but win over and make use of. None the less- 
 surely is the end attained through long circuitous ways ; 
 and in this so different medium progress manifests itself as 
 well as in the midst of Nature. 
 
 3. The final term of this progress in Nature, according 
 to Moses, is man. Man, in fact, is not an individual one 
 amongst the terrestrial creatures ; he is the ver)' object and 
 aim of creation itself. Now, how should not a being so 
 magnificently privileged continue to be the object of the 
 solicitude and active care of the Creator ? How should 
 not this new series of " God said,'^ which originates the 
 ever-ascending movement of history, refer itself also to 
 him ? 
 
 And here a grand prospect opens before us. According 
 to the subsequent revelations recorded in Scripture, the 
 creative Word of which Moses speaks is not only a 
 spoke7i word but a speaking Word, who was pleased to 
 create for himself an organ of speech, just such as He 
 himself was to God. The universe is His drama, per- 
 formed for the glory of the Father ; and in this drama 
 man is the chief actor. He himself has intervened to 
 unite himself with man, to gain him over to His cause, 
 and make him a fellow-laborer in His Divine work. Man, 
 
(^ STUDIE-S OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 by uniting his will with that of this Word, and by making 
 his powers agents of the creative Will, becomes, instead of 
 a creature, himself a creator. He shows himself already 
 such, even here below, through the magic of the arts, but 
 that is but the prelude to the new labors to which the 
 Future will call him. And as the prophecy of Caiaphas 
 realized itself in the Son of man,* so will the word of the 
 tempter, with regard to mankind, become a reality: "Ye 
 shall be as gods." 
 
 God said : " Let there be light." And there was light. 
 
 God said : " Let us make man in our image." And man 
 was created. 
 
 God said : " Let eternal truth shine out in the person of 
 man." f And Jesus appeared. 
 
 God will say : " Behold, I make all things new." % And 
 God shall be all in all.§ 
 
 Such an end is the only one which could correspond to 
 such a beginning, as this beginning is alone worthy of such 
 an end. 
 
 * S. John xi. 50. } Rev. xxi. 5. 
 
 t 2 Cor. iv. 6. § 1 Cor. xv. 28. 
 
Note. — I am led in this work to this point of view : that the 
 narrative contained in the first chapter of Genesis is the enuncia- 
 tion of a divine revelation. It appears to me impossible to speak 
 thus of what one could not have seen or understood if he had not 
 the certainty of being in possession of supernatural instruction. 
 I am not ignorant that one may object to this manner of view, the 
 analogies between the contents of this chapter and the Chaldean 
 traditions contained in the cuneiform documents (compare the 
 Chaldean Genesis by George Smith). But to a more profound 
 study, the differences appear far more considerable than the resem- 
 blances. The Chaldean account is a thcogojiy. The subdivision 
 of the creative work into Seven periods is in harmony with the 
 institution of the Week, as this itself rests in its turn upon the 
 lunar phases. 
 
 Tradition in Genesis begins, it seems to me. only with what 
 is usually called the second narrative of the Creation (Gen. ii. 
 4-9). Up to this passage we have a pure revelation. 
 
 As the law of Moses given upon Sinai was granted to correct, 
 clarify, and define the natural law written in the natural conscience, 
 so the revelation given to Moses relating to the origin of the 
 universe has served to correct and decide the content of the ancient 
 traditions which preceded some primary revelation, it maj- be, 
 of natural reflection, and which had been brought from Chaldea 
 by Abraham and preserved even to the Exodus of Egypt in the 
 patriarchal families. 
 
 F. GODET. 
 
 Neuchatel, Jul)', 1882. 
 
68 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF LIFE. 
 
 LIFE . . . who understands it ? Who has seen it ? It 
 is like the goddess Isis, whose veil may never be 
 lifted by mortal hand. We take life as a fact ; we ascertain 
 its beginning, development, end ; but we cannot explain it. 
 In treating of Life we can make history, not theory. 
 
 But what a history is that of Life ! how unbounded is the 
 wealth of the manifestations of this principle which every- 
 where shows itself and everywhere conceals itself from 
 sight. To attempt to give an account of life, is it not to 
 pretend to gauge the Infinite ? All the elements — air, 
 water, earth, are saturated with life. Throw a plumb-line 
 into the ocean ; before it has reached a depth of 230 
 fathoms, it will have passed through eight different fauna. 
 Climb the heights of Java ; six times in a few hours will the 
 flora be changed as by magic before your eyes. Crumble 
 a piece of white chalk of a pound weight ; the dust in your 
 hand will contain the remains of 10,000,000 creatures. Place 
 a drop of stagnant water under your microscope ; you will 
 soon have discovered in it a population of infusoria of 
 which the number equals that of the human creatures who 
 move upon the earth. But if we confine ourselves to man, 
 what varied systems of life we find in this one creature ! 
 what a complication of activities of all kinds in the same 
 individual ; the life of the senses, the life of the intellect, 
 the life of the affections and desires, of the heart and of 
 the will ! Pass on from the individual to the family, to 
 
THE HISTORY OF LIFE. 69 
 
 society, — new flames issue from the central fire of life; 
 industrial and commercial life, the life of politics, of art, 
 of science, of morals, of religion ! How shall we discover 
 order in the manifestations of all these forms of life ? How 
 discern a plan amidst this infinite multiplicity ? How 
 measure what seems to set all measure at defiance ? 
 
 I see a way ; — it is to try to take as our standard the 
 being who is the most complete epitome of life as we know 
 it up to this time, in whom we behold the result of all 
 former developments, the centre of all its present, and the 
 probable starting-point of all its future manifestations — 
 man. 
 
 There is a saying of a Greek philosopher, " Man is the 
 measure of all things." Is not that the same as if he said : 
 If you wish to discover the secret of the development of 
 life, study man ; for life in general is only the expansion of 
 that which is to be found in germ, or in compendium, in 
 man. Let us, as an experiment, set out with this thought 
 of Protagoras. CEdipus found in man the solution of the 
 riddle of the sphinx ; let us endeavor to find in him the key 
 to the problem of life. Let us examine his internal con- 
 stitution, and see if from this preliminary study there will 
 not spring forth a ray of light to elucidate the process of 
 the development of life on the earth, in nature and in 
 history. 
 
 I. 
 
 What is man ? 
 
 According to the title of this essay, our course in the 
 study of this question is marked out for us by Nature. We 
 have to inquire, first, what man is, according to the Bible ; 
 secondly, what he is, according to our observations. Once 
 in possession of the results of this twofold inquiry, we shall 
 be able to enter upon the solution of the great question 
 
70 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 which we have proposed to ourselves. Perhaps we may 
 thus discover a thread to guide us through the infinite 
 labyrinth of life. 
 
 From the point of view of Holy Scripture, man is a com- 
 posite being, made up of two elements of opposite nature 
 and origin. He is, as to his body, formed out of the dust 
 of the earth ; but in this body there exists a breath of life 
 due to the inspiration of God himself. "God," says the 
 ancient book Genesis, "formed man of the dust of the 
 ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.'' * 
 The nature of the being which resulted from the combina- 
 tion of these two elements is described by the ex- 
 pression " a living soul ; " and thus, continues Genesis, 
 "man became a living soul" — words which were repro- 
 duced by S. Paul almost literally.f We see that this 
 expression " living soul " is not applied to the breath of 
 God considered in itself and as separate from the body, but 
 that it describes man in his entirety, as the result of the 
 union of the two contrasted elements. If Holy Scripture, 
 speaking of the soul, undeniably puts it in more direct 
 relation with the breath of God than with the body, it 
 is none the less true that it only gives the name Soul to the 
 first of these elements when looked at as the principle of 
 life, and as the animatijig principle of the body (afiifjia^ 
 dme). When that which was breathed into us is consid- 
 ered in itself and apart from the body, it takes the name 
 of spirit (rouach, piieumd). Thus it is said in Ecclesiastes : 
 " The dust shall return to the earth as it was, and the spirit 
 shall return unto God who gave it." And Jesus said, after 
 the resurrection, "a spirit (^pneiima) hath not flesh and 
 bones." % The spirit then, in the Bible, means the breath 
 
 * Gen. ii. 7. 
 
 t " The first man Adam was made a living soul." — i Cor, xv. 45. 
 
 X Eccles. xii. 7 ; S. Luke xxiv. 39. 
 
THE HISTORY OF LIFE. 7I 
 
 of God considered as independent of the body ; the soul is 
 the same breath, in so far as it gives life to the body. 
 
 By this we may understand how it comes to pass that 
 notwithstanding the essential duality of the nature of man, 
 the soul, in Scripture, is often distinguished from the spirit ; * 
 and even how it is that when S. Paul wishes to describe the 
 complete constitution of the human being, he places side by 
 side these three words — body, soul, and spirit : "And the 
 very God of peace sanctify you wholly : and I pray God 
 your whole spi?-if, soul, and body be preserved blameless unto 
 the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." f 
 
 This is what Scripture teaches us about the internal 
 organization of our being. What does observation teach us 
 on the same subject .'' What do I find in myself and in my 
 fellow-beings ? 
 
 First, something which is seen by others, that is, the body : 
 secondly, something which sees others, which even does 
 more than see them, — looks, and then reflects upon what 
 it has seen, something to which the bodily eye acts but as 
 a window through which it looks, while itself invisible, and 
 behind which it meditates, — the soul. Lastly, I find in 
 myself something of higher nature still, an instrument by 
 the help of which my being, penetrating beyond the veil of 
 all that either sees or can be seen, can put itself into direct 
 contact with the infinite Author of so many marvels. — 
 the organ of adoration which is in me, the sense of the 
 Divine, the spirit. % 
 
 As has been said by a Christian philosopher : " Through 
 my body I am put into relation with nature below me ; 
 
 * Thus, Heb. iv. 12 : " The word of God is . . . sharper than any Uvo-edged 
 sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints 
 and marrow." 
 
 t I Thess. V. 23. 
 
 X " God whom I serve with my spirit in the Gospel of His Son." — Rom. 
 i. 9. 
 
72 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 through my soul with men, my equals, around me ; through 
 the spirit, with God above me." * Body, soul, and spirit, 
 
 — three systems of life, and nevertheless but one person, 
 
 — this is man. The ego may be compared to a charioteer, 
 having three horses abreast to drive ; not, however, that 
 he is equally related to the three elements of which our 
 complex nature is made up. During this terrestrial exist- 
 ence, which is the only one known to us by actual experi- 
 ence, it is to the soul that the feeling of personal identity 
 seems to attach itself in man. It is in it that the ego dwells ; 
 consequently it is it that occupies the central position in the 
 life of man. The two other elements seem to be its organs, 
 intended to connect it with two worlds, one above, the other 
 below it. By means of the body, the soul holds commu- 
 nion with material and terrestrial nature ; through the spirit 
 it comes into contact with the higher and divine world. At 
 the same time that it receives the influences of these two 
 spheres, of the one through the channel of the sensations, of 
 the other through that of inspirations, it re-acts freely upon 
 them ; on the former by means of physical labor, on the 
 latter through the no less energetic and efficacious labor of 
 prayer. The passage which we have quoted from Ecclesi- 
 astes is not applicable only to the last moment of human 
 life. The body of man is at every instant in process of 
 returning to the earth from which it was taken, to seek in 
 it the nourishment of its forces and the materials of its 
 activity ; and equally at every instant the spirit returns to 
 God who gave it, in order to unite itself to Him by deep 
 inward aspirations, to which Divine communications are 
 the response. Hovering between these two worlds, by the 
 help of these two organs, through which it stands related 
 to them, the human soul is evidently so constituted as to 
 establish between them a system of exchanges, and thus to 
 
 * M. de Roiisremont. 
 
THE HISTORY OF LIFE. 73 
 
 labor at the realization of heaven upon earth, or (which 
 comes to the same thing) at the transformation of earth into 
 heaven. 
 
 ' Observation and Holy Scripture agree then in this, — 
 that they teach us to see in man a spirit united to a body, 
 and which has become, by means of this union, a soul which 
 is the centre of three kinds of life ; that of a person, free 
 and intelligent, the life of the soul, ox psychical life ; that of 
 the sensations and of the organic activities, ox physical life ; 
 and that of the aspirations and of heavenly communion, or 
 spiritual life. 
 
 From the moment of his birth man possesses the prin- 
 ciple, or at least, the potentiality of these three kinds of 
 life. But they only make their appearance in him success- 
 ively. First, the bodily life, the eating, drinking, and sleep- 
 ing of little children. Then, after some weeks of this 
 existence, which, looked at superficially, might appear 
 purely animal, there shines forth one day on the face of the 
 infant that first smile of heavenly sweetness, which 
 reveals to the mother, as she leans over him, the soul which 
 has bv deo^rees been awakened bv contact with her own. 
 From the beginning that soul was there, but latent ; it has 
 only just begun to enter upon active existence, and all the 
 richness of its future development is wrapped up in this 
 first manifestation of its presence. At last, after an inter- 
 val it may be of many years, when already the lamp of 
 intelligence has been lit and has been casting bright beams 
 — when the spring of the will has set itself in action with 
 an energy which increases day by day, — one evening? 
 after a day of happiness, or an hour of awakened affection 
 on his mother's knees at the moment of resigning himself 
 to sleep, the child feels his heart opening to a love richer 
 and purer than that with which he embraces all beings known 
 to him, even his parents themselves. Above the father 
 
74 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 who has but just pressed him to his heart, and the mother 
 who is even then giving him her last kiss, his eyes seek 
 the Father of his father, the unseen Friend of his mother. 
 And, closing his eyes, he murmurs, " I thank Thee, my 
 God ! " It is the spiritual life which has just been awakened. 
 The organ of the Divine, which belongs to the essence of 
 the sou], has found its object. If, in the future, its action 
 is not restrained, and the spirit so grows in strength as to 
 control the life of the soul which has already begun ; if the 
 soul, in its turn, succeeds in taking the government over 
 the bodily life which is still further developed, the true 
 hierarchy will then have established itself, and Divine order 
 reign in the life of man. 
 
