ii. God's Word.
1. And God said. — This gives the keynote to the narrative, the burden ten times repeated, of this magniiicent 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.
^ Says Carlyle : " Man is properly an incarnated word ; the word that he speaks is the man himself." In like manner, and with still more truth, might it be said of God that His Word is Himself ; only John's assertion is not that the Word is God, but that it was God, implying is of course.'
2. 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 work itself, our enjoy- ment of it can only be superficial, and we are, through our in- gratitude, on the road to an idolatry more or less gross. Our enjoyment is pure and perfect only 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.
IT We read, " God created " ; " God made " ; " God saw " ; " God divided"; "God called"; "God set"; "God blessed"; "God formed " ; " God planted " ; " God took " ; " God commanded " ; but the most frequent word here is " God said." As elsewhere, " He spake and it was done " ; " He commanded the light to shine out of darkness " ; " the worlds were framed by the Word of God " ;
* J. Brierley, Life and the Ideal, 248.
• J. W., LetUr$ of Yesterday, 48.
38 LET THERE BE LIGHT
" upholding all things by the word of His power." God^s " word " is then the one medium or link between Him and creation. . . . The frequency with which it is repeated shows what stress Grod lays on it. . . . Between the " nothing " and the " something " — non-existence and creation — there intervenes only the word — it needed only the word, no more; but after that many other agencies come in — second causes, natural laws and processes — all evolving the great original fiat. When the Son of God was here it was thus He acted. He spake : " Lazarus, come forth " ; " Young man, arise " ; " Damsel, arise " ; " Be opened," and it was done. The Word was still the medium. It is so now. He speaks to us (1) in Creation, (2) in the Word, (3) in Providence, (4) by His Sabbaths.!
3. This word, " And God said," further reveals the personality of God. 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 fixedness of laws, which almost compel me to recognize in all things only the march of a fixed Fate, this word, " And God said," unveils to me an Arm of might, an Eye which sees, a Heart full of benevo- lence which is seeking me, a Person who loves me. This ray of light which, as it strikes upon my retina, paints there with perfect accuracy, upon a surface of the size of a centime, a land- scape of many miles in extent — He it is who commanded it to shine.
Be kind to our darkness, 0 Fashioner, dwelling in light,
And feeding the lamps of the sky ; Look down upon this one, and let it be sweet in Thy sight
I pray Thee, to-night. 0 watch whom Thou madest to dwell on its soil. Thou Most
High! For this is a world full of sorrow (there may be but one); Keep watch o'er its dust, else Thy children for aye are undone,
For this is a world where we die.*
iii. Light
1. Let there be light. — The mention of this Divine command is suflBcient to make the reader understand that this element, which was an object of worship to bo many Oriental nations, is
' FToratiuj Bonar. • Je*n IiiRelow.
GENESIS I. 2, 3 39
neither an eternal principle nor the product of blind force, but the work of a free and intelligent will. It is this same thought that is expressed in the division of the work of Creation into six days and six nights. The Creation is thus represented under the image of a week of work, during which an active and intelli- gent workman pursues his task, through a series of phases, graduated with skill and calculated with certainty, in view of an end definitely conceived from the first.