Genesis 1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep… I. THE SPIRIT OF GOD BROUGHT ORDER AND DEVELOPMENT TO THE MATERIAL WORLD. How did that shapeless mass become such a world as this? What account of the transition does science give? It says, "Change succeeded to change, in strict accordance with physical law, very slowly but surely, with no sudden transitions, till, step by step, the one condition passed into the other." Those regular changes were all that appeared; and they are all which appear now, though the same changes are still going on. We cannot see the intelligence, the mind, which directs the works of nature; but it is equally true that we cannot see them in the works of man. Yet the mind of man is at work, though invisible, animating his body; and it is truer to speak of his mind as planning the house he builds, and the steam engine he sets to work, than to say that the materials came together into their right places, though that is all that we see. And so it is truer to say that the Invisible Mind, the unseen Spirit of God, moved upon the formless earth, and brought it to its present ordered form, than to say it happened so. Science mentions only what appeared; but Genesis tells the deeper truth, that the informing mind accomplished all — Genesis, which was written centuries before science was born. There is special fitness in the words employed, "The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." It indicates the quiet untiring ways in which God works in the heavens and the earth. II. THE SPIRIT OF GOD MUST BRING ORDER AND DEVELOPMENT TO THE SPIRITUAL WORLD. The moral and spiritual nature of man forms quite another world from the material universe, and yet how closely the two are linked in the human body and soul! Look at the moral and spiritual nature of men. How high they can rise! so high that there is fitness in speaking of God's image in them as a real kinship of nature with God. What noble examples there have been among men, of righteousness, faithfulness, and love — the very attributes of God — yet we feel man has not realized the greatness and goodness that he may. But how low men can sink! to what extremes of wrong, and treachery, and selfishness, and cruelty! We cannot picture it all; to do so would be to have present to the mind what human society has been and is — the crimes, the woes, the degradation, and shame, of generations of human lives and hearts. To picture human society as it is — I mean especially its evils — would be more, not only than imagery could realize, but more than any feeling heart could bear. The material chaos is but a faint image of this deeper spiritual chaos; but taking it as such, we may ask, Does God leave the world in this chaos of degradation and woe? Turn to another Bible picture: "I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes" (emblems of purity), "and palms in their hands" (emblems of victory). (T. M. Herbert, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. |
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