The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1891-06-04
.CREA TING a WORLD.
"And the Evening and the Morning
Were the Sixth Day. Is Dr..
Talmage's Text.
He Explains How God Drove Back
Darkness and Called Forth the
Light.

s &.
Light.
BROOKLYN, Especial. DIR. Talmage
took for text Gen. l., 81: "And the
evening and the morning were the
sixth day"
From Monday morning to Saturday
night gives US weeks work. If we
have filled that week with successes we
are happy. But I am going to tell
you what God did in one week. Co.'S
mogony, geology, astronomy, orni-
thology, ichthyology, botany, anat-
omy are such vast subjects that no
human life is long enough to explore
or comprehend any one of them. But
I have thought I might in an unusual
way tell you a little OF what God did
in one week, and that the first week.
And whether you make it a week OF
days or a week of ages, care not, for
[ shall reach the same practical result
Of reverence and worship.
The first Monday morning found
swinging in space the piled-up lumber
and rocks and metal and soil and
water from which the earth was to be
builded. God made up his mind to
create human family and they
must have a house to live in. But
where? Not a. roof, not wall, not a
door, not a room was fit for a human
occupancy. There is not a pile of
black basalt in Yellowstone Park or
an extinct volcano in Honolulu so
inappropriate for human residence as
was this globe at that early period.
Moreover there was no human archi-
tect to draw a plan, no quarryman to
blast the foundation stones, no car
penters to hew out a beam, and no
mason to trowel a wall. Poor pros
pect! But the time was coming when
a being called man was to be con-
structed and he was to have a bride;
and where he could find a homestead
to which he would take her must have
been a wonderment to angelic intelli-
gences. There had been earthquakes
enough, and volcanoes enough, and
glaciers enough, but earthquakes, and
volcanoes and glaciers destroy in
stead of build
But there is need of .
IMMEDIATE LIGHT.
Where shall it come from? Desiring
to account for things in anatural way
you say, and reasonably say, that
heat and electricity throw out light
independent of the sun, and that the
metallic bases throw out light indie
pendent of the sun, and that alkalies
throw out light independent of thesun
The record makes me think that,
standing over this earth that spring
morning, God looked upon the dark
ness that palled the heights of this
world, and the chasms of it, and the
awful reaches of it, and uttered,
whether in the Hebrew of earth, or
some language celestial, know not,
the word which stands for the subtle,
bright, glowing and all-pervadingf fluid,
that word which trills and garlands
and lifts everything it touches, that
word the full meaning of which all the
chemists of the ages have busted them
selves in exploring, that word which
suggests a force that flies 100000
miles in a second and by undulations
727, OOO,OOO,OOO,OOO in a second
that one word God utters-Light! And
Instantly the darkness began to SHIN
mer, and the thick folds of blackness
to lift, and there were scintillations,
and coruscations, and flashes, and a
billowing up of resplendence, and in
great sheets it spread out northward,
southwark, eastward, westward, and
a radiance filled the atmosphere until
it could hold no more ofthe brilliance.
1t is Monday night. "And the evening
and the morning were the first day"
THE WATER
Now it is Tuesday morning. A deli
cate and tremendous undertaking is
set apart for this day There was a
great superabundance of water. God
by the wave Of His hand this morning
gathers part of it in suspended reser-
vo1rs and part of it he orders down
into the rivers, and lakes and seas.
How to hang whole Atlantic oceans in
the clouds without their spilling over
except in right quantities and at right
times was an undertaking that no one
but Omnipotence would have dared.
But God doesit as easily as you would
lift glass Of water. There he HOSTS
two clouds each 80 miles wide and
five miles high and balances them.
Here he lifts the cirrus clouds and
spreads them out ingreat white banks
as though it had been showing in
heaven. And the cirrostratus clouds
in long parallel lines so straight you
know an infinite geometer has drawn
them. Clouds which are the armory
from which thunderstorms get their
bayonets of fire. Clouds which are
oceans on the wing. Half of this Tues
day work done, the other hall is the
work of compelling the waters to lie
down in their destined places. So God
picks up the solid ground and packs
it up in five elevations which are the
continents. With his fingers he makes
deep depressions in them, and these
are the lakes, while at the piling up OF
the Alleghanies and Sierra Nevadas
and Pyrenees and Alps and Himalay-
as the rest of the waters start by the
law OF gravation to the lower nlaces