 This spectacle has been seen but once on earth, in the 
 life of that Child of whom it was said, " And the Child 
 grew and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom ; and 
 the grace of God was upon Him.'"*^ He increased in 
 stature ; that refers to the bodv. He was filled with wis- 
 dom, — the knowledge of, and the will to do, right, — that 
 is the soul. He was open to all the influences of Divine 
 grace ; there was the spirit. In this normal subordination 
 of the body to the soul, and of the soul to the spirit, 
 consists the harmony, the strength, the health, the well- 
 being, the plenitude, the perfection, the verity of human 
 existence. 
 
 The life of each of these three elements has its peculiar 
 characteristics, by which it can be easily distinguished from 
 the two others. The body is ; it is born, grows, decays, 
 without the will having any share, properly speaking, in this 
 progress. Physical life does not control its own actions ; 
 it pours itself forth without being its own master. It is 
 a capital which awaits its proprietor. 
 
 This expected proprietor is the soul. The distinctive 
 
 * S. Luke ii. 40. 
 
THE HISTORY OF LIFE. 75 
 
 characteristic of the soul, as compared with the body, is its 
 consciousness, and its self-government by means of the 
 intelligence and the free-will with which it is endowed. 
 However much the soul may be solicited by sensual 
 instincts and blind appetites, it is not governed by these 
 lower principles, except so far as it is its will to give way 
 to them. It can, when it chooses, resist and conquer them 
 in the name of a higher law. We cannot say of the soul 
 simply that it is, but that it is what it wills to be ; it be- 
 comes that which it decides for itself to become. But if it 
 is thus its own master, this privilege is not granted to it in 
 order that it may alienate its own rights by self-indulgence 
 and weakness, nor yet that it may keep itself to itself in the 
 narrowness and stiffness of egotism, but that it may give 
 itself up by the free and deliberate impulse of Love. Now 
 this, its highest act, can only be accomplished by the help 
 of the spirit. 
 
 Just as self-government is the characteristic of the soul's 
 life, so is self-surrender that of the life of the spirit. 
 Under the dominion of the Holy Spirit, of that breath from 
 on high which comes to unite itself to the spirit in man, 
 and which secures him the mastery over the soul, and 
 through the soul over the body, there comes a time when 
 we cr)/' : " O God, Thou hast made me free. I can either 
 live to myself, or give myself up to some base master. I 
 will do neither the one nor the other. I offer myself to 
 Thee who art better than myself, who excellest all things. 
 Accept henceforth of my free-will as an instrument of Thine. 
 A sacred fire of love makes me Thy servant, and, for Thy 
 sake, the servant of all my brethren." From this mo- 
 ment spiritual life not only exists, but reigns supreme, in 
 man. 
 
 Existence, liberty, holy love, these are the character- 
 istics of the three kinds of life which are ours either 
 
y6 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 actually or potentially, and whose growth and development 
 make up the whole sum of the life of man. 
 
 Having said this, is it possible to conceive of anything 
 higher.? Apparently not. Above simple existence there 
 is free existence ; above freedom, there is the life which, 
 having reached the entire disposal of itself, sacrifices itself 
 for love. Above this third form of existence we can 
 Conceive nothing, — we dare to say there is nothing, for 
 God is Love. 
 
 Through the possession of these three kinds of life, of 
 which the first is in contact with the lowest steps in the 
 scale of being, the last is an emanation from the Divine 
 essence, and the second forms the link between the two 
 others, must not man be the summary and compendium of 
 life in the universe ? And, while discovering in ourselves 
 these three fonns of life, have we not, without suspecting 
 it, hit upon the secret of the development of life on this 
 our planet ? 
 
 11. 
 
 I. Just as in man physical life is the starting-point, and 
 constitutes the medium in which the awakening of the 
 faculties of the soul takes place, so on our earth an 
 immense and luxuriant development of organic life, vegetal 
 and animal, preceded the appearance of the human soul, 
 and prepared for the advent of the moral life. 
 
 Organic life has not existed from eternity on our planet. 
 Geology determines for us in some measure the date of its 
 beginning. Above certain ancient strata, which contain 
 absolutely no vestige either of vegetable or animal life, we 
 come suddenly, in certain rocks which crop out in different 
 parts of the globe, upon the first remains of organized 
 
THE HISTORY OF LIFE. 7/ 
 
 beings ; these are algae or crustaceans, and among the 
 latter there is a kind bearing some resemblance to our 
 modern wood-louse. As has been observed, the inaugura- 
 tion of life upon this world's stage took place in the most 
 modest manner. To these first efforts of organized life 
 succeeded the grand development of vegetal life, of which 
 the carboniferous strata have preserved the remains ; rich 
 stores which, after so many millions of centuries, still supply- 
 materials to our industry. During this period, in which 
 vegetal organization so preponderated, animal life was 
 slowly carr)'ing on its upward movement. But it remained 
 in the second rank ; its true time had not yet arrived. It 
 was only after the disappearance of this great vegetal 
 creation that animal life developed itself, in its turn, with 
 a marvellous power. This it did ni two successive creations. 
 The most ancient is that of which the strata of the Jurassic 
 epoch contain the remains. The principal inhabitants of 
 the globe in this age were amphibious monsters, such as 
 the plesiosaurus, the ichthyosaurus, the megalosaurus ; then 
 appeared other kinds no less strange, such as the ptero- 
 dactyl. To this first great creation, which may be called 
 the age of the saurian dynasties, soon succeeded another, 
 of a character altogether different, of which the most 
 distinctive representatives are the gigantic mammals of the 
 tertiary period, such as the mammoths and the mastodons, 
 those colossal creatures, of whom the last survivors seem 
 to have been contemporaneous with the first men. 
 
 During these thousands of thousands of centuries occupied 
 by the development of all life anterior to man, what do we 
 find on our globe ? Nothing, answers Science, but the 
 unconscious growth of the plant, the blind appetites of the 
 animal, and the unbridled reign of sensual life ; nothing 
 but physical birth, life, and death. Not one creature 
 conscious of the object of its existence, or in any degree 
 
78 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 responsible for its actions. The world is still closed to 
 moral life. 
 
 Nevertheless, we must not suppose that no law presided 
 over the apparent irregularities of this gigantic work. A 
 progress may be discerned in the succession of these 
 animal forms. They approximate, step by step, to those 
 of the present age, and especially to the human type, which 
 is the ideal, ruling as it were, though invisibly, all this 
 mysterious evolution. This long poem of the creation 
 which modern science reconstructs verse by verse, canto 
 upon canto, obeys one single idea, — that of aspiration after 
 man. Not one of these formations, not one of these strange 
 creatures, but makes a step in advance towards this goal 
 aimed at from the very beginning. Just that which in our 
 individual life is the time passed in the womb, that process 
 of formation during which, first as a molluscous, then an 
 amphibious, then a vertebrate creature, our physical being 
 works out for itself the final organization with which it is 
 to see the light of life, such in the great work of nature 
 has been that succession of animal forms, through which 
 physical life has reached, by a long circuitous course, from 
 its starting-point, the first bivalve, to its goal — man. 
 
 2. But just as in the human creature there suddenly 
 appears, in the midst of the functions of instinctive and 
 bodily life, as it were a ray issuing from a higher sphere, 
 the first indication of the presence of the intelligent and 
 free soul ; so on our planet, after the long-continued labor 
 of vegetal and animal life, the being at last makes his 
 appearance, who coming from another sphere, is to 
 develop, in the midst of nature, a life independent of 
 nature. 
 
 Man is the true Janus, the god looking two ways. On one 
 side, he is closely connected with nature by his body. He 
 is its compendium ; for, as we have just noticed, in his 
 
THE HISTORY OF LIFE. 79 
 
 embryonic state he passes through all its phases. He is 
 its goal; for we cannot find any new creation in the vegetal 
 or animal world subsequent to the appearance of man. 
 Finally, he is its C7'own ; for he is its chef-d'oeuvre. There 
 are, no doubt, animals stronger than man, or in which 
 some particular organ is brought to greater perfection than 
 the corresponding organ in man. But in no animal are all 
 the senses taken together so harmoniously developed, and 
 all the proportions of the organism so admirably adjusted 
 and combined as in him. We feel that the object of past 
 efforts has now been reached to such a degree, that all the 
 progress of animal life hitherto, seems to have had for its 
 highest end the elaboration of this human body, which it 
 was Nature's mission to offer, as a perfect servant, to the 
 free and conscious soul, its future sovereio-n. 
 
 At the same time that man in the phenomenon of 
 his body closes the whole preceding work of creation, 
 he inaugurates, by the higher life with which he is endowed, 
 a new chapter. With the appearance of man upon the 
 stage of the world. Nature reaches her resting-point, and 
 History begins. The violent crises which had preceded 
 his arrival cease by degrees. The presence of this creature 
 of a higher world seems to have the effect of bringing peace 
 into the theatre in which he is called to play his part. 
 Some partial convulsions, such as earthquakes, volcanic 
 eruptions, and a crisis of a unique nature, the deluge, 
 alone recall the revolutions through which life had up 
 to this time made its way. In the midst of a Nature, the 
 forces of which are henceforth under discipline, man begins 
 his proper work. He contemplates the world ; he feels him- 
 self distinct from it; he asserts his claims as the heir 
 of this beautiful domain, and endeavors to take possession 
 of it by the twofold labor of knowledge and action; 
 he "dresses the garden," according to the Scriptural 
 
80 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 expression ; he distinguishes between different objects, 
 and exercises his powers in giving them names ; he sets 
 before himself aims, and finds means for their attainment ; 
 he modifies things in conformity with his wishes and 
 his needs ; he develops the inexhaustible resources of his 
 intelligence and his will, — those twin-sisters, the loyal 
 agents of all our activity. At the same time his feelings 
 awake ; his heart opens to the sweet affections of family 
 life, and to the pure enjoyments of nature. It is the drama 
 of the soul's life which is now beginning. What will be its 
 end ? Nature was ever aspiring after man, the free being ; 
 man aspires after a perfect existence, after God. In 
 intelligence he possesses an instrument capable of appro- 
 priating the secrets of universal knowledge ; in his free- 
 will, the power of being holy as God is holy, and of 
 becoming, by that means, the agent of His omnipotent 
 will. But this aim, so far above him, is still for him lost in 
 the dim distance. In order to reach it, it is necessary that 
 man should surrender himself ; and in order to surrender 
 himself, he must be his own master, and, first of all, he 
 must conquer himself. But what is the enemy he has 
 to conquer? The common notion is, that the obstacle 
 in the way of our self-government is the authorit}' of a mas- 
 ter who imposes his laws upon us ; and that is why 
 man makes efforts to get rid of, or at all events to draw his 
 attention away from, the thought of God. This is the 
 deepest of delusions. The danger which threatens our 
 liberty is much more truly the power of our lower nature, 
 of our sensual appetites, of our instinctive tastes. Here is 
 the true enemy of our liberty, which we must overcome for 
 ourselves by a series of victories^ of which each one is 
 an act of self-denial. Let the natural inclination cause the 
 spring of the will to give way for a moment under its 
 pressure, and there is an end of liberty ; man is no longer 
 
THE HISTORY OF LIFE. 8l 
 
 his own master, he becomes, Hke an animal, the slave 
 of nature. There remains but this alternative, to be 
 assimilated either to the gentle sheep, if his instincts are 
 benevolent, or to the voracious saurian, if they are crueL 
 Created free, potentially, we ought to became so actually^ 
 by repeated victories of conscious will over blind instinct. 
 In order to win this victory, our will needs a support, 
 which it can only find in a law superior to that of the 
 appetites — in the sense of duty. A state of conflict 
 between what is right and what is agreeable is then 
 the situation, at once dangerous and glorious, in which man 
 must be placed if he is to become in fact what he is 
 by destination — a being morally free. Without this 
 actual conflict between moral obligation and nature, man 
 would, without even suspecting tlie injury he was doing 
 himself, give way innocently to his natural inclinations, and 
 his liberty would be forever confiscated. If there is to be 
 an education of the human race, one of the first acts of the 
 Divine Educator will be, to provoke a struggle between 
 duty and pleasure, between conscious will and blind 
 instinct. This is the meaning of that primeval trial to 
 which man was subjected. The Divine command, "Thou 
 shalt not eat," was a protecting fence erected by a Father's 
 hand to keep off instinct, and withstand its invasions. It 
 was the safeguard of our free-will. What a crisis was here ! 
 If the conscious will, supported by the sense of duty, 
 triumphed over natural inclination, then, set free thereby 
 from the dominion of instinct, it would see opening before 
 it a career of new conflicts and more glorious victories. 
 But if, on the contrary, inclination triumphed, man's 
 will was reduced to slaver}' ; and deprived, by this sub- 
 jection, of the free disposal of himself, he would, under the 
 dominion of the flesh, fall lower and lower. This crisis 
 was then at once inevitable and decisive. It was for man, 
 
82 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 whatever might happen, the transition from a merely natural 
 life to historic development. 
 
