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CHAPTER I.

Genesis 1.

ET us open our Bibles at the first chapter of
Genesis. We are beginning a series of lectures

on "Great Epochs of Sacred History," which, it is unnecessary to say, will be Biblical and expository in character, because from our point of view there is no sacred history outside of the Bible.

I.

The theme of this lecture is "When the World Was Made," and without further preliminaries let us read the first verse:

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

If, for the first time, we had heard these words, certain questions would have arisen in our minds. For example, Who wrote them? Where did he obtain his information? How do we know it is true? When was the beginning? Who is God? How did He create the heaven and the earth?

In attempting to answer them, let me remind you that for thirty-five hundred years, more or less, the whole of the Christian church and the Jewish nation. have believed that Moses, the great leader and legis

lator of the Hebrew people, was the human author of these words. These two witnesses, the Christian church and the Jewish nation, have had every reason and every facility for ascertaining the facts in the case, and therefore we may believe their testimony is true, and rest upon it.

WHERE MOSES GOT HIS FACTS.

Moses may have obtained his information by direct revelation from God; or from tradition, as handed down from generation to generation, for the long lives of the patriarchs would have permitted its transmission through not more than five or six men; or he may have obtained it by the comparison of other and earlier documents, for similar records of creation were in possession of other nations. But in any event, we know from other scriptures that he was guided and controlled by God in the record he has here made of it.

The Bible does not say when the beginning was. There is a chronology in the margin of our Bibles, and it says the earth is six thousand years old, but you doubtless know that it is a man-made chronology and not God-made. It is not part of the inspired text, and therefore we have a right to go back of it, if we will, and inquire concerning it.

The earth may be six thousand years old, or sixty thousand, or six hundred thousand, or it may be six hundred million years old, as some scientists believe. But if the latter should prove beyond a peradventure that the earth is so old, there is nothing in the Bible

it would contradict, for the Bible says that "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," but does not state when the beginning was.

THE BEING OF GOD.

Who is God? As we understand the Holy Scriptures, God is an infinite and a personal Being, above and independent of the universe He created. If such a God, personal and infinite, did not create the heaven and the earth, who did? Excuse the vulgarism, if I say that it is up to the disputer to say who did create the heaven and the earth, and how it was created, if God, and such a God, was not its creator.

I quote a sentence or two from Dr. A. T. Pierson, who reminds us of the axiom that nothing can be imparted to a work that is not first in the workman, or to a product that is not first in the producer. In this earth we see a work, a product, and we see one that has design and purpose stamped upon its every part; but design and purpose are always the products and the proofs of intelligence. Therefore, whoever designed this earth, whoever wrought out the work and the product must have had intelligence, and intelligence presupposes a personal being. We have here the whole argument for a divine Creator in a nutshell, and one which has never been answered, and never can be answered while the world lasts.

WHERE DID MAN COME FROM?

Let us follow Dr. Pierson a little further. There are those who would say concerning man for example,

that he is developed from a monkey. But where did the monkey come from? He came from a codfish. But where did the codfish come from? It came from an oyster. But where did the oyster come from? It came from the original germ, or protoplasm. But where did the protoplasm come from? They would answer that it was spontaneously generated. In other words, it came from itself! Now they say:

"All is plain, The chain has been traced link by link to the very last."

"Yes, but that link has no staple, it has no fastening anywhere." "It makes no matter," they would reply, "the chain is hung somewhere."

We grant that, but to us the "somewhere " is God. He is the staple of the chain, He is the fastening, and no one and nothing else. Argue as you please, you are always arguing in a circle and coming back to the place whence you started, except as you begin where Moses begins, in the first verse of the first chapter of Genesis.

WERE THERE MEN BEFORE ADAM?

And here is a further interesting suggestion concerning that first verse of Genesis. There are devout scholars, who are at the same time devout Christians, who believe that it is separated by a long period from the verses which follow it.

They believe that it refers to a creation of heaven and earth prior to the creation of the earth as we now know it.

They hold that that long-ago earth was created good, and perfect and holy, and that there were men upon it before Adam, pre-Adamites, as they are called. But they hold that some great catastrophe occurred in it, brought about by sin through the same devil and Satan who is introduced to us little later on.

They would claim further, that as the result of this catastrophe the earth fell into that condition of chaos described in the second verse.

If this hypothesis be true-and it may be trueperhaps it allows time enough for the formation of those geological strata of which scientists speak, and time enough to meet the demands of others who affirm that the creation of the earth must have been hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years ago.

II.

Let us, then, passing from the first verse, read the work of the first day of what we may call our era, and come face to face with the picture of the earth in its condition of chaos. Verses 2 to 5:

"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day."