The Brookhaven leader., 1891-06-04
THE CREATION.
ReV.T Dewitt Talmage Discourses
on the Great Narrative.
The Lessons Taught by the Historlc Week
OF Producing Order Out of Chaos
Man the Growing Effort of
Gods Handiwork.


sixth day.-Genesis, l., 81.
The first Monday morning found
swinging in space the piled up lumber
of rocks and metal and soil and water
from which the earth was to be build
ed. God made up His mind to create a
human family, and they must have a
house to live in. But where? Not a
roof, not a wall, not door, not room
was fit for human occupancy. There is
not pile of black basalt in Yellow
stone 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 architect to draw a plan, no
quarryman to blast the foundation
stones, no carpenter to hew out beam,
and no mason to trowel wall. Poor
prospect! But the time was coming
when being called man was to be
constructed and he was to have a
bride, and where he could find a
homestead to which he could take
her must have been u wordcr-
ment to angelic intelligence. There
had been earthquakes enough, and
volcanoes enough, and glaciers enough,
but earthquakes and volcanoes and
glaciers destroy instead of build A
worse-looking world than this never
swung. 1t was heaped up deformities,
scarifications and monstrosities. The
Bible says it was without form. That
is, it was not round, it was not square,
it was not octagonal, it was not a
rhomboid. God never did take anyone
in His counsels. but il lie had asked some
angel about the attempt to turn this
planet INTO place for human residence,
the anger would have said: NO, no,
try some other world; the crevices of
this earth arc too deep; its cragS are too
appalling; its darkness is too thick.
But Monday morning came. | think
it was spring morning and about half
past four o'clock. The first thing need
ed was light. 1t was not needed for
God to work by, for He can work as
we'll in the darkness. But light may
be necessary, for angelic intclligences
are to see in its full glory the process of
world-building. But where are the
candles, where are the candelabra,
where is the chandelier? No rising sun
will RON in the morning, for if the sun
is already created, its light will not yet
reach the earth in three days. No
moon or stars can brighten this dark
ness. The moon and stars are not born
yet, or, if created, their light will not
reach the earth for some time yet.
Eut there is need of immediate light.
Where shall it come from? Desiring to
account for things in natural way you
say, and reasonably say, that heat
and electricity throw out light in
dependent of the sun, and that
the metallic bases throw out light indie
pendent of the sun, and that aka
lies throw out light independent of the
sun. Oh, yes, all that is true, but l do
not think that is the way light was Gre
ated. The record makes me think that,
standing over the 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, wheth-
or in the Hebrew of earth, or some
language celestial | know not, that
word which stands for the subtle,
bright, glowing and all-pervading fluid,
that word which thrills and garlands
and lifts everything it touches, that
word the full meaning of which all the
che nists of the ages have busted them
selves in exploring, that word which
suggests force that flies one hundred
and ninety thousand miles in a second
and by undulations seven hundred and
twenty-seven trillions in a second,
that one word God utters-Light!
"And the evening and the morning
were the first day"
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-
voirs 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, e.
cept in right quantities and at right
times, was an undertaking that no one
but Omnipotence would have dared.
But God does it as easily as you would
lift a glass of water. There He hoists
two clouds each thirty miles wide and
five miles high aud balances them.
Here He lifts the cirrus clouds and
spreads them out in great white
banks, as though it had been
showing in Heaven. And the
cirro stratus clouds in long
parallel lines so straight you know an
infinite geometer had drawn them.
Clouds which are the armory from
which thunder storms get their bayo-
nets of fire. Clouds which are oceans on
the wing. No wonder, long after this
first Tuesday of creation week, Elihu
confounded Job with the question:
"Dost thou know the balancings of the
clouds?" Half of this Tuesday work
done, the other half 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 into
i've elevations which are the continents.
With His fingers He makes deep depres-
sions in them, and these are the lakes,
while at the piling up of the Alleghan-
les and Sierra Nevadas and Pyrenees
and Alps and Himalayas the rest of the
waters start by the law of gravitation
to the lower places, and in their run
down-hill becomes the rivers, and then
all around the earth these rivers come
into convention and become oceans be-
meath. as the clouds are oceans above.
sand the evening and the morning We're
th.. second day"