;^^^-^ 



\Xi^ 




i^ivisioa.2)S IZ35 
Section • iJ / / 



PRIMEVAL REVELATION 



The ''Davies LecUire'\for 1896 



PRIMEVAL REVELATION 



STUDIES IN GENESIS I.— VIII. 



J. CYNDDYLAN JONES, D.D. 



NEW YORK 

AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY 

lo, EAST 23RD STREET 

1897 



EXTRACT FROM THE TRUST DEED 
OF THE "DAVIES LECTURE" 

Thomas Da vies, of Bootle, near Liverpool, being deeply 
interested in the success attd prosperity of the religious de- 
nomination knoivn as 

The Welsh Calvinistic Methodists, 

and being actuated by a desire to perpetuate the memory of 
his late father, 

David Davies, 

who was for many years a faithful and consistent member 
of the said denomination, lately resolved to found and endow 
a Lectureship to be called 

The Davies Lecture, 

in connection with the said denomination ; and for that pur- 
pose, in June, \Z^Ty, paid to Trustees, appoifitedby the Getieral 
Assembly, the sum of ;^2,ooo, to produce annually the sum 

of£so- 

The Lecturer shall be a fully ordained Minister of the 
Welsh Calvinistic Methodists. 

The subject of the Lecture shall be Religion. 

The Lecturer shall be allowed co?isiderable latitude in the 
treat^nent of the subject. 

While special attention should be given to the Christian 
Religion, it is not intended to exclude the subject of other 
religions. 



vi THE "DAVIES LECTURE" 

Such topics as the following may be taken up by successive 
Lecturers : 

The Definition of Religion. 

The Origin^ Growth^ a?id Development, together with the 
Universality of Religioji. 

The Philosophy of Religion. 

The Science of Comparative Religion. 

The Jewish Religion in its various Stages. 

The Christian Religion in its Developjnents and Corrup- 
tions, in its Doctrines and Practices. 

The Relation of Science to Religion. 

The Relation of Morality to Religion. 

All topics fairly co7inected with Religion in any of its 
aspects, ivhether Theological, Philosophical, or Historicil. 

The Lectures shall be delivered in each year during the 
sittings of the General Assembly of the Welsh Calvinistic 
Methodists, at one of their Chapels in the place or town 
ivhere such sittings shall be held, and on some evening before 
the day devoted by the said assembly to preachiftg ; and the 
Moderator of the Assembly ^ or in his absence the Actifig 
Moderator, shall preside at the meeting at which the Lecture 
shall be delivered. 

Each Lecturer must, within twelve calendar months after 
delivering his Lecture, publish it at his own expetise in crown 
Svo, the Lecture to take not less tha?i 150 pages ; and to be 
preceded by extracts from this Deed, explaining the foundation 
and purpose of the Lecture. 



PREFACE 

T N thinking of a suitable subject for the Davies 
-^ Lecture for 1896, my mind gravitated to 
" Mosaic Theology " as being both timely and 
fruitful. Materials accumulated beyond my expecta- 
tion, till at last I found myself under the necessity 
of dividing the work into three parts — Primeval 
Revelation, Patriarchal Revelation, and the Sinaitic 
Revelation. The first only is presented in this 
volume, and is complete in itself. 

Many efforts have recently been made to reduce 
the first chapters of Genesis into myths, and to 
reconstruct human history on the supposition that 
man began his career as a savage. In this volume 
the attempt is made to interpret these chapters on 
the traditional hypothesis that the Bible account is 
historically trustworthy, and that therefore mankind 
began their course, not in a state of barbarism, but 
in a stage of civilisation, under the spiritual guidance 
of the Creator. 

Under the stress of the evolution theory, theo- 
logians of repute are endeavouring to get, not as 



Vlll PREFACE 

much, but as little, meaning as they possibly can 
out of the early narratives of the Bible. Marvellous 
is the ingenuity which is shown in proving what the 
early saints did not know and did not believe. But 
I still think we ought to read the Old Testament 
under the reflected light of the New, and to extract 
from it, not as little, but as much truth as we honestly 
can. Has the principle of Old Testament inter- 
pretation, as illustrated in the Epistles to the 
Romans and Galatians, and especially in the Epistle 
to the Hebrews, been invalidated ? Development 
implies a beginning as well as an end, germs as 
well as fruits. Are seeds less real than roses? 

The literature of this subject is immense, and I 
claim acquaintance with but a small fraction of it. 
Since this book went to the press, I have read 
Professor Ryle on the Early Nai-ratives of Genesis ; 
and, whilst regretting it had not come under my 
notice before to enable me to give more point to 
certain strictures, it has only confirmed me in the 
belief that the mythical theory of the beginning of 
Genesis presents us with a very lame and inadequate 
introduction to the volume of Divine Revelation, 
claiming our loyalty and faith. I have also just 
read a lecture {Church Times, February 19, 1897) 
recently delivered by Canon Gore, in which he 
attempts the reconciliation of the evolutionary origin 
of man with the Christian doctrine of the Fall. The 



PREFACE IX 

impression left on my mind is that he either dilutes 
the evolutionary theory of the origin or the Biblical 
doctrine of the fall of man, or rather that he dilutes 
both. Either Moses in the Old Testament and 
St. Paul in the New employed language unjusti- 
fiably strong, or Canon Gore uses language ex- 
cessively weak. 

Indeed, one begins to wonder what is it Christianity 
requires us to believe. According to a certain class 
of influential theological writers, it does not require 
us to believe in the first eleven chapters of Genesis ; 
it does not require us to believe in Hebrew history 
as presented in the Pentateuch ; it does not require 
us to believe in the infallibility even of the Lord 
Jesus Christ. Is it a healthy tendency of the modern 
theological mind to be thus continually endeavour- 
ing to reduce the Christian faith to a minimum, to 
be always asking, not how much, but how little, we 
may believe? 

J. Cynddylan Jones. 

Whitchurch, near Cardiff. 
February 24, 1 897. 



CONTENTS 



INTRODUCTION 

PAGE 

THE PENTATEUCH AND CRITICISM .... I 



CHAPTER 1 
THE CREATOR AND THE CREATION . . . -47 

CHAPTER II 
CREATION AND GEOLOGY . . . . -6/ 



CHAPTER III 

CREATION AND ASTRONOMY . . . . . 9O 

xi 



Xll CONTENTS 



CHAPTER IV 

PAGE 

CREATION AND EVOLUTION ..... IO9 



CHAPTER V 
THE CREATION OF MAN . . . . . -133 

CHAPTER VI 

MAN IN EDEN . . . . . -159 

CHAPTER VII 
UNITY AND ANTIQUITY OF MAN . . . . 1 80 

CHAPTER VIII 

man's INNOCENCE AND PROBATION .... 205 

CHAPTER IX 
THE TEMPTATION AND FALL 226 

CHAPTER X 
THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE FALL . . . . 251 



CONTENTS 



xill 



CHAPTER XI 

THE PROTEVANGEL ! DAWN OF HOPE 



PAGE 



CHAPTER XII 



CAIN AND ABEL '. EVIL AND GOOD . 



