In the Beginning God made the Heaven and the Earth.
1. It is right that any one beginning to narrate the formation of the world should begin with the good order which reigns in visible things. I am about to speak of the creation of heaven and earth, which was not spontaneous, as some have imagined, but drew its origin from God. What ear is worthy to hear such a tale? How earnestly the soul should prepare itself to receive such high lessons! How pure it should be from carnal affections, how unclouded by worldly disquietudes, how active and ardent in its researches, how eager to find in its surroundings an idea of God which may be worthy of Him!
But before weighing the justice of these remarks, before examining all the sense contained in these few words, let us see who addresses them to us. Because, if the weakness of our intelligence does not allow us to penetrate the depth of the thoughts of the writer, yet we shall be involuntarily drawn to give faith to his words by the force of his authority. Now it is Moses who has composed this history; Moses, who, when still at the breast, is described as exceeding fair; Moses, whom the daughter of Pharaoh adopted; who received from her a royal education, and who had for his teachers the wise men of Egypt; Moses, who disdained the pomp of royalty, and, to share the humble condition of his compatriots, preferred to be persecuted with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting delights of sin; Moses, who received from nature such a love of justice that, even before the leadership of the people of God was committed to him, he was impelled, by a natural horror of evil, to pursue malefactors even to the point of punishing them by death; Moses, who, banished by those whose benefactor he had been, hastened to escape from the tumults of Egypt and took refuge in Ethiopia, living there far from former pursuits, and passing forty years in the contemplation of nature; Moses, finally, who, at the age of eighty, saw God, as far as it is possible for man to see Him; or rather as it had not previously been granted to man to see Him, according to the testimony of God Himself, If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house, with him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently and not in dark speeches. It is this man, whom God judged worthy to behold Him, face to face, like the angels, who imparts to us what he has learned from God. Let us listen then to these words of truth written without the help of the enticing words of man's wisdom 1 Corinthians 2:4 by the dictation of the Holy Spirit; words destined to produce not the applause of those who hear them, but the salvation of those who are instructed by them.
2. In the beginning God created the heaven and
the earth. Genesis 1:1 I stop struck with admiration at this thought. What
shall I first say? Where shall I begin my story? Shall I show forth the vanity
of the Gentiles? Shall I exalt the truth of our faith? The philosophers of
Greece have made much ado to explain nature, and not one of their systems has
remained firm and unshaken, each being overturned by its successor. It is vain
to refute them; they are sufficient in themselves to destroy one another. Those
who were too ignorant to rise to a knowledge of a God, could not allow that an
intelligent cause presided at the birth of the Universe; a primary error that
involved them in sad consequences. Some had recourse to material principles and
attributed the origin of the Universe to the elements of the world. Others
imagined that atoms, and indivisible bodies, molecules and ducts, form, by
their union, the nature of the visible world. Atoms reuniting or separating,
produce births and deaths and the most durable bodies only owe their
consistency to the strength of their mutual adhesion: a true spider's web woven
by these writers who give to heaven, to earth, and to sea so weak an origin and
so little consistency! It is because they knew not how to say In the beginning
God created the heaven and the earth. Deceived by their inherent atheism it
appeared to them that nothing governed or ruled the universe, and that was all
was given up to chance. To guard us against this error the writer on the
creation, from the very first words, enlightens our understanding with the name
of God; In the beginning God created. What a glorious order! He first
establishes a beginning, so that it might not be supposed that the world never
had a beginning. Then he adds Created to show that which was made was a very
small part of the power of the Creator. In the same way that the potter, after
having made with equal pains a great number of vessels, has not exhausted
either his art or his talent; thus the Maker of the Universe, whose creative
power, far from being bounded by one world, could extend to the infinite,
needed only the impulse of His will to bring the immensities of the visible
world into being. If then the world has a beginning, and if it has been
created, enquire who gave it this beginning, and who was the Creator: or
rather, in the fear that human reasonings may make you wander from the truth,
Moses has anticipated enquiry by engraving in our hearts, as a seal and a
safeguard, the awful name of God: In the beginning God created — It is He,
beneficent Nature, Goodness without measure, a worthy object of love for all
beings endowed with reason, the beauty the most to be desired, the origin of
all that exists, the source of life, intellectual light, impenetrable wisdom,
it is He who in the beginning created heaven and earth.
