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Bible Dictionaries
Creation
Fausset's Bible Dictionary
or Science and revelation being from the same God cannot be mutually opposed. But either, or both, may be misinterpreted; and there have been as many false interpretations of the book of nature as of revelation. As the Copernican theory was ultimately found not to militate against, but to harmonize with, Scripture, when the language of the latter was better understood; so no real scientific discovery ever since has been found adverse to full belief in revelation, when the latter has been better understood. The full knowledge of both has ever advanced side by side. The Bible, having not scientific but religious truth for its object, speaks in phenomenal language, which in part even the scientific have to do, as in the phrases sunrise and sunset. Creation, in the strict sense of the first origination of being out of nothing, does not come within the scope of science.
It is by the Bible alone, and through faith we understand that the worlds were framed (fitly formed) by the word of God, so that not (as, from the analogy of things reproduced from previously existing and visible materials, one naturally would suppose) out of things which appear hath that which is seen been made" (Hebrews 11:3). No human being was witness of creation (Job 38:4). Geology traces ages ascending backward, marked by animal and vegetable existence, less and less highly organized the further back we go; but at last comes to a point beyond which it has no light, and I must fall back on revelation and faith for information. "In the beginning God created" the world, "the heaven and the earth" (Genesis 1:1): "In the beginning the Word WAS" (John 1:1). Βara' , "created," used of creating (1) the universe; (2) the sea monsters whose vastness causes amazement at God's power; (3) man, in the image of God (Genesis 1:27).
Everywhere else God "makes" ('asah ), as from an already created material, the firmament, sun and stars, and the brute (Genesis 1:7; Genesis 1:16; Genesis 1:25), or "forms" (yaatsar ) beasts out of the ground (Genesis 2:19), and "builds up" (Genesis 2:22 margin) the woman of the rib from man. The three verbs occur together (Isaiah 43:7). Βara' is confined to GOD's acts; the other two verbs are used also of man's acts. Though bara' extends to other acts of God besides the original creation, it is only in a secondary application, without reference to preexisting materials; still, except in the original creation, they are not excluded. Moreover, the contextual "in the beginning" can only mean an absolute beginning, in contrast to the previous nonexistence of the world and sole existence of the Creator.
This creation of all things out of nothing distinguishes the Bible from all pagan cosmogonies and philosophical speculations, which make matter eternal. The Creator's mode of "creating" is not revealed, but simply the fact, that it was by the putting forth of His will. Two narratives of creation, the latter (Genesis 2:4, etc.) the supplement to the former (Genesis 1-2:), appear at the forefront as the basis of the Bible revelation. That in Genesis 2:4, etc., evidently continues and recapitulates that in Genesis 1-2:3, in order to prepare the way for the account of paradise and man's fall. The first gives a clear summary of creation, man included, down to the sabbath rest from creation. The second concentrates attention on man. Accordingly, in the first Εlohim (from 'alah "strong"), the name for the mighty God of creation in general, appears. In the second Jehovah (Υahweh , the personal God in covenant relation to man, the unchanging "I AM."
To mark the identity of this personal Jehovah with the Elohim of the previous part, the two, the personal and the generic names, are joined, Jehovah-Elohim "the Lord God." The mighty Elohim who created all things is also the Jehovah, who from the days of paradise down to the days of Moses, the writer of the pentateuch, has been in personal and unchangeable covenant relation with His people. Moreover, Jehovah, being derived from hawah, the Syriac and Chaldee for the Hebrew hayah "to be," must have come down from a time prior to the separation of the Hebrew from the Aramaeans, i.e., prior to Abraham (for Syriac was soon after quite distinct from Hebrew, Genesis 31:47). The accounts of creation and of the construction of the tabernacle resemble each other (the world being God's great tabernacle, Psalm 19); the general plan first (Genesis 1), then the actual creation of the first pair, Eden, etc., next.