 If the Bible record, which alone has preserved for us the 
 memory of the first temptation, had not told us what have 
 been its consequences, the grievous experience which ever}' 
 man undergoes of the condition of moral slavery into which 
 we are plunged, would bring us to the knowledge of it. 
 Which of us has not many a time made an effort to shake 
 off the chains of egotism and self-love in which his free- 
 will is bound, with no other effect than to make him more 
 clearly realize their weight ? Which of us has not often 
 heard the confession of S. Paul, " I am carnal, sold under 
 sin ; . . . the good that I would I do not, but the evil which 
 I would not, that I do," breaking forth from the depths of 
 his broken heart ? Who has not uttered the sigh with which 
 this lamentable description of the Apostle's Ijfe, before he 
 was made free, concludes: "O wretched man that I am ! 
 who shall deliver me from the body of this death ? " * This 
 universal experience indicates clearly what was the result 
 of that great ordeal with which the drama of human history 
 •opened : inclination triumphed over duty, and the will of man 
 became its slave. 
 
 Humanity having thus fallen at the beginning of its course, 
 and missed its proper destination, God might have extin- 
 guished it. But that would have been to retreat in presence 
 of the enemy. God is raised too high above sin to fear 
 entering into conflict with it. He has opened to man in 
 his fallen state, as He would have done to man victorious, 
 a pathway of development for his various faculties. He has 
 Himself called into action the powers of the human soul in 
 all directions. Man was to learn to know himself, and to 
 dispose of himself, in the vitiated atmosphere of sin, just as 
 he would have had to do in the pure atmosphere of virtue. 
 
 * Rom. vii. 14, 19, 24. 
 
THE HISTORY OF LIFE. 83 
 
 For his intelligence, though obscured, was nevertheless not 
 annihilated ; and his liberty, though fettered, was not entirely 
 lost. The noble calling of primitive man has remained in 
 this respect that of fallen man also. Humanity seeking 
 itself : this would have been, without the fall, and this has 
 been, notwithstanding the fall, the inner meaning of human 
 history since the time of Adam. The cynic philosopher 
 looking for man in broad daylight with his lantern, is but 
 the grotesque symbol of this sublime reality. 
 
 In Ancient Histor>' men often see nothing, and point out 
 nothing, but a succession of monarchies mutually overturn- 
 ing one another ; nothing but a series of bloody wars, leav- 
 ing behind them cities in ruin and nations crushed or 
 carried into captivity. Behind these mighty convulsions of 
 the ancient world, men do not discern the real history, — 
 that of humanity laboring at the work of laying hold of, and 
 understanding itself, and travailing in birth of man, — the 
 true man. As in the epochs anterior to man, behind the 
 gigantic ferns, the voracious amphibians, and the monstrous 
 quadrupeds, we recognize fundamentally one thing only ; 
 nature working its way up to man ; so in the colossal mon- 
 archies which one after another, in the ages before Christ, 
 filled the stage of history, — in the Assyrian-Babylonish 
 world with its crushing military power, — in the Medo-Per- 
 sian kingdom with its strong administrative organization, 
 — in the Greek race with its incomparable artistic and 
 scientific genius, — in the Roman empire with its powerful 
 political centralization, — the true historian recognizes one 
 thing : humanity striving after the full development of its 
 manifold faculties, the complete mastery of itself and of 
 the world, man laboring to get full possession of himself, 
 in prospect of a destiny which he does not yet clearly com- 
 prehend, that of voluntary self-surrender. 
 
 Certainly it cannot be said that four thousand years w^as 
 
84 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 too long for such a work. The human soul is a deep well ; 
 to sound its depths requires time. Reading Plato or Soph- 
 ocles shows us how energetically the consciousness of man 
 gave itself to this task ; and when one thinks it well over, 
 even setting aside the great confusion and entanglements 
 brought in by sin, we shall not be astonished at this space 
 of forty centuries granted to psychical mankind for learning 
 to understand, and to gain the mastery over itself. But sin 
 made this long period of preparation still more necessary. 
 It was important that fallen man should undergo completely 
 the humiliating experience of his condition of moral misery, 
 and that he should learn in this severe school to recognize 
 a twofold inability which he finds in himself : namely, first, 
 to transform in his own strength and without a fresh gift 
 from God, his psychical into spiritual life, even when the 
 former is pure ; secondly, to restore his natural life to its 
 original purity, when once it had been vitiated by sin. 
 
 But, just as in the young man who exerts in all directions 
 the forces of his natural life, there is to be found in the 
 deepest parts of his being a spiritual sense which aspires 
 after a higher existence, an organ of his nature intended 
 for intercourse with God ; so amongst mankind in the 
 ancient world there was one nation which, while all the rest 
 were exerting the faculties of their souls and giving them- 
 selves assidously to the cultivation of the earth, received 
 the higher mission of developing the spiritual aspirations 
 which raise man above himself and the world. While the 
 great nations of the East are giving themselves to the cruel 
 pleasure of conquest^ while the Phoenicians, governed by 
 the sense of the useful, cultivate industry and commerce, 
 while the Greeks are seeking to realize in their artistic and 
 literary masterpieces the ideal of the beautiful and the true^ 
 while, finally, the Romans, following the guidance of their 
 natural gift of practical wisdom, formulate wisely for cen- 
 
THE HISTORY OF LIFE. 85 
 
 turies to come the idea of right, one nation is distinguished 
 from all this psychical humanity by a religious tendency, 
 which makes it as it were a stranger in the earth. Its chief 
 concern is neither conquest nor industry, neither science 
 nor the arts, no, nor even righteousness, in the purely 
 human sense of that word. That which occupies its life is 
 worship ; it is God's claim upon man ; it is the coming 
 order of things, in which this claim of God shall be realized 
 in the Earth ; it is Jehovah who is, and who is coming ; it 
 is His kingdom, holy and glorious, and His awful judgment. 
 The wise men of this nation are prophets, its artists are 
 psalmists, its heroes labor as agents of the Most High. 
 Raised up from time to time to re-awaken in the heart of 
 the nation that Heaven-sent longing which is the central 
 force of its life, but which without their help would soon die 
 away within it, these divine messengers are for Israel just 
 what Israel himself is commissioned to be for the rest of 
 mankind, — the embodiment, in the midst of the psychical 
 life of the ancient world, of the religious faculty inherent 
 in the human soul ; of the spij-it in man longing to fill itself 
 with the spirit of God. So that while God " suffered all 
 other nations to walk in their own wavs," *' to make them 
 learn by experience their own inability to reach the absolute 
 Good, He places Israel under the yoke of an education at 
 once gentle and strong, in order to preserve it from complete 
 subjection to the flesh. While prophecy is for this nation 
 like the spur which makes the spirited war-horse spring for- 
 w^ard, the law is as the bridle which teaches him to restrain 
 his impetuous movements in view of the circumstances of 
 the present. Heathen nations have, it is true, something 
 analogous to this. Conscience is with them " a law written 
 in their heart," t and from the midst of them, as well as 
 from the heart of creation in general, there springs a sigh 
 
 * Acts xiv. 16. t Rom. ii. 15. 
 
S6 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 after that state of perfect liberty, for which man feels him- 
 self to have been made. But outside of Israel these are 
 but spontaneous and ineffectual reactions of the moral 
 nature of man ; whilst the corresponding forces in Israel, 
 the Law and Prophecy, are the results of a Divine educa- 
 tion, actual and reaching its object. It is the same differ- 
 ence as that between an invalid under medical treatment, 
 and one uncared for. Israel is the organ which God him- 
 self trained for the exercise of the spiritual sense in ancient 
 humanity ; this constitutes the direct preparation for the 
 future advent of the spiritual life ; while the heathen, left 
 to themselves, are but a negative and indirect preparation 
 for it. 
 
 Let us suppose man to have been without sin ; then the 
 result of these four thousand years of preparation would 
 have been a humanity so completely understanding and 
 mastering itself as to be able to surrender itself, and to 
 cast at the feet of its God the crown of a liberty which has 
 been acquired by holiness ; and God would have immedi- 
 ately responded to this homage by the gift of His Spirit. 
 Sin has not absolutely defeated this result, but it has 
 profoundly altered the form under which it has been 
 reached. Through a long experience of its sinfulness, 
 humanity has understood its own inability to realize for 
 itself its own intended destiny ; namely, to find God, and 
 unite itself to Him. But it has none the less sighed, in 
 the persons of its noblest representatives, for this glorious 
 consummation. It has implored, as it were upon its knees, 
 that Divine help of which it so profoundly felt its need. It 
 cried by the mouth of Isaiah : " O that Thou wouldst 
 rend the heavens and come down." * The Spirit did not 
 present himself to its imagination as a bridegroom imposed 
 upon it by force, but as its betrothed, worthy of deepest 
 
 * Isa. Ixiv. I. 
 
THE HISTORY OF LIFE. S^ 
 
 love. And at the critical moment it found expression in 
 those sublime words, in which the young Jewish heroine, 
 as its representative, answered the Divine call : " Behold 
 the handmaid of the Lord ; be it unto me according to 
 Thy word." *' 
 
 3. This intense longing, and this courageous self-sur- 
 render, fruit of the long-sustained working of God's Spirit 
 upon Israel, were the seeds of the coming era — of the third 
 phase in the history of life. The new fact which then 
 made its appearance — the existence of the Church, indi- 
 cated the advent of a new period, that of the life of the 
 Spirit, on our earth. 
 
 St. Paul has called Jesus Christ the .econd Adam, and 
 the /^i-/ Adam.f There is a great wealth of thought for the 
 heart and mind of the believer in these two epithets. As 
 the first Adam had constituted the close here below of the 
 development of physical life and the opening of that of the 
 life of the soul, so Jesus Christ closes the development of 
 psychical life, and inaugurates the advent of the life of the 
 Spirit. Adam was a living soul, cast by God into the 
 midst of the convulsions of nature, to bring into the 
 physical creation, order, harmony, and peace. Jesus Christ 
 the life-giving Spirit, comes from heaven to calm the 
 tempests of the human soul. He brings order and harmony 
 into the exercise of our faculties, and in our individual hfe, 
 domestic and social, He makes the serenity of Divine 
 order reign. 
 
 This second Adam is also the last Adam. There is, 
 after Him nothing higher to look for , " That eternal life 
 which was with the Father, was manifested unto us," % says 
 St. John. Jesus is the Divine life realized in man, and 
 offering itself, in an accessible and tangible form, to be 
 participated in by all that is called man ; " the Word was 
 * S. Luke i. 38 t i Cor. xv. 45, 47. X i John L 2. 
 
88 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 m3.de flesh.^^ * To drink of this fountain is to partake of 
 the Divine Life in the measure in which it is accessible to 
 the creature. 
 
 How did this supreme Life make its appearance ? How 
 did it develop itself in a man ? How did it communicate 
 itself to mankind ? 
 
 It was under the most modest forms, as we have seen, 
 that physical life first made its appearance upon our planet. 
 It was also under circumstances of the deepest humility 
 that the advent of the life of the Spirit took place, in the 
 person of Jesus Christ. A manger received the little Child 
 in whom that treasure was virtually contained ; a carpen- 
 ter's shop was the witness of the labors of the growing Boy ; 
 by Baptism, the symbol of impurity and death. He passed 
 from youth into the stage of manhood, and that was also 
 the means through which He entered upon the higher 
 sphere which it was His mission to open to all others ; an 
 upper room, its doors shut for fear, was the centre whence 
 the new life streamed, and whence it has been propagated 
 since the day of Pentecost through generations and 
 centuries. 
 
