Creative and Redemptive. 265 possess of God, of Sin, of Responsibility, of Eternity, as were they pure creations out of nothing-utter fictions, is equivalent to supposing that the human race issued from Adam and the sons of Adam, without the co-operation of Eve and her daughters. We know these things not only as a revival of experience by our race in former ages, but by our own feelings or consciousness; and, as all the parts of nature are analogous or cognate, we are going through that experience which others have gone through, learning that the world within man and the world without man are equally a revelation or manifestation of the Almighty. This knowledge is not without but within us, a revelation from Intelligence to intelligence; and by means of an organ which, though restricted within the sphere of experience, is enabled to apprehend, though not comprehend, concerning the supra-sensible and supernatural. There is a faculty which, by means of successive reaches in symbolical procedure, as in mathematics, enables pious men so to condense sensible experiences, that they attain a prevision in spiritual things like the astonishing previsions of exact science. The truth of this may be discerned in the character and works of Moses, and in the narratives of creation. There are two separate Scriptural accounts of creative work, which, through want of sufficient critical skill, have been wrongly considered as varying and erring records by two different writers. The former account (Gen. i.-ii. 3) is a brief summary or symbol of creative acts. The latter account (Gen. ii. 4-22), after reference, in verse 4, to the creation of the world, describes the planting of Paradise, and particularises the fashioning, temptation, and fall of man. The former, in which the Divine name is Elohim, D, shows God's relation to all things as the Creator, Owner, Lord of the universe. The latter, where we find the name or names, Din Jehovah Elohim, represents the Lord, the eternal and infinitely powerful: the Father is God in His own Essence, the Source and Foundation of all; the Son is the Mediating Principle, the Deliverer, or Saviour; the Spirit is the active Principle effectuating that relationship; all, of course, included in Jehovah Elohim. The first chapter being Elohistic, and the second Jehovistic or Jahvistic, affords no conclusive evidence that the two accounts are not by the same author. In the Pentateuch, Histories, and Psalms, one and the same writer will be found to use both names. An occasional appearance and disappearance of the sacred name, Jehovah, accords with the intense reverence in which it was held. Not only so, Elohim, Mighties, is a more suitable word in describing creation; even as the name, Jehovah, gives a more touching character to redemption, and represents the Divine Personality. The evident contrariety of statement, both as to matter and manner, is proof of difference as to the writer's aim. The proof can be given in detail :— In the first chapter, six days form distinct periods or eras of creative operation. In the second chapter, as if to show that the works of God are one work, and the days of God are one day-all the days become one-"the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens." The first chapter, after stating that God is the Creator of all things, describes the use of means in development of the earth. The Spirit moves upon the waters: the chaotic fluidity was not water, such as we are now acquainted with, which could not collect until after the appearance of light, nor until the glowing earth began to cool on its surface; and light appears as the result. Light may be regarded as that means of effectual operation by Divine energy, when will was enunciated, as figuratively expressed, by word. The firmamental expanse was cleared, the waters were gathered into seas, continents and islands were formed. Afterwards, the earth put forth that vegetal power by which sea and land were replenished; the earth being that fruitful mother, able, by energy, to give birth to plant and to animal, as we now say, "by natural power "-all being done according to law. By law is meant that order and sequence, of varying intensity and rapidity, now called natural. In the second chapter, the admirable mechanism, and the work which was wrought by it, are specially ascribed to a personal God. As if the notion of Democritus had been foreseen and corrected,—“ All life and change are due to the com Trees of Life and Knowledge. 267 bination and separation of molecules;" as if the thought of Lucretius was anticipated and reproved,-" Nature is seen to do all things spontaneously of herself;" and, as if the error of materialists had been prophesied of and condemned-"Matter is the universal mother "--we are plainly told, “The Lord God made the earth and the heavens, and every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground." Not from man was the pleasant pasture; nor did the mechanism and beauty of herb and flower proceed from the earth; nor is the exquisite structure of animals due to the ground-the Lord God made them all. Eden, delightful for situation, was Divinely chosen and planted. The word niin, "Generations," heading the second narrative, "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord made the earth and the heavens"-is not to be understood as giving an account of the original beginning, but taken in the sense of one thing proceeding from another, as (Gen. v. 1), “This is the book of the