3. Do not then imagine, O man! That the visible
world is without a beginning; and because the celestial bodies move in a
circular course, and it is difficult for our senses to define the point where
the circle begins, do not believe that bodies impelled by a circular movement
are, from their nature, without a beginning. Without doubt the circle (I mean the
plane figure described by a single line) is beyond our perception, and it is
impossible for us to find out where it begins or where it ends; but we ought
not on this account to believe it to be without a beginning. Although we are
not sensible of it, it really begins at some point where the draughtsman has
begun to draw it at a certain radius from the centre. Thus seeing that figures
which move in a circle always return upon themselves, without for a single
instant interrupting the regularity of their course, do not vainly imagine to
yourselves that the world has neither beginning nor end. For the fashion of
this world passes away 1 Corinthians 7:31 and Heaven and earth shall pass away.
Matthew 24:35 The dogmas of the end, and of the renewing of the world, are
announced beforehand in these short words put at the head of the inspired
history. In the beginning God made. That which was begun in time is condemned
to come to an end in time. If there has been a beginning do not doubt of the
end. Of what use then are geometry — the calculations of arithmetic — the study
of solids and far-famed astronomy, this laborious vanity, if those who pursue
them imagine that this visible world is co-eternal with the Creator of all
things, with God Himself; if they attribute to this limited world, which has a
material body, the same glory as to the incomprehensible and invisible nature;
if they cannot conceive that a whole, of which the parts are subject to
corruption and change, must of necessity end by itself submitting to the fate
of its parts? But they have become vain in their imaginations and their foolish
heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. Romans
1:21-22 Some have affirmed that heaven co-exists with God from all eternity;
others that it is God Himself without beginning or end, and the cause of the
particular arrangement of all things.
4. One day, doubtless, their terrible
condemnation will be the greater for all this worldly wisdom, since, seeing so
clearly into vain sciences, they have wilfully shut their eyes to the knowledge
of the truth. These men who measure the distances of the stars and describe
them, both those of the North, always shining brilliantly in our view, and
those of the southern pole visible to the inhabitants of the South, but unknown
to us; who divide the Northern zone and the circle of the Zodiac into an
infinity of parts, who observe with exactitude the course of the stars, their
fixed places, their declensions, their return and the time that each takes to
make its revolution; these men, I say, have discovered all except one thing:
the fact that God is the Creator of the universe, and the just Judge who
rewards all the actions of life according to their merit. They have not known
how to raise themselves to the idea of the consummation of all things, the
consequence of the doctrine of judgment, and to see that the world must change
if souls pass from this life to a new life. In reality, as the nature of the
present life presents an affinity to this world, so in the future life our
souls will enjoy a lot conformable to their new condition. But they are so far
from applying these truths, that they do but laugh when we announce to them the
end of all things and the regeneration of the age. Since the beginning
naturally precedes that which is derived from it, the writer, of necessity,
when speaking to us of things which had their origin in time, puts at the head
of his narrative these words — In the beginning God created.
5. It appears, indeed, that even before this
world an order of things existed of which our mind can form an idea, but of
which we can say nothing, because it is too lofty a subject for men who are but
beginners and are still babes in knowledge. The birth of the world was preceded
by a condition of things suitable for the exercise of supernatural powers,
outstripping the limits of time, eternal and infinite. The Creator and Demiurge
of the universe perfected His works in it, spiritual light for the happiness of
all who love the Lord, intellectual and invisible natures, all the orderly
arrangement of pure intelligences who are beyond the reach of our mind and of
whom we cannot even discover the names. They fill the essence of this invisible
world, as Paul teaches us. For by him were all things created that are in
heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible whether they be thrones or
dominions or principalities or powers Colossians 1:16 or virtues or hosts of
angels or the dignities of archangels. To this world at last it was necessary
to add a new world, both a school and training place where the souls of men
should be taught and a home for beings destined to be born and to die. Thus was
created, of a nature analogous to that of this world and the animals and plants
which live thereon, the succession of time, for ever pressing on and passing
away and never stopping in its course. Is not this the nature of time, where
the past is no more, the future does not exist, and the present escapes before
being recognised? And such also is the nature of the creature which lives in
time — condemned to grow or to perish without rest and without certain
stability. It is therefore fit that the bodies of animals and plants, obliged
to follow a sort of current, and carried away by the motion which leads them to
birth or to death, should live in the midst of surroundings whose nature is in
accord with beings subject to change. Thus the writer who wisely tells us of
the birth of the Universe does not fail to put these words at the head of the
narrative. In the beginning God created; that is to say, in the beginning of
time. Therefore, if he makes the world appear in the beginning, it is not a
proof that its birth has preceded that of all other things that were made. He
only wishes to tell us that, after the invisible and intellectual world, the
visible world, the world of the senses, began to exist.
