Expositions of Holy Scripture | Page 3

afterwards created to
inhabit it. How far the details of these days' work coincide with the
order as science has made it out, we are not careful to ask here. The
primeval chaos, the separation of the waters above from the waters
beneath, the emergence of the land, the beginning of vegetation there,
the shining out of the sun as the dense mists cleared, all find
confirmation even in modern theories of evolution. But the intention of
the whole is much rather to teach that, though the simple utterance of
the divine will was the agent of creation, the manner of it was not a
sudden calling of the world, as men know it, into being, but majestic,
slow advance by stages, each of which rested on the preceding. To
apply the old distinction between justification and sanctification,
creation was a work, not an act. The Divine Workman, who is always
patient, worked slowly then as He does now. Not at a leap, but by
deliberate steps, the divine ideal attains realisation.
5. The creation of living creatures on the fourth and fifth days is so
arranged as to lead up to the creation of man as the climax. On the fifth
day sea and air are peopled, and their denizens 'blessed,' for the equal
divine love holds every living thing to its heart. On the sixth day the
earth is replenished with living creatures. Then, last of all, comes man,
the apex of creation. Obviously the purpose of the whole is to

concentrate the light on man; and it is a matter of no importance
whether the narrative is correct according to zoology, or not. What it
says is that God made all the universe, that He prepared the earth for
the delight of living creatures, that the happy birds that soar and sing,
and the dumb creatures that move through the paths of the seas, and the
beasts of the earth, are all His creating, and that man is linked to them,
being made on the same day as the latter, and by the same word, but
that between man and them all there is a gulf, since he is made in the
divine image. That image implies personality, the consciousness of self,
the power to say 'I,' as well as purity. The transition from the work of
the first four days to that of creating living things must have had a
break. No theory has been able to bridge the chasm without admitting a
divine act introducing the new element of life, and none has been able
to bridge the gulf between the animal and human consciousness
without admitting a divine act introducing 'the image of God' into the
nature common to animal and man. Three facts as to humanity are
thrown up into prominence: its possession of the image of God, the
equality and eternal interdependence of the sexes, and the lordship over
all creatures. Mark especially the remarkable wording of verse 27:
'created He him male and female created He them.' So 'neither is the
woman without the man, nor the man without the woman.' Each is
maimed apart from the other. Both stand side by side, on one level
before God. The germ of the most 'advanced' doctrines of the relations
of the sexes is hidden here.

HOW SIN CAME IN
'Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the
Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said,
Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto
the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of
the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said,
Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the
serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth
know, that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened;
and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman
saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes,
and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof,

and did eat; and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat.
And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were
naked; and they sewed fig-leaves together, and made themselves aprons.
And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the
cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the
presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden. And the