Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 May 1891 — THE SIXTH DAY. [ARTICLE]

THE SIXTH DAY.

Six Days Completed the Almighty’s Work. First Light—Next Dispelling the Waters That Covered the Earth—Then the Ban., qnet—The Creation of Man the ClimaxDr. Talmage's Sermon. —— - . ——— Rev. Dr. Talmage preached at Brooklyn, Sunday. Text: Genesis i., 31. He said: A worse-looking world than this never swung. It was heaped up deformities, scarifications and monstrosities. The Bible says it was without form. That is, it was not round, it was not square, it was not octagonal, it was not a rhomboid. God never did talje any one in His counsels; but if He had asked some angel about the attempt to turn this planet into a place for human residence the angel would have said, “No, no! Try some other world; the crevices of this earth are too deep; its crags too appalling; its darkness is too thick.” But Monday morning came. I think it was a spring morning and about half past 4 o’clock. The first thing needed was light. It was not needed for God to work by, for He can work as well in the darkness. But light may be necessary, for angelic intelligences are to see in its full glory the process of worldbuilding. But where are the candles? Where are the candelabra? Where is the chandelier? No rising sun will roll in the morning,for if the sun is already created its light will not reach the earth in three days. No moon or stars can brighten this darkness: The moon and stars are not born yet, or, if created, their light will not reach the earth for some time yet.

But there is need of immediate light. Where shall it come from? Desiring to account for things in a natural way you say and reasonably say, that heat aud electricity throw out light independent of the sun, and that the metallic bases throw out light independent of the sun, and that alkalies throw out light independent of the sun. Oh, yes; all that is true, but I do not think that is the way light was created. The record makes me think that,, standing over this earth that spring morning, God looked upon the darkness that palled the world, and the chasms of it, and the awful reaches of it, and uttered, whether in the Hebrew of earth or some language celestial I know not, that word that stands for the subtle, bright, glowing and all-pervading fluid; that word which thrills and gar'ands and lifts everything it touches; that word full of meaning which all the chemists of the ages have busied themselves in exploring; that word which suggests a force that flies 192, - 000 miles a second, and by undulations 727,000,000,000,000,000 miles in a second; that word which God utters —Light! And instantly the darkness began to shimmer and the thick folds of blackness to lift, and there were scintillations, and coruscations, and flashes and a billowing up of resplendence, and in sheets it spread out northward, eastward, westward, and a radiance filled the atmosphere until it could hold no more of the brilliance. Light now to work by while supernatural intelligences look on. Light, the first chapter of the first day of the week. Light the joy of the centuries. Light, the greatest blessing that ever touched the human eye. The robe of the Almighty is woven out of it, for he covers himself with .light.as-with a garment. Oh! blessed light! lam so glad this was the first thing created that week. Good thing to start every week with is light. That will make our work easier. That will keep our disposition more radiant. That will hinder even our losses from becoming too somber.

Now' it is Tuesday morning. A delicate and tremendous undertaking is set apart for this day. There was a great superabundance of water. God by the wave of his hand. This morning-gathers part of it in suspended reservoirs and part of it He orders down into the rivers ahd lakes and seas. How to hang whole Atlantic oceans in the clouds without their spilling over except in right quantities and at right times was an undertaking that no one but omnipotence Would have dared. But God does it as easily as you would lift a glass of water. There He hoists two clouds, each thirty miles wide and five miles high and balances them. Here ; he lifts the cirrus clouds and spreads them out in great white banks as though it had been snowing in heaven. And the cirro-stratus clouds in long parallel lines so straight you know an infinite geometer has drawn them. Clouds which are the armory from which thunderstorms get their bayonets of fire, clouds which are oceans on the wing. No wonder, long after this first Tuesday of creation week. Elihu confounded Job with the question, “Dost thou know the balancing of the clouds?” Half of this Tuesday work done, the other half is the work of compelling the waters to lie down in their destined places. So God picks up the solid ground and packs it up into five elevations, which are the continents. With His finger He makes deep depressions in them, and these are the lakes, while at the piling up of the Alleghanies and Sierra Negiflas and Pyretiess and Alps and imalayas the rest of the waters start by the law of gravitation to the lower places, and in their run down hill become the rivers, and then all around the earth these rivers come’ into convention and become oceans beneath, as the clouds are oceans

above. How soon the rivers got to their places when God said: “Hudson and James and Amazon down to the Atlantic, Oregon and Sacramento down to the Pacific.” Theree-quar-ters of the earth being water, and only one-quarter being land, nothing but almightiness could have caged the three fourths so that they could not have devoured the one-fourth. Thank God for water and plenty of it! What a hint that God would have the race very clean —three-fourths of the world water. Pour it through the homes and make them pure. Pour it through the prisons and make their occupants moral. Pour it over the streets and make them healthy. There are several thousand people asleep in Greenwood who, but for the filthy streets of Brooklyn and New York would have been well to-day and in churches. Moreover, there never was a filthy street that remained a moral street.