Scripture's design being to unfold redemption, only so much of the natural world is set forth as is needed for that design. Genesis 1 is not so much a full narrative of details as a revelation of the scheme in the Creator's mind, the archetype of the actual (Genesis 2:4-5; Gesenius, Targum, and Syriac). "Now no plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprouted forth, for the Lord God had not caused it to ram," etc. The earth already had brought forth grass (Genesis 1:11); but no cultivated land and no vegetables fit for man's use existed yet; "plant," "field," "grew," do not occur in Genesis 1. In the pattern of the tabernacle shown on the mount the description begins with the furniture of the tabernacle, then goes on to the priests, and ends with the sabbatical law. So, in creation, the process begins with the lower creatures, plants, and animals, then, man, creation's priest, Eden, and lastly the sabbath.
Genesis 1:1 teaches the religious truth needed for a right knowledge of God, that the world is not eternal, that God created it in the beginning; when that beginning was it does not state. But the high antiquity of the earth is expressly taught in Psalms 90:2, where God's formation of "the earth" in general is distinguished from that of "the (Hebrew tebel ) habitable world," Greek oikoumenee (Psalms 102:25; Proverbs 8:22). Geology shows that creation occupied immense ages, but that man's creation was its closing act and at a comparatively recent date. Two views are held as to Genesis 1: The one that between Gen.1:1 and Gen.1:2 intervened the vast geological periods, and that these are undescribed in Genesis 1; and that Genesis 1:2 describes the chaotic state which succeeded the last geological period before the earth's preparation for man; and that the description of the six days refers to this preparation.
If the seventh day sabbath in Genesis 2:2 be an ordinary day, then the six days must be ordinary days and this view is favored. But geology seems to oppose any such state of the earth intervening between the preceding age and that of man's creation as could be described as" without form (desolate) and void." No universal convulsion (IF these words are to be pressed literally) separates the present orders of life from those preceding. No one series of stratified rocks is void of traces of life. Thus, we seem led to the conclusion (2) that the stage in the earth's progress when it became surrounded with chaotic waters (how long after "the beginning" we know not), described in Genesis 1:2, is that which existed before the arrangement of its surface took place. (But see below.) The sabbath of God is described in Hebrew 3-4, as not yet ended; it will last until He who sitteth on the throne shall say, "Behold I make all things new."
God's creating this dark and desolate state of the earth was not in vain, but that in due time it might be "inhabited" (Isaiah 45:18). It was no "fortuitous concourse of atoms," or "laws of nature" acting independently of the continually active divine will of their Author. "The Spirit of God" as the Giver of life "brooded ('moved') upon the waters." Then began organic life, at first in the lower types. Sir W. Jones (Asiatic Researches) states that the Indian philosophers similarly believed (doubtless from the primitive tradition) that water was the first element and work of the creative power. "The waters are called Nara, since they are the offspring of Nera or Iwara, and thence was Narayana named, because His first moving was upon them. THAT WHICH IS (the exact meaning of the I AM or JEHOVAH), the invisible Cause eternal, self-existing, but unperceived, is Brahma."
This address of Menu, Brahma's son, to the sages who consulted him concerning the formation of the world, evidently corresponds with the revelation in Genesis. Then God said "Let there be light," and there was light. Light was first in a diffused state. It is not a separate, distinct body in itself, but caused by undulations of ether propagated through space with inconceivable rapidity. Hence it is not said God created, but God commanded it to be. Scientifically the Bible distinguishes between "light" ('or ), Genesis 1:3-5, and the light hearing "luminaries" (me'orot ), Genesis 1:14-18. Much of the preexisting light diffused through space on the fourth day gathered round the sun's body (compare Job 38:19). Still, through the incandescent photosphere that enwraps the sun we catch glimpses of the orb itself by the spots visible on it.
