That this creative work was piecemeal, and on separate days, we know from the narrative. Why it was so arranged we do not know.  Vast as was the work to be done, almost infinite as was the complexity of the laws required to be formulated, it could have all been done at once, in a moment of time; for time does not exist to the Divine Mind.  But seeing that the work was to be on earth, and for the benefit of creatures to whom the divisions of time were all-important, we can dimly, at least, discern a certain fitness and appropriateness in the gradual and divided work.

[Footnote 1:  The reader will recognize that there is not the least exaggeration in this.  It is plain matter of fact, as I have endeavoured to show in the earlier chapters of this book.  Everywhere we see force ready to be evoked by the proper method.  Everywhere we see molecular motion, and a perpetual combination and resolution of elements and compounds, whether chemical or mechanical.]

CHAPTER XIV.

THE INTERPRETATION SUPPORTED BY OTHER SCRIPTURES.

In interpreting the narrative before us, we have an important aid which has hardly received the attention it deserves.  I allude to the other passages of Scripture which were written by men undoubtedly familiar with the Book of Genesis.

Now, in more than one of them, I find the idea that the Creation spoken of is the Divine work in heaven, and not the subsequent and long process of its realization on the surface of our globe, fully confirmed.

In the beautiful thirty-eighth chapter of the very ancient Book of Job, we find a distinct allusion to a time when God “laid the foundations” of the earth, prescribed “its measures,” made a “decreed place” for the sea, and framed the “ordinances of heaven,” and this in presence of the heavenly host assembled—­

“When the morning stars sang together, And all the sons of God shouted for joy.[1]”

[Footnote 1:  Job xxxviii. 7.  The sons of God are clearly the angels (cf.  Job i, 6).]

The same idea can be gathered from the text which I have placed on the title-page of this book.  “By faith we understand that the aeons (the whole system of nature in its various branches, physical, moral, and social) were ordained ([Greek:  kataertisthai]) by the word of God.”  The process of actual development is here passed over, as not being the main thing; what attracts attention is the Divine Design, the “framing” of the wonderful ideal or ordinance without which the “aeons” could not proceed to unfold themselves.  I do not mean, of course, for a moment to imply that, after God had formulated the laws and designed the forms, He left the working out of the results to themselves.  I should be sorry if, in bringing into prominence what has generally been overlooked, I seemed to throw the rest in the shade.  God’s providence and continued supervision are as important in themselves as the original design:—­but this is not the central idea embodied in the passage.