We confess at the outset that we sympathize with those who try to keep the peculiar realms of religion and natural science apart in such a way that a collision between the two is impossible. We quietly leave the investigation of the temporal succession in creation--especially the investigation of all that belongs in the finite causal connection of natural processes--to natural science; we also do not look to the source of our Christian religion, to the Holy Scripture, for a scientific manual, least of all for the communication of a knowledge of nature, supernaturally manifested and claiming divine authority, the acquisition of which is especially the task of scientific labor. But we bestow just as decidedly upon religion the specific task of showing man the way to communion with G.o.d, especially the way of salvation; a task in which it can as little permit itself to be hindered by natural science, as the latter in the pursuit of its peculiar tasks can allow an objection from any source. On the side of religion, the bond of unity which brings {292} into harmony the two activities of the human mind--the religious and the investigating--in the realm of nature, and, in general, in the whole realm of exact science, consists in the fact that in all which exact science offers to religion as the result of its investigation, the latter perceives and shows the works and ways of G.o.d; and on the side of the exact sciences, the bond consists in the fact that they bring within the reach of their scientific, historical, literary, culturo-historical, and exegetical investigations all that which in the religious realm appears, or in the written word is fixed, as historical fact. Religion, therefore, concedes to exact sciences the full right of examining the biblical records as to all the relations of their historical and literary connections; it even makes these investigations a quite essential and, at present, very much favored branch of its own science of theology. On the other hand, religion reserves just as decidedly to itself the full right of drawing from them, of maintaining, and of realizing, the whole full _religious_ basis and significance of those records.

We know very well that such a proposition is very simple in principle, but much more difficult in practice. For the quintessence of that which const.i.tutes the basis of the Christian religion--namely, the leading back of mankind to communion with G.o.d by means of salvation--is not only a philosopheme, a theoretical or mystic doctrine, but a _fact_: it comes into the world as a series of divine _facts_; it is interwoven by innumerable threads into creation and the course of nature and history; and, as to this whole aspect of its appearance in the world of phenomena, it falls under the cognition of the exact sciences. But as soon as any given fact excites the {293} interest of religion as well as that of exact science, collisions are possible from both sides. Some advocates of religion, through mistaken zeal for religious interests, may think it necessary to a.s.sert and to represent as indispensable to religion facts whose cognition as to reality belongs only to exact science and which are contested by exact science; as, _e.g._, the creation of the world in six literal days, or the creation of the single elements of the world without the action of secondary causes.

And some advocates of exact science, from reasons of a superficial a.n.a.logy, may erroneously think it necessary to dispute the reality of facts, otherwise well attested, but wanting a.n.a.logy, in which religion has a central interest; as, _e.g._, the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, or the reality of his miracles. Or they may unjustifiably try, from our experiences in this world, to forbid glances which religion permits us to throw beyond the present course of the world; _e.g._, the eschatological hope of Christians is often enough contested, or as the laws of nature are called eternal in the absolute sense of the word, although natural science is only led to a recognition of the duration of the same, which is congruent with the circ.u.mstances and duration of this present course of the world.

We are perfectly aware of all these possibilities of a collision, and of all the difficulties of their prevention and reconciliation; but we nevertheless know of no other way for their avoidance than that simple principle of agreement which, on account of its simplicity and clearness, seems to us to be perfectly able to maintain the peace between the two parties interested, or where it is disturbed, to restore it. {294}

Thus, we wholly agree that in the question of creation the investigation of the succession and of all modalities in the appearance of the single elements of the world, is entirely left to natural science, and that the biblical records should on the one hand be investigated wholly, and even to their remotest consequences, from a literary, historical, and exegetical point of view, and on the other hand be tested with equal fullness and completeness as to their religious contents. The literary and exegetical examination of the Mosaic account of creation will reveal that its conceptions of that which in the creation of the world belongs entirely to the natural process, do not go beyond that which otherwise belongs to the sphere of knowledge and views of antiquity, as well as of immediate perception of nature in general; and that we cannot expect any scientific explanation from it, because man really came last on the stage of earth, and is therefore not able to say anything, founded upon autopsy, about the origin of all the other creatures which preceded his appearance. Just as little could the first men possess and deliver to their offspring a remembrance of the first beginnings of their own existence. Moreover, the literary and exegetical interpretation of the Bible will also refer to other pa.s.sages of the Holy Scripture which entirely differ from the succession of creations, as they are related in Genesis I; so, _e.g._, besides Job x.x.xVIII, 4-11, the second account of creation in Genesis II, 4-25: again a proof that what we read in the Biblical record of creation about the succession in the appearance of creatures is not binding upon us.

Religion can have nothing to say against these results; it will not reject the information of man as to the {295} succession and the modalities in the appearance of the single elements of the world, which it receives from natural science, and will not expect it by means of a special supernatural manifestation; it will willingly accept it from natural science, and simply make use of it in such a way that in nature and its processes it also perceives a manifestation of G.o.d. Now, when it examines the different Biblical accounts of creation as _to their religious substance_, it will find in them such a pure and correct idea of divine nature and divine action--such a pure conception, equally satisfying to mind and to science, of the nature of man, of his position in nature, of the nature and destination of the two s.e.xes, of the ethical nature and the ethical primitive history of man,--it will especially have to acknowledge in the Biblical account of creation, in spite of all points of collision with the cosmogonies of paganism, such an elevation above them, such an exemption from all _theogony_, with which heathen cosmogonies are always mixed up, that we are perfectly right in perceiving in these records the full and unmistakable elements of a pure and genuine stream of manifestation, which pours into mankind.

So far we find ourselves in full harmony with a theology which, in the manner indicated, reconciles the religious interest with the historical and critical interest. We find the points of view to which this perception leads, represented with special clearness and attractiveness in Dillmann's Revision of k.n.o.bel's "Commentar zur Genesis" ("Commentary on Genesis"), Leipzig, Hirzel, 1875.