 This new life only grew by degrees even in Him who 
 was the first depositary of it, and who is forever its eternal 
 principle. Assuredly He was master of himself at the 
 moment when, by His incarnation, He gave us His Divine 
 person as a gift. This act of self-devotion, the type and 
 source of all Christian self-devotion, was that of a free 
 being. But, once a man, He was, like all other men, 
 subject to the law of moral progress ; and in order to gain 
 self-mastery, even He had to begin by conquering himself. 
 This was his work during the thirty years He spent in the 
 obscurity of Nazareth. He was searching into His own 
 nature, and foreseeing what He should be. In the Holy 
 
 * S. John i. 14 
 
THE HISTORY OF LIFE. 89 
 
 Scriptures He saw prefigured His person and His work ; 
 in them He traced the outlines of a mission which He per- 
 ceived to be His own. It was as a sealed letter, an 
 instruction drawn up beforehand by His Father, which was 
 not to be opened till He was in open sea, in the midst of 
 the struggles and storms of His earthly existence. From 
 the part of His life which is known to us, it is easy to 
 argue that the parts which are unknown were not free from 
 painful trials. The prayer which ever accompanied the 
 tears He shed for the sins of those around Him, was one 
 of the principal commentaries which made Him by degrees 
 understand those sacred books which were so full of Him. 
 Thus did He reach the time of His moral maturity. 
 During these first thirty years He had, as it were, recap- 
 itulated in himself all the labor of human kind in the 
 preceding ages. The moment when this work of prepara- 
 tion was completed was that in which the voice of John the 
 Baptist called upon all the people to purify themselves by 
 baptism, in order to prepare for the near approach of the 
 kingdom of God. Jesus, by participating in this sacred rite 
 with His people, brought into it what He had acquired, 
 or rather what He had in his own person become, through 
 His whole preceding development ; the psychical man 
 complete, the pure and living temple for which the Holy 
 Spirit was looking, that He might therein descend into 
 humanity. If Jesus was in himself the sum and crown of 
 the whole preceding life of humanity, considered morally 
 and intellectually, more especially was He the expression of 
 the Jewish conscience, of that exquisite moral sense which 
 was the fruit of the discipline of the Law, and of the ardent 
 aspirations kindled in men by the word of prophecy. And 
 when, at the moment when Jesus descended into the 
 Jordan to receive, himself, in His own way. His consecra- 
 tion to the kingdom of God, and the depths of His heart 
 
90 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 opened, and His prayer went up to heaven, heaven made 
 answer ; the Spirit of God descended without measure upon 
 this unique Being, whose mission it was to communicate 
 Him to mankind. That is a beautiful thought which 
 is put by one of the apocr}'phal Gospels into the mouth of 
 the Holy Spirit at this moment : " My Son, in all the 
 prophets I have been looking for Thy coming, that in Thee 
 I might find My rest ; for Thou art My rest. Thou art My 
 first-born Son who reignest for evermore."* Immediately, 
 under the impulse of the Spirit, with Whom His own will 
 had just identified itself, Jesus made himself an offering, 
 first to God, by His victory over the temptation in the 
 wilderness ; then to Israel, by His earthly ministry ; lastly, 
 to the world, by His expiatory sacrifice ; realizing thus the 
 most generous and the most complete act of self-surrender 
 ever accomplished by human being, or that can possibly be 
 conceived. Absolute self-devotion to that which is greatest, 
 — God; and at the same time to that which is meanest and 
 most abject, — the worst of sinners ; such is human life as 
 we behold it in Jesus, and as by a Divine act He has been 
 able to make it in His own person. And this is indeed 
 that spiritual life of which by nature the human soul 
 possesses the capacity, the feeling, the presentiment, and 
 instinct, but which it never succeeds in realizing, except by 
 that wedded union with the Holy Spirit which first 
 consummated itself in the Christ. 
 
 After having realized this, the highest form of life, 
 Jesus re-ascended into His glory, not to abandon humanity 
 to itself, and leave it nothing but the sweetest and purest 
 of memories, but to labor at raising it to Himself, by 
 pouring upon it, from out of His own glorified existence, 
 that perfect life which He has himself realized here" 
 
 * Gospel of the Nazarenes, quoted by Jerome. 
 
THE HISTORY OF LIFE. QI 
 
 below * The scene of the effusion of this spiritual life is 
 the Church, which is therefore called the Body of Christ.'^ 
 The atonement completed by Christ gives to all a right to 
 the Divine forgiveness ; and the forgiveness thus obtained 
 gives to each a new claim, the claim to the possession 
 of the Spirit. Since the day of Pentecost, Jesus has 
 never ceased granting this highest favor to every one who 
 can press his claim upon Him. After having expended 
 upon us His earthly lifetime in the course of His ministry, 
 shed for us His blood in His death, He by His Spirit 
 makes us sharers in His own glorified and living person- 
 ality. The Holy Communion is the visible expression of 
 this supreme gift. But the possession of the Spirit is 
 so profoundly one with our own personal life, and presup- 
 poses so complete a surrender of our whole being, that it 
 must imply an absolutely free act of our will. Accordingly, 
 God, who did not ask our consent when He was pleased 
 to bestow upon us the life of our body and that of our 
 soul, because these gifts were as yet only the vocation to the 
 higher gift, acts with more reserve when about to bestow 
 this last benefit. He limits himself to offering it to us 
 when the favorable moment has arrived ; that is the object 
 of the preaching of the Gospel, through the instrumentality 
 of the Church and of the ministry which she nurtures in her 
 bosom. If there be a Church constituted objectively, it is 
 in order that the Spirit should be offered to all, while yet 
 not forced upon any one. Each of us has received the 
 gift of earthly life solely with a view to this higher destina- 
 tion—to receive through the Spirit the only life worthy of 
 the name. If our souls are free and intelligent, it is that 
 they may become voluntarily the abodes and agents of the 
 
 * S. John xvii. 2 : V As Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He 
 should give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him," 
 t Eph. i. 23. 
 
92 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 Holy Spirit, and, through Him, of Jesus Christ glorified. 
 If there be in us a man, it is in order that that man may- 
 manifest himself in the likeness of the Man-God.* To 
 thrust away from us this life of thd* Heavenly Christ, 
 in order to keep our own psychical life, amounts to this, — 
 that when the doors of a palace are opening before us, we 
 choose to shut ourselves up in a prison. Or rather, it is an 
 act of suicide of the most senseless and cruel kind. 
 To surrender ourselves to the Spirit is to find ourselves ; 
 but in His presence to keep ourselves for ourselves is to be 
 lost. Jesus said this in those words often repeated by Him, 
 which express the ultimate law of every life which is truly 
 human: " Whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and 
 whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it.f 
 
 4. During innumerable centuries, physical life had been 
 freely displaying itself in Nature. In Adam was formed a 
 bridge between this first form of existence and one 
 more excellent, that of the free soul. During forty cen- 
 turies did this latter form carry on its evolution in mankind 
 of old. Then at last came Jesus Christ, who effected the 
 transition from the life of the soul to one more perfect 
 still — that of the Divine Spirit in the human soul. For 
 two thousand years, the flame of this spiritual life has 
 been burning in the Church, propagating itself in every 
 direction, wherever it finds in mankind the material 
 needed for its support. Have we reached the end ? Is 
 possibility exhausted ? It would seem so ; for no higher 
 form of life than that which Jesus realized in himself, and 
 which He communicates to us from heaven, is conceivable. 
 And yet, if it were so, the cycle would not be closed. No 
 
 * Rom. viii. 29 : " Conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be 
 the first-born among many brethren." V. 17 : " Heirs of God, and joint heirs 
 with Christ." 
 
 t S. Matt. xvi. 25. 
 
THE HISTORY OF LIFE. 93 
 
 development whatsoever is completed until, having reached 
 its closing stage, it takes up once more its beginning, 
 in order to lift it to the same height. There is a profound 
 saying, " The future is but a return to the past." * Arrived 
 at the summit of spiritual life, it is with no look of disdain 
 that man turns back to contemplate the lower stages of 
 existence through which he has ascended. Even the mere 
 physical life with which he began, inspires him with no 
 feeling of shame. Does not that also bear the impress of 
 a Divine wisdom ? Contempt for the body is no sign of a 
 true and healthy spirituality. Jesus, set free from His 
 body by death, did not leave it forgotten behind Him. He 
 reclaimed it from the sepulchre, and restored it to life by 
 the Resurrection. Even at the Ascension, on re-entering 
 His original life of Divinity, He did not depose, but 
 transformed it, and fitted it to become the organ of Omni- 
 potence, and of that Divine life into the possession of which 
 He was about to re-enter ; " /;/ Him dwelleth all the fulness 
 of the Godhead bodil}\^^ STiys St. Paul.t Was it not one pur- 
 pose of the transfiguration to give us a presentiment of this 
 mystery of glory? If a grown man cannot contemplate 
 unmoved the cradle in which his eyes first saw the light, the 
 child of God, having reached the state of holiness, will not 
 despise the body in which his soul first awoke to the light 
 of individual consciousness, and in which, at a later period, 
 his spirit became a partaker of the heavenly life. Even 
 here below, when the Holy Spirit has made a temple of 
 the human body, does He not ennoble its features ? Does 
 He not illumine its expression, renew its failing strength, 
 and give support to its weakness ? Now in the human 
 body there is contained a germ, which begins to grow, 
 through our union with the Holy Spirit, amidst the very 
 
 * M. Charles Prince, Professor in Neuchatel College, 
 t Col. ii. 9. 
 
94 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 dissolution of the bod}'. So will that new organ of the spirit 
 form itself, which St. Paul in his bold manner of speech 
 calls the spiritual body. In the same way that our earthly 
 body is here below the organ of the soul, which is the seat of 
 our personality, so will the spiritual body be the organ of 
 the spirit^ when that shall have become our personal life. 
 " There is," says St. Paul, " a natural body (alive with the 
 life of a soul), and there is a spiritual body," (serving as an 
 organ to the spirit).^ Now, if by His action on this mortal 
 body, the Holy Spirit already at times works wonders even 
 here on earth, what will He not make of the new body, 
 His own creation. His masterpiece ? St. Paul compares 
 our present body to a " bare grain," and the future body 
 to the plant, perfect in form and color, which springs from 
 this imperfect germ dropped into the earth. How great, 
 then, will be the splendor and vitality of this spiritual 
 body ! 
 
 But this is not all. As in our present body we see the 
 two systems, animal and vegetable, which are around us, 
 converging, and in them Nature, as it is on earth, in its 
 entiret}^ ; so will the future body be the centre of a nature 
 renewed and glorified, freed from the law of vanity and 
 death. The ideal after which are instinctively yearning, 
 not men only, but, as St. Paul says all creatines ^ will be 
 realized. And physical existence, so coarse in appearance, 
 which has been the spring and source of life on our planet, 
 being taken up as its fellow-worker by the power of the 
 Spirit, shall become the glorious theatre of the activity and 
 of the virtues of its new master, the spiritual body. 
 
 Matter is not necessarily the imprisoner of the spirit, 
 nor a hinderance to its operations. We see this in the 
 supple and, as we might say, omnipotent hands of the 
 artist; we see it in the instrument by which he effects such 
 
 t I Cor. XV. 44. 
 
THE HISTORY OF LIFE. 95 
 
 marvellous results. Now art is but the prelude to that 
 glory which is one day to become the crown and splendor 
 of holiness. 
 
 To sum up what has been said. On the theatre of 
 Nature, unconscious life has been exercised, a slave to the 
 senses. On the stage of histor}^, the human soul has 
 displayed the riches of life self-conscious and free. In the 
 Church (understanding this word in its most spiritual sense) 
 there grew up, and has since developed itself, a new thing, — 
 the life of holy love, realized in Jesus Christ, and by Him 
 communicated to us. Finally, in that supreme abode which 
 we call heaven, this perfect life, divine in its essence, 
 human in its form, will expand and radiate through matter 
 then glorified. Such is an outline of the development of 
 life, as we may conceive it by adapting our own observation 
 of facts to the Scriptural revelations. How can we con- 
 template without admiration this plan, conceived before 
 time was, and of which the magnificent result is to bring 
 time back to eternity ? How not recognize here the 
 thought of Him who is " wonderful in counsel, and 
 excellent to working ? " * How resist crying out with the 
 Psalmist, " Lord, how great are Thy works. Thy thoughts 
 are very deep ? " St. Paul has summed up this divine plan 
 in those few words, the key to the riddle of man's histor}', 
 and the text of all Christian philosophy : f 
 
 " First that which is natural ; 
 Afterwards that which is spiritual." 
 
 * Isa. xxviii, 29. f i Cor. xv. 46. 
 
g6 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 ANGELS. 
 
 THE subject which is now to occupy us has its attrac- 
 tions, but also its dangers. The veil of mystery 
 which enshrouds it constitutes its attraction. The danger 
 to which we are exposed in treating it, is that of putting 
 our trust, while upon ground which belongs to things divine, 
 in a guide not adequately qualified, imagination. 
 
 In order as much as possible to avoid this danger, we 
 shall endeavor to draw from Nature any inductions, and from 
 History any analogies which they may offer ; then, putting 
 these results into connection with those contained in the 
 book of Divine Revelation, we shall seek to throw light 
 upon these several sources of knowledge by comparing each 
 with the other. Might I but succeed in rescuing this inter- 
 esting subject out of the obscurity in which it is lost in so 
 many minds ! It is no doubt a secondary, but still an im- 
 portant, part which these beings, who are to be the subject 
 of our study, play in the grand drama of the work of God 
 ujDon earth. 
 
 Four points will require our attention : — 
 
 1. The existence and nature of the angels. 
 
 2. The manner of their development. 
 
 3. The relations in which they stand to each other. 
 
 4. Their relation to us. 
 
 The existence of angels cannot be questioned by anyone 
 who holds fast to the contents of the Bible revelation. But 
 for any one who rejects these revelations, or who hesitates 
 
ANGELS. 97" 
 
 to accept all that they teach, may we not find some reasons 
 fitted to induce him to admit the real existence of an order 
 of beings in some respects superior to man ? 
 
