STUDY XV.

COMPARISON OF THE TWO DIVINE ACCOUNTS.

"Umbra in Lege; imago in Evangelio; veritas in Colo."-ST. AMBROSE.

"In the spiritual childhood of the world, outward signs were needed to make known God's power and rule. The secret springs of the machinery were displayed; but, when the fulness of time was come, men were no longer to walk by sight, but by faith."— Memorials of a Quiet Life.

THE world is that theatre on which the drama of life is played. Possibly we should not trouble ourselves with what is behind the scenes, unless fresh influxes. came in from the region beyond our experience. Probably, no one is able to define what does not exist; nor to declare what is not going on in the world; but reflection discloses two modes of existence, on two different planes: Material, which we feel or perceive; and Ideal, of which we have intellectual and emotional conception. Conscious of existence, co-existence, pre-existence; movement of thought is with the flow of things, and we know of a world within and a world without -the is, the was, the will be. To despise outward form endangers inward spirit.

Deeply convinced of a world behind the field of phenomena, we are astonished by statements that "it stands in no relation to us, nor have we faculties by which we know it." Educated and scientific men know that the universe is worked by unseen energy; that all phenomena are reducible to one Cause; the many are in the One, the One is in the many. "The phenomena we deal with are bi-polar, on the one side objective, on the other subjective, and these are the twofold aspects of reality."

This knowledge, or revelation by intelligence to intelligence, by means of successive reaches in symbolical procedure, as in mathematics, enlarges and elevates sensible

experiences, to a prevision in mental and spiritual things like the astonishing previsions of exact science. It opens

and adventures on new and illimitable paths of physical and psychical research which will ultimately dominate the whole world of thought.

אֱלֹהִים,which the Divine name is Elohim

This fact explains the two separate accounts of creative work, which, through want of critical skill, have been wrongly considered as varying and erring records by two writers. The former account (Gen. i.-ii. 3) is a brief symbol of creative acts. The latter (Gen. ii. 4-22) redemptive, describes the planting of Paradise, and particularises the fashioning, temptation, and fall of man. The former, in shows God's relation to all things as the Creator, Owner, Lord. The latter, where we find the name or names, D, Jehovah Elohim, represents the Lord-omniscient, eternal, infinitely powerful, the Father-God in His own Essence, Source and Foundation of all; the Son-Mediating Principle, Deliverer, Saviour; the Spirit-the active Principle, holiness; all included in Jehovah Elohim.

The first chapter being Elohistic, and the second Jehovistic, or Jahvistic, affords no evidence that the two accounts are not by the same writer. In the Pentateuch, Histories, Psalms, one and the same author uses both names. Elohim, Mighties," is a more suitable word in describing creation; as the name Jehovah gives a more touching character to redemption and represents the Divine Personality in relation

to man.

The diversity of statement, both as to matter and manner, shows difference in the writer's aim: proof is given in detail for sound argument is the true friend of godliness, but those who treat it with as little sentiment as the genealogy and habits of a weed are not to be regarded.

In the first chapter, six days form distinct and separate periods or eras of creative operation. In the second chapter (verse 4), as if to show that the works of God are one work, and the days of God are one day-all the days are one"the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens."

The first chapter, after stating that God is the Creator, describes the use of means to develop the earth. Spirit moves upon the waters-the chaotic fluidity was not water, such as we are now acquainted with, which could not collect

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until the glowing earth began to cool on its surface. Light was the means of operation by Divine energy when Will was enunciated by Word. The firmamental expanse was cleared, the waters were gathered into seas, continents and islands were formed. Afterwards, the earth put forth power by which sea and land were replenished; the earth being that fruitful mother, able, by endued energy, to give birth to plant and animal according to law. "By law is meant that order and sequence, of varying intensity and rapidity, called natural." This chapter, we are told, “contains no error as to cosmical science." 1 It is a scheme of outward work by the Divine Spirit.

In the second chapter we have not any laboured theme; but mystic sparkles of Divine Intelligence working with definite moral purpose. The mechanism and work 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 combination and separation of molecules; as if the thought of Lucretius was anticipated and reproved-" Nature is seen to do all things spontaneously of herself;" 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." A clear and forcible statement that God gives to Nature all new forces.

The word ni¬hin, "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 God made the earth and the heavens "-is not an account of the original beginning, but to be 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 moral 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 "Notes on the Earlier Hebrew Scriptures:" Sir G. B. Airy, K.C.B.

of mental and moral development. The command not to eat contains a warning against evil; and the entrance of a Tempter shows the need of teaching, warning, premonition, concerning human duty, responsibility and peril. Chance and fate are a stultifying antagonism, each makes impotent the other. Service and disservice, submission and rebellion, temptation, fall, death of man, are those things of which this chapter records the generation.

They are connected with a change in the name of God. He is not simply D, God, as related to matter and unintelligent life, as the Divine energy; but in, Jehovah

Elohim, God known to Man, the Personal, the Covenant God, the Promiser and Restorer. Evil not manifested, probation not experienced, neither angels nor men could know the destructiveness of evil, nor the grandeur of Divine beneficence.

"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 was not a rainless, nor treeless locality; dense warm vapour condensed into rain as vapour now condenses. The statement signifies-Things did not exist of themselves, nor by the fertilising influence of rain. In the mind 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. We may also take it thus-" God had not caused it to rain; there was no new nor special creation for rain, but there went up a mist from the earth. 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. Scripture is a delicate test to prove our scientific, moral, and spiritual condition.

"There went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground." 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

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do with them; they were God-made. The argument isThere was no rain, nor any power in rain, to form the exquisite and marvellous herb; God formed it, and mist going up from the earth returned in water to refresh the whole face of the ground. Paul Gerhardt said—

"Whatsoever betideth, night or day,

Know God's love for thee provideth good alway."

1

The view stated above, as to the distinct and separate purposes for which both accounts are given, is confirmed by one who 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."" It would have been well had he sought 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 by a feebler hand. The chief purpose of the mystery, we venture to suggest, is to give in symbol 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 in departing from God. Ignorance besets research in this direction with many difficulties, unless we use it as a stimulant.

Regard the garden and the planting, the Trees of Life and of Knowledge, the formation of woman, the serpent with audible speech, as symbolical embodiments to give reality and clearness to common understandings concerning spiritual transactions. Not less but more real because spiritual; not weakened in truth because of allegorical form; not losing intensity of power, of meaning, of sacredness; but alive with life and motion exceedingly evil-destroying both body and soul.

Further, the two accounts were written for distinct and separate purposes appears plain from-(1) Facts left out, (2) Enlarged and varied arrangement of facts in the second narrative.

M.A.

"Essays and Reviews "-Mosaic Cosmogony: C. W. Goodwin,

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