The Work of Creation

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 16, 1857

The Work of Creation.

THE Creator has spoken, and the spangled stars look out from openings of deep unclouded blue; and as the day rises, and the planet of morning pales in the east, the broken cloudlets are transmitted from bronze into gold, and anon the gold becomes fire, and at length the glorious sun arises out of the seas, and enters on his course rejoicing. It is a brilliant day; the waves of a deeper and softer blue than before, dance and sparkle in the light; the earth, with little less to attract the gaze, has assumed a garb of brighter green; and the sun declines amid even richer glories than those which had encircled his rising, the moon appears full orbed in the east—to the human eye the second great luminary of the heavens—and climbs slowly to the zenith as night advances, shedding its mild radiance on land and sea. Again the day breaks; the prospect consists, as before, of land and ocean. There are great pine woods, red-covered swamps, wide plains, winding rivers, and broad lakes, and a bright sun shines over all. But the landscape derives its interest and novelty from a feature unmarked before. Gigantic birds stalk along the sands, or wade far into the waters in quest of their ichthyic food, while birds of lesser size float upon the lakes, or scream discordant in hovering flocks, thick as insects in the calm of a summer evening, over the narrow seas, or brighten with the sunlight gleam of their wings the thick woods. And ocean had its monsters; great "taninim" heave their huge bulk over its surface to inhale the life-sustaining air: and out of their nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a "seething pot or cauldron." Monstrous creatures, armed in massive scales, haunt the rivers, or scour the flat rank meadows; earth, air, and water are charged with animal life, and the sun sets on a busy scene, in which unerring instinct pursues unremittingly its few simple ends—the support and preservation of the individual, the propagation of species, and the protection and maintenance of their young. Again the night descends, for the fifth day has closed, and morning breaks on the sixth and last day of creation. Cattle and beasts of the field graze on the plains; the thick-skinned rhinoceros wallows in the marshes; the squat hippopotamus rustles amongst the reeds, or plunges sullenly into the river; great herds of elephants seek their food amid the herbage of the woods; while animals of a fiercer nature—the lion, the leopard, and the bear—harbor in the deep caves till the evening, or lie in wait for their prey amid tangled thickets, or beneath some broken bank.

At length, as the day wanes, and the shadows lengthen, man, the responsible lord of the creation, formed in God's own image, is introduced upon the scene, and the work of creation ceases forever upon the earth. The night falls once more upon the prospect, and there dawns yet another morrow, the morrow of God's rest:—that divine Sabbath in which there is no more creative labor, and which "blessed and sanctified" beyond all days that had gone before, has as its special object the moral elevation and final redemption of man. And over it no evening is represented in the record as falling, for its special work is not yet complete. Such seems to have been the sublime panorama of creation, exhibited in vision of old to

"The shepherd who first taught the chosen seed, In the beginning, how the heavens and earth Rose out of chaos;"

and, rightly understood, I know not a single scientific truth that militates against even the minutest or, least prominent of its details.—Hugh Miller's "Testimony of the Rocks."