301 



CHAPTER XIII 

ANTEDILUVIANS I DEVELOPMENT OF EVIL 



• 327 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE DELUGE : APPARENT TRIUMPH OF EVIL 



• 352 



INTRODUCTION 



INTRODUCTION 

THE PENTATEUCH AND CRITICISM 
PART I 

AN impression often prevails that the Bible is 
a book adapted only for scholars, and that 
special training is necessary to its right apprehension 
and profitable use. That, however, is a grievous mis- 
take. The Bible is a book designed not for scholars, 
but for men ; not for specialists in the higher walks 
of life, but for the bulk of the population of the 
world. Scholarship is a valuable auxiliary, but only 
an auxiliary. Without it the precise signification of 
words cannot be ascertained. The scholar must be 
the translator, and our debt to scholarship for exact 
translations is great. But once the right rendering 
is ascertained, the linguistic scholar has no signal 
advantage over others. 

The Bible is a religious book, concerning itself 
principally about the spiritual side of human nature. 
Its examination, therefore, needs to be carried on 
with reverence and in a sympathetic spirit. Imagi- 
nation being the most spiritual faculty in man, it 
follows that in many respects the poet is the best 
commentator. Where the exegete saws a knot, the 
poet cuts it. Hence the illumination of Holy Writ 
by Dr. Parker in his People's Bible, He never brings 



2 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

forward lexicons, never discusses rules of grammar — 
he intuitively sees the heart of a passage, and shows 
it to others, without the aid of dissection or analysis. 
His rich imagination serves him better as an inter- 
preter of the inner soul, the permanent message, of a 
paragraph of Scripture than a roomful of lexicons. 
By this, of course, is not meant that he and others 
do not use lexicons and conform to the rules of 
syntax ; but they do not carry them under their 
arms wherever they go, discussing them instead of 
the Divine Message. The cabinet-maker does not 
exhibit his tools in the window — he keeps them in 
the workshop, and exhibits for sale only the articles 
of furniture ready-made. 

There are two ways of studying nature. One is 
the method of the scientist, who investigates the 
laws of nature, calculates the distance of the stars, 
weighs the air in balances, analyses the flower into 
its chemical elements. Inestimable is the service 
this method of studying nature renders to humanity, 
the method which has created modern civilisation. 
The other is the method of the poet, and is as old 
as the world. The poet may know but little about 
physical laws, has never thought how many tons 
of gases go to constitute the sun, has no idea how 
to extract the aroma from the rose and preserve it 
in a corked phial ; and yet he is acknowledged to 
be nearer the core of things than his more precise 
and learned brother. 

"Give mc a theme," a little critic cried, 

"And I will do my part.' 
" 'Tis not a theme you need, " the world replied ; 

"You need a heart." 



THE PENTATEUCH AND CRITICISM 3 

What the scientist is to nature, that is the exegete 
to the Bible. He analyses, dissects, divides, and the 
service he renders deserves heartiest recognition. 
The man of feeling and imagination sees more deeply, 
is nearer the untold Secret, feels more profoundly the 
inscrutable Mystery which people name God. Think 
of the Lord Jesus, who, according to modern 
theorists, was innocent of Hebrew and other learn- 
ing requisite to literary criticism, — how straight He 
walked to the heart of truth ! " I am the God of 
Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob : God is not the 
God of the dead, but of the living " (Mark xii. 27). 
Mere exegesis had failed to discover in that verse the 
truth of the immortality of the soul and the resurrec- 
tion of the dead. Lay the emphasis on the present 
tense of the verb, and you cannot strike the spark ; 
throw the stress on the substantive God, and yet you 
come short of the truth. But what no exegesis could 
perceive the lively pious imagination of the Saviour 
straightway divined. It is not a truth of exegesis, 
but a truth of poetry. 

Better, however, than either scholarship or imagi- 
nation is faith, a good honest believing heart — an 
inward experience of the objective truths of Revela- 
tion. " The life Is the light of men." Not the light 
is the life, but the life is the light. To appreciate 
the best things of the Bible, we must read it not 
through the head, but through the heart. Hence 
" heart " is the great comprehensive word of the Old 
Testament, whose theology is primarily that of the 
moral nature. Very little metaphysics you find, the 
philosophy which Is the result of analytic reflection ; 
everything is concrete, living, actual. The man 



4 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

whose heart has been touched by Divine truth, who 
has experienced its power in his own life, who has 
known it to sweeten the bitter waters welling up from 
his corrupt nature, will not be easily moved by the 
contrary winds of speculative scholarship. His 
answer is ready — " I believe, not because of thy 
saying, for I have heard Him myself, and know that 
this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world." 
Inward experience is too strong for the acutest 
criticism to dislodge, and this experience is the 
fundamental qualification to rightly understand the 
Scriptures. " The natural man," however much 
educated and trained, " receiveth not the things of 
the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him ; 
neither can he know them, because they are spiritually 
discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, 
yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath 
known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? 
But we have the mind of Christ" (i Cor. ii. 14-16). 

These words of St. Paul must not be explained 
away as conveying an exaggerated meaning. Be- 
tween the psychical man, however able and erudite, 
and the inner meaning of God's Word, there is a 
fixed barrier, an impenetrable veil ; he is no more 
entitled to pass judgment on it than is the blind to 
criticise painting. True, the blind can measure the 
length of the canvas, can even pronounce an opinion 
on its make and texture ; but when the painting is 
under discussion, his criticism passes like the idle 
whistling wind. Thus the psychical man may dis- 
cuss documents, examine their age and composition, 
and this is the function of Biblical criticism ; but 
when we come to the higher verities, the supernatural 



THE PENTATEUCH AND CRITICISM 5 

and the Divine, he possesses not the competency 
necessary to pronounce a valid judgment. Let the 
eyes be opened, the film removed— in other words, let 
the man be born again, and he will see the Kingdom 
of God. The denials of one class and the theories 
of another he brushes like cobwebs aside. " He that 
believeth shall not make haste." Scholarship, imagi- 
nation, experience — these three are the great factors 
in Biblical interpretation ; but the greatest of these is 
experience, the very qualification within the reach of 
the mass of believers. 

The permanent value of books and their real con- 
tribution to the mental and spiritual wealth of the 
world are not to be estimated by the din and noise 
attendant on their publication. It is easier to achieve 
reputation as a destroyer than as a constructor, as an 
incendiary than as a builder. Labour the year long 
to erect a house, solid, firm, and spacious, and no one 
will stop to inspect your work or give you a word of 
commendation. But set fire to a building, and all 
the inhabitants of the town will congregate to wit- 
ness the blaze, and there will be more talk about 
one house burning than about one hundred houses- 
building. Popularity always waits upon works of 
destruction. The same principle operates largely in 
the world of mind. Attack the cherished beliefs of 
mankind, attempt to undermine the hallowed faith of 
millenniums, contradict the affirmations of the wisest 
and best of the race, and you will command attention 
beyond your real deserts. To the fascination of this 
false glamour are especially exposed the young 
people of the present day, who are in danger of 
mistaking a distant bonfire for the rising sun. 



