| | \__ __/ | | \/ | | |..} RATIONAL}....|.....................|.........................}MAN. SPIRIT, } | INSPIRATION. | 3. _Creation was consecutive._ The creative epochs follow each other in a manifest Order of Thought. The reasons for this order are obvious on the face of the sacred narrative, so that we are constrained to regard the creative process as the realization of a purpose, the development of a foreseen and predetermined plan. This is clearly manifest from the aptly styled "pauses of contemplation" which occur in the progress of the sacred narrative. At each stage of the creative work the Deity is represented as surveying that already finished, and pronouncing it "_good_" (טוֹב = καλόν, fair and good). This may seem strange when viewed apart from the completed plan. What good, one might ask, is the light when there is no eye to see? What good the expanse of heaven, the land and seas, with none to inhabit them? What good the plants with none to use them? But the Intelligence that foresaw the end toward which the creative process was tending could recognize the fitness and the beauty of each new element of creation as contributing to that completed whole, which, when realized, is pronounced "_very good_." Thus each stage of the advancing work of creation is pronounced "good" in view of its subordination to the ultimate purpose, which is the highest "good." Each is a step upward and onward, and is "good" as a preparation and a means for a better that is yet to come. Thus the reading of the sacred Hymn of Creation leaves the decided impression that a chain of subordination and interdependence runs through the entire organic and inorganic creation, binding the whole together in an ideal unity. All the laws and results of the past are brought forward, and become a prelude and a preparation for the future developments. The earlier stages of the creation furnish the conditions for the later stages, and are in some sense a prophecy of what is to come. The successive stages of creation are thus results, in part, of a "nature"--a constitution and order of things already established, and in part of a new impulse carrying nature forward toward the predestinated goal. The more extended our acquaintance with the actual economy of nature, the more does the subordination and interdependence of the creative epochs become manifest, and the more are we convinced that "the law of consecution" which reveals itself in the sacred narrative is a real law of the universe.