What, then, is creation in the sense of the Hebrew writer. The act is expressed by the verb _bara_, a word of comparatively rare occurrence in the Scriptures, and employed to denote absolute creation, though its primary sense is to cut or carve, and it is indeed a near relative of our own English word "pare." If, says Professor Stuart, of Andover, this word "does not mean to create in the highest sense, then the Hebrews had no word by which they could designate this idea." Yet, like our English "create," the word is used in secondary and figurative senses, which in no degree detract from its force when strictly and literally used. Since, however, these secondary senses may often appear to obscure the primitive meaning, we must examine them in detail. In the first chapter of Genesis, after the general statement in verse 1, other verbs signifying to _form_ or _make_ are used to denote the elaboration of the separate parts of the universe, and the word "create" is found in only two places, when it refers to the introduction of "great whales" (reptiles) and of man. These uses of the word have been cited to disprove its sense of absolute creation. It must be observed, however, that in the first of these cases we have the earliest appearance of animal life, and in the second the introduction of a rational and spiritual nature. Nothing but pure materialism can suppose that the elements of vital and spiritual being were included in the matter of the heavens and the earth as produced in the beginning; and as the Scripture writers were not materialists, we may infer that they recognized, in the introduction of life and reason, acts of absolute creation, just as in the origin of matter itself. In Genesis ii. and iii. we have a form of expression which well marks the distinction between creation and making. God is there said to have rested from all his works which he "created and made"--literally, created "for or in reference to making," the word for making being one of those already referred to.[31] The force of this expression consists in its intimating that God had not only finished the work of _creation_, properly so called, but also the elaboration of the various details of the universe, as formed or fashioned out of the original materials. Of a similar character is the expression in Isaiah xlii., 5, "Jehovah, he that _created_ the heavens and spread them out;" and that in Psalm cxlviii., 5, "He commanded and they were _created_, he hath also established them for ever and ever."