|
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, be
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 learnt
from God. Let us listen then to these words of truth written without
the help of the "enticing words of man's wisdom" 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." 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 anti 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 be 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 passeth away" and "Heaven and earth shall pass
away." 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 men 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." 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 yam
sciences, they have wilfully shut their eyes to the knowledge of the
truth. These men who measure the distances of the stare 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
tiring: 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" 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," that is to say
that piety is, as it were, the groundwork and foundation of
perfection. Art is also tile 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." 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 par-title 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 stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain and spreadeth 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 failing
into the abyss? Then you must consider that this support needs itself
a support to prevent it from failing. Can we imagine one? Our reason
again demands vet 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?" 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 hath
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
aethereal 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.
|
|
