Part 48

Now that we have come to the last of those wonderful working-days of which God has told us, I want you--just as we all did when we had reached the SIXTH DAY in our readings--to read over again all the verses in the first chapter of Genesis down to verse 26, and to notice carefully the words which God has used in speaking to us about what He created and made. And I want you especially to think of those two words of which we were speaking a little while ago--God created, and God made.

Before God speaks to us of the FIRST DAY, with its evening and its morning, He tells us that "in the beginning" He "created the heaven and the earth."

(Day I.) Then--we do not know how long after--God spoke, and commanded the light to shine out of the darkness; so that where the dark had been the light now was. "And God saw the light, that it was good," and divided it from the darkness. The light God called Day. Then after the night had passed, the light returned, and there was morning. "And the evening and the morning were the First Day."

(Day II.) Again God spoke, and that great globe of air which surrounds the earth was formed--the blue sky above us, and the clouds, the treasure-house for the rain. "And God called the firmament," or expansion, "Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the Second Day." Upon this day we do not read of anything new being made; and it is not said, "And God saw that it was good," as after the work of the other days.

(Day III.) Again God spoke, and the dry land appeared'; so that upon this Day there were already in existence earth and sea, air and water, day and night. And God Himself saw that all was good in the world which He had made. Then He adorned the earth with verdure and beauty, and brought out of it grass, corn, fruit-trees; each "after its kind," "And God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the Third Day."

(Day IV.) Again God spoke, and the two great lights, sun and moon, were set to give light--day and night--upon the earth, and to order the seasons. "And God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the Fourth Day."

(Day V.) Again God spoke; living creatures swarmed in the waters, and "winged fowl" flew "in the open firmament of heaven." It is now, in connection with air and sea being filled with living beings, to which God gave not only the same power to grow and multiply with which He had endowed the trees and the herbage, but in addition to it, power to move from one place to another at will, power to enjoy, and to go in quest of that which seems to them desirable, that we have again the word, "God created," and also a new word, never before used about day or night, earth or sea, sun or moon, tree or flower--"God blessed."

You remember how we noticed, when we were reading about the work of God on the Fifth Day, that as soon as He had made, not stones or plants, but fishes and birds, He blessed them. God made these living creatures happy, each in the place suited to the kind of life He had given it. And again of this Day's work we read, "And God saw that it was good.... And the evening and the morning were the Fifth Day."

Now let us read verses 24 and 25 very carefully. These verses tell us of part of God's work on the Sixth Day; and we notice that this Day begins, like the former ones, with those three words which we have read so many times in this chapter--"And God said."

(Day VI.) I wish you to stop at the end of verse 25 because there the account which God has given us of His creation of the world ends. All was now complete; and all was very good in the eyes of Him who had made and fashioned it. The rest of the chapter speaks of a distinct part of God's Creation, when man, who was to be over it all, was made; a part of the Creation, but head and Crown of all; a being distinct from any other inhabitant of earth, air, or sea, because created in the image of God.

The old writer who speaks so quaintly about the "great pond of the world," and the "guests" which it contains, exclaims with wonder when he thinks of the "tenant" which God, when He had made the great house of the world and furnished it, brought in to possess it. He says:--

"But, oh God, what a little lord hast Thou made over this great world!... yet none but he can see what Thou hast done; none but he can admire and adore Thee in what he seeth.... Other creatures Thou madest by a simple command, man not without a divine consultation; others at once, man Thou didst first form, then inspire; others in several shapes, like to none but themselves, man after Thine own image ... others with qualities fit for service; man for dominion; other creatures grovel to their earth, and have all their senses upon it, this is reared up towards heaven."

We talked a good deal about this; for I wished that Eustace and Leslie, and even little Dick, should understand something of the great difference which God has put between those creatures--the cleverest and best of them--who live their little life in the sea or on the earth, and then pass away altogether, and even a little child who does not know its right hand from its left, and cannot take care of itself perhaps nearly so well as a bird or a beast, but who has within it what God has given to no bird or beast, a spirit which can never die, a spirit which must some time "return unto God who gave it," because it belongs to Him.

No beast will have to give an account of itself to God; for to these creatures of a day, He has given their bodies, so wonderful and beautiful, and the breath by which they live; but not that deathless part, the spirit, because of which every man is responsible to God, and knows that he is, even though he may never have read in God's Word that "every one of us shall give account of himself to God."

Let me tell you how a missionary explained this, not long ago, to a king far away in the heart of Africa.

He had been talking to him about the stars and the sun; and the king presently asked where God, who had made the sun, dwelt, and what He did with people after they were dead.

The missionary says, "I answered that God was not confined to one place as we are; that when man's body died, the spirit of him who was a child of God went above, and dwelt for ever in the presence of God, and those whom God knew not here in this life were cast out into a place of sorrow and burning."

"But why does God do so?" the king asked. "What reason has He for putting man from Him?"

The missionary explained that God is righteous, and must punish those who are guilty in His sight.

"But," said the king, "we did not know the laws of God here. How can He punish us for not keeping them?"

The missionary answered that God had put His law in their hearts, so that they all knew what was right and what was wrong.

"You know," he said, "when a man lies to your face and steals from you, that he injures you; and call him bad and wicked. So when you tomorrow do the same thing, God judges you with the same judgement with which you judged your fellow-creature yesterday."

"Yes," replied the king, "that is true; that I understand."

We shall think more by-and-by about the great difference which God has put between man, whom He created in His own image, and every other creature, but I want you never to forget it.

In reading of the beautiful life which God gave to the fishes and the birds, and to those beasts that He commanded the earth to bring forth, about which we are going to speak a little today, we must always remember, while we admire the wonderful gifts and powers which they have from God, that He has put the widest possible distance between us and them.

We shall see that many of these animals are much stronger than the strongest man; that to some of them God has given senses keener than ours; and to others, in an especial degree, that great gift called instinct, by which the little swallow finds its way over sea and land, the ants "prepare their meat in the summer," the beaver makes dams across the stream, and the little prairie dogs build pleasant towns, where they can all live together, one of them always keeping watch lest any enemy should surprise the workers.

All these are beautiful proofs of the kindness and faithfulness of God towards the creatures He has made; and we may admire them, and learn all we can from them; but never imagine for one moment, that man is only a grander and more wonderfully made sort of animal, as a lion is superior to a mole, and a mole to a worm.

Just as God has told us there would be, there are now some people who think they know better than to believe what His Word says about this, and who try to think that there never was such a "wonderful animal" as man has grown to be, and are not ashamed to talk of his "ape-like ancestors." But among all the fossil-animals which the earth has kept so safely, I need hardly tell you that not one specimen of an animal between a monkey and a man has ever been found. As has been well said, those who speak in this way "have to convert a four-handed ape into an erect man, a screaming baboon into an articulating, speaking being; brutal instinct into reason, will, conscience; a thing that perishes into that which believes in God, and whose soul is immortal."