V MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS 197 



of the whole. In the beginning "Elohim 1 created the heaven 

 and the earth." Heaven and earth were not primitive existences 

 from which the gods proceeded, as the Gentiles taught ; on the 

 contrary, the " Powers " preceded and created heaven and earth. 

 Whether by " creation " is meant "causing to be where nothing 

 was before" or "shaping of something which pre-existed," 

 seems to me to be an insoluble question. 



As I have pointed out, the second verse has an interesting 

 parallel in Jeremiah iv. 23 : " I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was 

 waste and void ; and the heavens, and they had no light." I 

 conceive that there is no more allusion to chaos in the one than 

 in the other. The earth-disk lay in its watery envelope, like 

 the yolk of an egg in the glairc, and the spirit, or breath, of 

 Elohim stirred the mass. Light was created as a thing by 

 itself ; and its antithesis " darkness" as another thing. It was 

 supposed to be the nature of these two to alternate, and a pair 

 of alternations constituted a "day "in the sense of an unit of 

 time. 



The next step was, necessarily, the formation of that "firma- flu/t fc^VW 

 ment," or dome over the earth-disk, which was supposed to/ife*>i 

 support the celestial waters ; and in which sun, moon, and stars 

 were conceived to be set, as in a sort of orrery. The earth was 

 still surrounded and covered by the lower waters, but the upper 

 were separated from it by the '* firmament," beneath which what 

 we call the air lay. A second alternation of darkness and light 

 marks the lapse of time. 



After this, the waters which covered the earth-disk, under the 

 firmament, were drawn away into certain regions, which became 

 seas, while the part laid bare became dry land. In accordance 

 with the notion, universally accepted in antiquity, that moist 

 earth possesses the potentiality of giving rise to living beings, 

 the land, at the command of Elohim, "put forth" all sorts of 

 plants. They are made to appear thus early, not, I apprehend, 

 from any notion that plants are lower in the scale of being than 

 animals (which would seem to be inconsistent with the prevalence 

 of tree worship among ancient people), but rather because 



1 For the sense of the term "Elohim," see the essay entitled 

 " The Evolution of Theology " at the end of this volume. 