generations of Adam;" and (Gen. x. 1), "These are the generations of the sons of Noah." The growth or advance speedily assumes an intense mystical signification. The Garden has to be dressed and kept, not merely to be kept from running wild; the meaning of dressing and keeping is deeper than that of trimming flowers. The Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life are mystical tokens of development; the command not to eat is a warning against evil; and the entrance of a Tempter shews the need of these teachings, warnings, and premonitions concerning human duty, responsibility, and peril. The service and disservice, the submission and rebellion, the temptation, fall, and death of man, are those things proceeding from one another of which this chapter records the generation. These generations are connected with a change in the name of God. He is not simply D, God, as He stands to matter, and to unintelligent life as the Divine energy, but bibe Jehovah Elohim, God known to Man, the Personal the Covenant God to whom obedience is due, the Promiser and Restorer. "God had not caused it to rain "—is not a denial of previous rain, but an assertion of the Divine origination of plants and animals. Paradise may have been a rainless, not treeless locality; but we do not understand, if so, why the dense warm vapour did not condense into rain. The statement signifies-Things did not exist of themselves, nor merely by the fertilising influence of rain. In the mind or wisdom of God every plant was created before it existed. The ideal first, after that the reality. The whole was conceived and spiritually wrought out before there was any rain. That rain did fall is certain. The Divinely ordered constitution of nature required it. Rain-drops fell on sand, mud, soft clay, and left their marks on the sea-shores of the ancient world; and the rocky legend proves, by the shape of these little indentations, that long before man appeared the meteorologic state of the earth as to rain, wind, cloud, electricity, was the same as now. "There went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground "-may be limited to Paradise. The dew is plentiful and rain is scanty in those parts where God's Garden is supposed to have been planted. We prefer this interpretation-The plant and herb were not created by growth-power of the earth, nor by the fertilising influence of rain, nor had man to do with them; they were God-made. The argument is,―There was no rain, nor any power in rain, to form of themselves the exquisite and marvellous herb; nor was there any co-operation of man; God formed it, and with dew refreshed it. The origin was in that energy, above and beyond nature, which comes down into nature. The view given above as to the distinct and separate purposes for which both accounts are given is confirmed by one from whom we little expected confirmation,-he writes of the first, "None but a professed mystifier of the school of Philo could see anything but a plain statement of facts;" but "the circumstances related in the second narrative of creation are indeed such as to give at least some ground for the supposition that a mystical interpretation was intended to be given to it."1 1 "Essays and Reviews "-Mosaic Cosmogony: C. W. Goodwin, M.A. Narrative of Mystery. 269 It would have been well had the writer sought out this mystical meaning; he might have found the true interpretation of the second narrative, and been preserved from the error of counting it a mere repetition of the former, and by a feebler hand. The chief purpose of the mystery, we venture to suggest, is to give in concrete form, so far as the nature of the thing and human capacity allow, an account of man's departure from the Almighty. The reality under the figure, and the figure with underlying reality, are that awful spectacle, the growth and consequences of spiritual depravity, which no man, with unveiled face, can safely look upon. The fact, moreover, of the second narrative being mystical affords matter for study to those who say-"Your belief and our science are not possible in the same mind. Why the stupendous miracle of no rain on that spot of spots, Paradise -so beautiful in verdure-so rich in animal life? Rain must have fallen, even before the sea collected in mass: the existence of continent, of island, of river, necessitated the action of rain and denudation." We also, as men of science and of faith, must be at one with ourselves-intellect and emotion be duly content. Making, therefore, no attempt to explain the miracle-if miracle there was not insisting even that Paradise was a rainless locality, regard the garden and the planting, the trees of life and of knowledge, the formation of the woman, the visible appearance of the serpent and audible speech, as symbolical statements and embodiments to give. simplicity and clearness to common understandings concerning spiritual transactions. Not the less but more real because spiritual; not weakened in truth because the whole may be recorded in allegorical form; not losing intensity of power, of meaning, of sacredness, because God arranged the Divine Plan as a landscape and placed His own and human doings in a garden, but living and moving before us. While thus putting the whole, so far as possible, in a form acceptable to scientific minds, we all do well to remember our Lord's words "Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed."-Jno. xx. 29. Further, that the two accounts were written for distinct and |