The first movement is called beginning. To do
right is the beginning of the good way. Just actions are truly the first steps
towards a happy life. Again, we call beginning the essential and first part
from which a thing proceeds, such as the foundation of a house, the keel of a
vessel; it is in this sense that it is said, The fear of the Lord is the
beginning of wisdom, Proverbs 9:10 that is to say that piety is, as it were,
the groundwork and foundation of perfection. Art is also the beginning of the
works of artists, the skill of Bezaleel began the adornment of the tabernacle.
Often even the good which is the final cause is the beginning of actions. Thus
the approbation of God is the beginning of almsgiving, and the end laid up for
us in the promises the beginning of all virtuous efforts.
6. Such being the different senses of the word
beginning, see if we have not all the meanings here. You may know the epoch
when the formation of this world began, it, ascending into the past, you
endeavour to discover the first day. You will thus find what was the first
movement of time; then that the creation of the heavens and of the earth were
like the foundation and the groundwork, and afterwards that an intelligent
reason, as the word beginning indicates, presided in the order of visible
things. You will finally discover that the world was not conceived by chance
and without reason, but for an useful end and for the great advantage of all beings,
since it is really the school where reasonable souls exercise themselves, the
training ground where they learn to know God; since by the sight of visible and
sensible things the mind is led, as by a hand, to the contemplation of
invisible things. For, as the Apostle says, the invisible things of him from
the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that
are made. Romans 1:20 Perhaps these words In the beginning God created signify
the rapid and imperceptible moment of creation. The beginning, in effect, is
indivisible and instantaneous. The beginning of the road is not yet the road,
and that of the house is not yet the house; so the beginning of time is not yet
time and not even the least particle of it. If some objector tell us that the
beginning is a time, he ought then, as he knows well, to submit it to the
division of time — a beginning, a middle and an end. Now it is ridiculous to
imagine a beginning of a beginning. Further, if we divide the beginning into
two, we make two instead of one, or rather make several, we really make an
infinity, for all that which is divided is divisible to the infinite. Thus
then, if it is said, In the beginning God created, it is to teach us that at
the will of God the world arose in less than an instant, and it is to convey
this meaning more clearly that other interpreters have said: God made summarily
that is to say all at once and in a moment. But enough concerning the
beginning, if only to put a few points out of many.
7. Among arts, some have in view production,
some practice, others theory. The object of the last is the exercise of
thought, that of the second, the motion of the body. Should it cease, all
stops; nothing more is to be seen. Thus dancing and music have nothing behind;
they have no object but themselves. In creative arts on the contrary the work
lasts after the operation. Such is architecture — such are the arts which work
in wood and brass and weaving, all those indeed which, even when the artisan
has disappeared, serve to show an industrious intelligence and to cause the
architect, the worker in brass or the weaver, to be admired on account of his
work. Thus, then, to show that the world is a work of art displayed for the
beholding of all people; to make them know Him who created it, Moses does not
use another word. In the beginning, he says God created. He does not say God
worked, God formed, but God created. Among those who have imagined that the
world co-existed with God from all eternity, many have denied that it was created
by God, but say that it exists spontaneously, as the shadow of this power. God,
they say, is the cause of it, but an involuntary cause, as the body is the
cause of the shadow and the flame is the cause of the brightness. It is to
correct this error that the prophet states, with so much precision, In the
beginning God created. He did not make the thing itself the cause of its
existence. Being good, He made it an useful work. Being wise, He made it
everything that was most beautiful. Being powerful He made it very great. Moses
almost shows us the finger of the supreme artisan taking possession of the
substance of the universe, forming the different parts in one perfect accord,
and making a harmonious symphony result from the whole.