Now it is Wednesday morning of the world’s first week. Gardening and horticulture will be born to-day. How queer the hills look and so unattractive they seem hardly worth having been made. But now all the surfaces are changing color. Something beautiful is creeping all over them. It has the color of emerald. Aye, it is herbage. Hail to the green grass, God’s favorite color and God’s favorite plant, as I judge from the fact that He makes a larger number of them than of anything else. But look yonder! Something starts out of the ground and goes up higher and higher and spreads out broad leaves. It is'a palm tree. Yonder is another growth and its leaves hang far down, and it is a willow tree. And yonder is a growth with mighty sweep of branches. And here they come—-the pear, and the apple, and the peach, and the pomegranate, and groves, and orchards and forests, their shadows and their fruit girding the earth. We are pushing agriculture and fruit culture to great excellence in the nineteenth century, but we have nothing now to equal what I see on this first Wednesday of the world’s existence. I take a*, taste of one of the apples this Wednesday morning, and I tell you it mingles in its juices all the flavors of Spitzbergen and Newton pippin, and Rhode Island greenings, and Danvers winter sweet and Roxbury russet and Hubbardson’s nonesuch, but added to all and overpowering all other flavors is the paradisaical juice that all the orchards of the nineteenth century fail to reach. I take a taste of the pear, and it has all the luxury of the 3,000 varieties of the nineteenth century; all the Steekel and the Bartlett of the pomologieal gardens of later times are acridity compared with it. And the grapes! Why, this one cluster has in it the richness of whole vinyards of Catawba, and Concords, and Isabellas. Fruits of all colors, all odors and all flavors.

Now it is Thursday morning of the world’s first week. Nothing will be created to-day. The hours will be passed in scattering the fogs and mists and vapors. The atmosphere must be swept clean. Other worlds are to hove in sight. The little ship of the earth has seemed to have all the ocean of immensity to itself. But mightier craft are to be hailed to-day • on the high sea. of spree. First, the moon’s white sail appears, and does very well until the sun bursts upon the scene. The light that on the previous three mornings was struck from an especial word now gathers in the sun, moon and stars. -One for the day, the others for the night. It seemed as if “they had all, within twenty-four hours been created Ah,_ this is a great time in the world's first week. The moon, the nearest neighbor to our earth, appears, her photograph to be taken in the nineteenth century, when the telescope shall bring her within 120 miles of New York. And the sun now appears, afterward to be found 888,000 miles in diameter, and, put in astronomical scales, to be found to weigh nearly 400,000 times heavier than our earth; a mighty furnace, its heat kept up by meteors falling into it as fuel, a world devouring other worlds with its jaws of flame. And the stars came out,’ those street lamps of heaven, those keys of pearl, upon which God s fingers play the music of the spheres. How bright they look in this oriental evening! Constellations! Galaxies! What a twen-ty-four hours of this first week—solar, lunar, stellar appearences. All this Thursday and the adjoining nights employed in pulling aside the curtain of vapor from these flushed or pale-faced worlds. Enough! Now it is Friday morning in the first week of the world’s existence. Water, *but not a fin swimming in it; air, but not a wing flying it. Can it be that it was made only for vegetables? But, hark! There is a swirl and a splashing in all the four rivers of Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel and Euphrates. They are all a-swim with life, some darting like arrows through split crystal,and others quiet in dark pools like shadows. Everything, from spotted trout to behemoth; allcolored, all-shaped, the of finny tribes that shall by their wonders of construction confound the Agassizes, the Cuviers and the Linnaeuses and the ichthyologists of the more than 6,000 years following this Friday of the first week. And while I stand on the banks of these paradisiacal river watching these finny t ribes, I hear the whirr in theairanJl I look up, and behold, wings—wings of larks, robins, doves, eagles,’ flara> ingoes, albatrosses, brown-threshers. Creatures of all color, blue as if dipped in the skies, fiery as if they had flown out of the sunsets, golden as if they, had taken their morning bath in buttercups.' But now it is Saturday morning of