 We see before us on earth three orders of living things 
 — plants, animals, men. If we once arrive at the percep- 
 tion that these three classes of creatures are the first steps 
 of the ladder in a system of beings, of which the fourth and 
 final step, though missing in fact here on earth, is none the 
 less imperatively demanded as necessar)' in theory ; would 
 it not follow from this, with great probability, that this 
 superior order which is thus indispensable to the harmony 
 of the whole, does really exist in some domain of creation 
 inaccessible to our present faculties ? This is precisely the 
 conclusion for which we are about to plead. 
 
 Let us notice the relation in which the individual stands 
 to the species in the three orders of living things which are 
 before us in Nature, and we shall see whether this relation 
 does not lead us naturally to suppose that that superior 
 order which we have imagined must exist. 
 
 In the vegetable world, species only has any proper exist- 
 ence ; the individual specimen is but its representative, 
 nothing more, nothing less. If we put a rose into the ele. 
 ment proper for its growth, it will there become that only 
 which any other rose would have become if placed under 
 the same conditions. Language applies to individuals in 
 the plant world the term specwiens. This is because they 
 are to the species what the several impressions of a photo- 
 graph are to the 7iegative, which they reproduce precisely. 
 Thus, properly speaking, there is but ojie rose, — the species 
 rose, which lives on, and is continually re-born in the transi- 
 tory apparitions by which it becomes visible to us. A plant 
 may be compared to some single and indivisible property, 
 where each part-owner lives upon the whole and for the whole. 
 In the plant world the individual as such has no existence, 
 but the species only. 
 
98 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 In the animal world the species is still the essential thing, 
 l)iit the individual has already now become an independent 
 reality by the side of, and above it. Individuality begins 
 to show itself above ground ; but, nevertheless, the animal 
 is governed by instinct. Now what is instinct but the power 
 of the species manifested in the individual ? Subjected to 
 this blind and irresistible law, the individual is incapable of 
 drawing from its own being an act of free-will, or of making 
 a resolution which shall be properly its own. Hence the 
 absence of responsibility, and hence also the want of prog- 
 ress in the animal world. The lion of our day does exactly 
 what his ancestors did, and what his descendants will do in 
 the remotest future. If man does not hold out a helping 
 hand to him by training, the animal will tread over and over 
 again the circle marked out for him by instinct. The indi- 
 \idual lives, it is true, but as the slave of species. His 
 gaoler does, indeed, allow him to take a few steps in his 
 prison-yard, but never to leap its walls. 
 
 The transition from the animal to the man is marked by 
 a complete reversal in the relations of the individual to the 
 species. The latter does still exist in man. We speak, 
 not without reason, of hmiian kind. Each man owes his 
 existence to his parents, and it is that which constitutes 
 species. With men, as well as with animals, species is that 
 primordial, obscure, mysterious material, out of which each 
 individual being shapes itself. But — and herein consists 
 the reversal of the relation — the law of instinct, even while 
 exerting its power in man, does not govern him absolutely. 
 Instinct is his first master, but by no means his eternal 
 tyrant. Man can struggle against his natural appetites ; he 
 can even, with the help of conscience and reflection, over- 
 come the solicitations of his lusts, and sacrifice them on the 
 altar of moral obligation. The prisoner can force the doors of 
 his cell, and escape out of his prison. And because he can, 
 
ANGELS. 
 
 99 
 
 he ought to do so. The individual only becomes properly 
 a man, in proportion as he exercises this glorious preroga- 
 tive. If he neglects to do so, he remains on the level of 
 the lower animals, and ends by even surpassing them in 
 brutality. He is punished by becoming a victim to those 
 instincts over which he was intended to rule. From this 
 faculty of self-governmerit springs the power of progress in 
 mankind. Instinct — the cradle and temporary guardian 
 of the individual — gives but the starting-point to his devel- 
 opment. Once he has broken down this barrier by an act 
 of reflective will, man sees opening before him a pathway 
 of progress towards perfection, both for the individual and 
 for the race. 
 
 We see, then, that species is not extinct in man, but the 
 individual has power to free himself from its bondage, and 
 it is his noble mission to reach the dignity of personality 
 by subjecting the promptings of a blind and natural instinct 
 to the higher claims of morality. Man is no longer a mere 
 specimen of a class, he is a person. 
 
 On comparing these three forms of existence which we 
 perceive in nature around us, there would appear to be evi- 
 dently a law by which the preponderance of individuality 
 bears an ever-increasing proportion to that of a species. 
 In the first stage, individuality has no existence ; in the sec- 
 ond it does exist, but is still in bondage ; in the third it 
 comes forth free, and able to effect its entire deliverance 
 from species. May there not be a fourth state, superior 
 even to this last, and rendering the whole system com- 
 plete ? 
 
 In the science of mathematics, if three terms are given, 
 we can make out the fourth with perfect certainty. The 
 two middle terms, being known, enable us to argue from 
 the first to the last which is unknown. May we not then 
 say in like manner that, among living creatures, animals and 
 
# 
 
 100 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 men are the two middle terms by the help of which we can 
 rise from the first* term of the series, the plant, to another 
 and still unknown one, the very opposite and complement 
 of the first, that is, the angel ? 
 
 Having established the fact of these three forms of being ; 
 species without individuality ; individuality under bondage 
 to species ; species overpowered by individuality — what 
 have we remaining for the fourth form ? Evidently, indi- 
 viduality without species. This formula, which seems at 
 first sight strange to us, yet, on reflection, points to and 
 describes a method of existence much more simple than 
 our own : an order of beings, amongst whom, species having 
 ceased to exist, each individual owes his existence no longer 
 to parents like himself, but immediately to the creative will. 
 Should we not then have exactlv the angel ? 
 
 This method of existence is precisely that which is attrib- 
 uted to these mysterious beings in Holy Scripture. In 
 speaking of us, the term son of man is frequently used, but 
 the angels are called sons of God, never sons of angels. 
 Why should this be, except for this reason, that they owe 
 their existence to a direct act of creation, and not to the 
 ordinary means of descent ? In the most explicit revelation 
 which we have in Holy Scripture on the nature of angels, 
 our Lord makes a remarkable comparison between the 
 angels and the saints in glory. "The children of this 
 world," He says, "marr\', and are given in marriage; but 
 they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that 
 world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither 
 marry, nor are given in marriage. Neither can they 
 die any more ; for they are equal unto the angels ; and 
 are the children of God, being the children of the resur- 
 rection." * This declaration of our Lord gives us four very 
 remarkable data upon the nature of angels : ist. They have 
 
 * St. Luke XX. 34-36. 
 
ANGELS. 10 1 
 
 bodies, since the resurrection bodies are to be like theirs. 
 2d. These bodies do not owe their existence to the ordi- 
 nary process of fiUation, but to an immediate act of creation ; 
 for they are compared to the bodies with which the souls 
 of the faithful will be re-clothed at the time of the resurrec- 
 tion. It is in virtue of this resemblance that both alike are 
 to bear the name ''sons of God " in the life to come ; " they 
 are the children of God, being the children of the resurrec- 
 tion." 3d. The conjugal relation will no longer exist for 
 glorified men, any more than it exists for angels. 4th. 
 This enfranchisement from the conjugal relation corre- 
 sponds in both cases to the exemption from death. Do 
 not, then, the exact contents of this declaration of our 
 Lord agree, as closely as possible, with the conclusions at 
 which we have arrived in our observations on the living 
 creatures known to us in Nature ? 
 
 So far, then, as our inductions are well grounded, and 
 that w^e believe our Lord was speaking of a subject on which 
 He could pronounce with authorit}^, we may now consider 
 the question of the reality and of the nature of angels as set- 
 tled and pass on to the second step, that of tr}-ing to dis- 
 cover what is the manner of development of these beings. 
 
 II. 
 
 We see, then, a ladder or scale before us ; on the bottom 
 step of it we have species without individuality ; next above 
 that, individuality in species ; one step higher, the individ- 
 ual detaching himself from species ; and at the top of the 
 scale, the individual without species, that is, the angel. 
 Below this scale of living creation, and as it were the ground 
 upon which it rests, we have inanimate matter without either 
 
102 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 collective or individual life ; and at an infinite and immeas- 
 urable height above, the Being from whose hand it is sus- 
 pended, and in whom both individual and species are 
 but one, that is God. The angel, then, has his place marked 
 out and distinctly definable in the system of Nature. Can 
 w^e find out something of his history ? And first, with ref- 
 erence to the body. 
 
 The imagination of painters has clothed angels in grace- 
 ful bodily forms. Do not let us materialize too much on 
 the one hand by giving literal wings and feet to these 
 beings, but neither let us reject the idea too contemptuously, 
 for, as we have just seen, they have really a bodily organism, 
 though different from our own. 
 
 If, then, they have a body, they must have a habitation. 
 Where is it ? Can it be that the angels form the 
 population of the star-lit sky ? In this way one might 
 explain the double sense of the expression so often used in 
 Scripture, " the Lord of Hosts," which would appear to 
 mean both the Lord of the stars and the Lord of angels. 
 This interpretation, too, gives a meaning to the petition in 
 the Lord's Prayer, " Thy will be done in earth, as it is in 
 heaven." It may be, however, that there are superior 
 spheres of existence distinguished from those in which we 
 live, less by distance in space than by a difference in nature 
 and quality. When Jesus said of those whom He called 
 "these little ones," that their angels do always behold the 
 face of God, that is to say, that they are the beings nearest 
 to His throne, we must not, therefore, imagine to ourselves 
 these angels as living half-way to the nebulae above our 
 heads. They are at once higher and lower ; higher, since 
 they are said to be so near the throne ; lower, in that they 
 are in some ways connected with those weak creatures who 
 are the most in need of protection on this earth. The 
 heaven which they inhabit is not then topographically distant 
 
ANGELS. 103 
 
 from our own sphere. It may be that it is diffused through- 
 out it in the same manner as the impalpable ether pervades 
 tangible nature. 
 
 As to the moral development of the angels, we know, in 
 the first place, that they are free beings. This follows 
 from the high place which they occupy in the scale of living 
 creatures. Unfettered by the laws of species, and conse- 
 quently not under the dominion of blind instinct, the 
 angel must be even more free than man, who has to drag 
 after him the heavy chain of collective existence, and of the 
 involuntary solidarity of his species. Now one character- 
 istic of all free existence is temptation. No sooner was 
 man placed in the scene of his future activity than he was 
 made subject to this law. The power to obey or to resist 
 is the first gift of God to a free being, as soon as He has 
 made Himself known as the giver of his existence, and of 
 all the benefits which accompany it. And what is human 
 life but a series of trials, out of each of which we emerge 
 either more freely dependent, or more obstinately rebel- 
 lious ? 
 
 To surrender ourselves or to refuse to do so, to confirm 
 from the motive of love our state of dependence, or proudly 
 to deny it, it is in this that that progress in good or evil 
 consists, to which the perilous prerogative of free-will 
 forces us. If the angels are free as we are free, or even 
 more completely so, they cannot escape from the state of 
 probation. 
 
 We know in what the trial of man consisted. It was 
 adapted to the initial stage of his existence, to his then 
 infantine condition, and to his instinct of enjoyment. 
 Shall we now endeavor to lift the veil which conceals the 
 trial, doubtless of a very different kind, to which the angels 
 were subjected ! No, we have but to call to mind that for 
 man himself there exist more subtle and dangerous 
 
104 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 temptations than those of the flesh ; temptations of a kind 
 purely spiritual, such as proceed from self-love, self-will, 
 the love of praise, the abuse of intellectual superiority, the 
 substitution of self for God in the interior worship of the 
 soul. Now temptations of this kind are more conceivable 
 in any being, in proportion as he is endowed with a more 
 spiritual nature, and with more of liberty and of personal 
 independence. 
 
 We know that the trial of the angels has taken place. 
 Holy Scripture makes known to us the result of it, though 
 without telling us in what it consisted. This result differs 
 in one very material point from that in our own case. 
 With us the race altogether is fallen, just because we are a 
 race, and in that method of existence, the fate of all the 
 individuals is bound together, at least according to the 
 order of nature. Humanity is like a single tree with many 
 branches ; cut the trunk, and each branch is as completely 
 severed from the root by that one blow, as if it had itself 
 been struck. The case must be quite different where there 
 is no race, no filiation, no species. The angelic host, 
 instead of resembling a tree bearing a multitude of branches, 
 may rather be compared to a forest, composed of a number 
 of trees, each independent of the others. With the angels, 
 then, trial may have had different or opposite results in 
 different cases. And, according to Scripture, we find that 
 this possibility became a reality. It tells us of certain 
 angels, that they " kept not their first estate, but left their 
 own habitation ;" * that they " abode not in the truth ;" f 
 while to others is given the title of " holy angels," t and 
 "elect angels." § The former, then, have abjured the law 
 of their existence, the will of their Creator ; that is to say, 
 they have made their own will the principle of their actions. 
 
 * Jude6. J I Tim. v. 21. 
 
 t John viii. 44. § St.. Matt. xxv. 31. 
 