In the beginning God made heaven and earth. By
naming the two extremes, he suggests the substance of the whole world,
according to heaven the privilege of seniority, and putting earth in the second
rank. All intermediate beings were created at the same time as the extremities.
Thus, although there is no mention of the elements, fire, water and air,
imagine that they were all compounded together, and you will find water, air
and fire, in the earth. For fire leaps out from stones; iron which is dug from
the earth produces under friction fire in plentiful measure. A marvellous fact!
Fire shut up in bodies lurks there hidden without harming them, but no sooner
is it released than it consumes that which has hitherto preserved it. The earth
contains water, as diggers of wells teach us. It contains air too, as is shown
by the vapours that it exhales under the sun's warmth when it is damp. Now, as
according to their nature, heaven occupies the higher and earth the lower
position in space, (one sees, in fact, that all which is light ascends towards
heaven, and heavy substances fall to the ground); as therefore height and depth
are the points the most opposed to each other it is enough to mention the most
distant parts to signify the inclusion of all which fills up intervening Space.
Do not ask, then, for an enumeration of all the elements; guess, from what Holy
Scripture indicates, all that is passed over in silence.
8. In the beginning God created the heaven and
the earth. If we were to wish to discover the essence of each of the beings which
are offered for our contemplation, or come under our senses, we should be drawn
away into long digressions, and the solution of the problem would require more
words than I possess, to examine fully the matter. To spend time on such points
would not prove to be to the edification of the Church. Upon the essence of the
heavens we are contented with what Isaiah says, for, in simple language, he
gives us sufficient idea of their nature, The heaven was made like smoke, that
is to say, He created a subtle substance, without solidity or density, from
which to form the heavens. As to the form of them we also content ourselves
with the language of the same prophet, when praising God that stretches out the
heavens as a curtain and spreads them out as a tent to dwell in. In the same
way, as concerns the earth, let us resolve not to torment ourselves by trying
to find out its essence, not to tire our reason by seeking for the substance
which it conceals. Do not let us seek for any nature devoid of qualities by the
conditions of its existence, but let us know that all the phenomena with which
we see it clothed regard the conditions of its existence and complete its
essence. Try to take away by reason each of the qualities it possesses, and you
will arrive at nothing. Take away black, cold, weight, density, the qualities
which concern taste, in one word all these which we see in it, and the
substance vanishes.
If I ask you to leave these vain questions, I
will not expect you to try and find out the earth's point of support. The mind
would reel on beholding its reasonings losing themselves without end. Do you
say that the earth reposes on a bed of air? How, then, can this soft substance,
without consistency, resist the enormous weight which presses upon it? How is
it that it does not slip away in all directions, to avoid the sinking weight,
and to spread itself over the mass which overwhelms it? Do you suppose that
water is the foundation of the earth? You will then always have to ask yourself
how it is that so heavy and opaque a body does not pass through the water; how
a mass of such a weight is held up by a nature weaker than itself. Then you
must seek a base for the waters, and you will be in much difficulty to say upon
what the water itself rests.
9. Do you suppose that a heavier body prevents
the earth from falling into the abyss? Then you must consider that this support
needs itself a support to prevent it from falling. Can we imagine one? Our
reason again demands yet another support, and thus we shall fall into the
infinite, always imagining a base for the base which we have already found. And
the further we advance in this reasoning the greater force we are obliged to
give to this base, so that it may be able to support all the mass weighing upon
it. Put then a limit to your thought, so that your curiosity in investigating
the incomprehensible may not incur the reproaches of Job, and you be not asked
by him, Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? Job 38:6 If ever you
hear in the Psalms, I bear up the pillars of it; see in these pillars the power
which sustains it. Because what means this other passage, He has founded it
upon the sea, if not that the water is spread all around the earth? How then
can water, the fluid element which flows down every declivity, remain suspended
without ever flowing? You do not reflect that the idea of the earth suspended
by itself throws your reason into a like but even greater difficulty, since
from its nature it is heavier. But let us admit that the earth rests upon
itself, or let us say that it rides the waters, we must still remain faithful
to thought of true religion and recognise that all is sustained by the
Creator's power. Let us then reply to ourselves, and let us reply to those who
ask us upon what support this enormous mass rests, In His hands are the ends of
the earth. It is a doctrine as infallible for our own information as profitable
for our hearers.
