22 THE CREATION AND THE CREATOR
you will, in its blackest colours ; but good exists too, and good will triumph at last, because God and good are one. And so our poet declares —
Oh, thought's absurd ! — as with some monstrous fact Which, when ill thoughts beset us, seems to give Merciful God that made the sun and stars. The waters and the green delights of earth, The lie ! I apprehend the monstrous fact- Yet know the maker of all worlds is good, And yield my reason up, inadequate To reconcile what yet I do behold — Blasting my sense! There's cheerful day outside.*
3. And there is also the assurance that through the ages an unceasing Divine purpose runs. Scientific research reveals that plan up to a certain point. It proceeds from lower to higher, and from higher to highest; from inorganic to organic; from the simple to the complex; from the zoophyte to man. It is ever ascending, unfolding into richer amplitude and meaning. Such is the testimony of the rocks. Here revelation takes up the mighty theme. God is in creation. The development of the plan cannot cease where geology leaves it. A Divine purpose runs through the ages, and, according to later revelation, centres in Jesus Christ. Hence He is described as " a Lamb slain from the foimdation of the world." The redemptive idea is thus funda- mental ; it is the central truth of creation. " For by him and through him and to him are all things." Here is the meaning of creation ; man as created is not the ultimate purpose of God, but man as redeemed and glorified. Here the purpose of God in creation becomes luminous and grand. The suffering world is not the fulfilment of the Divine plan, but the renewed and recon- structed world. "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together . . . waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body." At the opening of the Bible we see all things proceeding from God, at the other end we see all things returning to Him again. " When all things shall be subdued unto him (Christ), then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all."
^ There is plan in the universe ; plan implies thought, thought
' J. Flew, Studies in Browning, 30.
GENESIS I. I 23
predicates a thinker. Philosophically, the Divine mystery of Creation is the transmutation of thought into matter, or the self- evolution of God, the evolution from the Originating Spirit of what was involved in Himself —
The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains — Are not these, 0 Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns?
Is not the Vision He ? Tho* He be not that which He seems ? Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams ?
We live in dreams, because the self-evolution of the Spirit in man and matter necessarily implies a career amidst various com- plications and appearances that are more or less obscure, a kind of divinely appointed dreamland; but the Divine origin of the problem is the assurance of the awakening from the dream, for it is the Omnipotent who is hidden in the dream — the dream of life ; and the full awakening will be when Parent and offspring, Thinker and thing thought, become consciously one ; perhaps that will be when we die, perhaps there is truth in Shelley's words, " Peace, peace, he is not dead, he doth not sleep, he hath awakened from the dream of life." I do not know. But I do know from direct revelation, endorsed by conscious intuition, that God is Love and that the human race and its Divine source are inseverable, and, as Owen Meredith says —
Only matter's dense opaqueness
Checks God's Light from shining through it,
And our senses, such their weakness. Cannot help our Souls to view it
Till Love lends the world translucence,
Then we see God clear in all things. Love's the new sense, Love's the true sense.
Which teaches us how we should view things.*
^ B. Wilberforc«.
Let There be Light.
Literature.
Banks (L. A.), The World's Childhood, 13, 25.
Bellew (J. C. M.), Sermons, iii. 241.
Burrell (D. J.), The Golden Passional, 110.
Cohen (0. J.), in Sermons by American Rabbis, 168.
Evans (R. W.), Parochial Sermons, 237.
Fuller (M.), The Lord's Day, 1.
Button (R. E.), The Grovm of Christ, i. 445.
John (Griffith), A Voice from China, 123.
Jowett (B.), Sermons on Faith and Doctrine, 282.
Kemble (C), Memorials of a Closed Ministry, i. 1.
M'Cheyne (R. M.), Additional Remains, 88.
Macleod (D.), Christ and Society, 243.
Matheson (G.), Leaves for Quiet Hours, 159.
„ Voices of the Spirit, 1.
Sale (S.), in Sermons by American Rabbis, 114. Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Iv. No. 3134. Stanley (A. P.), Church Sermons, i. 171. Thomas (J.), Sermons (Myrtle Street Pulpit), ii. 293. Thome (H.), Notable Sayings of the Great Teacher, 246. Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), xix. (1881) No. 1166. Christian World Pulpit, xixviii. 331 (White) ; Lev. 145 (Davidson) Church Pulpit Year Book, vi. (1909) 42.
Let There Be Light.
And the earth was waste and void ; and darkness was upon the face of the deep : and the spirit of God moved (R.V. m. was brooding) upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light : and there was light. — Gen. i. 2, 3.