ANGELS. 105 
 
 They have thus fallen from the sphere of truth, which 
 is only in God, into that of falsehood ; their existence has 
 become factitious, they oscillate unceasingly between 
 illusion and imposture, alternately deceived and deceiving. 
 For there exists no support outside of their own being to 
 which they can attach themselves. They no longer possess 
 God, from whom they have separated themselves, and with 
 whom the faithful angels are still in communion ; neither 
 can they enjoy the world, with which the nature of their 
 organs does not allow them to communicate directly,"* 
 — that world which forms a temporary compensation for 
 sinful men who have lost God. They live and act in the 
 void of their own subjectivity ; a void which they ever seek 
 to people with their own lying creations. The only conso- 
 lation they have for the loss of God consists in fighting 
 against all that is good and true, and in seducing other free 
 beings, whom they seek to drag with them into their own 
 feverish activity, purely negative, and constantly powerless. 
 The holy angels, on the contrary, in conforming to the 
 will of God, have become sharers in His power and in His 
 truth ; they are happy instruments in His hand, in that 
 particular sphere of the universe over which each of them 
 is set. Accordingly, the extraordinary operations of Divine 
 power in the region of external things are attributed to 
 them, and the Son of man speaks of His miracles as of 
 " angels which ascend and descend." f The reward of 
 their willing submission is to be really what they were 
 destined to be, and what their name expresses, — atigels, or 
 messengers from heaven, the agents of God. In God they 
 possess at once both the guaranty of the reality of their 
 existence, and that of their activity. 
 
 * All the more do they seek to do so indirectly, through the medium of the 
 human bzings by whom they contrive to gain access to it. Hence what are 
 called possessions. 
 
 t St. John i. 51. 
 
I06 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 III. 
 
 In what relation do these beings stand to one another ? 
 Do they form a hierarchy ? Are they united by any kind 
 of organization ? 
 
 Nowhere upon earth do we find complete equality ; and 
 the higher we ascend in the scale of being, the more marked 
 do we find the superiority of some, and the subordination 
 of others. Three forms of inequality are very distinctly 
 marked among men, which are scarcely to be found among 
 inferior beings ; in family life, the natural superiority which 
 belongs to parents ; in the State, that which belongs to 
 rank ; in society in general, that of influence. 
 
 The first of these three fonns of superiority can have no 
 existence among the angels. As regards the second, St. 
 Paul speaks of thrones^ dominions^ principalities^ and powers, 
 all which terms seem to point to different degrees of a hie- 
 rarchy. And as regards the superiority which results from 
 personal influence, we can affirm that, even without the tes- 
 timony of Scripture. For do we not find ever}-where among 
 men some who are subject to influence, and others who 
 exert it ? Human society may be compared to a pyramid, 
 on the lowest steps of which stand the multitude, which have, 
 strictly speaking, neither thought nor will. Next above 
 them are those whose function it is to reproduce and pub- 
 lish, while themselves possessed of a certain amount of 
 power, the word of command given to them from above. 
 At the summit, in a narrow space reserv^ed for a small num- 
 ber of elect souls, are arranged the real geniuses, those who 
 open out new horizons to the minds of men, and new paths 
 for their activit}'. These are the true potentates of human- 
 ity ; burning and shining lights like Luther, or consuming 
 
ANGELS. 107 
 
 fires like Voltaire. If this is the case among men, how 
 much more must it be so among the angels, who are supe- 
 rior to us in intelligence and liberty. First, at the base of 
 the pyramid are the angels, properly so called, or messen- 
 gers ; these are, perhaps, those whom Holy Scripture calls 
 powers ; above them the prmcipalities • then the dominions ; 
 which unite under their sceptre different groups of angels, 
 of ascending degrees of importance : and, at the summit, 
 there are the thrones, or, as Scripture also calls them, arch- 
 angels, or chief among the angels. 
 
 Three among these latter, Scripture designates by name, 
 two among the elect, one among the fallen angels. The 
 two first are called Michael and Gabriel, names which 
 express in human language the offices which they fulfil in 
 the Creation of God. The meaning of the word Michael 
 is : Who is like unto God / In him we behold the being 
 who is placed at the ver}^ summit of the scale of living 
 creatures. One thought and feeling alone absorbs him, and 
 makes the sum of his being — that of the immeasurable 
 distance which separates him from the Creator. Himself 
 at the very summit of all, he feels more than all others his 
 own nothingness. Zeal for the glor>' of God, whom he 
 adores whilst veiling himself, is the spring of his activity, 
 the very principle of his existence. From this feeling arises 
 the nature of the work he has to do, which is to overthrow 
 ever}'thing that dares to make itself equal with God, or to 
 oppose itself to Him, Paganism in particular, under all its 
 various forms. In the Old as in the New Testament, 
 Michael appears as the protector of Israel, and the cham- 
 pion of Monotheism, (of which this people was the deposi- 
 tary,) and as the vanquisher of Satan and the destroyer 
 of his works. This archangel thus fitly preludes the final 
 work of the Messiah as the Judge of the world. 
 
 The meaning of the name Gabriel, the second archangel 
 
I08 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 of light, is the strofig 7?ian, or God's hero. In him we see 
 the active executor of God's designs for the salvation of 
 men. Whilst Michael is occupied in overthrowing all that 
 opposes God, Gabriel hastens the realization of his plans. 
 It is he who appears to Daniel to announce to him the 
 return from the captivity, and to fix the time for the still 
 distant advent of the Messiah ; it is he who, in the New 
 Testament, announces to Mary the birth of the Saviour of 
 the world. * Gabriel is the heavenly eva?igelist ; he preludes 
 the work of the Messiah as the Saviour of the world. 
 
 If, then, there are chiefs among the elect angels, it is but 
 natural that there should also be such among the rebel or 
 fallen angels. 
 
 The only being of this kind whom Scripture specifies by 
 name, is he who is called Sata?i, — this name, which means 
 the adversary, is drawn from his relation to God, — and the 
 devil, which means calumniator, or accuser, and is drawn 
 from his relation to men. The power which Holy Scripture 
 attributes to this being in his fallen state, is a testimony to 
 the greatness of his position, and the excellence of his fac- 
 ulties before his rebellion. Besides, there is one fact which 
 proves this ; he dared to measure himself, as it were, in 
 single combat with the son of God. When he says to Him, 
 while showing Him all the kingdoms of the world, "All 
 this is delivered to me," there is no authority for thinking 
 that he was not speaking the truth. Moreover, Jesus has 
 elsewhere confirmed this assertion in calling him more than 
 once, the prince of this world. Did our earth, then, once 
 make part of the domain originally assigned to this monarch ? 
 Was it his fief ? Did he legitimately exercise authority over 
 it until the day when he tried to make himself lord instead 
 of vassal ? However that may be, he still inhabits a sphere 
 superior to ours, butfiot far removed from it, which St. Paul 
 
 * Dan. viii. i6; ix. 21. St. Luke i. 19, 26. 
 
ANGELS. 1 09 
 
 Speaks of as heavenly places. * It is from thence that, with 
 a multitude of other beings like himself, and swayed by his 
 influence, he exercises up to this present time an unlimited 
 power over that portion of mankind to whom Christ's be- 
 neficent influence has not yet extended. 
 
 It has been sometimes maintained that the mention of 
 these superior beings, both good and bad, in Holy Scripture, 
 has been borrowed from the Babylonish and Persian 
 religions, wdth which the Israelites came into contact during 
 their captivity in the countries of the Euphrates and the 
 Tigris. But in these religions the number of the archangels 
 is always seven, not three. This number seven, which 
 bears a relation to the number of the ministers of the 
 Persian kings, we find, doubtless, in the Jewish documents 
 subsequent to the Babylonish captivity. But Holy Scripture 
 shows itself independent of these fables. Moreover, the 
 two principal angels of light whom it brings before us, 
 already appear as the companions of Jehovah at the time 
 of His visit to Abraham, in the book of Genesis, written a 
 long time before the Babylonish captivity. And as regards 
 the archangel whom it reveals to us as the Prince of the 
 kingdom of darkness, it does not make him a god, as do 
 all the religions of the East, but a poor created being, 
 trembling in the presence of God,t and so much the more 
 miserable as he had, in his former state, been richly 
 dowered. 
 
 Here then, as elsewhere, the Bible maintains that inde- 
 pendent character which guarantees to us the originality 
 of its sources. 
 
 * Eph. vi. 12. 
 
 t Zech. iii. 2. S. James ii. 19. 
 
no STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 IV. 
 
 We now arrive at the question which most concerns us ; 
 that of the relation which angels bear to human beings. 
 Perhaps an analogy drawn from history may throw some 
 light upon this delicate question. Until the advent of 
 Jesus Christ the Israelites seemed separated by an iron 
 wall from all other nations. The Greeks and Romans 
 occupied the foreground of the scene, but Israel, in its 
 retired and isolated position, appeared to bear no relation 
 to those great actors in history. Nevertheless, a deeper 
 study makes it apparent that on many points the progress 
 of these nations was parallel with that of the people of 
 God. History had progressed simultaneously with the 
 ever-increasing influence of this unique people, until at last 
 the moment arrived when, the barrier having fallen, the 
 two streams, Jewish and Pagan, were reunited. It was in 
 the Church that this confluence, which constitutes the 
 close of ancient history, was effected. It had always been 
 intended and predicted. From the ver}' beginning God's 
 purpose was the realization of the unity of the human race 
 by means of the Gospel. 
 
 There is a unity even vaster than that of the human race, 
 and not less positively decreed by God ; that of all the 
 beings who make up the moral universe, the kingdom of 
 heaven in its fullest extent. Just as in the old world, God 
 was preparing that first fusion which dates from the advent 
 of Jesus Christ ; so is He now, in this present economy, 
 ever working to prepare for that far greater and richer 
 unity, which will be consummated at the glorious re-appear- 
 ing of the same Jesus Christ. 
 
 It needs but to open one's eyes, to perceive the relations 
 
ANGELS. Ill 
 
 which unite the development of our race with that of those 
 beings of whom we are now treating, relations which fit 
 our human history into a grander whole, that of the great 
 universal history. The temptation and the fall of the first 
 man, and up to a certain point, the creation even of 
 humanity, are the first events which attest the relation 
 existing between the two spheres. If Satan was really, in 
 his original state, the monarch to whom was entrusted 
 the government of this Earth, and if the condition of man 
 was that which is implied in the Divine command : Have 
 dominion over the earth and over all that moveth upon 
 it, — there is but one conclusion to be drawn from these 
 facts, that is, that from that time God substituted man for 
 Satan as the lord of the world ; and that the place He 
 intended for man in creating him was that of a successor 
 and a rival to Satan. 
 
 Satan was a revolted vassal, and God gave his domain 
 to another. Man received the mission to conquer it by 
 superiority, not of strength, but of obedience. From this 
 point of view we understand the eagerness with which Satan 
 has from the first labored to draw men away from submis- 
 sion, and into complicity with his rebellion. What could 
 be more attractive to a rebel than the hope of causing the 
 army sent to overcome him to turn, and to make himself 
 its leader against that ver}' power who had raised it against 
 him ? 
 
 But what avail the stratagems, and even the victories of 
 Satan against the designs of supreme Wisdom ? The 
 defection 'of humanit}', the chef-d ^ceuvre of diabolic clever- 
 ness, has only served to exhibit in a more striking manner 
 the grandeur of the Divine plan. 
 
 Through the sin of man, it is true, Satan has become 
 provisionally the master of this earth ; he has even gained 
 one more subject. He who was to have taken away his 
 
112 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 empire is become his ally and his slave ; and what degra- 
 dation has he not ever since inflicted upon his unhappy 
 captive ! With what heavy chains has he not loaded him ! 
 Idolatry with its shameful practices, war with its bloody 
 horrors, death with its inexpressible anguish, sin, above all, 
 with its baseness and remorse ; behold in all these the 
 monuments of Satan's power over humanity, the trophies 
 of his victory over our Earth. 
 
 And what does God do ? Does He at once crush in His 
 fury His adversary and ours ? That would not be to con- 
 quer him. In a combat such as this, it is necessar}^ to 
 confound in order to conquer ; and to confound is to show 
 oneself not the stronger but the better. 
 
 Do you see that little Child lying in a manger ? Here 
 is the new Champion whom God has chosen, and whom 
 He will from henceforth oppose to the Prince of this world. 
 Satan, himself a creature, had aspired to the independence 
 and to the glory of a god. God detaches from himself a 
 mysterious Being, another self, who willingly despoils 
 himself of His condition as God, and reduces himself to 
 the dependence and nothingness of a created Being. The 
 archangel made himself God ; the Son of God makes him- 
 self man ; the Word becomes flesh. Under the humblest 
 form of human life. He acts out that absolute submission 
 to God, which had been refused both by the archangel and 
 by the first man. Satan feels now a principle in humanity 
 which resists him ; he hastens to the spot, for he perceives 
 that his power is being threatened. 
 
 As once before he had triumphed in the garden of plenty, 
 so now he hopes to do in the desert of privation. But this 
 time he has met with his vanquisher. Jesus remains firm 
 in spite of all his suggestions and his offers ; He persists 
 in referring all to God ; the preservation of His bodily 
 existence, the means of establishing His kingdom on earth, 
 
ANGELS. 113 
 
 the time when He should perform His miracles, all are 
 referred to God. The whole of His subsequent ministry 
 is only a confirmation of this unreserved submission, to 
 which He devoted himself in the wilderness. And after 
 He has consummated His expiatory and redeeming work. 
 He is at last crowned and enthroned as the new Sovereign 
 of the earth. It is a change of dynasty ; * the world passes 
 into the hands of another master. Satan is deposed, and 
 his rights of sovereignty are transferred to Jesus Christ, 
 who in His turn transfers them to mankind. His family, in 
 whose name, and as the representative of whom, He has 
 fought, obeyed, conquered. 
 