10. There are inquirers into nature who with a
great display of words give reasons for the immobility of the earth. Placed,
they say, in the middle of the universe and not being able to incline more to
one side than the other because its centre is everywhere the same distance from
the surface, it necessarily rests upon itself; since a weight which is everywhere
equal cannot lean to either side. It is not, they go on, without reason or by
chance that the earth occupies the centre of the universe. It is its natural
and necessary position. As the celestial body occupies the higher extremity of
space all heavy bodies, they argue, that we may suppose to have fallen from
these high regions, will be carried from all directions to the centre, and the
point towards which the parts are tending will evidently be the one to which
the whole mass will be thrust together. If stones, wood, all terrestrial
bodies, fall from above downwards, this must be the proper and natural place of
the whole earth. If, on the contrary, a light body is separated from the
centre, it is evident that it will ascend towards the higher regions. Thus
heavy bodies move from the top to the bottom, and following this reasoning, the
bottom is none other than the centre of the world. Do not then be surprised
that the world never falls: it occupies the centre of the universe, its natural
place. By necessity it is obliged to remain in its place, unless a movement
contrary to nature should displace it. If there is anything in this system
which might appear probable to you, keep your admiration for the source of such
perfect order, for the wisdom of God. Grand phenomena do not strike us the less
when we have discovered something of their wonderful mechanism. Is it otherwise
here? At all events let us prefer the simplicity of faith to the demonstrations
of reason.
11. We might say the same thing of the heavens.
With what a noise of words the sages of this world have discussed their nature!
Some have said that heaven is composed of four elements as being tangible and
visible, and is made up of earth on account of its power of resistance, with
fire because it is striking to the eye, with air and water on account of the
mixture. Others have rejected this system as improbable, and introduced into
the world, to form the heavens, a fifth element after their own fashioning.
There exists, they say, an æthereal body which is neither fire, air, earth, nor
water, nor in one word any simple body. These simple bodies have their own
natural motion in a straight line, light bodies upwards and heavy bodies
downwards; now this motion upwards and downwards is not the same as circular
motion; there is the greatest possible difference between straight and circular
motion. It therefore follows that bodies whose motion is so various must vary
also in their essence. But, it is not even possible to suppose that the heavens
should be formed of primitive bodies which we call elements, because the
reunion of contrary forces could not produce an even and spontaneous motion,
when each of the simple bodies is receiving a different impulse from nature.
Thus it is a labour to maintain composite bodies in continual movement, because
it is impossible to put even a single one of their movements in accord and
harmony with all those that are in discord; since what is proper to the light
particle, is in warfare with that of a heavier one. If we attempt to rise we
are stopped by the weight of the terrestrial element; if we throw ourselves
down we violate the igneous part of our being in dragging it down contrary to
its nature. Now this struggle of the elements effects their dissolution. A body
to which violence is done and which is placed in opposition to nature, after a
short but energetic resistance, is soon dissolved into as many parts as it had
elements, each of the constituent parts returning to its natural place. It is
the force of these reasons, say the inventors of the fifth kind of body for the
genesis of heaven and the stars, which constrained them to reject the system of
their predecessors and to have recourse to their own hypothesis. But yet
another fine speaker arises and disperses and destroys this theory to give
predominance to an idea of his own invention.
Do not let us undertake to follow them for fear
of falling into like frivolities; let them refute each other, and, without
disquieting ourselves about essence, let us say with Moses God created the
heavens and the earth. Let us glorify the supreme Artificer for all that was
wisely and skillfully made; by the beauty of visible things let us raise
ourselves to Him who is above all beauty; by the grandeur of bodies, sensible
and limited in their nature, let us conceive of the infinite Being whose
immensity and omnipotence surpass all the efforts of the imagination. Because,
although we ignore the nature of created things, the objects which on all sides
attract our notice are so marvellous, that the most penetrating mind cannot
attain to the knowledge of the least of the phenomena of the world, either to
give a suitable explanation of it or to render due praise to the Creator, to
Whom belong all glory, all honour and all power world without end. Amen.
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