"Day" is used often for a long period, with a beginning and' close, like morning and evening (Genesis 49:27; Deuteronomy 33:12). As the prophetic "days" at the close (Daniel 12:11-12), so the historical "days" at the beginning of the Bible seem to be not literal but "days of the Lord"; compare Psalms 90:4, "a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday," and 2 Peter 3:8, "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day." Psalm 104 is an inspired commentary on the history of creation in Genesis 1; compare the account in Psalms 104:8; Proverbs 8:25-28, of the upheaval of mountains from beneath the waters and depression of valleys, whereby land was severed from sea; just as we still find traces (sea shells, etc.) of their former submersion on the highest mountains.
The special phrase in the Hebrew for the first day, "one day". [or "day one"] marks it as a day unique, just as the day that shall usher in the millennium is called" one (extraordinary and unique) day" (Zechariah 14:7). The seventh day is not described as the previous six, "it was evening, it was morning," because the Lord's sabbath extends over the whole present order of things, eventuating in the "sabbath rest that remaineth for the people of God" (Hebrews 4:9 margin). The Creator entered into the sabbath rest when He ceased from material creation, to carry on the new and spiritual creation in man (2 Corinthians 5:17; Hebrews 4:10). Yet God's sabbath is not an idle one: "My Father worketh hitherto," namely, upholding all creation. Compare Jesus' "day" (John 9:4; John 5:17); man's present short-day-sabbath is a type of God's and the saints' saboatism.
The proportion of the seventh day to the previous six, of whatever length it and they be, is the ground of our seventh-day sabbath. For the "firmament" (Genesis 1:6) translated "the (air) expanse," or sky overhead which supports the clouds or" waters above the heavens." Air, involved in the creation of the expanse, was the second necessity after light. Light was needed for the crystallization of inorganic forms and the molecular arrangement of the mineral matter of rocks. Light and air are needed for even the lowest types of life. Hugh Miller identifies the first day's work with the azoic period; the second day with the silurian or palaeozoic; the third day with the carboniferous; the fourth day with the permian and triassic; the fifth day with the oolitic or cretaceous, the period when, the air and the waters having been previously prepared, the waters brought forth in swarms insects, fish, and monstrous reptiles of sea and land, and fowl flew in the air; the sixth day with the tertiary, which saw first the higher animals, the land mammalia , and lastly MAN.
Plants appear before animals in Genesis 1. Geology does not directly as yet confirm this; but it may hereafter; the cellular structure of the earlier plants was not favorable to their preservation. Moreover, dependent as animals are on vegetation, it must have preceded them. Traces of life are found in the laurentian and certainly in the cambrian strata, the former the oldest rocks, whereas animal creation seemingly does not appear until the fifth day in Genesis 1:20-22. But "fish" (dag ) is omitted in the fifth day; an omission the more remarkable, as "fish" occurs (Genesis 1:26; Genesis 1:28) as among the animals over which God gave man dominion. The creation of fish long previously is therefore assumed, not stated. The tannin , from tanan "to stretch, and romesheth , from raamas "to trample" ("whales" and" every living creature that moveth," Genesis 1:21), answer to the saurians and allied reptiles occurring in the rocks precisely at the point assigned them by Moses.
The narrative in Genesis does not assert simultaneous creation of all the plants on the third day, and of reptiles and birds on the fifth, and of mammals on the sixth day; the divine command and its fulfillment are narrated as distinct. What Moses narrates is, not the first appearance of each class, but the time when each came into remarkable development and prominence. The simplicity and brevity of the narrative exclude the noting of the creation of the primeval types which passed out of existence ages before man appeared. God ordered His own work on a system of law, and from time to time supplied new forces, or gave new directions to existing forces; not that He changed His design, or found His original plan defective. He contemplated the interference from the first, but did not introduce them until their time was come. In the theory of the correlation of forces, electricity, galvanism, chemical action, gravitation, light and heat, are various manifestations of the same thing, called force or energy.