But it seems to us that a readiness to be just to historical criticism and impartial exegesis has hindered {296} theologians occupying this standpoint from being just also to _the religious element_, in its full meaning, in reference to a very important part of the Mosaic account of creation, in which the author of it shows quite a decided religious interest. We mean the _six days of creation_, together with the _seventh day_, the divine Sabbath. Theologians became too quickly satisfied with the exegetical perception of these seven days, as creative, earthly days, of twenty-four hours; and this hindered them from a.s.signing to the religious meaning the full importance which these days have in that record. That the idea and the number of the days in that account have a high religious meaning to the author, is clear from the following: The account in Genesis I, 1-24, belongs to that series of parts of the Pentateuch which we call the original, and which has the Sinaitical Law as the centre of its belief. The division of the days into weeks, each having six working days and one day of rest, which possibly existed before, but which received obligatory importance to Israel first by the Sinaitical legislation, so far controls that account of the creation of the world that, next to the sublime perception of the dignity and position of man, it forms its very quintessence. The account makes that divine week of creation, with its six working days and its divine day of rest, the divine prototype and model for the human division of time; and the Decalogue also, in the conception which it has in Exodus XX, directly bases the commandment of the Sabbath on the divine week of creation. Now, if we suppose that the author took these days as earthly days of twenty-four hours, we are first of all obliged to reject as a child-like error the idea on which from _religious_ {297} reasons--not from reasons of a mystical idea of G.o.d, but from direct practical religious reasons--he puts great importance; an idea with which he establishes an inst.i.tution of human life which has been preserved through many thousands of years and is still preserved as the exceedingly blissful basis of all social life. For that the creation of the world, from the beginning of things up to the appearance of man, demanded more than six times twenty-four hours, is beyond any doubt. Moreover, we should be obliged to reject the arguments of such a central religious custom as Sabbath-rest in a record in which we have to a.s.sign an absolute and lasting religious value to all other religious elements of it, as to the ideas of the unity, omnipotence, and wisdom of G.o.d, of his creation through the creative word, of the perfection of his works, of man bearing the image of G.o.d. We should even see that idea of G.o.d which presents itself to us out of all other characteristics of that record in such spotless purity and sublime magnitude, sink down to a decided insignificance through the identification of the divine days of creation with our earthly days of twenty-four hours.

All this certainly brings near to us the question: do we make a correct exegesis, do we correctly _read_ that record, when we think that the author, because he speaks of days, must necessarily have understood earthly days, such as we know now?

We readily perceive how interpreters have arrived at this view. The divine sections of creation in the Mosaic account show themselves too decidedly as days to make possible any other interpretation than to take them as days.

Now from experience we do not know of any other days than of earthly days of twenty-four hours; {298} and therefore the conclusion naturally follows, that the author also took the divine days of creation as such earthly days of twenty-four hours. A simple reference of the same to periods, so that we should again think of fixed periods of the earth or of the world, would especially pervert the literal sense--would entirely remove from the account the idea of "day" which is so essential to the author of the record, and thereby render obscure the archetype of the divine week of creation for the human divisions of time; and the looked-for harmony between the Biblical days and the geological periods of the earth would by no means be established by such an identification of the days of creation with the periods of the world: for the geological or even the cosmic and astronomical periods are nowhere in congruity with the Biblical days of creation.

But the question, however, is: are there not evidences in the Biblical account itself which show that the author did _not_ take these days as creative earthly days of twenty-four hours? We have to answer this question decidedly in the affirmative.

In the first place, it is an established fact that these days of the week of creation were also, according to the meaning of the author, _days of G.o.d_. Now that such days of G.o.d, even with the most childish and simple worldly knowledge of that early period of mankind, so soon as such a pure _idea of G.o.d_, as appears from the whole account, is at the bottom of the conception, can no longer be _identical_ with the days of the creature, is to be inferred beforehand with the greatest probability from the purity of that idea of G.o.d, and is even expressly {299} confirmed by special evidences in the record itself. We have to mention no less than four of them.

The days of creation present themselves _as days of G.o.d_, which as such _differ from the creative days of earth_ by the fact that with them the _day_ and the _work of the day_ are absolutely identical. In the creative days, the day and the work of the day are always different from one another; the days come and go as temporal frames which include everything that happens during these days, whether we know it or not. Now we may turn our attention to and mention ever so many works of an earthly day: there always happen innumerable other things which also belong within the frame of that day and which are only not observed by us. It is quite another thing with those Biblical days of creation: here the day _begins_ with the beginning of the day's work; it _exists_ and _pa.s.ses on_ single and alone in the course of the work of the day, and it comes to an end when the day's work is completed, and the work of the following day begins: it comes to an end with "evening and morning."

We also lay some stress, though not very much, upon the fact that, in the account, that which makes and regulates the _earthly_ day is created not before the fourth day of creation, Genesis I, 14: "And G.o.d said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven _to divide the day from the night_; and let them be for signs and for seasons, and _for days_ and years." We admit that if we were obliged for other reasons to suppose that the author of the account took the days of creation as common earthly days of twenty-four hours, we must and should find it possible that the author had been able to {300} suppose the existence and the course of such earthly days even _before_ the creation of sun, moon, and stars; for he certainly could not yet have the scientific perception that the sun with its light and the rotation of the earth were the only cause of an earthly day. But it is easier and more natural for us to bring that pa.s.sage, Genesis I, 14, into accord with the conception that the days of creation are divine days which, as such, are different from creative days, and on one of which G.o.d also created that which originates creative days.