6 PRIMEVAL RE^^ELATION 

" Those whom the age deh'ghts to honour," writes 
Dr. Munro Gibson, " are not the builders, but the 
destroyers ; not those who open new windows in 
heaven, but those who are most assiduous in their 
efforts to close the old ones ; not those who seek 
to build our knowledge of spiritual things on sure 
foundations, but those who are trying to loosen the 
old foundations or undermine them altogether. It 
would seem as if the signs of the times almost 
justified our taking up the lament of the bard of 
old : ' A man was famous according as he had lifted 
up axes upon the thick trees. But now they break 
down the carved work thereof at once with axes and 
hammers ' (Ps. Ixxiv. 5, 6). The time was, when 
a man that would go out into the forest and gather 
material for building the temple of the Lord, was 
the man whom the people delighted to honour. But 
now the man that uses axe and hammer, not in 
making anything new of his own, or in making any- 
thing at all, but in hacking and marring the carved 
work of God's sanctuary, is sure to be cheered on 
by a sufficient number of thoughtless sympathisers. 
No one who has watched the signs of the times at 
all closely, will be disposed to doubt that, if there 
were issued at the same time two works on religious 
themes by authors equally well known and of equal 
ability, the one constructive and the other destructive, 
the one conservative and the other critical, the latter 
would have a very much larger sale, and attract 
much greater attention than the other." ^ 

The popularity, however, of this class of books 
is shortlived. "It cometh up in a night, and in 
• The Ages before Moses, p. 12. 



THE PENTATEUCH AND CRITICISM 7 

a night perisheth." To be original and novel is 
comparatively easy when you leave the king's high- 
way, striking across the fields, and having only the 
virgin soil upon which to leave the print of your 
foot. The difficulty is to walk along the highroad 
of thought, trodden by the feet of hundreds of deep 
thinkers, and yet to step sufficiently heavy to leave 
your mark for the next generation to see. This 
alone is worth striving for. 

These remarks are made in view of the prominence 
given in the magazine literature of the day to the 
negative school in Biblical criticism. Because of 
this prominence many young people are apt to 
imagine that the so-called Higher Critics surpass 
all others in scholarship, ability, and insight. Not 
necessarily. Remember that able scholars are ranked 
on the one side as well as on the other ; let us not 
therefore be blinded by mere glitter. " Try the 
spirits whether they be of God." In every age the 
Bible has met with stout-hearted opponents. The 
same cavilling spirit which led the critics a century 
ago to deny the Homeric authorship of the Iliad 
and Odyssey, and which half a century later induced 
them to traverse the apostolic authorship of the 
New Testament, now instigates them to question 
the Mosaic authorship of the first section of the Old 
Testament. But as in the first two instances the 
attempt, though characterised by apparently extra- 
ordinary analytic perception, signally failed, so, I 
feel confident, in the present case the Higher Criticism 
will have to beat a retreat. 

After Astruc, the physician of Louis XIV., called 
attention in 1753 to the systematic occurrence of the 



8 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

words God and Lord, Elohim and Jehovah, in the 
composition of Genesis, and therefore to two sets 
of documents — a valuable discovery and accepted 
by most modern theologians— the members of the 
French Academy utilised their ingenuity to convert 
it into an indictment, not only of the Mosaic author- 
ship of the Pentateuch, but of the supernatural in 
general. From the French Academicians it passed 
into the hands of the more patient and learned 
Germans, the majority of whom were animated by 
a spirit of antagonism to faith in the supernatural. 
Graf, Kuenen,^ and Wellhausen, the three great 
champions of the Higher Criticism, are avowed dis- 
believers in the supernatural. That is to say, they 
scout both miracle and prophecy ; to them Divine 
inspiration is an idle dream. This is not mentioned 
to their prejudice or to the disparagement of their 
labours ; but that our young men may grasp the 
situation, and discern the real kernel of the contro- 
versy that is now waging. It is a battle between the 
natural and the supernatural, between faith in God 
as the mere God of nature and faith in Him as also 
the God of grace. The celebrated advocates of the 
Higher Criticism already named are disbelievers in 
miracle, in prophecy, in inspiration, in the divinity 
of Christ — in a word, in the whole scheme of redemp- 
tive grace. Their herculean labours in connection 
with the criticism of the Old Testament they under- 
took with the express object of explaining the rise 
of the religion of Israel on purely naturalistic grounds, 
without any special Divine intervention in the way 
of revelation or inspiration. With what result? 
^ Kuenen is a Dutchman. 



THE PENTATEUCH AND CRITICISM 9 

With the result that they deny the historic trust- 
worthiness of the Pentateuch. Genesis is myth, 
fiction, legend — everything but reliable history. 
Even our English Professor Cheyne goes so far as 
to say that our children should be taught after 
a certain age that Genesis is not history, only a 
compilation of legendary lore.^ 

In passing over from Germany into England, the 
Higher Criticism underwent a decided change for 
the better, not in scholarship, but in faith. At all 
events, it passed into the hands of scholars who 
profess to be believers in the supernatural. But be 
that as it may, from a Christian standpoint the 
pedigree is bad. No theories from such a quarter 
should be entertained without a scrupulous examina- 
tion of their credentials ; and not till scholars of 
Christian repute, like Canon Driver and the late 
Professor Robertson Smith, became the godfathers 
of the Higher Criticism, did it find welcome and a 
home in the churches, or rather the manses, of Great 
Britain. When the Greeks could not capture Troy 
by force of arms, they resorted, says the story, to 
guile. Professing great admiration for the valour of 
the Trojans, they sent the latter a present of a large 
wooden horse. Flattered by this rare testimony to 
their intrepidity, the Trojans innocently opened the 
city gates to admit of the entrance of the Grecian 
gift. But concealed within the wooden structure 
were mighty armed warriors, who, rushing out under 
the cover of night, opened the gates for the enemy 
to enter. What they failed to do by force, they 
accomplished by stratagem. It is always risky to 
^ Contem^porary Review^ vol. Ixvi., p. 91. 



10 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

receive presents from the Greeks. Down to within 
a few years the Higher Critics were outside the walls 
of the Christian Church, vehement deniers of the 
supernatural ; now they are to be found within its 
precincts, and it behoves us to examine their pre- 
tensions with the greatest care. 

