Breath of God did not become a living soul, but made man to be a living soul-a candle illumined by the Lord. A creating in the soul of spirit-elements-man's true spirit-form. The Breath of God is that Divine energy which created the God-willed spiritual human personality.

Man in the "image of God" means the ideal, or sort, or kind. In the "likeness of God" means the relation or order of spirituality essentially distinguishing him from brutes. Man is neither, as to his body, the precipitate of the spirit; nor, as to his soul, the sublimate of matter. He is a combination by Divine origination as to the body; and by Divine in-breathing as to the soul. The body, thus fashioned, receives at the resurrection a re-fashioning of glory. The soul, possessing not only the life which God wrought in matter when He made the brute, but that life, in union of soul and spirit, effected by Divine inspiration, received higher blessing and energy through the Incarnation of Christ. The Son, the form of God in heaven, assumed the fashion of man on earth to endow the earthen vessel with Heavenly treasure. The Word of God is both a power and living person, bringing immortality to light. First the natural body, then the spiritual body.

To help an evolutionist in his endeavour to accept the Bible account, we suggest-From some form, possibly nearer to man than any now known, by exaltation and exquisite fashioning of inner relations in adjustment with enlarged and more complicate outer relations, man may have come forth as from sleep-a prodigy. There are illustrations. The crawling creature leaps forth a beautiful vision of sportfulness in the light. The leaps and surprises in animal life are numerous. The surpassing power of some ancient intellects is not less a surprise than a delight. The intellect of a truly great man--the man of a million-may be taken as a recurring symbol of that exaltation by which the dust made flesh, the flesh received capacity for spirit. In other words— "God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life: and man became a living soul."

Materialists assert-"That which we call spirit disappears with the dissolution of the individual material combination.” 1 There is no proof of such positive statement, nor is proof 1 66 'Kraft und Stoff," p. 13: Dr. Büchner.

Dogmatism Descending to Puppyism. 119

possible. The forces of life continue in other forms, why not the spirit? Matter is known by mind; and maintaining that the smallest particle of sand is utterly and for ever indestructible, we cannot think that our inner personal individuality, all that by which we understand the mechanism of worlds, is extinguished. If we accept the words of Locke as to all our ideas depending upon the senses- -"nihil est in intellectu quod non prius in sensu '-we add the correction of Leibnitz-"nisi intellectus ipse," except the intellect itself.

" 1

As to Providence, God, Creation, we are told—“ What this or that man may understand by a governing Reason, a universal soul, a personal God, etc., is his own affair. The theologians, with their articles of faith, must be left to themselves." So we are to give up all reverence for God, and believe-not that God created all things out of nothing, but that all things created or evolved themselves out of something very little better than nothing. The man may as well say "There is nothing behind the door"—simply because he cannot see through the door; as deny the Eternal Power, because it is invisible. He is an ill-odorous man who extracts all his thoughts from the dung-heap. Good men know of a rich blessedness; joys strangely sweet, and their lips tremble with meet thankfulness, that things of beauty are a joy for ever.

Accurate investigation enables strong men to check naughty little ones, who count it a stroke of wit and genius to scoff when greater minds worship. Progressive research and elucidation may be compared to that operation in nature which, little by little, rolls away the morning mist from a splendid landscape; and fuller meaning, richer beauty, evergrowing power of sacred verity, go forth for deeper investigation by the intellect of future ages. Dogmatism descending to puppyism places something infinitely less than a tadpole at one end of the series, and man at the other, and professing to know all about it, must be rebuked. One line of thought is sufficient. The Book, abused by Secularists as of barbaric origin, mightily rules the intellect, emotion, conscience, of the civilised world; and wherever intellect is enlightened by it, or morals are purified by it, or conscience is instructed by it, men live rightly for mutual welfare and the glory of “Kraft und Stoff," p. 43: Dr, Büchner.

:

God. Writers of the Bible connect the natural with the supernatural, man with God, the universe with Deity, and by Divine inspiration give an account of the creative process. An unscientific age could not possess the knowledge of our own scientific time, nor men styled "semi-barbarous" be adorned with the accuracy and genius of modern professors, but their words are not contrary to science; the effect of research has been verification, and the recesses of nature present counterparts of spiritual truths. These truths are scattered over the surface of Scripture, or lie within the depths, much as the plants and gems of nature are arranged on and in the earth. No formal order, no narrowing system, can be found; but as grasses of many forms, flowers of every hue, trees of graceful foliage, contain wonderful unity in richest, wildest variety-so Bible truths and natural facts, whether scattered, or knit together, plant deep roots of love and wisdom in our heart and mind. They keep our days well in hand, make our life a temple for duty, and bestow an eternal crown.