Another evidence in the account is of still greater importance for our conception of days. These days of creation in the Biblical record _have no night_. The account closes the work of each day with the words: "_And the evening and the morning were the first day_," "_the second day_," etc. Now, if we have to suppose that the author took these days as common earthly days, it would be quite impossible to understand why, after having mentioned at the close of the day's work that it now became evening, he omits the long night of twelve hours, and, although not having said anything of the night, makes the morning which follows the latter, the end of the preceding day; and why he does not say, "and it became evening" and "it became _night_, the first day," etc. We then could not avoid the question: what, according to the conception of the author, did G.o.d do in these six nights of his week of creation? But if we suppose that the author took the days as days of G.o.d, and therefore, in his conception of the days of creation, elevated the same above the common earthly days of the creature, and so represented them to himself as he alone, through his idea of G.o.d, thought he might {301} venture to do, then that mode of expression, so exceedingly strange under all other suppositions, appears very simple and natural to us. For the author did not mention a night, because these days simply had no night; and they had none, because as days of G.o.d they _could_ have none--because with G.o.d there is no night; because the rest of G.o.d, as the seventh day shows, is only a day of rest and not a night of rest. And the author saw the morning immediately following the evening of his divine day of creation, and recognized in this morning together with the evening immediately preceding it, the close of the day, because the accomplishment of the day's work (evening) already contained in itself the preparation of the following day's work, or at least pointed to the coming of the latter.

Finally, the fact that, according to the Biblical account, _the seventh day still has no end_, is just as decisive for us. The end of each of the six days is mentioned by the solemn repet.i.tion of the words: "And the evening and the morning were the first day," etc.; but it is not mentioned in regard to the seventh day. Now if, according to the meaning of the author, the seventh day had also had its end like any of the six preceding days, he would at the seventh and _last_ day have had _double reason_ for mentioning its end; and the omission of that concluding word would indeed be inconceivable. When Dillman says: "The formula 'and (it became) the evening' is wanting, because the account is here at an end, and is no longer to be carried over to another day, and because for that reason its designation as seventh day is presupposed in v. 2," we have to reply that, under the supposition of the days of creation having {302} been common earthly days, a carrying over of the account to further days was certainly to be expected, even if from nothing else than the formula: "And the evening and the morning were the first day," etc. For then the human weeks could have followed the week of G.o.d, in which man, following the divine example, would have had to work six days and to rest one. The same commentator says (p. 24): "The author could not even have dared make a statement about the life-duration of the first men, if to him the day in which he was created had been an indefinitely long period of time." But, according to the conception of the Biblical author supposed by us, only the "day of G.o.d," in which he was created, would have been an indefinitely long period of time (although we are not willing to identify the days of G.o.d with certain earthly periods of time); the earthly days and the earthly years, on the other hand, would have their existence after the fourth day of creation, and thus, according to that view, we could estimate and name the earthly years and days of all that which happened before the fourth day of creation, under the condition that we have, or believe we have, the means of estimating them. When Dillmann continues: "On the contrary, the author took these days as nothing else than days," we wholly agree with him; but add to it: "not days of the creature, but days of G.o.d."

By this long duration of the seventh day, we are obliged to draw still another conclusion; namely, that according to the conception of the author the six preceding days also must have far exceeded the duration of earthly days. This leads us to another Biblical a.n.a.logy, whose direct power of demonstration for a long {303} duration of the Biblical days of creation is, it is true, justly contested, but which, as soon as we have to a.s.sume for other reasons that according to the author the days of creation far exceed the earthly days as to duration, becomes a strong support of this view. For it is certainly not unimportant that in the 90th Psalm, the psalm of Moses, the mediator of the Sinaitical legislation, to the circle of ideas of which that account of the creation so entirely belongs, the thought is expressed which is also taken up in the second letter of St.

Peter, with its developed cosmological conceptions: namely, the thought "that one day _is_ with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day."

With that exegesis of the seventh day as one still remaining up to the present, we are in clear accord with the more developed theology of the New Testament, and with the interpretation which it itself gives of that divine day of rest. Jesus himself, in St. John, V. 17, puts aside a reproach of the Pharisees in reference to a healing on the Sabbath, with the words: "My father worketh hitherto, and I work." This answer only has a meaning in the sense: my father worketh hitherto, although, since the accomplishment of the days of creation, he enjoys the Sabbath-rest; and thus I also work on the Sabbath as on a work-day. And the Letter to the Hebrews, in its fourth chapter, looks through the medium of the ninety-fifth Psalm back to this Sabbath of creation which, as a day of rest of G.o.d, exists to-day, and the entering into which is given and promised to the people of G.o.d.

By this whole conception of the Biblical week of creation, which appears to us _exegetically_ much more {304} natural and unconstrained than any other, we alone reach that conception which the author of that record _intends to_ reach; namely, a conception really worthy of G.o.d, of his temporal relation to the world, and of the relation of human days to the divine days of creation; we get a foundation for the commandment to keep the Sabbath, the idea of which can be completed without disturbing the idea of G.o.d. The relation of G.o.d to the whole temporal course of this present world, from its beginning to its end, for the religious mode of contemplation of man who, as the image of G.o.d, looks to the creative activity of G.o.d for a prototype and an example for his own activity, can be comprised in one single, great, divine week, whose first six days last to the completion of the creation of man, and whose seventh day still lasts and will last to the completion of the course of the world--till the latter itself, and mankind with it, can enter into the divine rest.

From this religious interpretation, which we have to ascribe to that Biblical idea of the divine week of creation, it by no means follows that religion has to demand of natural science that it shall reach in its cosmogonic investigations the same succession in the appearance of things as we find in the Biblical account. This would be nothing else but an actual carrying of a pretended religious interest over beyond the limits of a realm in which the deciding vote belongs to natural science. However incomplete the cosmogonic knowledge of the latter may be, it nevertheless is at present established clearly enough to reject forever such a demand.

Astronomy convinces us that it is entirely inconceivable that all which belongs to the work of the fourth Biblical day of creation, even {305} the whole formation of stars and of our system of planets, _succeeded_ the work of the third day, the formation of earthly continents and plants. And geology in its strata, which exhibit petrifactions, shows us that the relative Biblical days' works in reality did not succeed one another alternately in such a way that the one began where the other ceased, but that from the beginning of organic life the works of the third and the fifth days from the carboniferous period, also the works of the third, fifth, and sixth days, developed themselves perfectly by the side of each other. It would be an excess of refinement to identify any Biblical day of creation with any period or any complex of periods in the development of the earth or of the world.