The English critics profess faith in the super- 
natural, and their testimony we gladly receive. 
Their faith in the Pentateuch as an inspired produc- 
tion, however, I am not able to reconcile with their 
faith in their own criticism regarding its composition. 
If Canon Driver can, he ought to do it with all speed, 
for it would disarm much opposition and allay many 
apprehensions. His attempts heretofore in this 
direction cannot be considered satisfactory. To 
further assure my own mind on the subject, I have 
taken the precaution of reperusing the learned 
canon's volume of sermons on the Old Testament, 
published to show how the Christian faith comports 
with the results of the Higher Criticism. The im- 
pression left upon me is that there is a distinct fall 
in the moral temperature the moment he touches 
the supernatural — all enthusiasm seems to die out. 
The supernatural he reduces to the lowest minimum 
possible ; but I see not why the supernatural should 
be admitted at all, unless it be admitted to some 
purpose. Such preaching would never save the 
world, nor lift the Church to a higher plane in the 
spiritual life. Of course, in a scholar, in whom 
the critical temperament has been highly trained, 
much enthusiasm is not to be expected ; and 
yet the lack of it is a serious disqualification to 
understand Moses or interpret Isaiah — men whose 



THE PENTATEUCH AND CRITICISM II 

moral nature was all aflame with the fire of 
God. 

Dr. Delitzsch, whilst adopting the view of the more 
recent composition of the Pentateuch in its present 
form, firmly maintains its pre-existence in a more 
ancient form. The historicity of the Pentateuch is 
with him a cardinal article of faith. The existence 
of the Tabernacle, the prevalence of the chief festi- 
vals, and the institution of the Aaronic priesthood 
from the Mosaic age he unhesitatingly accepts. 
The orations attributed to Moses in Deuteronomy 
he considers to be not inventions or dramatisations, 
but literary enlargements of authentic discourses 
of the lawgiver, just as the discourses of the Lord 
Jesus in the Fourth Gospel are by the evange- 
list drawn out, and their inner meaning evoked 
thereby into greater clearness. In the introduction 
to his commentary on Genesis, Dr. Delitzsch con- 
tinually refers to national traditions as furnishing 
reliable material to the more recent compilers. 
Though he does not say whether he means oral or 
written traditions, yet we are justified in concluding 
that he comprises both. Canon Driver also drops 
hints which would imply that this is also his stand- 
point ; yet he does not separate himself with the 
same decision as Delitzsch from the Wellhausen 
school. To the theory of Delitzsch orthodox theo- 
logians could, from the point of view of doctrine, 
offer no great resistance ; for, though admitting that 
the present form of the Pentateuch is post-exilic, he 
yet strenuously maintains that the substance of the 
legislation and much of its language stretch back to 
the Mosaic age, and that the books are therefore 



12 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

historically credible. Delitzsch agrees in essence with 
the orthodox view, and is in direct antagonism to the 
theory of VVellhausen, so enthusiastically espoused in 
this country by the late Robertson Smith, especially 
in its attempt at the reconstruction of Israelite 
history. 

From the critics I pass on to their criticisms. 
Here, however, be it remarked that I do not imagine 
for a moment that the traditional view does not need 
rectification— our views of all the doctrines need 
rectification from time to time. What is protested 
against is not its rectification, but its total subversion. 
Let us then inquire what the two views are in their 
main features, for our limits will not allow of our 
entering into details and examining all the proposed 
modifications of the one or the other. 

What is the modern analytic view? That the 
books of the Pentateuch (or Hexateuch), with the 
exception perhaps of Exod. xx.-xxiii., were not 
composed till about the time of the Exile— a little 
before and a little after ; therefore, long subsequent 
to the transpiration of the events whose history they 
record. To the Pentateuch are ascribed from seven 
to twelve successive authors, and the critics profess 
ability to apportion to each his share of the work, 
even to the dividing of a sentence in half. The 
authors, living between the age of Hezekiah and 
Ezra, projected their own ideas into the bygone 
times, so that Genesis and Exodus do not pourtray 
the patriarchal and Mosaic ages, but the times of 
the writers themselves, wJio painted on the canvas of 
the past the ideas of the then present. Mark that well. 
In order to do the Higher Critics full justice I will 



THE PENTATEUCH AND CRITICISM 1 3 

here quote the language of the learned and venerable 
Bishop of Bath and Wells as to their method of 
procedure : " First, the Elohistic narrative. Next the 
Jehovistic story-book. But this division does not 
meet all the exigencies of the case. A third writer 
has to be invented, who partakes of some of the char- 
acteristics of both the Jehovist and Elohist. These 
three contributors are distinguished by the letters 
E, J, and JE. A fourth or fifth or sixth is the 
Deuteronomist, and others who write in his spirit, 
marked by the letters D, D\ Dl But the combined 
labours of E and J and JE and the D's did not come 
into their present shape at once. We have to dis- 
tinguish as separate works : (i) The Priestly Code, 
comprising Leviticus and the allied portions of Exodus 
and Numbers, and this again is subdivided into P\ 
P^ P^ according as they wrote in the priestly spirit. 
(2) The Book of the Covenant, comprising Exod. 
xxi.-xxiii., and other passages relating to Covenants 
represented by Q, meaning four. (3) Deuteronomy, 
and according to some a Book of Holiness. It is 
also thought that some other fragments and inter- 
polations may have gone to make up the whole. 
And then, finally, there is R, the Redactor or Editor 
of the whole Hexateuch, and successive redactors, 
as R^ R^ etc." ^ 

In the name of common sense and universal 
experience, I venture to ask. Was ever a book com- 
posed like that ? was ever a book criticised like 
that ? It reminds me of the criticisms passed upon 
our countryman's song, " God bless the Prince of 
Wales." On its publication such was its popularity 
^ Examination of the Two Books of Chronicles. 



14 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

that it provoked the hostiHty of a number of metro- 
politan critics. The composition was declared to be 
devoid of originality, a fragment of a bar being 
found in a certain oratorio, another combination 
of two or three notes found in another song, till at 
last the leading comic paper gave the over-acute 
critics their quietus by solemnly undertaking to find 
every single note in music previously published. 
Thereupon the charge of plagiarism fell flat, and 
the song lives, second only in popularity to the 
national anthem. Not dissimilar is the method where- 
by the Higher Critics have conducted their analysis 
of the Pentateuch. The common sense, not only of 
the mass of readers, but of trained critics in other 
departments of literature, is shocked, and signs are 
not wanting that British and Continental scholarship 
is veering round — a reaction, it would seem, has 
already set in. 

What is the orthodox or conservative view ? That 
the Pentateuch is substantially the work of Moses 
and his helpers. He was an eye and ear witness of 
all the transactions recorded in Exodus, Leviticus, 
Numbers, and Deuteronomy ; consequently there is 
no mystery as to the materials for, or the manner 
of, their composition. 

But as Genesis deals with events in the remote 
past, in its preparation he must have resorted to 
another method. What was that method ? No 
theologian ever imagined that he received the patri- 
archal and antediluvian history ready-made from 
heaven. The view of all sane theologians is that 
Moses wrote the book under the same conditions 
as other historians. He did not receive historic 



THE PENTATEUCH AND CRITICISM 1 5 

truth by revelation — he had to search for it Hke 
all other investigators. He gathered information 
from folklore and oral tradition, collected whatever 
documents he could. With these materials in his 
possession he sat down to write the Book of Genesis. 
How does he proceed ? Does he disguise the originals 
by paraphrasing them in his own language so that 
one uniform style might pervade the whole ? No ; 
that is the modern European style, which converts 
a book into a copyright, and seeks out of authorship 
to make money and reputation. Moses proceeds in 
the Oriental fashion, letting characters and facts 
proclaim themselves. He examines his authorities 
carefully, compares them scrupulously, excises what 
is incompatible with the object in view. He then 
writes his history, inserting here an extract and 
there a quotation, and making of the fragments one 
continuous and consistent whole, interpreting the 
facts in the light of the religious idea, — the idea 
of God working out the salvation of the world 
through an elect people. Genesis is then a com- 
pilation. Why not ? Is not all history a com- 
pilation ? And the more the original authorities 
are allowed to speak, the more faithful and reliable 
the history. 

