truth, recorded in the Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Prophets, the Gospels. All these fruitful interpretations would be unfruitful, and no interpretation, did they not grow out of the real actual germ-God made the world and all things that are therein. The whole becomes more wonderful when compared with Auguste Comte's famous but erroneous law of scientific progress. Every sciencę, he says, passes to perfection by three stages the theological, the metaphysical, the positive. Biblical science is the very reverse of this, and founded on the most positive and simple statements which it is possible to make. The whole race of man, and afterwards Israel in particular, were dealt with in the directest, most real, and positive manner. Those were the true days of sacred positivism. He who doubts may compare the simplicity and reality of Genesis with the myths, poems, and rhapsodies of all other nations. From that positive was a transition into the metaphysical: the prophets are witnesses. Then appeared Jesus who, with perfect truth, established the world's theological school. His piety rested on true wisdom, and that wisdom was based on positive fact. The knowledge of it is like a view in a glass—yet not a view in a glass; it brightens and elevates the human mind into a likeness of the Divine Mind. Man's duty high and lifted up above the mists of human error, has the body of heaven in its clearness. Faith ascends to God-Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier. Our will, if we are not unbelieving and rebellious, is becoming conformed to His Will; our thoughts are being fashioned by His Mind. When perfect in Christ, we shall be one with God, and He one with us (John xiii. 21-23). "Oh, my friend, That thy faith were as mine; that thou could'st see With the strong eye that sees the promised day THE account of creation, if a true account, is proved by that truthfulness to be Divinely inspired. Early unscientific thought could not, of itself, know or invent those deeply hidden facts of which accurate science has but lately obtained possession; and however clear the mind's eye of early contemplative genius, it could not, without Divine aid, see how the world was framed. A revelation of the fact that God did create the world is vastly important, and establishes the kingdom of God in the universe of matter, as the history and salvation of man establish it in the world of spirits. The revelation was made probably to the first man; and handed down to Moses through a tradition which had become the almost exclusive possession of the few who, amidst polytheistic systems, retained their faith in the ancient and pure theism of a more primitive religion. To Moses it was, doubtless, confirmed and probably enlarged by new revelation. It is not a picture of the Divine action drawn by an ancient geologist, though there is agreement with the discoveries of geological science, both as regards the antiquity of the earth, and as to the process of its formation; nor was it depicted by man's imagination trying, in its own way, to account for nature's origin and phenomena. Imagination was used, but only as the faculty through which God made a revelation of Himself. There was knowledge, but not scientifically obtained as is our modern conception of the universe. “It is the production of a writer who seems to possess an acquain tance with natural history, and might almost be suspected of knowing some facts of geology;" yet this acquaintance he could not possess. The simplicity of the words and deep accurate meaning agreeing with latest attainments of science; the painting of things which men could not have seen, and description of works which man could have no knowledge of; are from a human mind acquainted with the deep things of God. The heavens were undoubtedly in existence when our earth was formed. The heavens are not the firmament, which was created the second day; nor are they simply the sun, moon, and stars, spoken of in the fourth day. Heavens may mean all these and many more. The apostolic word (Eph. iii. 10) declares that the manifold wisdom of God is made known by the earthly Church to angelic powers of heaven; as if to show that God's eternal world-plan did not begin with the earth, even as it will not end with the earth. Science tells us that star-formation is yet in progress; and Scripture states that the Lord is even now preparing mansions (John xiv. 2). It is not needful to inquire whether heaven may be a spiritual world, entering, enclosing, and extending far beyond all material existence. The Scriptural doctrine is, "long before the earth was fashioned for man, there were heavens, and morning stars, and angels; regions more glorious than the earth, heavens more ancient than the firmament; and heavenly inhabitants who excel in strength." 12 There have been acts of a wonderful and startling character, of which we possess but few incidents, in the origin and fall of spirits (Job xxxviii. 