On the other hand, for a Christianity founded upon the Holy Scripture, it is still not entirely without interest to compare _the results of natural science and the extent and succession of the Biblical days' works with one another_. For a declaration which undertakes to trace something which has so deep a hold on human life as the Sabbath-rest, back to the prototype of directly divine action, is certainly worthy of attention. Now if we wish to make such a comparison, we can only do it in exact a.n.a.logy with the way and manner in which we compare the predictions of the prophetical word with their fulfilment. For in so far as the declarations of that Biblical record about the circ.u.mstances of creation have religious value of which we are to take notice, they as declarations concerning events of which man certainly cannot have historical knowledge of his own, come entirely under the point of view of the _prophetical word_; with the exception that they do not contain a forward-looking but a {306} _backward-looking prophecy_. This is one of the most correct and fruitful thoughts which Johann Heinrich Kurz, in his "Bibel und Astronomie" ("Bible and Astronomy"), Berlin, Wohlgemuth, 1st edition, 1842, has expressed, but has fantastically misused, in that work, in general so prolific of indefensible positions; a fate which, as is well known, the forward-looking prophecy has had also often enough to undergo.

In the same manner as we have to explain the forward-looking prophecy from two factors--on the one hand, from the circ.u.mstances of time, the knowledge, the dispositions, and the characters of prophets; on the other, from the receptivity of their mind for the mind of G.o.d and the last purposes of his actions--we also have explained that record of creation from two factors: on the one hand, from the view and the knowledge of its time, and on the other from the receptivity of its author for a pure and living idea of G.o.d and of the religious relations of human life. And we shall also have to do likewise when interpreting it. For the interpretation of the forward-looking prophecy, we have behind us the experience of thousands of years, from which the following principles, of treatment and interpretation have resulted. As long as such a prophetic word is not yet fulfilled, so long, indeed, its meaning is and remains the object of Christian faith and Christian hope; but it is difficult and almost impossible to distinguish in it, what is lasting substance, and what is transient form. Perhaps many a thing is looked upon as substance, which in the fulfilment appears to be only an image and form; and perhaps many a thing as form, which in the fulfilment shows itself as a more concrete reality than we had supposed. {307} And it would even be psychologically a violent a.s.sumption, if we should presuppose in the mind of the prophet a still greater knowledge of the future course of things, than that which he expresses; or if we should separate him in his worldly knowledge, and even in the form of his prophetic utterances, from the views and limits of his time. But by far the most fruitless effort of all would be to construct beforehand out of his words the particulars of the historical course of the future. Attempts of this kind have been defeated whenever they have been made. But if the fulfilment of such a prophetic word has once taken place, it is a joy and a strengthening of faith to all following generations, and even after the final fulfilment of all prophecy, it will still be a joy to the children of G.o.d in their perfection, to compare prophecy and fulfilment and to allow the prophecy to be illumined by the light of fulfilment, the fulfilment by that of prophecy.

All this finds its full application to the Biblical narrative of creation.

That which in the forward-looking prophecy is the historical fulfilment, is in the backward-looking the scientific investigation. So long as the latter was not directed at all to the prehistoric history of the earth, it was an audacious undertaking to separate in the Biblical six days' work substance and form from one another; it was and is still an unpsychological violence to suppose in the human author of the narrative all possible knowledge of psychical and scientific secrets, and to lift him above the child-like views of his time concerning the things of this world. But it was by far the most fruitless undertaking to construct in detail from his words a picture of the real {308} circ.u.mstances of the creation and development of the world. Attempts of this kind have been often made; but they have produced nothing but dreams. And certainly the attempt to control and correct natural investigation by means of such dreams would be like trying to correct well-established facts of history by the prophecies of a still earlier period, or even to prove them false. But from the time when natural science, as it is at present, began to pay attention to the prehistoric history of the earth and even of the universe, such a comparison has been possible.

It tells us, it is true, that the Biblical days' works did not follow each other in the course of earthly and cosmic developments in such a way, that the one began where the other ceased, but that they pa.s.sed on in the long lines of their course, beside one another, and above one another. But looking upon their _meridian alt.i.tudes_, they nevertheless, where we are able to undertake certain geological comparisons, follow one another exactly in the same order in which the days follow one another in that Biblical record. The meridian alt.i.tude of the _third day_ (for here the certainty of geological knowledge first begins for us) has to be looked for where the continents are formed and the vegetable life preponderates on earth: and that is the _carboniferous period_. The meridian alt.i.tude of the _fourth day_ must have been reached where for the first time the covering of vapor and clouds of the earthly atmosphere permanently parted, and sun, moon, and stars became visible: and geology finds this time in the period which lies between the carboniferous period and the trias--in the _Permian period_, as it is called in England, in the _dyas_ of the {309} fossiliferous and of cupriferous slate and _Zechstein_, as we call it in Germany. The meridian alt.i.tude of the _fifth day_ has to be looked for where ocean-life, with its sauria and innumerable animals, gave its impress to organic life on earth, and the air was filled with inhabitants: geology calls such a time the _secondary period_ of trias, Iura, and chalk. That ocean-life preponderated in this period, is beyond any doubt; while in general geology gives us more meagre information about the inhabitants of the air than of the animals of the ocean and land. The flying sauria of Iura are still characteristic enough to leave at least the possibility that the winged world, which in value still stands below the mammalia, a.s.sisted in giving to that secondary period its proper type. Finally, the meridian alt.i.tude of the _sixth day_ cannot be anywhere else than where the animals of the land became the most characteristic inhabitants of the globe, and where man appeared: and that is the tertiary period of geology, in which mammalia appeared in great numbers and variety, and at the end of which we find the first traces of the appearance of man.