Light is not a material substance, but a mode of motion, undulations of ether propagated with inconceivable velocity. Accurately Moses writes, not God made light, but said on the first day Let light be. But why at the first, before organisms needing light existed? Because, to call forth light was to call into action FORCE in its various manifestations. Matter and force are the two elements out of which visible creation is formed. Matter was already made, but it remained chaotic (Genesis 1:2) until force in the form of "light" was evolved. Then gravitation would begin, light and heat would permeate the mass, elementary substances which chemistry reveals would be developed, and the whole would move toward the center of gravity. The great nebula of Orion illustrates the state of the solar system when light first appeared.
God's dividing the light from the darkness, and calling the light Day and the darkness Night, is the Mosaic phrase which marks His communicating rotatory motion to the mass, so that the earth revolved on its axis, from whence now results the division of day and night; a result however not then ensuing until the sun concentrated the diffused light in itself on the fourth day, when accordingly again the division of day and night is mentioned. Laplace's nebular hypothesis is possible only by supplying what revelation supplies, namely, God's interposition to impart force and rotation to matter. The nebulae in Orion and Argo represent the state of our system on the first appearance of light; there are changes passing over nebulae, some in the purely gaseous stage, others (as the nebula Draco) in transition, others in incipient central condensation.
The 118 Andromeda nebula assumes a lenticular form resulting from rapid rotation, the mass being ready to break up into separate worlds. All the motions of the bodies of our solar system are from W. to E., proving that their motions have a common origin, all at one time existing as a single mass revolving in the same direction. Uranus' satellites alone on the outer verge of our system retrograde, having been acted upon by some disturbing force. Bode's law of planetary distances ceases beyond Uranus, and does not hold good in Neptune. The figure of the earth is that naturally assumed by a plastic mass revolving about its axis; also its traces of intense heat accord with the nebular theory as modified by revelation; also the sun's state as a nebulous star which has not yet gathered up the whole of the original nebula.
At the beginning of THE SECOND DAY the earth had become separated from the gradually condensing mass of the solar system, and formed into a sphere. The "waters" mean the fluid mass of what afterward was divided into solid, fluid, and gas. The sorting of them was the work of the second day. Hydrogen and nitrogen in an incandescent state compose mainly many nebulae, as the spectroscope shows. God's introduction of OXYGEN into active operation produced air and water in our earth, which before the second day had consisted of a fused heterogeneous mass. Almost half of the earth's crust consists of oxygen, which enters into the composition of every rock and metallic ore. Chemical action therefore must have been most intense during the whole second day. By it the waters above the firmament were separated from that molten mass under the firmament which subsequently consolidated into rocks and ores.
Probably all the water, strictly so-called, floated above, in the condition in which Jupiter now appears. His apparent surface is crossed by alternating belts of light and shade, due to vast masses of steam ejected forcibly from the body of the fiery planet. His atmosphere being of vast depth (7,850 miles), the rotatory velocity of its upper portions is much greater than that of the planet's surface; hence the steam arranges itself in belts parallel to its equator. The eight greater planets are divided into two groups of four by the intervening belt of minor planets. The two groups differ much; but the members of each differ little in density, size, and length of day; the moon is the only satellite of the inner group; the outer has 17 satellites. The steam of the earth floating at the second day's commencement would soon lose its heat by radiation into space, and would descend to the surface as rain.
So the nucleus would gradually cool, and solids be formed, as granite, from the heat, moisture, and enormous pressure; and the globe internally molten would have a solid crust, covered all round with water, and surrounded by an atmosphere denser and more complex and extensive than now. The laurentian is the earliest sedimentary rock, 200,000 square miles N. of the Lawrence; the lower laurentian has been displaced from its original horizontal position before the upper was deposited above it. At this point is the first trace of upheaval and subsidence; here the Creator's interposition is marked, "Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear," the first work of THE THIRD DAY.