According to this view, where is inspiration ? 
Inspiration for its own sake is of no value. The 
doctrine of inspiration is of value only as a guarantee 
of truth. If we are persuaded of the truth without 
inspiration, we occupy exactly the same ground as 
if there were inspiration. Inspiration does not make 
truth error or error truth. The doctrine of inspiration 
cannot make the Bible truer than it is, but to us 



l6 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

it is a guarantee of its veracity. Do I then believe 
in the inspiration of Genesis ? Certainly, in a double 
sense. 

First, in a religious history of such vast consequence 
to the race, I believe that Moses was not left to the 
exercise of his unaided, unillumined judgment. In 
the selections he made, the combinations he effected, 
and the new light he shed on the whole through the 
predominance of the religious idea, he was divinely 
guided. If he were not, then he was a tenfold greater 
genius than he is generally represented to be. Observe 
the elevation of his style, the purity of his thoughts, 
the inerrancy of his moral instincts. An aged minister, 
narrating his religious experience in a synod of our 
Church, being asked if he read much of the books 
of Moses, made answer, " Yes, especially Genesis ; 
I read the other books, but Genesis is my favourite — 
I get more spiritual good out of Genesis." Though 
only a young man of about eighteen, my attention 
was particularly arrested by the old man's testimony 
— I was filled with amazement that the oldest book 
in the world should contain so much spiritual aliment 
for nineteenth-century Christians. No mere human 
intellect, it seems to me, was capable of producing 
such a book, so free from everything degrading and 
fantastic, so rich in spiritual truth. Able, learned 
men in Egypt, Assyria, and other countries were 
contemporaries of Moses ; yet none left behind them 
memorials comparable to these. How to account 
for the difference ? Only on the ground of the 
supernatural. Moses' genius was doubtless transcen- 
dent, and yet we cannot conceive that he, by dint 
of mere genius, so surpassed his contemporaries as 



THE PENTATEUCH AND CRITICISM 1/ 

to produce Genesis. Moses' genius could not do it ; 
his genius, divinely inspired, could, and did. 

Second, in the sense that Genesis is a record of 
inspired men. Moses is the first Biblical writer, but 
not the first inspired man. The authors of Holy 
Writ were not the only inspired men of antiquity. 
Inspiration was not confined to writing — it extended 
to thinking, feeling, speaking, acting. Enoch and 
Noah in the antediluvian world, Abraham, Isaac, 
and Jacob in patriarchal times, were all inspired 
men, leading inspired lives, speaking inspired words, 
performing inspired deeds. Genesis is an inspired 
record of inspired men. In the progress of the 
centuries the book was frequently transcribed. Con- 
sidering the character and material of ancient writing, 
it was inevitable that mistakes should creep in ; and 
it is possible, nay, probable, that explanatory notes 
were added to make clear to the copyists' contem- 
poraries what appeared to them obscure. This 
perhaps suffices to explain the supposed anachro- 
nisms, or a large number of them, on which modern 
criticism has so tenaciously fastened — such as the 
references to the Canaanites, the enumeration of 
the kings of Edom, and the identification of ancient 
place-names by their more recent equivalents. Strike 
out all these anachronisms, and it makes not the 
slightest difference to the trend or completeness of 
the story. 

Personally I am prepared to go further, and the 
majority of Christian ministers will not, I believe, 
demur, viz., to concede that Moses did not reduce 
the Pentateuch into one continuous roll or book. It 
was probably composed in fragments as occasions 

2 



1 8 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

demanded and opportunities arose, during the forty 
years' wanderings in the wilderness ; in this frag- 
mentary state it was probably left at his death. 
He had neither leisure nor facilities for revision ; 
and the first copy of every work is somewhat rough 
and uneven. In after-times, with the development of 
literature and religion, these fragments were probably 
cemented together into one continuous whole, and 
in the hands of successive editors underwent here 
and there minor changes, certain modifications in the 
legislation in the face of new circumstances being 
unavoidable. That it did not attain its final form 
till the days of Ezra is probably true ; but what of 
it in its preceding forms? What ought to be con- 
sidered the date of the publication of a book, that 
of the first or that of the last edition ? Through 
how many editions the Pentateuch went we cannot 
tell ; what were the minor alterations successively 
introduced escapes our ken ; still the books com- 
posing it, in all their essentials, remain the same. 
The central truth in the traditional view, for which 
we contend, is — tJie historical trustwortJiiness of the 
PentateucJi. 



PART II 

HAVING roughly sketched the two hypotheses, 
the constructive and the destructive, the tradi- 
tional and the negative, let us proceed to consider 
which we shall choose. For myself I may say that 
I have examined their respective claims carefully 
as presented in the standard works, weighed them 
conscientiously in the balance, once and again wavered 
in my decision. Yet the longer and more compre- 
hensively I examined them, the more convinced I 
became that the traditional view is the truer, without 
of course maintaining for it in all details absolute 
accuracy. The charge has been made that specialists 
grow contracted in their view till gradually they 
become incapable of surveying arguments in their 
relative importance and large bearings. The con- 
tentions of the Higher Critics seem to some extent 
to sustain the accusation. 

Take the following examples, and I name these 
because, so to speak, they are intellectually portabl9^^ 
young men, whose acquaintance with the controversy 
is somewhat limited, being much influenced by them. 
" It is made a difficulty that, in the last chapter of 
Deuteronomy, which no one supposes of the same 
age as the earlier part of the book, the town of Dan 
is thus named, though it was known as Laish till the 

19 



20 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

days of the Judges. That such additions have been 
made here and there to the historical notices of the 
earlier books, by revisers of different periods, is 
assumed to prove that the historical portions of 
the first books of the Bible were written in the land 
of Canaan, and that not before the period of the 
Kings ! The words ' on this side Jordan/ in Deut. 
i. I, it is said, ought to be translated 'across the 
Jordan,' in which case they would show that the 
writer lived in West Palestine. Etymologically 
* 'cbcrl the word used, means ' across ' ; but unfortu- 
nately for the new critics, it was employed arbitrarily, 
for both east and west, when Deuteronomy was 
written, without reference to the relative position 
of the Jordan, or other natural boundary, leaving 
its meaning to be gathered from an additional word 
of explanation. Thus, in Num. xxxii. 19, we 
read, ' P'or we will not inherit with them on yonder 
side \ineeber'\ the Jordan, and forward [or thence 
on] ; because our inheritance is fallen to us on this 
side \7neebcr\ Jordan eastw^ard ' ; so that in this 
verse '^eber stands for both east and west of the 
Jordan. The word, ultimately, after the conquest 
of Canaan, was applied to the east side of Jordan ; 
as Perea, which means the same, was at a still later 
period : but, when the Pentateuch was written, it 
was used indifferently of the east and west, in refer- 
ence to the temporary position of the Hebrews, who 
were still on the eastern side. Its meaning in the 
first verse of Deuteronomy is, moreover, at once 
conclusively proved from the fact that the various 
places mentioned as marking the region intended 
arc all on the east of Jordan. 



