It is possible that God made at first only one kind of matter, the germ of all the universe. Indeed, Scripture seems to hint this in the sublime record of the origin of light: "And God said, Let there be light, and there was light." Here light is evidently regarded as the first of all sublunary things.
The principal agent in this work was the Son of God. He had made the third heaven. He had created angels. The strong Satan himself was originally the workmanship of Christ. It is no strange hand that moulded the worlds. Go wherever you may, the hand of Christ has been before you, and He Who made all these strange suns, and all these mighty systems, is the very Victim that suffered, bled, and died on Calvary.
I. The creation was a gradual process, a process probably extending over millions of ages; not merely a process, but a procession of things and beings, from inferior to superior, from the less to the more perfect. The reasons might be: (1) to show that God's works were not the offspring of hasty impulse, but that they were planned from everlasting, and executed with minute and lingering care; (2) to discover the variety of methods which a God infinitely rich in resources can employ in effecting His great purposes. This gradual creative work occupied the Creator for millions of ages. This we gather, not from the Bible, but from the discoveries of geology.
II. The creative process at last came to a point in man, who, amidst ten thousand other animated forms, alone was made, in the full sense of that word, perfect, and who became the best and highest work of God. From the Scripture statements about the creation of man we deduce the following principles: (1) that man was formed by a direct act of Omnipotence; (2) that he was made after the model of his Maker, and therefore perfect; (3) that he was immeasurably superior to the lower animals, and entitled to dominion over them; (4) that he was the object of God's peculiar blessing; (5) that one main purpose of his creation was to subdue and cultivate the earth; (6) that he consisted of two parts a body taken out of the dust of the ground, and an immaterial part breathed into him by his Creator; (7) that although created a unit, he was potentially plural, too, and was destined to be joined by a companion in his original state of innocence and purity; (8) and that he was in a state of probation, and exposed to temptation and the hazard of fall.
G. Gilfillan, Alpha and Omega,vol. i., p. 49.
References: Genesis 1. H. Alford, Meditations in Advent,p 71; S. Leathes, Studies in Genesis,pp. 5, 17; Expositor,2nd series, vol. iv., p. 191, vol. vii., p. 444; 3rd series, vol. iii., p. 354; Parker, vol. i., pp. 103, III. 1-2:4. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iv., p. 34; J. Monro Gibson, The Ages before Moses,p. 55.