that God creates a spirit independently of the laws of propagation at the event of every human birth? The obvious reference of the text is to the record of man's original creation in Genesis, and like it has nothing to say about the time and manner of the production of each human spirit. The same may be said of Zech. xii, 1, often adduced to support creationism: "Jehovah stretcheth out the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him." This glowing language simply refers to the great truth that God is the creator of heaven and earth and man, but it furnishes no specific information of the time and manner of the formation of each. So again in Isa. xlii, 5, Jehovah is described as He that created the heavens and stretched them out; He that spread forth the earth, and the things which go out of it; He that giveth breath unto the people upon it, And spirit to them that walk therein. So far from proving that each human soul is at birth an immediate creation of God, these poetic parallelisms show rather that the creation of the heavens and the earth and all things in them is in like manner a direct and continuous production of Jehovah. The giving of breath to the people is not essentially different from giving spirit to them that walk in the earth. God is the author and continual support of all the growths of nature as truly as he is the giver and upholder of all the souls of men. He is "the God of the spirits of all flesh" (Num. xvi, 22) because he is creator of mankind. He is represented in Ezekiel (xviii, 4) as saying, "Behold, all souls are mine: as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine." According to Paul the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in man (1 Cor. vi, 19). God is the creator and former of the entire man, body and soul with all their organs and faculties, and when a biblical writer mentions one part of the human constitution as the offspring or the workmanship of God we are not to conclude that therefore he is not as truly the author of the whole. A general statement that God is the father of the spirits of men cannot therefore decide the question of man's propagating his own species. "Thy hands have made me and fashioned me," says the psalmist (cxix, 73), but his statement is as true of the body as of the soul. The classic text, supposed to be quite decisive on the subject, is Heb. xii, 9: "We had the fathers of our flesh to chasten us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits, and live?" Here it is argued that we have a striking antithesis between the fathers of our bodies and the Father of our souls; as if God were not as truly the author of the one as of the other. The statement of the New Testament writer is not equivalent to the dogma that God creates ab extra a spirit for every human body produced under the law of generation. He simply contrasts the fatherhood of man and the Fatherhood of God. He does not even say, "Father of our spirits," but "Father of the spirits," which includes such spirits as are mentioned in chap. i, 14. It is nothing to his purpose to deliver an opinion about the origin of the human soul as incapable of transmission in the ordinary process of generation, but to enhance the thought of the Fatherhood of God over all spirits. The antithesis is between human fathers and the heavenly Father. That the author of this epistle believed in the procreation of human souls is apparent from chap. vii, 10, where he represents Levi as in the loins of his father Abraham at the time when Melchizedek met him. In none of these texts, therefore, do we find any sufficient warrant for the idea that man differs from all other living creatures on earth in the propagation of his kind. But the Scriptures do make it emphatic that his entire being,-body, life, soul, spirit, mind,— springs from the Fountain of all created life, the living and eternal God. By the same upholding Power all things continue in being. No child is born into this world, no fish, no fowl, no insect, comes into existence but the living God is present and efficient at its coming, and also at its going forth again. Not a sparrow lives or dies without our Father (Matt. x, 29). "He is before all things, and by him all things hold together" (1 Col. i, 17). 4. Dispersion of Races and Tribes. The dispersion of all the nations of mankind from one original family is the teaching of Gen. x, 1-xi, 9. The table of nations there given accords with the well-known facts of the outgrowth of families and tribes, and of their multiplication in the earth. The races of mankind are classified under three great divisions, Japhetic, Hamitic, and Semitic. But the families, tongues, lands, and nations mentioned in this ancient scripture are not sufficiently comprehensive in detail to represent the modern races and distribution of mankind. Great peoples and nations have arisen since the book of Genesis was written, and over continents and islands unknown to the biblical writers there exist today families, tongues, and nations with a civilization immeasurably in advance of any of the ancients. Many peoples and races seem also to have deteriorated and become changed in color, stature, and capability. We look almost in amazement on the various types of mankind as modern research has presented them before us, and we wonder how they all could have sprung from one ancestor. The scientific anthropologist examines the remarkable differences in the size of bodily structure, in the configuration of the skull, in the color of the skin, in the peculiarities of the hair, and in mental traits. He studies to classify the different races according to certain notable characteristics which seem to differentiate them. There are the Caucasian, the Semitic, the Mongolian, the Malay, the Australian, the Negro, and the American Indian races, and if these seven be traced out into their various subordinate families, we must make note of Aryans, Ethiopians, Kaffirs, Zulus, Patagonians, Aztecs, Eskimos, and scores of similar divisions which correspond, in their relation to the leading types, to such biblical names as Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, and Sepharvites. The task of classifying all these scattered tribes of men into the fewest principal types belongs to the specialist in ethnography.' How all these races became dispersed abroad from one original center of population; how changes of climate, varieties of food, and habits of life may have brought about, in the long course of ages, the striking varieties of color and of physiognomy which we now find; how languages were formed, modified, and changed in structure and usage in the lapse of time these are all questions of permanent interest fo man, but demand only a passing recognition in a treatise on biblical doctrine. Whatever future research may determine as to the polygenous origin of different races, there is at present no sufficient evidence in hand to warrant belief in that hypothesis. The biblical teaching and the trend of scientific studies in ethnology show rather that all races of men sprung from one original human pair, and were dispersed abroad over the face of the earth and among the islands of the great sea from one geographical center. 1 Huxley's classification of the principal types into the Mongoloid, the Negroid, the Australoid, and the Xanthochroic has met with much favor. See Journal of the Ethnological Society, vol. ii, p. 404. 1870. CHAPTER V THE ORIGIN OF MAN 1. The Definite Modern Question. It remains to inquire into the origin of the human race. Whence came the first man? To answer in the bare language of Genesis that "God created man in his own image; male and female created he them," is not sufficient for the modern inquirer. The more formal statement of Gen. ii, 7, that "Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul," fails also to answer the more specific questions which are now put forward. For we are now definitely asked whether this process of creation were the act of a moment, an hour, a day, or a thousand years. Was it an immediate and instantaneous creation, or a long process of evolution? 2. Two Ways of Answering the Question. There are two supposable ways in which this question may be answered. One is by receiving direct information from a supernatural and unquestionable source; the other is by means of such methods of research as man employs in ascertaining facts in any other question of archæology. It has long been supposed, on the one hand, that the first chapters of the book of Genesis are a literal and authoritative historical account of the origin of the world and of man. But critical and rational investigation has largely discounted this traditional view of the biblical narrative. The old idea that the world was "made out of nothing," and that all it contains was brought into existence in one week of ordinary days and nights, has been effectually exploded. No modern apologist of reputation argues for a literal interpretation of the six days of creation; but attempts without number have been made to read into the biblical narrative the findings of scientific research and the suggestions of the nebular hypothesis of the universe. These attempts, however, carried on now for more than a hundred years, are in themselves a striking witness of the failure of the narrative itself to convince intelligent readers that it is a literal historical account of the facts of creation. A supernatural revelation of specific facts which thus fails to commend itself to the judgment and conscience of diligent seekers after the truth would seem to be in itself a manifest absurdity. What possible authority can such a variously interpreted record be for determining the specific questions of modern astronomy, geology, and biology? For reasons elsewhere given' we are compelled to regard the opening chapters of Genesis as a series of symbolical or idealistic pictures rather than as records of science and of history. Whatever their origin and composite character, set as they now are at the beginning of the biblical canon, they embody sublime ideas of God and the world which the most simple and unlearned readers have always been able to discern. They are profitable for showing that God is the beginning and end of all things. He bringeth light out of the darkness, and order out of confusion. He is the infinite personal Intelligence back of all phenomena. He governs the heavens and the earth according to well established laws, and determines the times and seasons with unerring wisdom. He is the ultimate source of all life', and the all-pervading Force by which through illimitable eons the animal creation culminated in man with his godlike capacity for wisdom, love, and power. We accordingly find nothing in the biblical narrative to forbid the hypothesis of evolution in accounting for the origin of man. 3. Poetical Concepts of Creation. So far as the opening chapters of Genesis convey an ideal of the origin of man on earth, they indicate that he is a product of the earth and of the heavens through the creative energy of God. The revelations given are embodied in poetic pictures rather than in prosaic and realistic details of fact. How long and through what details of method the process of man's creation was brought about are no more clearly revealed than are the processes of development by which the heavens and the earth reached their present conditions. It was a beautiful conception of the sacred writer to portray the entire process under the figure of six days of labor followed by a sabbath rest. The whole picture is in substance but an apocalyptic elaboration of what a psalmist (Psa. xxxiii, 6-9) says in a few lines of Hebrew parallelism: 2 By the word of Jehovah were the heavens made, For he said, and it came to pass; He commanded, and it stood firm. See my Biblical Apocalyptics, chapter iii. New York, 1898. It is quite possible that if life began in this world by a miraculous act, the creative power may have operated so gently that an investigating committee of angels would have failed to determine whether it may not have been a case of spontaneous generation.-Macloskie, in the Presbyterian and Reformed Review, 1898, p. 16 |