We nevertheless do not a.s.sign special weight to the establishment of such a correspondence. The religious value of the idea of a divine week of creation is rendered perfectly certain to us, if we only find that it is reconcilable with a pure idea of G.o.d. That would not be the case, if we had to look upon the week of creation as an earthly week; but it is perfectly so, if the divine week stretches over the whole temporality of the course of the world. Therewith we can be satisfied. For we have neither theological nor philosophical nor {310} scientific evidences enough to draw from these Biblical utterances any _metaphysical conclusions_ in reference to the relations of G.o.d to the temporal development of the world. We should not dare to contest directly such metaphysical relations: for the human week, with its day of rest, is such an eminently fortunate and blissful invitation, the observance of this command is accompanied by such a striking prosperity in all life-relations of a people, its non-observance by such an evident curse, and, moreover, the idea of man bearing the image of G.o.d is such a fruitful idea, satisfying equally spirit and mind, that we have to remember the possibility that the inst.i.tution of the human week, with its day of rest, is certainly founded on the real relations of the life-process of that creature which bears the image of G.o.d to the activity of its divine prototype upon the earth. But nevertheless, we just as little dare to attempt or to challenge the establishment of such metaphysical relations: for a theosophistic treatment of numbers seems to us no fruitful field for the promotion of religion--neither for the promotion of religious knowledge nor for that of religious life.

Still, however, the result of our comparison between Biblical and scientific interpretation seems to us worth mentioning for a special reason. It is true, we have found a succession of the _meridian alt.i.tudes_ of the Biblical days in the same order in which, according to the Biblical relation, the days' works followed one another; but we have found in the _total course_ of the Biblical days that their works in reality pa.s.sed on in long lines contemporaneously with one another. Now, since that first part of our result--the succession of _meridian {311} alt.i.tudes_--is the least we have to expect, if the counting of the days shall at all have an objectively real ground in the world's process, on the other hand, the second part of our result--the far-reaching contemporary existence of the different Biblical days--has an exact a.n.a.logy with those prophecies whose partial or entire fulfilment permits us a more certain judgment of the character of prophecy and a more certain comparison between prophecy and fulfilment. Even the prophetic world knows of a divine day, which in the prophecies occupies an eminent and central position: it is the day of the Lord as the day of judgment and salvation. This day of the Lord also stands before the eye of the prophet, certainly not as a common earthly day of twenty-four hours, but as a day of G.o.d rising above earthly days and embracing an infinite number of them, although it also has its very distinct meaning which comes into the earthly temporality. But in the historic fulfilment, there happen along with it a thousand things which do not belong to it; for two-thirds of mankind that day did not dawn at all; and as to its temporal course, it had its dawn in the beginnings of mankind,--its sunrise took place eighteen hundred years ago, and its meridian alt.i.tude is still impending.

Finally, that even the piety of those who composed the Biblical records, and of all those who see in them the manifested evidences of their faith, a.s.signs no religious weight to the succession of the days' works, becomes clear from the before-mentioned fact, that the second account of creation, which makes man and his ethical primitive history its centre, relates the creation of the inhabitants of the earth in quite a different order from {312} the first one. We shall treat of this point again, and more in detail, for another reason, in the following section.

We still have to treat of the question as to what position the Holy Scripture and Biblical Christianity take regarding a _development in general_: and here also we have only to say that they are very favorable to such an idea. The works of the six days themselves are in their succession nothing else but a development, a permanent differentiation of that which was not separated before, a continuous unfolding of the more simple into the more complex, an always progressing preparation of the globe for newer and higher forms of existence, until finally man appeared. In the Biblical account of creation, the idea which forms the basis of every evolution theory, (namely, that the new which appears has its conditions and suppositions, its creative secondary reasons, in the preceding), is p.r.o.nounced with special clearness. When it says: "Let the Earth bring forth gra.s.s and herb,... and the earth brought forth," etc.; "And G.o.d said: Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life,"

etc.; "Let the earth bring forth the living creature; and it was so;" and "G.o.d made the beast of the earth,"--the creative causality also is mentioned in the clearest words by the side of and under the causality of the Creator, by means of which the latter had made creatures. The friendly relation between the Biblical account and the evolution theory even goes so far that the Holy Scripture, like that theory, does not permit animals to come forth from plants, although the latter represent the lower, the former the higher, and that, plants are a {313} necessary condition for animals, but that even according to the Bible both kingdoms come forth from the inorganic of the earth. When treating of the creation of plants, it says, "Let the earth bring forth gra.s.s," etc.; and when treating of that of animals, it says, "Let the earth bring forth the living creature." At last, if science should once succeed in perceiving more clearly than now the origin of the organic from the inorganic, it would have in those words the means for a harmony with the Biblical conception.

Now, just as evidently as the Holy Scripture is favorable, in general and as a whole, to the idea of evolution, so certainly it seems to reject it precisely at that point where the whole interest of our question lies; namely, in reference to the origin of the single species. For here, when treating of the creation of plants as well us of animals, it is said in most distinct words: "_after his kind_." But the contradiction is only apparent. As to the way and manner in which G.o.d created every species, whether he used secondary causes or not, nothing else is said than that G.o.d created every species, that the creatures exist in distinctly marked species, and that these species are not chance, but lie in the plan of G.o.d--that they are his work. This fact, that it was G.o.d who wished to create each species as species, and in reality created it, is just as firmly established, if the species came forth from one another and were developed in gradual transitions, as if they received their existence in some other way. As, in the fifth day's work, we find simply the words: "And G.o.d said, _Let the earth bring forth_ the living creature: and it was so;"

and "_G.o.d made_ the beast of the earth,"--in precisely the same way {314} G.o.d could indeed _create_ single plants and animals _after their kind_, in such a way that one should come forth from another, that they should be developed from one another.

-- 2. _The Creation of Man._

The most important facts which we have to mention, as bearing upon the position of the Christian doctrine of the creation of man in reference to the evolution theory, have been treated of in Chapter I, _A_. We have especially convinced ourselves of the fact, that the new, even if it has its secondary causes, and comes into existence in gradual development, is no less a creation of G.o.d, and has no less the full value of the new, than if it were created instantaneously. Likewise man also stands before us untouched in the full newness and dignity of his being, in the full qualitative and not simply quant.i.tative superiority of the highest gifts of his mind, and especially of his personality, his ego, his liberty,--in one word, in his full image of G.o.d,--whether we have to look upon him as created in gradual development or as created suddenly.

There are two circ.u.mstances in the Biblical account from which we see that, although it is naturally silent as to the descent problem, it not only knows and acknowledges the connection of man with the lower creatures of the earth, but also expressly directs attention to it.

