Earth's Morning; Or, Thoughts on Genesis

Wirnin the last twenty years the book of Genesis has come very prominently into view, as the starting-point of

“numerous discussions. Science and history have combined to lead us back to it. The former has taken up its story of creation; the latter its nationalities, as contained in its genealogies and chronology.

The present volume does not enter into these discussions. It aims at exposition, not controversy. Its object is to investigate the meaning of each verse and word; that, having done so, the exact revelation of God in these may be brought out, and the spiritual truth evolved.

Here are the rudiments of all Scripture-truth. And in this book we have the first materials on which to construct a true theory of development ; — development not simply of ‘truth,’ but of the purpose of God respecting man, and man’s earth. The germs of true development are to be found here in their earliest stage. God here unfolds Himself and reveals His mind step by step; His truth expanding itself age after age, under divine superintendence, so as to prevent the consequences of mere human interpretations, or development according to the mind of man.

vi PREFACE.

All Scripture connects itself with Genesis, and ought to be read in this connection; for it is not so much the later Scriptures that throw light on Genesis, as it is Genesis that throws light on the later Scriptures.

Genesis is not merely the first book of Scripture, but it is the fountainhead of revelation. It must be studied as such if we would understand it aright.

THE GRANGE, EDINBURGH,
November 1874.

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if is our ‘faithful Creator’ (1 Pet. iv. 19) who here

speaks to us. He loves us too well to hide from us the great things which He has done. He would have us know how He made all things; and as He delighted in them, so He would have us delight in them.

When creation came forth, ‘the morning stars sang together, and the sons of God shouted for joy’ (Job xxxvilil. 7); and when the different parts of the new creation come into being, there is likewise ‘joy in heaven.’ In both creations God is represented as taking divine delight (Prov. viii. 31); and in both cases ‘He calls. together His friends and neighbours, saying unto them, Rejoice with me’ (Luke xv. 6).

‘He has not left Himself without witness’ (Acts xiv.

17): and in this first book of Scripture we have His

testimony to Himself and to the work of His hands.

Creation says ‘God is love, though on a lower key and

with less distinctness than redemption. ‘The invisible

things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly VOL, ¥I. A

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2.) i THOUGHTS ON GENESIS. seen, being understood by the things that are made’ (Rom. i. 20).

And this creation bears testimony to the Son of God; for by ‘Him He made the worlds’ (Heb. i. 2). ‘By Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible: all things were created by Him and for Him’ (Col. i. 16). His connection with creation reveals to us His love. His love to man and man’s world is no new thing. It did not begin when He was made flesh. Long before that we find that He ‘rejoiced in the habitable parts of His earth, and that His delights were with the sons of men’ (Prov. viii. 31).

Nor less has the Holy Spirit His part in the mighty work. He ‘moved’ or ‘brooded’ over the face of the waters (Gen. 1. 2). ‘By His Spirit He hath garnished the heavens’ (Job xxvi. 13). ‘Thou sendest forth Thy Spirit, they are created’ (Ps. civ. 30). In creation, as in redemption, Father, Son, and Spirit are spoken of as working. Creation belongs to each: and the love manifested in creation is the love of Father, Son, and Spirit, ‘God is love:’ and this, though in dimmer characters, is written on the heavens and earth, and shines out in sun, and moon, and stars, The Holy Spirit is

1 Thus old Joseph Beaumont (1648) describes the manifestation of God and His love in creation, or rather in the purpose to create — —

* All things at first was God, who dwelt alone
Within His boundless self. But bounteous He
Conceived the form of the creation,
That other things by Him might happie be

A way to ease its streams His goodness sought,
And at the last into a world burst out.’

love; and His love is in the sunshine of the first creation as truly as of the second.

Yet, though surrounded with the loving works of God each day, how little have we learned the lessons of heavenly love which creation teaches! How sadly do we misinterpret creation ; — reading in it power, wisdom, majesty, and greatness; yet how seldom, Love!

HEAVEN and EARTH are the two places or regions whose history God, in His word, purposes to write.

Ver. 1. ‘Lx the beginning God created the heaven (or ‘* heavens’’) and the earth.’

He who alone knows everything relating to these, secret or open, visible or invisible, physical or spiritual, undertakes to put on record for us, ‘at sundry times and in divers manners,’ some memorials of the varied wonders which have taken place within their bounds: to tell us something of what ‘eye hath not seen, nor ear heard;’ and what man, in the full sweep of his science, could not discover.

It is to ‘heaven and earth’ that He confines His information; and of things beyond these He says but little. Of what He intended them to be; of what He made them; of what they have been; and of what they yet shall be, when His great original purpose shall unfold itself in all. its parts in the ages to come, He gives us His own account. Who but Himself could do this? “Man may guess or fancy, God only can make known the things of God, in any part of His universe (zt Cor. ii 11); the Architect alone can give us the

Resi: eternal plan of His great structure, at least in outline, and tell us something of its carrying out, the process of erection, the hindrances, the successes, the failures.

The Bible is God’s history of heaven and earth, — the only authentic history of them in existence. He is His own historian. He begins and ends His volume with these: and throughout it, they form the scene of His manifold plans and workings, the circle over which His divine love spreads itself in its manifestations of wisdom and power, and within which it gets vent to its eternal fulness, — a fulness which finds its way into all that which we call ‘nature’ (z.e. essential constitution of things, Rom. xi. 24), or ‘creation’ (ze. things as coming from a Creator, Mark x. 6).?

He sets out with asserting His own prerogative as Creator, — His exclusive and undivided prerogative, — the originating One, the unbeginning One.? He tells us that the things we see are not self-produced, nor are they from eternity. They once were not. They once

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