The first appearance of life is not noted in Genesis In the laurentian rock the first traces of life appear, a lowly organization akin to the foraminifera, the individuals being connected together as in varieties of coral. In the cambrian, the next rocks, ripple marks occur showing that those rocks (the Harlech grit) formed a sea beach. The silurian, deposited in the bed of a sea, and the old red sandstone, afresh water formation, come next. Then the carboniferous, with the coal measures above, testifying to an uniformly high temperature (since coal is found in far N. latitudes), a moist atmosphere, and an enormous terrestrial vegetation. This answers to God's command on the third day, "Let the earth sprout sprouts ('the herb seeding seed,'" and the fruit trees yielding fruit, etc. The majority of the vegetation then was cryptogamous, having only spores which only contain the germ; but seeds contain the germ and nourishment for it.
No traces of grasses are found. The first of the three classes in God's words is the cryptogamous or seedless, the other are seedbearers. Not the first beginnings, but the extraordinary development, of vegetable life is here marked. The cryptogams thrive best in an atmosphere such as then existed, in which light was diffused rather than concentrated in the sun, and in which the atmosphere was full of moisture. They absorbed and decomposed the excess of carbonic acid, and so purified the atmosphere. The great heat was derived from other sources than the sun, perhaps from the interior of the earth.
On THE FOURTH DAY the concentration of light and heat in the sun was so far completed that he became the luminary of the system which heretofore had derived its light and heat from other sources; possibly the light now in the sun had existed as a nebulous ring warming the planets within it, as the nebula ring in Lyra; or as diffused luminous matter, filling a space which included the earth's orbit. The system's light is not even yet wholly concentrated into the sun, but a vast chromosphere or ring of light surrounds his disc. Enormous volumes of hydrogen are ejected from it, and rotate on their axis as a cyclone.
A corona, like the nebula in 4,373, extends beyond the chromosphere, reaching from 400,000 to 1,800,000 miles beyond the sun; besides gaseous hydrogen the corona contains solid or fluid particles giving a spectrum with dark lines indicating matter capable of reflecting light. The zodiacal light is thought to be a faint extension of the corona. The fourth day work was the concentration of light into the sun, "God made two luminaries" (light bearers, marking the distinction between them and light itself). The permian and triassic rocks, of which the magnesian limestone and the new red sandstone are chief representatives in England, answer to the fourth day. The earliest saurian fossils occur in very small numbers, and the first traces of mammalia, namely, small marsupials. Old forms pass away, and the barrenness of new forms of life answers to the Mosaic silence as to new forms of life on the fourth day. The great-sized saurians characterize the lias and oolite and chalk, answering exactly to Moses' account of THE FIFTH DAY.
The mammalia , the rodentia , and mustelidae , predominating in the tertiary period, answer to Moses' account of THE SIXTH DAY. However, in favor of the six days being ordinary days, D'Orbigny maintains that a gulf of darkness and death must have intervened between the tertiary strata and our present fauna and flora; for that not a single species, vegetable or animal, is common to the tertiary and the human periods. Dr. Pusey (Daniel, preface, 19) thinks that the condition of the earth "without form and void" was such as God, who made all things "very good," never created (Genesis 1:2); then for an undefined period (Genesis 1:3) "the Spirit of God was brooding (Hebrew) upon the face of the waters" of the dark and disordered "deep." Then followed successive action in God's remodeling the earth for man's habitation. Possibly the order of Creation of the whole world in six vast periods, called "days," was repeated in six literal days in preparing the earth for man, its noblest occupant, "the minister and interpreter of nature" (Bacon).
Natural selection, and sexual selection, the causes conjectured lately as accounting for change of species, are inadequate; for in each individual the concurrence of many contingent causes through ages is needed for producing the result. The probabilities against this concurrence in any one case are enormous, and in a large number of cases are out of the question. Such causes do not account for the development of a new organ, as mammary glands; or for the case of man, in whom intellectual superiority is accompanied by loss of physical power. No one case is known of natural or sexual selection altering species, and man's molding of breeds to his mind has never been carried beyond narrow limits. The plan of creation is progressive development modified by continual superintendence and occasional interpositions of the Creator, just at the points where they were required to make the theory of Darwin possible.