One of these circ.u.mstances is connecting man's creation with that of land-animals, in a single day's work. We do not lay more stress on this union than that of the Holy Scripture, although it emphasizes so strongly the dignity of man in his likeness to G.o.d and in his having entire {315} supremacy over the whole earth, and although it could have found therein reasons enough for a.s.signing a proper day to the creation of man, to which the whole preceding creation pointed, and whom the whole creation on earth should serve, yet in its account of the creation it evidently desires man to be looked upon in his connection as a creature with the animal world.

Moreover, we should not overlook, in the Biblical account, that the benediction which G.o.d gives to the animals of the water and the air, at the end of the fifth day, is in the sixth day not p.r.o.nounced over the land-animals--although they certainly are as much ent.i.tled to it as fish and birds--but over man. Of course, it is presupposed that the land-animals naturally partake of the benediction of man, so far as it can be due to them; the benediction, namely, of fertility and of increase. According to these indications and to the Biblical conception, man stands in still another and closer connection with the animal world than in that of mere supremacy over it.

The second circ.u.mstance to which we have to call attention, is the declaration (Genesis II, 7), that G.o.d created man out of earth; or rather, as the literal translation says: "_And the Lord G.o.d formed man (of) dust of the ground._" It is of no importance whether the accusative "dust of the ground" is, as some say, a mere appositive, or, as others explain it, the accusative of matter. When the account calls man dust of the ground, or a being formed of dust, the difference is infinitely insignificant, whether the earthly matter out of which G.o.d formed man who is dust of the earth, was an animal organism or not; whether man was formed {316} directly or indirectly out of the earth, and whether the forming demanded a longer or a shorter time. For that it did demand time, and that it was not an instantaneous creation, is implied in the expression "to form."

We call attention to this pa.s.sage for still another reason. The second account of creation, as it begins Genesis II, 4, and goes on to the end of the third chapter, is strikingly different from the first account, Genesis I-Genesis II, 4. It has its origin in that author whose book is called that of the Jehovist, or, more lately, the judaico-prophetic book; and who, among all those that have contributed stones to the building of the Pentateuch, gives the deepest insight into the nature of sin and grace, and into the divine plan of salvation. Now in this book, from the religious point of view so extremely worthy of attention, the account of the creation is given quite differently. Man is the centre of the account; that which does not directly refer to him is entirely omitted. The order in which the inhabitants of the earth were created, is not only not divided into the six day's works of the first account, and in verse 4 is not only directly taken as the work of a single day, in the expression [Hebrew: BAYWOM] (in the day, in which = when), without especial stress being put upon the expression "one day," for [Hebrew: BAYWOM] has become a particle; but this order is entirely different from the other. In the second account, the succession is the following: "first, man; then, the paradise into which man is placed; next, the trees (the question at what time the rest of the vegetable world was created is left entirely without answer); then, the determination to create also an a.s.sistant to man; next, the creation of animals; finally, the creation of the woman out {317} of a rib of man."

Now, although it is wholly beyond doubt that the two accounts had different authors, the question will nevertheless arise, how it was possible that those who inserted these two accounts in the Holy Scripture, one after the other, could so harmlessly put side by side and read one after the other these two accounts, so entirely contradictory, without being obliged to think that the truth of the one would refute the other. They certainly must have had in some way the conviction that the one account was consistent with the other. But such an agreement between the two accounts is only possible when we either see in them only ideal truths, or when one of the two shall represent the actual reality of the circ.u.mstances of creation, and the other rather their ideal character. In case we should have to make such a distinction, it cannot be doubtful which of the two accounts has more of the real, and which more of the ideal character. In the first account nothing is related which does not give direct points of connection in the real process, as we can imagine it. In the second account, we find many points which hardly permit a direct literal conception, even on the part of the first readers of the account and of the editors of the canon of the Old Testament: for instance, besides the different order in which the first account is given, the creation of the woman out of the rib of man: this account, when ideally taken, is so inexpressibly comprehensive, pregnant, and deep--when taken really, so perfectly improbable. It will be likewise difficult to believe that even the old readers of the account--at least those of them who looked deeper and were more enlightened--took with extreme {318} literalness the expression, that G.o.d breathed into the nostrils of man who is dust of the ground, the breath of life. The third chapter has still other features from which we have at least to a.s.sume that the author did not at all intend to give importance to an extremely literal conception of it. Now, if the second account is the more ideal one, the meaning of it is: that man, his being, his aim, his primitive history, is made the centre of the entire description, and around him all the rest is grouped; while in the first account he appears to be more the end of the whole creation--as he presents himself to natural investigation in the real process of creation, as the last member in the chain, not as the centre in a circle or a star. Now if that is the case, if the second account of creation, having man as its centre, is the more ideal, then we certainly must not overlook the fact that in the ideal account man is called dust of the ground. Then the nature of dust also belongs, from the ideal point of view, so necessarily to the nature of man that the question, whether the connection of this man who is dust of the ground, with this ground, is brought about through the form of a preceding animal organism, or not, is no longer of importance. Therefore, if we oppose the animal ancestry of man for the general reasons that we do not wish to descend from something lower, that lower nevertheless is present as dust of the ground. And if we oppose such a pedigree on account of the ugliness and wickedness which exist in the animal world, we have to point to the fact that, on the one hand, mankind also has stains which are uglier than those which disfigure the wildest beast of prey, and that, on the other hand, the animal world shows features which {319} are so n.o.ble that no man need be ashamed of them. It is certainly a right feeling to which Darwin, in his "Descent of Man," gives expression, when he says: "For my own part, I would as soon be descended from that heroic little monkey who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper, or from that old baboon who, descending from the mountains, carried away in triumph his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs, as from a savage who delights to torture his enemies, offers up b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifices, practices infanticide without remorse, treats his wives like slaves, knows no decency, and is haunted by the grossest superst.i.tions." We have but to add:--if only the coming forth from the creative hand of G.o.d, the creation in his own image, the communion with Him and being a child of His, are preserved. And that all this can be preserved, even when adopting descent and evolution, we have seen from repeated considerations.