 Such a transference is possible, in virtue of the solidarity 
 of the species which is the characteristic of humanity, and 
 which distinguishes it from angels. Inasmuch as it forms 
 one species, humanity can be saved altogether by One. 
 Such a method of salvation would not be applicable to the 
 fallen angels, who have only an individual and no collective 
 existence. Accordingly it is said that " Christ took not 
 on Him the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham." f 
 
 From that moment Satan and his followers have main- 
 tained a desperate fight against this new power, which was 
 to be substituted for theirs. From the heavenly places, those 
 superior regions where they still live, and from whence 
 they exert their influence, they endeavor to hinder the 
 Gospel and its progress throughout the world. But has not 
 Christ so arranged as to make His cause one and the same 
 with that of God t Therein is the sure guarantee of his 
 final victor}% The throne of the adversary is abased in 
 proportion as His is exalted. It is easy to see what must be 
 the effect of this double movement. 
 
 What part do the holy angels take in this work which God 
 is effecting in the heart of humanity ? A part both con- 
 
 * S. John xii. 31. f Heb. ii. 16. 
 
114 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 templative and active. They had once hailed with joyful 
 acclamations the creation of man : as Job says, " the morn- 
 ing stars sang together, and the sons of God shouted for 
 joy "when man first made his appearance on the earth. 
 Later on they were the assistants and servants of those 
 prophets whose ministry and whose visions prepared for the 
 coming of the Saviour. As soon as Jesus himself appeared, 
 they surrounded him like a band of devoted messengers, 
 ascending and descending at His orders, instruments of the 
 Divine interA^ention in the physical world, as the Holy Spirit 
 is of the work of salvation in the inner sphere. At the 
 moment of the consummation of the Eternal Sacrifice, they 
 looked down into this depth of mystery, and sought in 
 vain to fathom it. Finally, they were the first to make 
 known the Resurrection, as they had been the first to 
 announce the Nativity. 
 
 Ever since the foundation of the Church, their attention 
 has been fixed upon this masterpiece of Divine love. They 
 contemplate it with adoration, as a work greater than nature, 
 a creation more glorious and enduring than that of the six 
 days. As St. Paul says : " To the intent that now unto the 
 principalities and powers, in heavenly places, might be 
 known by the Church the manifold wisdotti of God."* 
 Upon this spiritual stage the angels contemplate with an 
 ever-renewed rapture the manifold means by which the 
 Father brings to the Son the hearts of sinners, and saves 
 that which had been lost. And there is joy amongst them 
 each time that an ineffable smile, passing over the face of 
 the Father, makes known to them that one of his children 
 who had been dead is now restored to life. 
 
 While thus contemplating, they learn, they grow, they 
 rejoice, sometimes also they weep, and always they adore. 
 But they do more than this. Once they were agents in the 
 
 * Eph. iii. lo. 
 
ANGELS. 115 
 
 history of the Master : now they are so in that of His 
 Church. " Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth 
 to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation ? " * 
 The greatest among them do not disdain to keep specially 
 close to the weak, and to the lowest amongst the faithful, t 
 Jesus himself declares this to us, without, however, giving 
 us any right to infer from these words that each human 
 being has an angel personally attached to himself. 
 
 But of what use, you will ask, is this intervention of angels ? 
 Cannot God help us by His providence and by His omnip- 
 otence, without having recourse to these created ministers ? 
 Assuredly He could do so : but to be consistent, you must 
 also ask, Why does the new-born infant, on its entrance into 
 life, find loving hands to care for and to tend it ? Could not 
 God clothe and nourish it himself by His power ? Or, again 
 do you ask, Why, in the danger through which you have just 
 passed God saved your life by means of one of your fellow- 
 men, instead of doing so by His own Hand .'' The reason is, 
 that it is not God's will that that bond, so full of sweetness, 
 which forever unites the benefited to his benefactor, should 
 exist only between Him and ourselves. The love of God is 
 great enough to make Him wish not to love, or to be loved 
 alone. He values love, which is the very essence of His 
 being, too highly not to labor by every means to multiply it 
 between all the beings He has created, as well as between 
 himself and them. This is the aim and end of all His dis- 
 pensations, negative and positive. His love for all, that of 
 all for Him and of all for one another, makes the glory of His 
 kingdom. And this is why it is His will that we should all 
 help one another, and that this relation of mutual assistance 
 should exist even betAveen angels and men. Thus He pre- 
 pares for the time when these two races, more widely differ- 
 
 * Heb. i. 14. t S. Matt. x"iii. 10. 
 
Il6 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 ing than Jews and Gentiles, shall be closely united in His 
 kingdom, and shall form but one body. 
 
 Finally, in the end of time, this relation between men and 
 angels, first contracted at the Creation, and made more inti- 
 mate during their development, will be sealed by a supreme 
 event. On the one hand, S. Paul says that men " will judge 
 angels," * i. e., holy men will judge the rebel angels ; on the 
 other hand, the angels will sift the tares from the wheat 
 among mankind, garnering up the former, and burning the 
 latter : such is the declaration of Jesus, t 
 
 And after each of these two classes of beings shall have 
 thus rendered homage to the Divine holiness in the pres- 
 ence of the other, the end of God's dispensations to both 
 will be realized. He who has determined to "gather 
 together in one all things in Christ, both which are in 
 heaven and which are in earth, " t will join both men and 
 angels in one under this single Head. 
 
 As, then, the two great streams in the old world, Jews 
 and Gentiles, after successive approaches, were at last 
 united in the Church, so the two great classes of beings of 
 whom the moral universe is composed, men and angels, 
 after being brought into a series of beneficent relations 
 with each other, will submit in concert to the sceptre of 
 Jesus Christ, the Creator and Lord of angels, the Creator, 
 Saviour, and Lord of men, the Judge of all. 
 
 It seems, then, impossible for us to set aside the belief 
 in the existence and agency of angels as a point of no 
 importance. We are led up to this belief by the inductions 
 of Nature, by the analogies of Histor}^, and by the teachings 
 of Scripture. And who does not feel how much, from this 
 point of view, the domain of the Divine work is extended 
 before us, and the sphere of light enlarged ? In the same 
 
 * I Cor. vi. 3. t S. Matt. xiii. 39. J Eph. i. 10 ; Col. i. 20. 
 
ANGELS. 117 
 
 way that the sight of the star-Ht heavens enlarges infinitely 
 our conception of the physical universe, so does the belief 
 in the existence of angels give the character of infinity 
 to the idea we form to ourselves of the kingdom of God. 
 And how can we avoid perceiving at the same time how 
 much this belief is fitted to give vividness to our terror, and 
 to deepen our horror of evil ? Does it not make us see in 
 every temptation a trap laid for us by a mortal enemy, and 
 in every sin we commit a complicity not only criminal but 
 senseless, with a hateful and malevolent being ? Finally, 
 do we not feel how much this belief tends to exalt the per- 
 son of our Redeemer, and to enhance His work ? He is 
 not only the Head of mankind, whom He has saved by 
 His sufferings, but also of the angels, to whom He gave 
 existence, and whom, from the midst of His glory, He leads 
 to perfection. 
 
 That was a magnificent duet which resounded in the 
 Church when, for the first time, the believers from amongst 
 the Jews, and the converts from amon^ the Gentiles, united 
 their voices to sing the new song, the hymn of salvation. 
 They both celebrated the marvellous works of God, but 
 each in his own manner ; the former praising Him above 
 all things for Yiis faithfulness in the fulfilment of the prom- 
 ises made to their fathers; the latter publishing His mercy 
 towards the people to whom He had promised nothing, 
 but who, whatever might be their unworthiness, had not- 
 withstanding received all.* It will be a h\iiin set for two 
 voices, even more rich and sublime, with which the elect 
 angels and glorified men will celebrate, together, the work 
 of God, but in differing tones ; the former with that rich 
 and sonorous voice, of which nothing has ever marred the 
 purity, announcing the faithfulness of the Most High which 
 so magnificently rewards their own faithfulness ; the latter, 
 
 * Rom. XV. 8, 9. 
 
Il8 STUDIES OF CREATION AND LIFE. 
 
 in a graver tone and more restrained accent, as becomes 
 beings whose song is born amidst tears, glorifying tlie grace 
 of Him who can blot out even unfaithfulness : those, setting 
 before us men, by their example, that ladder of light upon 
 which it is possible to ascend to God without once depart- 
 ing from the truth, to attain to perfection, not without trial 
 but without falling, to realize progress in pure good — thus 
 glorifying the holiness and the truth of that God who does 
 not permit that sin should ever appear to be necessar}^, or 
 even in itself useful ; and, on the other side, we men respond- 
 ing to them, and pointing in deep humility to the dark 
 abysses of sin into which we had thrown ourselves, but from 
 which the Hand of God has drawn us by unparalleled mar- 
 vels — thus glorifying in their eyes that grace which " where 
 sin abounded did much more abound, " * and which, in 
 thus transforming even evil into good, has accomplished 
 the greatest of all miracles. From the midst of the two 
 races, henceforth to form but one, there will then rise, in 
 var)dng tones, that united hymn (last word of the history of 
 free beings), of which the song of the angels and of the 
 shepherds, on Christmas Eve, was the prelude : " Praise be 
 to God and to the Lamb who sitteth upon the throne ! Alle- 
 luia ! " 
 
 * Rom. V. 20. 
 
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DR. CHRISTLIEB'S 
 
 Foreign Missions of Protestantism. 
 
 280 pp. 16mo. Price, 80 cents. 
 
 The Author's Copyrighted American Translation from the latest, 
 fourth, enlarged German edition. 
 
 The Statistics brought down to June, 1880, with an Index of 
 more than Sixteen Hundred Keferences. 
 
 The proof-sheets revised by one of the Secretaries of the Amer- 
 ican Board of Missions. 
 
 From a large number of favorable notices of the press we give a few 
 extracts : — 
 
 " The most accurate, complete, and satisfactory compendium of foreign 
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 pastor, but also by all the more intelligent members in the churches. — Ad- 
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 It shows the grandeur of the enterprise, and the blessedness of its results, in 
 a Avay that must impress every candid mind, as Avell as every sympathetic 
 heart. — Obseri-er, New York. 
 
 " The work is marked by breadth, thoroughness, and accuracy, and the in- 
 formation which it contains is nowhere else accessible in so convenient a 
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 " We rejoice to be able heartily to commend this book. ... It is accurate, 
 tasteful, and hea.utiful.'" — Coiiyregatiojialisf, Boston. 
 
 For Sale by all Booksellers, or sent, post-paid, on 
 receipt of price, by 
 
 Congregational Publishing Society, Boston. 
 
 GEO. P. SMITH, Agent. 
 
A BOOK FOR THE TIMES. 
 
 AN INQUIRY CONCERNIXG 
 
 THE 
 
 Relation of Death to Probation. 
 
 Written for, the Congregational Publishing Society by 
 PROF. G. FREDERICK WRIGHT, 
 
 ACTHOB OF " THE LOGIC OF CHKISTIAX EVIDENCES," AND " STUDIES IN 
 SCIENCE AND RELIGION." 
 
 Post-paid, 75 cents. 
 
 " If you like a book which takes hold of its subject with a grip and handles 
 it fairly and handsomely, and at the same time positively and thoroughly, 
 you have it here. Few men are entitled to speak with so much weight on the 
 point as Professor Wright. He is a confessed expert, a scientist in high stand- 
 ing. We commend the volume heartily to our readers, whatever their ijresent 
 opinions upon its subject." — Congreyafionalist. 
 
 " We highly commend it for its faithful and clear presentation of the 
 Scriptural teaching on this subject. Of course, this would be that there is no 
 warrant in Scripture for believing that there is probation after death, but 
 that the awards of the Judgment Day are endless." — ^Va^ioHa/ Baptist, I'hlla. 
 
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 ject. It is an especial tract for the hoar, and should be widely circulated." 
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 usual doctrine of Future Punishment."— Z/.'< /•(<;•*/ World. 
 
 " The position of the author is highly conservative, especially in the dis- 
 cussion of proof-texts, and he contends for the received opiniSn that pro- 
 bation ends with death with a keen, practical appreciation of the homiletic 
 importance of that doctrine."— Indejjendent, New York. 
 
 " It discusses the questions that have been suggested in regard to a possible 
 probation between death and the judgment, especially for those who have 
 not had the motives of the gospel presented to them in this life. In it the 
 reader will find the Scriptural aspect of the subject of eternal punishment 
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 Xeio York. 
 
 For Sale by all Booksellers, or sent, post-paid, on 
 receipt of price, by 
 
 Congregational Publishing Society, Boston. 
 
 GEO. P. SMITH, Agent. 
 
ACTON: 
 
 OE, 
 
 School and College Days. 
 
 Price, $1.00. 
 