God's "breathing into man the breath of lives" marks that while his body is allied to lower animals his moral and intellectual qualities come directly from above. The facts of observation confirm Genesis, and prove that these never could have been developed by natural or sexual selection, or the struggle for life out of lower organizations. Man's moral and intellectual superiority, while he is physically inferior, distinguishes his creation from that of all below him. (Condensed from Ackland's Story of Creation.) Unless one abnormal variety in a species furnished both a male and a female of the new kind, the new species would cease. Even if both were produced simultaneously, unless intermixture with the original species were secured, hybrids would result, and these do not propagate. No trace in all the strata of geology occurs of intermediate links between species.
Cuvier's principle of final causes and conditions of existence requires the coordination of each being so as to render the total possible. Every organized being has an entire system of its own, all the parts of which mutually correspond and combine by reciprocal action to the same end; no one can change in one part without a corresponding change in its other members. Thus, if the viscera be fitted only for digesting recent fish, the jaws must be constructed for devouring, the claws for seizing and tearing prey, the teeth for dividing its flesh, the limbs for pursuing and overtaking it, the organs of sense for discovering it far off, and the brain for such instincts as will enable it to plot for its prey. The Assyrian tradition of creation, discovered by G. Smith, agrees with the Bible rather than with Berosus.
The fall of an evil angel is described; the creation by the gods out of chaos (over which a goddess Tisglat, the Greek thalassa , "sea," presides) in successive stages; its being pronounced good by the gods; its culmination in the creation of man with the faculty of speech; man's original innocence, temptation, fall, and curse. There is however an elaborate lengthening of details (e.g. the deity's long address to the newly-created man on his duties, privileges, and glory), and an introduction of gods many, which contrasts with the sublime simplicity and divine brevity of the inspired record. The Bible account of the primeval tradition, in its reticence of all details save what subserve the end s of a moral and spiritual revelation, is just what man would never have given except by inspiration. The Assyrian account is uninspired man's expansion and dilution of the original history; at the same time confirming remarkably the true story. The general harmony in the, order of plants, animals, and man, between Scripture and science is strikingly confirmatory of revelation. Geology and Scripture agree:
(1) that the material world had a "beginning" the flora and fauna advancing progressively from the less perfect to the more perfect. The Greeks and Latins mark the orderly formation of the universe by expressing "order" and "world" by the same term, kosmos , mundus . Furthermore, revelation states the scientific truth that God "hangeth the earth upon nothing" (Job 26:7). The mention of the northern hemisphere here, and the southern hemisphere (Job 9:9), "the chambers of the S.," hints plainly at the globular form of the earth;
(2) that fire ("light") and water were two great agents of the mighty changes on the earth (Genesis 1:3; Genesis 1:9; Psalms 104:2-3; Psalms 104:6-9); the connection of light and heat is admitted, the sun's light being now known to come from its photosphere of incandescent hydrogen;
(3) that continents were formed under the ocean (Genesis 1:9-10; Psalms 104:6-9; Psalms 24:2, "He founded it above (not upon) the seas"; Psalms 136:6);
(4) that creation was not sudden, but progressive;
(5) that man was the last created (no fossil remains of man are found), that his appearance is comparatively recent.
Man is the crowning apex of creation; all the previous steps described are preparations for, and so silent prophecies of, his advent. Man is the summary of all preceding organizations; hence his brain in the embryo passes through the successive types of the fish's, reptile's, and mammal's brain. Geology gives no support to the theory that every species grew out of some species less perfect, the lower animal developing into the higher, the stronger surviving the weaker in the struggle for existence, and by the law of "natural selection" assuming those members which it needed for its development. There is no unbroken chain of continuity. New forms appear on the stage of life, having no close affinity to the old. The marvelous instinct of the working bee has not grown by cultivation and successive inheritance. It does not inherit its cell building or honey making power from its parents; for the drone and queen bee do neither.