the world’s first week, and with thi£ day the week closes. But oh, what a climateric day! The air has its population. Yet the .land has not one inhabitant. But here they come, by the voice of God created! Horses grander than those which in after time Job will describe as having necks clothed with thunder. Cattle enough to cover a thousand hills. Sheep shepherded by Him who made for them the green pastures. Cattle superior to the Alderneys and Ayershires and Devonshires of after times. Leopards so beautiful we are glad they cannot change their spots. Lions without their fierceness, and all the, quadruped world so gentle, so sleek, so perfect. Look out how you treat this animal creation, whether they walk the earth, or s wim the waters, or fly the air. Do you notice that God gave them precedence of the human race? They were created on Friday and Saturday morning, as man was created Saturday afternoon. They have a right to be here. He who galls a horse, or exposes a cow to the storm, or beats a dog, or mauls a cat, or gambles at pigeon-shooting, or tortures an insect will have to answer for it in the Judgment. Day. You may console yourself that these creatures are not immortal and they cannot appear against you, but the God who made these creatures and who saw the wrong you did them will be there. Better look out, you stockraisers and railroad companies who bring the cattle on trains without food and water for three or four days in hot weather, a long groan of agony from Omaha to New York. But how about the first human eye that was ever kindled, the first human ear that was ever opened, the first human lung that ever breathed, the first human neart that ever'beat, the first human life ever constructed? That needed the origination of a God. He had no model to work by. iWhat stupendous work for a Saturday afternoon 1 He must originate a style of human heart, through which all the blood of the body must pass every three minutes. He must make that heart so strong that it can, during the day, lift what would be equal to 120 tons of weight, and it must be so arranged as to beat over 36,000,000 times each year. About 500 muscles must be strong in the right place, and at least 250 bones constructed. Into this body must be put at least 9,000,000 nerves. Over 3,000 perspiring pores must be made for every inch of fleshy surface. The human voice must be so constructed it shall be capable of producing 17,592,186,044,415 sounds.

But all this the most insignificant part of the human being. The soul! Ah, the construction of that God himself would not be equal to if he were only less a God. Its understanding, its will, its memory, its ment or suffering, its immortality! What a work for a Saturday afternoon! Aye! Before night there were to be two such human yet immortal beings constructed. The woman, as well, was formed Saturday afternoon because a deep, sleep fell upon Adam and by Divine surgery a portion of his side was removed for the nucleus of another creation, it has been supposed that perhaps days and nights passed between the masculine and feminine creations. But no! Adam was not three hours unmated. If a physician can by anaesthetics put one into a deep sleep in three min„utes, God certainly could have put Adam into a profound sleep a short while that Saturday afternoon and made the deep and radical excision without causing distress. By a manipulation of the dust, the same hand that molded the mountains molded the features and molded the limbs of the father of the human race. But his eves did not see, and his nerves did not feel, and his muscles did not move, and his lungs did not breathe, and his heart did not pulsate. A perfect form he lay along the earth, symmetrical and of God-like countenance. Magnificent piece of Divine carpentry and Omnipotent sculpturing, but no vitality. "A body without a soul. Then the Source of all life stooped to the inanimate nostril and lip, and, as many a skillful and earnest physician has put his lips to a patient in a comatose state and breathed into his mouth and nostril, and at the same time compress the lungs, until that which was artificial respiration became natural respiration. What do you think of that one week's work? I review it not for entertainment, but because I would have you join in David’s doxology: “Great and glorious are Thy works, Lord God Almighty;” because I want you to know what a homestead our Father built for his children at the start, though sin has despoiled it; and because I want you to know hbw the world will look again when Christ shall havq restored it swinging now between two Edens; because I want you to realize something of what a mighty God He is and the utter folly of trying to war against Him; because I want you to make your peace with this Chief of the Universe through the Christ who mediates between offended Omnipotence and human rebellion; because I want you to know how fearfully and wonderfully you are made, vour body as well as your soul an Omnipotent achievement; because I want you to realize, that order reigns throughout the universe, and that God’s watches •tick to the second and that his clocks strike regularly, though they strike once in a thousand years;

Hog cholera is a very troublesome and frequent visitor, but it observes one society rule: It never calls unless invited. • '<