It has now become perfectly clear that from the same
sources which inspired the accounts of the creation of the universe
among the Chaldeo-Babylonian, the Assyrian, the Phoenician, and
other ancient civilizations came the ideas which hold so prominent
a place in the sacred books of the Hebrews. In the two accounts
imperfectly fused together in Genesis, and also in the account of
which we have indications in the book of Job and in the Proverbs,
there, is presented, often with the greatest sublimity, the same
early conception of the Creator and of the creation--the
conception, so natural in the childhood of civilization, of a
Creator who is an enlarged human being working literally with his
own hands, and of a creation which is "the work of his fingers." To
supplement this view there was developed the belief in this Creator
as one who, having
. . . "from his ample palm
Launched forth the rolling planets into space."
sits on high, enthroned "upon the circle of the heavens,"
perpetually controlling and directing them.
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