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and in order to make up the fourteen, from the captivity till Christ, Jeconiah has to be twice counted. In the genealogy of St Luke, from Adam to Abraham, Cainan is inserted between Sala and Arphaxad, in accordance with the LXX Version. The Hebrew makes Arphaxad to be aged thirty-five years at the birth of Salah; but the LXX states that Arphaxad was one hundred and thirty-five when he begat Cainan, and Cainan was one hundred and thirty when he begat Salah, and adds one hundred years to the ages of everyone of these-Salah, Eber, Peleg, Reu, Serug, and one hundred and fifty to Nahor. Indeed, the LXX adds one thousand four hundred and sixty-six years to the pre-Abrahamic period. Shem is put first of the sons of Noah, but was probably the youngest, and Japheth the eldest (Gen. x. 21; 1 Chron. xxvi. 10). St Paul says there were four hundred and fifty years of life-time for the judges, but only four generations are named-Salmon, Boaz, Obed, Jesse; yet for a similar period, from David to the manhood of Jehoichin, were nineteen or twenty-one generations. "No interpreter of Scripture, from the earliest times down to the present day, has ever been able to identify the ancestors of Christ, mentioned by St Matthew or St Luke, with any of the descendants of Zerubbabel, or other members of the house of David, whose names are recorded in the Old Testament.”1 From B.C. 536 to B.C. 457, is only seventy-nine years; and yet six generations are named (1 Chron. iii. 17-24). In our copies of St Luke, there are seventy-six generations from Adam to Christ; but Irenæus speaks of seventy-two, Augustin made seventy-seven, a mystical number from which he extracted wonders. It is also significant that in the whole time from the entrance to Canaan till the birth of Samuel, a space of four hundred years, only three high priests are named Eleazar, Phinehas, Eli.

These examples, which can be multiplied, suffice to show that names are used to bring us into contact with regions and epochs are not accurate measures of time, but links to unite the old and ever-young humanity with God by means of Jesus Christ. Names, placed in symmetrical series; and 1.66 Genealogies of our Lord," p. 94: Lord Arthur Hervey.

H

Humanity Linked with Divinity.

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numbers three, seven, ten, forty, reduced, or increased, or multiplied; are chosen with symbolical meaning. Indeed, at first there was no permanent chronological era even in common life. Facts were handed down, by memory and tradition, from father to son. As for Scripture, the words of every account extend to some great man-to the Patriarchs, to Noah, to Adam, thence to God. There are no ways of historically filling these gaps. Names actually and literally true, as applied to individuals, are also applied symbolically and collectively to the families, tribes, nations, by whom the earth was replenished. The conclusion we arrive at is, that chronology, in an exact and scientific sense, lies altogether outside of Revelation; and only exists in Holy Scripture for genealogical, not scientific purposes: hence, the charge of errors as to chronology are not to be regarded, are outside the scope of Scripture, do not affect those divine and spiritual truths which it is the object of Revelation to teach.

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STUDY VIII.

DAY I.-LIGHT.

"Truth is the Body of God, and Light is His Shadow."-PLATO.

STELLAR Worlds existed before the earth. The poetry of Job (xxxviii. 7) is beautiful and true: when the foundations of the earth were laid, "the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." We adopt the words of St Jerome "What eternities, what times, what originals of ages, must we not think there were before; in which angels, thrones, dominions, and the other powers served God; and existed apart from the changes and measures of times?" "God said-'Let there be light :'

And forthwith light

Ethereal, first of things, quintessence pure,
Sprung from the deep.”—Paradise Lost.

Light had shone long before in Heaven, and ancient stars had ere this been kindled. We believe this, though no scientific proof, so far as we know, exists that any fixed star or nebula is older than our sun. "Let light be," is the command. "There was light," is the substitution, on earth, of light for darkness. Light is a wave - like movement, a peculiar shivering motion, of the ultimate particles of bodies. The all-pervading æther takes up these molecular tremors, and conveys them with inconceivable swiftness to our organs of vision. This transported shiver of bodies, millions of miles distant, which awakes the splendour of day, and shines in the firmament at night, is, when translated into human consciousness, light. When we detect by a thermometer, or by the sensation that from which, as Locke says, we denominate the object "hot," that is heat; and when we become aware of it by the eye, it is called "light." "There

Our Conception of Light.

143

is no body in nature absolutely cold," says Professor Tyndall, "and every body not absolutely cold emits rays of heat." To render radiant heat visible, it must be raised to a certain temperature, when it emits a feeble red light; as heat grows, light augments in brilliancy, until, finally, it is dazzling white. "The difference between radiant heat and light is simply the difference between a low note and a high one."1 If we conceive the universe as consisting of non-luminous, formless matter, and then, in scientific use of imagination, endeavour to realise the growing warmth of all things, as the vibrations of matter are quickened and intensified into the amplitude of luminous oscillations in the various series of worlds, we shall have some faint conception of God's wonderful work when He said "Let there be light."

"Yet the sun

Was not, she in cloudy tabernacle
Sojourned the while."-Paradise Lost.

"Ignea convexi vis et sine pondere cœli

Emicuit, summaque locum sibi legit in arce."

OVID, Met. Lib. i.

Or,

"Fire rose out of the formless mass, hung like a curtain on the roof, as it were, of the world; making light in the vaulted sky, and clothing it with a luminous vapour light." more scientifically, "As in nebulous sphere, just become luminous, and in the new red hot liquid earth of our modern cosmogony, light was not yet divided into suns and stars, nor time into day and night.""

Let a current of electricity, of gradually increasing strength, be sent through a platinum wire; the particles of metal instantly vibrate with accelerating speed, and the wire becomes warm to the touch; but there is no light. At length, when the heat has grown, there is a faint red illumination. The glow augments with increasing heat, the red becomes more brilliant, orange rays are added; besides these appear yellow, then the green come, and in succession, blue, indigo, and violet rays. When the wire is white-hot, the simultaneous action of all the colours produces the effect or

1 "Recent Advances in Physical Science: " Professor P. G. Tait.
2 "Interaction of Natural Forces:" Professor Helmholtz.

impression of whiteness on the optic nerve, and the light is perfect or white.

We now, in some measure, have a conception of light going forth out of darkness. At whatever period, or in whatever manner, during the integration of our solar nebula into a planetary system, light began to shine, the heat would be the equivalent of the work of integration; and as the heat quickened in vibration, from the low to the high note, the brightness would increase the energy of heat would be transformed more or less into that of light. If the whole mass of the earth was agglomerated almost at once, and if the different rent parts impinged together with properly arranged velocities, we can note the state of things before and after that moment. Before were scattered masses of matter. Then, at the instant of impact, the integrated mass became of high temperature and light shone. Before that moment was darkness, after it was light. We cannot imagine that Moses, though learned in the wisdom of the Egyptians, knew this; or that the elementary atoms have their own shapes and powers, whereby they arrange themselves into molecules of exceeding complication and varying vibration; or could be aware that 458,000,000,000,000 vibrations in a second are necessary, in order to give us the consciousness of the lowest or red light; and we wonder that, in relating the primal illumination of the earth, he tells us first of the light, and after that of the luminous body-the sun. With higher reverence than any regard for his own wisdom draws forth, we meditate on the words "The earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light."

That which caused the integration of the earth, and the production of light and heat, was energy. Energy may be defined as the power of doing work. There is always a tendency, in every transformation of energy, to pass from a higher to a lower form; indeed, all the energy in the universe is passing on to the lowest and final form of equally diffused heat. This, the dissipation of energy, is by no

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