THE PENTATEUCH AND CRITICISM 21 

" We are further told that the Pentateuch could 
not have been written by Moses, from the use of the 
word yduiniah — ' towards the sea ' — for westward ; 
and of Negeb, the name employed for the southern 
uplands of Judah, for the south. * At Mount Sinai,' 
it is said, ' the sea did not lie to the west, and the 
Negeb was to the north.' ' If the writer lived in 
Palestine, however, the expressions would be correct.' ^ 
But it is forgotten that the Hebrews had spoken the 
language of Palestine for centuries before the birth 
of Moses, and must have adopted and used its 
ordinary geographical expressions, in the popular 
and not the etymological sense. Our word ' south ' 
means ' towards the sun ' ; but surely an Australian 
is not wrong in calling Melbourne south of Sydney, 
though to him it is not really south, that is, towards 
the sun, but north. Does he say that he goes south 
to India, because that country is etymologically 
south from Australia ? " ^ 

Seeing that these and similar instances are per- 
fectly explicable on the traditional view, one feels 
that Robertson Smith and others likeminded have 
pressed them beyond the limits of just and impartial 
criticism. The hypothesis of the Higher Criticism 
doubtless removes many minor difficulties, and the 
consideration of this inclined my judgment in its 
favour. But on further examination I discovered 
that it creates new difficulties, graver, more funda- 
mental, and more numerous than those it removes. 
I shall now enumerate in a general way the reasons 

^ Robertson Smith, Bible in the Jewish Church, p. t^it^. 
2 Dr. Cunningham Geikie, Hours with the Bible, vol. v., 
chap. X. 



22 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

which have led me to the conclusion that the old 
hypothesis, somewhat rectified, is preferable to the 
new. 

I. The traditional hypothesis of the Mosaic author- 
ship of the Pentateuch has, it seems to me, fewer 
literary difficulties to contend with. 

Years ago it was customary to object to the 
Mosaic authorship on the ground that the art of 
writing was not sufficiently developed for the pro- 
duction of such a large and bulky volume as the 
Pentateuch. By to-day, however, that objection has 
lost its force, for archaeological research indisputably 
shows that the age of Moses and the ages immedi- 
ately preceding were full of literary activity. Pro- 
fessor Sayce tells us that in that century "good 
schools existed throughout Western Asia, that the 
people of Canaan could read and write before the 
Israelitish conquest, that there was an active literary 
intercourse from one end of the civilised east to the 
other." ^ The recently discovered library of Assur- 
banipal affords sufficient evidence that this presenta- 
tion of the then state of education is not exaggerated 
or overdrawn. 

Closely allied with this is the objection that the 
richness of the vocabulary and the easy flow of the 
language are such as to indicate that the composition 
of the Pentateuch must belong to the golden period of 
the Hebrew tongue, that the comparative excellence 
of its style is inconsistent with its early production 
during the desert wanderings. Unfortunately we 
have no Hebrew writing outside Holy Writ to enable 
us to institute a comparison. If we wanted to base 
' Cu7item;porary Review^ August, 1888. 



THE PENTATEUCH AND CRITICISM 23 

an argument on the English of the Authorised Version 
of the Bible, it could be done by appcaHng to earlier 
and later writings. For instance, if the word " its " 
was used in a book, we would be presumably right 
in fixing its date after the year 1600, for before that 
time its employment is doubtful. Its total absence 
from the English Bible shows that the translation 
of the latter was made at or before the beginning 
of the seventeenth century. But in the case of the 
Pentateuch there is no Hebrew book older than 
itself, and no contemporaneous writing by which to 
test its literary style. 

Comparing the language of Jeremiah with that 
of the Pentateuch, the change, it must be conceded, 
is not so striking as might beforehand be expected. 
But ancient times should not be compared with 
modern, so full of stress and rush : that would be 
as unfair as to compare the speed of the Palestinian 
ass with that of the British locomotive. In Oriental 
climes changes are few and slow — fewer and slower 
of yore than in the present day. Besides, we have 
parallel cases in other languages. The Latin of 
Plautus differs but slightly from that of Gregory the 
Great, eight hundred years afterwards. The Greek of 
Thucydides is reproduced with comparative perfection 
in Procopius, one thousand years later. Brugsch 
speaks of two Egyptian papyri which, though in the 
date of their composition separated by one thousand 
years, are practically identical in language and 
grammar. According to Freytag, the Arabic spoken 
to-day at Mecca is in vocabulary and syntax, in every 
essential, the same as that of the Koran. Twelve 
hundred years have passed since the days of 



24 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

Mohammed, yet the language has undergone no 
perceptible change. Bear further in mind that the 
Pentateuch itself was preventive of rapid vicissitudes 
in the history of the Hebrew language. That the 
Bible always tends to check linguistic changes is a 
well-established fact. The English Bible practically 
stereotyped the English tongue. How rapid the 
changes between Chaucer and the Authorised 
Version ! how few the changes since ! The Penta- 
teuch, being according to the traditional view the 
great textbook of the nation, and especially of its 
master-minds, would inevitably fix their language 
and mould their style. 

Reference has already been made to the ana- 
chronisms contained in the first five books — that 
is, to statements which could only have been made 
after the settlement of Israel in the Promised Land, 
That these difficulties exist is patent to all, and 
that the new hypothesis explains them better than 
the old cannot in fairness be denied. Take, for 
example, the following : Gen. xii. 6, xiii. 7, xxxvi. 
31-39, xiv. 14; Num. xxxii. 40-43; Deut. xxxiv. 
I, 10. Many attempts have been made to explain 
them on the supposition that they had been written 
in the Mosaic age ; but it cannot be affirmed that 
they have been completely successful. However, 
on the rectified theory already sketched, their elu- 
cidation is feasible — namely, by viewing them as 
explanatory additions inserted by later editors or 
redactors, with a view to make clear what might to 
late readers appear obscure. 