It does not transmit it to its offspring, for it has none. Man degenerates indeed to an almost brutish state. But, as such, the race becomes enfeebled and dies out; whereas the domesticated animal which reverts to the wild state becomes stronger and more fruitful. This proves that the wild state is natural to the brutes, the civilized to man. Civilization never conics to savages from themselves, but from without; almost all barbarous races have traditions of having sprung from ancestors more powerful and enlightened than themselves. Man retains in a rudimentary form certain muscles and organs which are fully developed in the quadrumana (apes, etc.); the tail is a remarkable instance. But man's development has taken the form most disadvantageous (in the Darwinian view) in the struggle of life. His body unclothed, slowness of foot, lack of power in teeth, hands, and feet compared with many brutes, bluntness of smell and sight, put him at an immense disadvantage in the struggle for life.
"Man must have had human proportions of mind before he could afford to lose bestial proportions of body" (Duke of Argyll, Good Words, April 1868). Specific centers for the creation of many animals and plants are generally now supposed, since each species is confined to a certain habitat. Probably, those specific centers which are very far from man's primitive home were the scene of the creation of animals going on during the six days, simultaneously with the creation of the animals in the region of Adam's paradise. No clear proof of pre-Adamite man exists. If such yet be found, no physiological reason can forbid the Scripture view that God, after having formed the body of Adam on the highest type of human form," breathed into his nostrils the breath of life," so that man thenceforward "became a living soul;" thus he is distinct from the brute, of which it is not said that God so breathed into them, but only that they have body and "living soul" (Genesis 1:20-21); man, besides "body and soul," has "spirit" (1 Thessalonians 5:23; Ecclesiastes 3:21).
The unity of the human species is a fundamental principle of the Bible scheme of redemption (Deuteronomy 32:8; Matthew 19:4; Acts 17:26; Romans 5:14; Romans 5:19; 1 Corinthians 15:22). The differences of races, though hard to explain on the supposition of their unity, are not so hard as it is to account, on the opposite theory, for the close affinities, physical, intellectual, and moral, of all the human family. The germs of various characteristics were doubtless originally implanted in man by the Creator, to be manifested as the race progressed, in order to diffuse man over the earth of which he was the appointed lord under God (Genesis 1:28). The subsequent confusion of tongues at (See BABEL was not at random, but a systematic distribution of languages in connection with corresponding varieties of characteristics, for the purpose of a systematic distribution of the human race, as Genesis 10:5; Genesis 10:20; Genesis 10:31 proves.
The several varieties of race are gradually shaded off from one another, so that there is no alternative between the extremely improbable theory of eleven distinct species (!) and the Bible statement of only one. All men have reason and articulate speech; general words used by all prove in all the power of abstract reasoning; the absence of the former proves the absence of the latter, in beasts. All have the sense of responsibility to unseen powers; all are capable of being Christianized and civilized. All are reducible to one original ideal type, to which the Indo European comes nearest. The cubic contents of the skull of the lowest savage is 82 inches; the highest is 94; the gorilla is only 30.
Man alone walks erect; the negro's skull, unlike the ape's, is as perfectly balanced on the vertebral column as the European's skull. The lowest savage has more brain than he needs for the few wants of his crude life. Man brought death upon himself by sin (Romans 5:12; 1 Corinthians 15:21; Genesis 2:17; Genesis 3:19). But he did not entail death on the animal world according to any scripture; and geology proves the death of whole races of animals before man. That the lower creaturely world has a connection with man in its common present subjection to "vanity" (i.e. failure as yet of their designed end), and its future emancipation into the glorious liberty of the sons of God, appears from Romans 8:18-28. Man's fall is only a segment of a wider circle of evil which began with Satan and his angels' previous fall.
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Fausset, Andrew R. Entry for 'Creation'. Fausset's Bible Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/fbd/c/creation.html. 1949.