12, 13; Is. xiv. 12; Lu. x. 18; John viii. 44; 2 Peter ii. 4; Jude 6; 1 John iii. 8). The fall of angels, as connected with our own early history, may be thus stated:-Man was placed in paradise to dress and keep it. The secret meaning of those service-words becomes apparent in the fact that a tempter became the cause of ruin. There was evil for man to overcome: evil outside of him, not human-but angelic or spiritual. How far demoniacal malignity introduced or magnified 1 "Notes on the Earlier Hebrew Scriptures," p. 14: Sir G. B. Airy, K.C.B. "Mosaic Record of Creation:" A. M'Caul, D.D. Fall of Angels and of Man. 283 suffering in the early animal world, Scripture does not reveal; unless the "wasteness or emptiness," spoken of in the second verse of Gen. i. mean, as some think, a caused or wasting desolation. In Jer. iv. 23, the words are used of destruction wrought as punishment for sin. In Isaiah xxxiv. 11, they mean an after-destruction of that which once had been beautiful. In Rom. viii. 20-22, we are told that the creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly but in hope. Nevertheless, the Scripture statement, "God did not make the earth to be waste," is verified by the six days' process. The earth was wasteness and emptiness, or, as translated, “without form and void," because it had not yet been shaped, nor fitted for living. creatures. in wasteness, is sometimes used as synonymous with TM, non-existence, and a for nothingness. It is certain that all good operation, all healthful, orderly production, proceed from the Will of God; and that the Divine plan, working a conditioning influence, renders even wasteness and desolateness receptive of Divine energy. The disorder, in its degrees of evil, though made a means of discipline, is attributed to the agency, direct or indirect, of the devil and his angels; who, having fallen from their allegiance to God, sought evermore to mar His good work. Hence we know why wrath seems mingled with love; why there is pain, strife, death; why providence is that entangled maze, which only a faithful wise and loving heart can read aright. The fall of angels, and their evil influence on men, must not be put away as poetical and figurative; there is meaning, and that of a most awful character. What it is, as to the earth, we are painfully conscious of in the sin of our race, in the continual conflict of flesh and spirit, and in the dread of judgment to come. The record of it is a true history of real acts, not a mythological account of natural disturbances, nor a personifying of processes and laws by which God worked. "Specially remarkable, miraculous it really seems to be, is that character of reserve which leaves open to reason all that reason may be able to attain. The meaning seems always to be ahead of science, not because it anticipates the results of science, but because it is independent of them, and runs, as it were, round the outer margin of all possible discovery.' The numerous passages of Scripture which affirm or imply the existence and agency of extra-human and super-human orders, are connected with a vast scheme. Accurate study will give consistency to this evidence, dissipate many difficulties, and expand our knowledge of those mysterious beings with whom our own destinies are so marvellously involved. The Pre-Adamite world, occupying innumerable ages, answers the request of geologists for vast duration; and allows, if need be, for Pre-Adamite men. If such precursors existed of the Adam-man, as the Adam-man preceded the Christ-man, they were brute men, in whom was no breath of God; but, at best, only life yearning for more life. It is just possible, that as plant and animal had their order; the more primitive of each being more simple, and those following, for the most part, more highly organised; there may have been rudimentary men formed, as Scripture says, out of the ground. These may possibly have lived on for many generations until, in fulness of time, they were regenerated or recreated as the Adam, our forefather. There are thoughtful men who accept this as not unscriptural, and as explanatory of a scientific difficulty. We will not say, as Delitzsch, "The man who, in the ape, greets his brother only a little left behind, must needs have first substantially brutalised himself, or he would rather shudder at this counterpart of his own degradation." It is better to allow those who think that our structural resemblances to the nearest allied quadrumana are of a character indicating that both man and ape are derived from some earlier common stock, to state their opinion: the body being formed by a perfectly natural process, and existing so that-"The soul did but mean the breath, It knew no more;" then came the divine gift of immortality by means of endowing the (σáp) flesh, with (a) the spirit; thus the (σwa) body, dwelt in by the (x) psyche, became, through (TEM), the spirit a divine man. Hence, though descended from the brute, man is immortal by the birth of a spirit in 1 "Primeval Man," p. 367: Duke of Argyle. |