While the anachronisms may thus, on the traditional 
view, be satisfactorily accounted for, without doing 



THE PENTATEUCH AND CRITICISM 25 

violence to the body of the history, how do the 
Higher Critics explain the abounding archaisms 
contained in the Pentateuch ? The anachronisms 
altogether do not amount to more than twenty or 
thereabout ; the archaic idioms and other peculiari- 
ties of vocabulary amount to several scores. The 
orthodox theologians naturally endeavour to mini- 
mise the anachronisms and multiply the archaisms, 
for human nature will assert itself in the best of 
men. On the other hand, the Higher Critics make 
mountains of every molehill in the shape of an 
anachronism or apparent discrepancy, and strive to 
explain away everything which appears antique, and 
therefore inimical to their theory. This tendency 
is perfectly manifest in so sober-minded a writer as 
Dr. Driver, not to mention the more extreme men. 
How slow he is to perceive, or at least to acknow- 
ledge, the thousand disagreements in the writings 
of his own school ; and yet how quick to detect and 
accentuate every apparent inconsistency, however 
infinitesimally small, in the supposed writings of 
Moses ! But notwithstanding all efforts to slur them 
over, archaic idioms and linguistic peculiarities do 
exist in the Pentateuch. 

By a rare effort of labour, " Jahn made a collection 
of more than two hundred words, which either in 
themselves or the meaning attached to them are 
peculiar to the Pentateuch ; and he collected a second 
class of expressions which, though employed by later 
writers, are seldom or never used in the Pentateuch. 
So great an impression did these philological essays 
of Jahn produce on the mind of Rosenmiiller that 
although in the first editions of his commentary he 



26 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

strenuously argued for its late origin, he entirely 
changed his views, and in the Prolegomena to the 
third edition had the candour to acknowledge his 
former error." ^ Much importance need not be 
attached to this change of sides, for this is a habit 
much cultivated by German critics — De Wette was 
changing his opinion on this subject with every new 
edition of his work ; the fact is recorded to prove 
that in the judgment of competent Hebrew scholars 
these peculiarities do exist. Write down all the 
anachronisms on one side of the page and all the 
archaisms on the other, and the latter will be the 
length of the former many times over. 

As an example take the personal pronoun ^' hool' 
which is used in the Pentateuch indifferently for both 
masculine and feminine, whilst in all the succeeding 
books it is restricted to the masculine, the feminine 
being represented by " Jicel^ a form which occurs but 
rarely in the Pentateuch — twelve times to one hun- 
dred and eighty-seven of the other, and not at all 
in Deuteronomy, notwithstanding the confident asser- 
tions of the lateness of its composition. Similarly 
the noun " ndar!' youth, is used in the Pentateuch 
for both sexes, standing for a maid as well as a lad, 
whereas in the following books it is used exclu- 
sively in the masculine gender, the form " nci arah " 
being employed to designate the female. Ndar in 
the common gender is employed twenty-one times 
in the Pentateuch, whilst ndarah, in the feminine, 
but once, and that in Deuteronomy. That the 
changes here are from a less to a more developed 
stage of language is self-evident. Take our first 
' Jamieson, Com., vol. i., p. xxv. 



THE t^ENTATEUCH AND CRITICISM 27 

instance, hdo and hce. In Genesis hod occurs fifty 
times, hee but four times ; in Exodus hod ten times, 
hee not once ; in Leviticus hod sixty-six times, hee but 
six times ; in Numbers hod twenty-six times, hee but 
twice ; in Deuteronomy hdd thirty-five times, hee not 
at all. How to account for all these things? To 
suppose that men living in the reign of Hezekiah 
or Josiah, or after the return from the Babylonish 
Captivity, consciously and systematically invented 
all these ancient forms of speech to deceive the 
unwary, makes too preposterous a demand on our 
credulity. The traditional view in its core may 
mount above reason ; the critical view contains un- 
reason. That Deuteronomy, composed as is loudly 
asserted by the Higher Criticism in the era of the 
Exile, should use the pronoun in its ancient sense 
thirty times, and not once in its more modern and 
advanced form, is certainly a problem hard of solution 
on the new theory. The new best explains the few 
anachronisms; the old accounts best for the more 
abundant archaisms. 

Again, reflect a moment on the striking anthropo- 
morphic expressions contained in the Pentateuch, 
a feature much more marked than in the succeeding 
books. Poetry goes before prose. Every child is a 
poet— he speaks in poetry, thinks in poetry, feels in 
poetry. All his first words are concrete, metaphori- 
cal, figurative. Concrete terms have the precedence ; 
abstractions come later on. Hence in the first efforts 
of thought concrete terms are applied to spiritual 
truths, language is tinged with poetry. In the dawn 
of history men spoke in metaphors. The book re- 
pletest of poetry in my possession is an etymological 



28 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

dictionary. Every word traced to its root is a beauti- 
ful figure of speech, a perfect poetic gem. Hence the 
strong anthropomorphisms of the Pentateuch. The 
Hebrew never developed like the Greek into an 
abstract language. In this it resembled the Welsh — 
good for poetry, bad for philosophy. But as we 
come down the centuries the anthropomorphisms 
grow fewer and less marked. The very anthropo- 
morphisms of the Pentateuch seem to indicate 
its early origin. No post-exilic thinker could have 
invented them ; the very attempt would have done 
violence to all his religious feelings and convictions. 
According to the Higher Criticism the Books of 
Judges and Samuel were written approximately 
about David's time. That also is the date ascribed 
to the documents called respectively Elohistic and 
Jehovistic, the foundation documents of the Penta- 
teuch. With great surprise, therefore, we observe 
that "documents not supposed to differ in the date 
of their composition differ essentially in their descrip- 
tion of the methods of the Divine revelation, and 
in their modes of representing religious ideas ; and 
more, that the antique representations of the Deity 
contained in the Jehovistic document are even 
regarded later in date than the representations of 
a higher development and purity in the earliest part 
of the national histories."* 

2. The traditional theory, moreover, is more 
accordant with the historical character of the Old 
Testament. By throwing the composition of the 
earlier books on to the times of the Monarchy and 
the Exile, from seven hundred to one thousand 
^ Watson, Genesis, pp. 144, 146 



THE PENTATEUCH AND CRITICISM 29 

years after the events had transpired, their trust- 
worthiness as veritable histories is, I will not 
say, utterly destroyed, but imminently imperilled. 
Even allowing that the Elohist and Jehovist, about 
the reign of David, had national traditions to guide 
them in the writing of their separate stories, yet 
the case of Mohammed abundantly proves that 
traditional lore can but cautiously be trusted. 
Though the prophet of Arabia lived in a literary 
age and himself wrote the Koran, yet within two 
hundred years of his death no less than two 
thousand fables about him were floating in the air, 
with hardly a particle of truth in any of them. 