Authoritative statements about facts or phenomena can only perfectly agree with science in its final results, and this agreement must in no wise be hastened. Due exception has to be made for accounts which are popular, or figurative, or poetical. Nor is this any weakness: the waters of the sea in one place look blue, in another green, the difference being due to depth, or shallowness, or effect from on high; so there are recesses in Holy Scripture which none but saints can enter; and there is power moving on the very surface able to mould the minds of Dante and Milton, Michael Angelo and Raphael, that they may enrich and adorn our race. Not only so, there is another beauty; the Word was spoken-not to anticipate discovery, not to render experimental and inductive processes of the human mind unnecessary to the attainment of knowledge; but to set up an authoritative teaching where experiment and induction are inadequate to explain and establish due relations between God and man, between man and his neighbour; to erect true foundations of the body politic on an immutable, because Divine, morality; to train the individual by probation in time for the future eternity.

A diamond is not the less a diamond because of rudeness in the setting, and truths of Holy Scripture are not less

The Bible a Wonderful Book.

121

Divine, because our interpretation partakes of human imper-
fection. The angle of parallax, by which to measure the
lights of God, has its base in an existence wider than human
life. It is well to remember that God has written this fact
in ourselves and in every part of nature. Knowledge, even
the most elementary, always exceeds every merely physical
interpretation. We are not things but persons; with thought,
emotion, responsibility; and we feel that the link between
existence and non-existence is represented by that Eternal
Energy which, acting in every force, gives a different line of
direction, and a varied part of space, every moment; yet
holds all in unity as by the Hand of God. The Bible is an
unclosed wondrous Riddle-Book: a joy and study for ever.
Its loveliness increases, will never pass into nothingness; its
shapings of light into forms of beauty will move away the
pall from our dark spirits, and all the love of God reveal.
"When God, in His wondrous designing,
Made man of mysterious clay;
Came Satan and stole understanding,
Thus broke half his manhood away.

But, wonderful grace of our Saviour,
He came in the likeness of Sin.
With His own weapons foiled the deceiver,
And over him conquest did win.

Yet still the two natures within us,
The God-man and earth-man do dwell,
And which shall prevail over the other
Nor angel, nor demon, can tell.

Go ask of God's Riddle-the Bible,
Which nature is growing in thee?
Art a clay-man, or growest an angel?
Is it Upward, or Downward to be?"

Felix Melancthon.

STUDY VII,

INTERPRETATION OF THE DAYS.

"Cogitavi dies antiquos, et annos æternos in mente habui."--Ps. lxxvii. 5.

"Les jours de la création marquent la hiérarchie des êtres et des époques successives de leur apparition sur la face du monde ; mais l'action de Dieu ne se décompose pas en époques. Elle est une, puisque elle est parfaite."-EMILE SAISSET.

WHAT mean these days? Are they a separation of actual days and nights before the earth and sun were so conditioned, each to each, that day was possible? Or do they mean that there were births, growths, pauses, in the progress of Divine work? The latter opinion prevails with most thoughtful men. They take the outward appearance as a garment for the spiritual reality. Letter and spirit are held together by the real meaning.

THE FACTS ON WHICH MOST MEN ARE AGREED.

1. On scientific and Scriptural warrant the origin of the world is very ancient; so ancient that the beginning, in which heaven and earth were created, is taken by St. John (i. 1) to prove the co-eternity of Christ with the Father. The beginning of things thus early (Gen. xlix. 26; Deut. xxxiii. 15; Job xv. 7, xxxviii. 4; Ps. xc. 2; Prov. viii. 22-31; John i. 1-3, xvii. 24) neither lessens the marvel nor the fact of creation.

2. There is no more matter now than was originally created, nature not possessing the power, in itself, of originating matter; yet is subject to realities not less. wonderful. Cosmic processes throughout the universe, and the "fact that God is daily and hourly creating those myriads of human souls which He infuses into the bodies prepared by His providence,"1 convince many that creation

"Daniel the Prophet," Intr., p. xxii.: Dr. Pusey.