EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
The first chapter of the Book of Genesis sets forth in terms a child may in his manner apprehend the order of the Divine process of creation. Of this order the first element is the outgoing of the Divine life through successive degrees of spiritual and material substance that it creates, of less and less, even to least life. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. In the outmost, least living substance created there is yet a certain power of reaction, born of its very inertness. And the second element of the Divine order of creation is that out of this first, simple, least-living recipient through its reaction are evolved by regular—we say natural—process higher, more complex, and more living recipients, to receive higher or inner degrees of life from the One Source. The third element of this order is that this advance is made stage by stage, day after day, evening being the womb of the new morning. Evening was and morning was one day. This involves the decline of each successive stage after serving its purpose and maturing the germ for a new stage. Thus one generation of life gives way to its successor. The corn of wheat falls to the ground and dies in bringing forth a new
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