But we have to draw still another conclusion from the difference between the two accounts of creation. If the succession, in which the inhabitants of the earth appear in the first account, is so entirely different from that in the second, as it evidently is, we have necessarily either to give up the historical reality of the one or of the other account, or of both, or to suppose that the creation of the inhabitants of the earth took place in a way and manner which makes it possible to perceive a _real_ connection of the succession in the first account, _as well as_ in that of the second, with the real processes of creation. Now we do not at all intend to argue with those who choose the first part of the dilemma; we ourselves join with them, and believe that salvation does {320} not depend upon the objective reality of that succession, nor the possession of salvation on the faith of such reality. But we leave to the consideration of those who, in their religious convictions, think themselves bound to the objective reality of both accounts, the following thoughts: If not only ideal depth, but also a connection with the empirical and historical reality of the process of creation, is to be a.s.signed to the succession of the first account as well as to that of the second, it is only possible by a.s.suming a descent--namely, that man, _e.g._, may be called in one sense the first of creatures, inasmuch as with the first organism that was already given which was afterwards developed into man, and inasmuch as all which was otherwise created and developed as aspecial species, was only present on account of that aim; and that man in another, in the merely empirico-historical sense, is still also the last of creatures. Thus, then, the advocates of descent would find themselves in the unaccustomed position, equally surprising to friend and foe, of being in a much more friendly relation to the Biblical belief in revealed religion than their opponents. We should see the apparent discords not only between Scripture and nature, but also between account and account, dissolved into harmony, and above the double relation of the two accounts we should see the morphological ideas of Oken and Gothe, the ideas of types of Cuvier, Aga.s.siz, and Owen, the laws of development of K. E. von Baer, and finally the ideas of descent of Lamarck and Darwin, reach a friendly hand to one another. And even the old joys of a teleological view of nature, adorned indeed with queue and wig, but at present rejected with too much disdain, even if they {321} are called ichthyo-teleological and insecto-teleological, would attain in this reconciliation their modest, subordinate place. Moreover, we should then have the satisfaction of seeing again that a religiousness which in its own realm gives absolutely free play to natural investigation, and does not find it beneath its dignity to learn from natural science, can on that account retain its own autonomy in its own realm much more uncontestedly; and that, as it seems to us in the present case, it can go much farther in the use which it makes of its autonomy and in the extension of the revealed character of its religious records to physical processes and circ.u.mstances, than is either necessary or safe, and that it nevertheless is rewarded for keeping peace with natural science by more rich, more living, and more correct glimpses into the harmony between the word of G.o.d and the work of G.o.d, than would be the case with a religiousness which, without regard to natural science, weaves its cosmogonies from the Holy Scripture alone.

-- 3. _The Primitive Condition of Man: Paradise, the Fall of Man, and Primitive History._

After the Holy Scripture has narrated the creation of man in two accounts, the second of them gives us a continuation in the well-known account of Paradise and of the fall of man, with its consequences; and the further development, of the Biblical doctrine, as well as of Christian theology, has also taken the substance and quintessence of these narratives into its representation of the Christian truths of salvation.

We shall not throw any obstacles in the way of bringing about an understanding between the Darwinian views {322} and the Biblical primitive history, by acknowledging the justice of the view that Christian piety might in some way contain in itself the demand that also the form in which the facts of truth in Genesis III are given to us, has historical reality.

He who makes this demand has only his own short-sightedness and imprudence to blame, if he also loses the substance with the form, the figurative nature of which can be shown to him only too certainly. We acknowledge it as a real providence of G.o.d, which intends faithfully to guard believing man against a senseless and slavish adherence to the letter, and against grounding his means of salvation upon insecure foundations, that at the grand and venerable portal of Holy Scripture two accounts stand peacefully beside one another, which, if we penetrate through the form into their substance, complete one another in magnificent and profound harmony, but which, if we look upon the form as their substance, so diametrically contradict each other that we cannot do anything else but reject the one or the other, or, still more logically, both. We think that this hint is strong enough to be understood, and bears, like all bowing before truth and its power of conviction, rich fruit not only for our knowledge, but also for the purity, certainty, and richness of our religiousness. We shall not lose by this acknowledgment the character of revelation and the impression of the truth of these Biblical records, but shall be able through them, and through them alone, to gain and perceive it. It is true, the first account, and still more the second--the account of the creation and of the primitive history of man--has in its external form an exceedingly close relationship to the poetical myths of the ancient nations of the Orient; but {323} its difference does not consist essentially in the form--although this too, being the form of a true and correct substance, shows differences enough from these heathen myths--but consists in the substance itself. These heathen myths certainly contain many beautiful, deep, and true factors, but always, besides, fundamental ideas which we have to reject as half-true or wholly erroneous: sometimes a dualistic conception of G.o.d and the world, sometimes a materialization of the divine, the spiritual, and the ethical, sometimes fatalistic and sometimes magic elements in great number. These Biblical representations, on the other hand, certainly appear to us still in a picturesque form which is a.n.a.logous to that formation of myth; for it really seems to be the only form in which the mind of man, in his first epoch of life, was able to perceive and represent supernatural and ethical truth, as we are to-day able to represent the highest relations of our mind to the supernatural and the ethical only in pictures and parables; but the Biblical representations offer us, under this plastic covering, a substance which, in view of the most extensive criticism, of the deepest speculation, and of the most enlightened and practically most successful piety, is still established as the purest, the most correct, and the most fruitful representation of the nature of G.o.d, and of the ethical nature and the ethical history of man.