 A story of life at Oberlin in the days of President Finney. The deep re- 
 ligious spirit which pervaded that institution and brought all the pupils 
 under its influence, the earnest purposes and joyous experience of young 
 Christian men and women looking forward to lives of self-sacrifice for Christ's 
 sake, are clearly, spiritedly described. No one could have written this book 
 who had not himself been through the scenes described. Xo young man or 
 woman will read it without feeling its influence for good. 
 
 Eev. JA3IES H. Fairchild, D.D., President of Oberlin College, savs of it : 
 " I have been impressed by it as a story of decided merit, written from the 
 heart and life of the author in a vigorous and pleasing style - wholesome and 
 helpful in its suggestions and lessons. In my judgment, it cannot fail to 
 prove interesting to a Avide circle of readers." 
 
 Kev. S. E. Herrick, D.D., Pastor of :\rount Vernon Church, Boston, says 
 of It : "A book of great merit. I have read it, every Avord, AVith profit and 
 delight." 
 
 " This book is full of that deep, spiritual atmosphere which is the glory of 
 many of our Western colleges. INIany a man or woman there trained will 
 say, as he reads this volume, I too have been surrounded bv such influences 
 and thereby brought to the saving knowledge of God. With hearty com- 
 mendation we bid ACTOX Godspeed." — Golden Rule. 
 
 "As a story it has merit, being written in a vigorous and pleasing style. 
 The suggestions it contains for parents are valuable, and the lessons it teaches 
 young people cannot fail to be very useful. It is beautifully printed, and 
 tastefully bound." —Xeiv England Journal of Education. 
 
 " Set this down for your Sunday-school Library without fail. It is good as 
 a story : it is admirable in the discerning skill and spiritual wisdom with 
 which Christian truths are brought into relations with human experiences." 
 — Adcance. 
 
 For Sale by all Boolcsellem, or sent, post-paid, on 
 receipt of price, by 
 
 Congregational Publishing Society, Boston. 
 
 GEO. P. SMITH, Agent. 
 
Helps to a Life of Prayer. 
 
 BY KEV. J. M. MANNING, D.D. 
 Price, $1.00. 
 
 The Author's Preface to this book is as follows : — 
 
 " My own study of the subject of prayer, some of the results of 
 which are here gathered up, has brought to me a fuller experience 
 of the nearness and love of God than I once had ; and my earnest 
 wish, in offering this volume to the public, is that others may find 
 the same blessed experience, or have it deepened with them, if it 
 be already theirs." 
 
 ''Dr. Manning's charming little volume, which seems to have 
 been written out of his own heart, contains only six chapters, 
 respectively devoted to the Nature, Forms, Objects, Fruits, Power, 
 and Hour of Prayer. 
 
 "It is one of those sweet, suggestive, and experimental mono- 
 graphs which finely tends to deepen in other souls the tender sense 
 of ' the nearness and love of God.' It touches, with singular deli- 
 cacy and wisdom, many of those sensitive points of Christian ex- 
 perience which shrink from public exposure, to which it is not 
 always easy to give clear utterance. Cultured spiritual minds will 
 appreciate the elevated tone of sentiment and the beautiful style 
 of these Helps to a Life of Prayer." 
 
 *'I read this admirable little book on prayer through at a sitting, 
 so deeply was I interested in its contents. 
 
 "The book is timely in its theme, calm and judicial-like in its 
 impartiality, and cogent in its reasoning. It will, I am sure, be 
 fruitful in good results." — ReVo Wm. M. Taylok, D.D. 
 
 For Sale by all Booksellers, or seiit, post-paid, on 
 receipt of price, by 
 
 Congregational Publishing Society, Boston. 
 
 GEO. P. SMITH, Agent. 
 
Hand-Book of Congregationalism. 
 
 BY REV. HENRY M. DEXTER, D.D. 
 
 THE BEST BOOK OX CONGREGATIONALISM 
 FOR PRACTICAL USE. 
 
 Price, $1.00. 
 
 This cheap pocket manual [16o, pp. 212] it is believed will meet 
 a want long felt. It has been prepared with great care to reduce to 
 the densest form those main facts as to the Scriptural system of 
 Churcli government which all intelligent Congregationalists need 
 to know. 
 
 Special pains have been taken : ( 1 ) to bring all into accord with 
 the latest discoveries in the earliest annals of modern Congrega- 
 tional history, thus correcting many ancient errors whicli impair 
 the value of previous treatises; (2) to bring out the exact sense of 
 every passage in the New Testament which refers to politij ; (3) so 
 to emphasize the principles of Congregationalism as to place within 
 the grasp of every intelligent mind the means of correctly solving 
 all of its practical problems; (4) to supply a complete set of such 
 simple forms as its occasions require; (5) to suggest a few of its 
 advantages; (6) to outline those Rules of Order which govern all 
 Congregational assemblies; ajid (7) to make all usable by unusually 
 copious indexes. 
 
 For Sale by all Booksellers, or sent, post-paid, on 
 receipt of price, by 
 
 Congregational Publishing Society, Boston. 
 
 GEO. P. SMITH, Agent. 
 
SABBATH ESSAYS. 
 
 WORK OF PERMANENT VALUE ON A THEME 
 OF VITAL IMPORTANCE. 
 
 Price, $1.50. 
 
 As a treatise on the Sabbath, designed to meet all ordinary 
 inquiries on the subject, it will be Invaluable to Pastors, Sabbath- 
 School Teachers, Public and Private Libraries. It is the most 
 valuable contribution recently made to the literature on the Sabbath 
 question. 
 
 The book contains thirty-eight essays and addresses, discussing 
 the Sabbath in thirty-eight different aspects and relations. The 
 essays are divided into sections, as follows: "The Sabbath in 
 Nature," "The Sabbath in the Word of God," "The Sabbath in 
 History," "The Sabbath in the State and in Society." The 
 addresses follow, twelve in number, most of them on practical 
 questions of Sabbath observance. A Historical Sketch on Sabbath 
 Conventions closes the volume. The views of some of the foremost 
 men of all the evangelical denominations are here brought together, 
 presenting this great subject on all sides, fiu-nishing a discussion 
 that seems complete, and making the volume an invaluable text- 
 book on the Sabbath question. 
 
 For Sale by all Booksellers, or sent, post-paid, on 
 receipt of price, by 
 
 Congregational Publishing Society, Boston. 
 
 GEO. P. SMITH, Agent. 
 
SERMONS 
 
 ON 
 
 The International S. S. Lessons. 
 
 BY THE MONDAY CLUB. 
 
 456 pp. 12mo. Price, $1.50. 
 
 The Sermons by the ^Monday Club have gained a permanent hold upon the 
 interest of all classes of Sunday-school workers, many of Avhom have ex- 
 pressed in heartiest terms their indebtedness to the volumes already issued. 
 Pastors have found them instructive and stimulating as Bible studies. 
 Teachers have been aided by them to impress the truth warmly and effect- 
 ively on the conscience and the heart. These sermons have been read in 
 prayer-meetings, teachers' meetings, and the regular services of the church. 
 The entire series has a permanent value as treatises on the Sunday-school 
 
 lessons. 
 
 From hosts of commendations, in letters and by the press, we select the 
 folloA\-ing : — 
 
 "They are simple. Scriptural, devout, earnest, and practical. To workers 
 in the Sunday-school they will be of very great service, not as exegetical 
 studies, but as assistants in the application of truth to the heart and the con- 
 science."— TAe Watchman. 
 
 "These sermons are models of their kind. They are short, and might be 
 delivered without weariness at the close of the Sabbath schooV -ZioiVs 
 Herald. 
 
 . " Happily conceived and admirably executed. They deserve and will 
 secure a wide circulation."— Tr?>i. Ormiston, D.D., Neio York. 
 
 "Am very much struck with their wisdom, clearness, and point. They 
 seem to be just what would prove suggestive and helpful to Sunday-school 
 teachers."— i?er. Phillips Brooks, Boston. 
 
 " I could heartily wish that it might find its way into the Baptist, as well as 
 all other schools which use the course of \essons.''-Preside7it Cakhvell of 
 Vassar College. 
 
 "The style is very pure, chaste, and forcible, and the contents cast in 
 such a way that it will be very helpful to Christians, as well as instructive to 
 Sunday-school teachers." — C. L. Goodell, D.D., St. Louis. 
 
 For Sale by all Booksellers, or serd, post-paid, on 
 receipt of price, by 
 
 Congregational Publishing Society, Boston. 
 
 GEO. P. SMITH, Agent. 
 
Studies of the Old Testament. 
 
 BY AUSTIN PHELPS, D.D., 
 
 Professor at Andover Theological Seminarj-. 
 
 Author of " Still Hour,"' '• Work of the Holy Spirit," " Theory 
 
 of Preaching," "Men and Books,'" etc 
 
 333 pp. 16mo. Price, $1.25. 
 
 LIST OF SUBJECTS. 
 
 The Propliet of the Broken Heart. 
 
 God works with Minorities who are working for Him. 
 
 A Model of Prayer in Emergencies. 
 
 An Ancient Revival of Religion. 
 
 Christian Alliances with "Wicked Men. 
 
 Honoring God's House. 
 
 Presumption in the Worship of God. 
 
 Fidelity to the Religion of a Godly Ancestry. 
 
 The Lost Son of a Godly Father. 
 
 The Godly Son of an Ungodly Father. 
 
 The Prodigal Son of Godly Parents. 
 
 The Twin Serpents. 
 
 Avowed Enemies of Religion. 
 
 A Talk with Young People about Josiah. 
 
 An Ancient Model of Youthful Temperance. 
 
 The Lost Bible. 
 
 Good Men who are not Churchmen. 
 
 Intertwining of God's Plans with the Plans of Men. 
 
 The Kingdoms that die, and the Kingdom that lives. 
 
 Fruitless Convictions of Sin. 
 
 The Men in the Fire. 
 
 The Man in the Lions' Den. 
 
 The Fulfilment of Prophecy in the Career of Cyrus. 
 
 Christ the Centre of Biblical Thought. 
 
 " The Publishing Society has done nothing better of late than this issue of 
 Prof. Austin Phelps' ' Studies of the Old Testament.' Says the author: 
 * If the volume serves to illustrate, in any degree, how ancient and neglected 
 Scriptures may be revived in the popular interf^st, and thus to show the per- 
 petuity of the Old Testament as a lirinf/ book for all ages, the object of this 
 publication will be accomplished.' And this is precisely the service which 
 the volume is eminently fitted to render." — Advance. 
 
 For Sale by all Booksellers, or sent, post-paid, on 
 receipt of price, by 
 
 Congregational Publishing Society, Boston. 
 
 GEO. P. SMITH, Agent. 
 
Galilee iii the Time of Christ. 
 
 BY SELAH MERRILL, D.D., 
 
 U.S. CONSUL AT JERUSALEM. 
 
 No Book lias received more unqualified commendation from the 
 Press of this country and Europe. 
 
 Post-paid, $1.00. 
 
 •' A picture of Galilee as it was in the time of Christ — a picture so im- 
 mensely different from the one which the present condition of the country 
 suggests as possible, and scarcely less different from the one popularly enter- 
 tained concerning the former resources, population, and culture of the 
 Galileans. A glance ai the book is sufficient to show that its preparation 
 must have cost careful study ; a perusal of it only coutirms the impression of 
 scholarly painstaking." — Bibliotheca Sacra, April, 1882. 
 
 "With great industry Dr. ^Merrill has collected from the most varied 
 sources, information which Avill be of great use to those who have not the 
 means to consult the original authorities for themselves." — London Athemeum, 
 Jan. 14, 1882. 
 
 "He is well acquainted with the literature of the subject, particularly the 
 German : the descriptions of the activities of the inhabitants are very striking, 
 and the style is easy and floAving." — Theolof/ische Literatur, Zeitunrj, Leipzig, 
 February, 1882. 
 
 " No clergyman can afford to be without the information which is embodied 
 in this beautifully conceived and executed little treatise." — Christian Lender, 
 Boston. 
 
 " Sunday-school teachers will find its compact and clear pages of service 
 in interpreting the life of the early time." — Christian lief/lsfer. 
 
 " Its full index makes it equally serviceable as a book for reference and 
 reading." — Ifew York Obserrer. 
 
 " A book of interest alike to Jews and Christians. Dr. :Merrill has almost 
 exhausted all that has appeared in reference to his theme." — Jewish Mes- 
 senger. 
 
 •• The great benefit from this volume is that the careful reader will feel 
 that he knows the scene of our Lord's journeys, and almost sets his own foot 
 on that sacred region of the East."— The Pacific, San Francisco. 
 
 " This little monograph is the best authority on the subject of which it 
 treats to be found in the English language." — Christian Union. 
 
 " It stands almost, if not quite, alone as a monograph on this subject. It is 
 very readable as well as full of interesting matter." — Sunday School Times. 
 
 " Dr. Merrill's life at the East in connection with the Palestine Explora- 
 tion Society Researches furnishes to all strangers that certificate of his 
 fitness to speak with authority in these departments, which, however, is not 
 required by those who personally know him and his work." — Congrega- 
 tionalist. 
 
 For Sale by all Booksellers, or sent, post-paid, on 
 receipt of price, by 
 
 Congregational Publishing Society, Boston. 
 
 GEO. P. SMITH, Agent. 
 

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