Moreover, we shall not make it difficult to bring about an understanding between the Darwinian theories and the Biblical doctrine, by supporting the other view taught by the Holy Scripture--that death came into the animal world first through the fall of man, and that the fall of man first brought the character of perishableness {324} into the condition of the earth or even of the universe. There are essentially three Biblical pa.s.sages to which those refer who think that they find such a view in the Holy Scripture; namely, Romans V, 12; Romans VIII, 19-23, and Genesis III; but they are wrong. That the Apostle Paul, in Romans V, 12, by the world, into which death came through sin, did not mean the universe or the globe, but mankind, is plain enough from the connection, and is only demanded by the difference of meaning which in the Greek, as well as in the German language, the word "world" has according to its connection. And in Romans VIII, 19-23, where he speaks of the subjection of the creature to vanity, he does not mention a certain time in which it happened, nor an historical occasion, as the fall of man, which should have given the impulse to this subjection; but he only says, in general, that it was G.o.d who "hath subjected the creature to vanity," and that he hath "subjected the same _in hope_." He who reads this pa.s.sage without prepossession, can be led to no other idea than to this: that G.o.d has subjected the creature to the law of vanity from the very beginning of creation--not forever, but from the very beginning--with the intention that he shall also celebrate his transfiguration and deliverance from the yoke of perishableness, together with the perfection of mankind, and with the manifestation and transfiguration of the children of G.o.d. And even the curse of the ground (Genesis III, 17) is no cursing of the universe, or of the globe and its creatures, but only a cursing of _the ground_; and of this not on its own account, but only in its relation, as a means of subsistence, to man, and in opposition to the {325} exemption from labor which his life hitherto had, and to the agreeableness of his means of support in paradise.

After having thus rejected these two perversions of the Biblical doctrine, there remains to us as an established substance of the latter, and as an essential part of Christian dogmatics, so far as it may come into contact with the _Darwinian_ views, at least the following: Man was originally created by G.o.d, good and happy. To his goodness there also belonged the possibility of having a sinless development, as he ought to have had; and to his happiness there also belonged a life amid surroundings wholly corresponding to him, and the possibility of obtaining exemption from death and all evils by way of a self-controlling submission to G.o.d, which resists temptation. We purposely express ourselves thus. For the Biblical primitive history does not say that man was _created_ with exemption from the law of death, but that the latter must have been _granted_ to him as a reward for his submission: the tree of life stood _by the side of_ the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and only the eating of the fruit of the tree of life, by avoiding the eating of the forbidden fruit, should have given to man that immortality which he forfeited by disobedience. Man became disobedient, and, in consequence of it, subject to death; the harmony between man and his surroundings disappeared; the earth became to him a place of labor and of death; and now began for man his historical development as a web of guilt, of punishment, and of education and redeeming mercy.

Now, in the presence of this Biblical view, the question comes up first of all: is a view according to which man should have been able and obliged to take a sinless {326} development, and, in case he had taken it, should have been exempt from the fate of death and of the ills preceding it, and endowed with immortality as to body and soul--is such a view in any way reconcilable with the Darwinian ideas of development, according to which man came forth from the series of lower organisms, subject to death?

We could avoid answering this question by a deduction similar to that which we drew in Chap. I, -- 3, when treating of the question of the reconcilableness of the idea of evolution with theism, but of which we likewise made no use. We could show that in this question no other difficulties present themselves to the religious consciousness, than such as existed long before the appearance of the Darwinian theories and were overcome by pious consciousness and religious reasoning. For a difficulty entirely similar to that which here appears to us, when looking upon the whole human _species_ and its origin, stood before us heretofore, when looking upon the human _individual_ and his origin. From the standpoint of Biblical Christianity, we ascribe to the human individual an immortality of the soul and a coming resurrection of the body; but we do not to the human embryo at the beginning of its development in the womb. Now we know that the development of man from that embryo to perfect man is wholly gradual; that we cannot observe and predicate of any organ, of any quality, of any activity of body, soul, or mind, exactly the moment when it comes into existence; and that therefore we cannot give the moment when we could a.s.sume that something so decidedly great and new as the immortality of the soul and the prospect of a {327} resurrection of the body, begins for the human individual. Although we know all this, nevertheless in all discussions of the question whether we have to hope for an immortality of the soul and a resurrection of the body, the gradual development has hardly ever been, so far as we know, a weight--in any case, never the decisive weight--in the balance _against_ the supposition of an immortality. If we can look upon the idea of an immortality of the soul and of a resurrection of the body as reconcilable with the fact, that the human individual was only developed gradually out of something which was still soulless and perishable, we also have to look upon the other fact as reconcilable with the gradual development of the whole _species_; namely, that man, if he should have developed himself without sin, would have reached an immortality of body and soul. But we shall not enter this path which would lead us around the whole question. For the objection might be made, that the scientific and philosophic impossibility of a.s.suming an eternal duration of an individual that originated in time, has, indeed, always been pointed out, and only the _a.s.sertion_, not the _proof_, of the contrary has been opposed to it; but that Darwinism puts this impossibility into new and full light. Therefore, if we wish to reach a certain basis for our conviction, nothing else remains to us but to enter upon that question wholly and exclusively from Darwinian premises.

Now these premises, indeed, indicate to us a _development_ of things, but a development of such a kind that there appears to us something new, and always new in a rising line. The rising of this line of development consists in the fact that the spiritual comes forth from the {328} natural in permanent progress and in always higher development: that mind vanquishes matter. The first new thing which meets us in the development of the globe, is the organic and life; the second, sensation and consciousness; the third, self-consciousness and free-will. Now let us once suppose imaginary human spectators of every first appearance of these phenomena. Would he who thus far had only known inorganic phenomena and processes, have dared, before the appearance of life, to utter the proposition: matter can also become living and live? And who would have dared to suggest the further doctrine: matter can also feel and get a consciousness of things? Finally, who would have dared even to say: matter can also become a self-conscious and free personality? To every person who would have p.r.o.nounced such dreams of the future, there would have been opposed, apparently with full right, the inviolable mechanism of the inorganic world. But all this nevertheless took place. If something material can be led so far that a personality lives in it, that, with the a.s.sistance of this material basis, is able to perceive the ideas and the eternal, that can act in accordance with aims and designs and can set itself the highest aims, and that may even enter upon a loving and child-like relation to the highest primitive cause of all things, then we are no longer permitted to say that the material, of which the body of such a personality consists, could not have been subjected to the service of such a personality so far, that the latter could have vanquished the elements of the destruction