That tradition is unreliable was also the con- 
tention of the Higher Critics thirty and forty years 
ago, when they strove so valiantly to postpone the 
composition of the Gospels by one hundred years, 
to yield time for popular tradition to crystallise 
into myth. Accordingly, the leading German ex- 
ponents of the Higher Criticism, having the courage 
of their system, flatly deny the historical credibility 
of the Pentateuch. Let me here quote a few 
sentences from Wellhausen's Prolegomena to the 
History of Israel. " We attain in Genesis to no 
historical knowledge of the patriarchs, but only of 
the time when the stories about them rose among 
the Israelite people ; this later age is here uncon- 
sciously projected, in its inner and outward features, 
into hoar antiquity, and is reflected there in a 
glorified mirage." " Abraham is not a historical 
person ; he might with more likelihood be regarded 
as a free creation of unconscious art." " The 
patriarchs are the ideal prototypes of the true 



30 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

Israelite." " In the traits of personal character 
ascribed to them they represent substantially the 
nature and aspirations of the individual Israelite." 
" A whole series of stories about the patriarchs are 
cultus myths." Of incidents in other historical books 
of Scripture he avers that they " are pious make- 
ups," " full of inherent impossibilities," " without a 
word of truth in them." ^ 

Take, for example, the elaborate account given 
in Exodus of the construction of the Tabernacle of 
the Congregation. What have these Higher Critics 
to say to it ? That there is not an atom of historic 
truth in the whole account. The Tabernacle never 
existed except in the imagination of the priestly 
writer after the Exile. Of the institutions of the 
Passover and Pentecost not a trace, they say, is 
to be found till about the days of Hezekiah. The 
Temple of Solomon was not planned after the 
pattern of the Tabernacle — the Tabernacle was made 
after the pattern of the Temple, and then only on 
paper ! Between the wilderness sojourn and the 
reign of Hezekiah no mention is made of them ; 
and as no mention is made of them they did not 
exist. Lack of evidence is turned into abundance 
of evidence. 

These assertions have been repeated so frequently 
and loudly, and with so much confidence, that on 
reading Wellhausen's History of Israel on its first 
introduction to the British public, by Robertson 
Smith, with such flourish of trumpets, as affording 
us for the first time the " true key " to the Old 
Testament history, one felt staggered and amazed. 
' Pages 320, 321, 325. 



THE PENTATEUCH AND CRITICISM 3 1 

Ingenuous readers took for granted that scholarly 
men would never make such sweeping statements, 
unless they had perfectly verified their ground. The 
Bishop of Bath and Wells, however, thought he 
would test these asseverations by confronting them 
with the testimony of the Books of Samuel, Kings, 
and Chronicles. With what result ? That he found 
an account of six celebrations of the Passover, casual 
references to several others, and the recognition from 
age to age of the hereditary Aaronic priesthood — 
all of which were not invented, according to the 
Higher Critics, till the epoch of the Babylonish 
Captivity. If Bishop Hervey is right — and right he 
undoubtedly is — the contention that Leviticus and 
the latter half of Exodus were written by a late 
priest falls with a crash to the ground. 

Furthermore, these learned men have maintained 
with unwavering assurance that the idea of one 
God and one Sanctuary was unknown to Israel till 
about the same time, the time of the Captivity. 
Strange how they crowd all the grand things of the 
Old Testament into the age of Israel's declension 
and decrepitude, leaving the golden age of Israel 
practically emptied of all literature and all theology ! 
This is not in harmony with the philosophy of 
history, to say the least. However, the above 
assertion has been so often reiterated that many 
readers have been more or less imposed upon, never 
dreaming that able men would hazard such a state- 
ment without a sure foundation. " One God, one 
Sanctuary," Wellhausen tells us, was an axiom 
unknown till near the time of the Captivity ; con- 
sequently, the Aaronic priesthood and the elaborate 



32 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

ritual were unknown, because not needed. Con- 
sequently, again, it must have been about this period 
that those books, Dcuterononfiy included, were 
written. Upon this thesis, not upon any recondite 
study of language, Wellhausen is willing to stake 
his whole theory. Upon the validity of this assump- 
tion, the critics, German and English, found their 
dates of the composition of the greater part of the 
Pentateuch. 

Lately, however, a Scottish minister ^ brought the 
German theory and the Bible history face to face. 
In the sequel the theory of Wellhausen, on its first 
careful and " scientific " examination, collapses. In 
the duel between the German and the Scotsman, 
the latter proves himself in my opinion the better 
and truer man. So far the Higher Critics in their 
highminded and highhanded way profess to ignore 
the book ; but, all the same, Dr. Baxter riddles the 
Prolegomena of Wellhausen with as much severity 
and banter as Wellhausen was supposed to have 
riddled the books of Moses. If Wellhausen and 
his English admirers held that the Israelites did 
not observe the cardinal truth of their religion — 
that God is one and that there is none other besides 
Him, that they often and shamefully apostatised 
from their high ideal, that they worshipped false 
idols in the " high places " — they would be perfectly 
right. From the start the truth of the unity of 
God was taught them — it was not a new discovery 
made known in the age of Josiah for the first time ; 
but a truth long ago revealed, though not congenial 
to their idolatrous hearts. The idea of one supreme 

^ W. L, Baxter, M.A., D.D., Sa?ictuary and Sacrifice. 



THE PENTATEUCH AND CRITICISM 33 

central sanctuary was not foreign to them ; through- 
out their entire course the place of the Tabernacle 
was sacred above all others. Other sanctuaries 
were suffered, so long as in those places they wor- 
shipped the one true God ; but as these other 
sanctuaries, far from the capital, afforded facilities 
to the idolatrous people to offer unto the gods of 
the heathen, it was found expedient to suppress 
them. Josiah ordered the demolition of all the " high 
places," of all the local sanctuaries, because they 
fostered idol-worship. To aver that there is no 
trace of the truth of one God and one Sanctuary 
in the Hebrew religion and history, between the 
wilderness and the Captivity, is in flat contradiction 
to the only books which afford information on the 
subject 

The historical books of the Old Testament de- 
monstrate that Israel continually rebelled, went 
perversely after other gods, thus bringing into 
prominence the antagonism between the Israelite 
nation and the Israelite religion. Had their religion 
been of their own growth or manufacture, the 
striking contrast between them and it could not have 
existed. There is not this collision between other 
nations and their respective religions — the nations 
and their religions run parallel, without disharmony. 
But the greatest divergence often prevailed between 
the Israelites and their religion. " Pass over the 
isles of Chittim and see, and send unto Kedar and 
consider diligently, and see if there be such a 
thing," that a nation and its religion should be in 
continual conflict. " Hath a nation," any nation, 
" changed their gods, which are no gods ? but My 

3 



34 



PRIMEVAL REVELATION 



people, Israel, have changed their glory for that 
which doth not profit," their Jehovah for idols (Jer. 
ii. lO, II ). The religion and the Israelites being thus 
constantly opposed to each other, the religion, it 
is evident, did not originate in their hearts. They 
did not create it, it was creating them, and at last 
succeeded in an imperfect way to make them a 
peculiar possession unto God. 

These questions concerning dates and authorship 
are not to us of much importance in themselves, 
for the books are what they are, however they 
came to be. Yet they strike their roots down into 
problems deeper than themselves, into the natural 
or supernatural character of the Old Testament. 
We maintain that Jehovah created the nation ; the 
critics that the nation created Jehovah. We hold 
that God interposed by miracle and prophecy to 
redeem Israel ; they that Israel gradually wrought 
out its own redemption. We teach salvation by 
grace, that is, in virtue of the supernatural ; they 
teach salvation by works, that is, on naturalistic 
grounds, thus reducing the religion of Israel into 
one amongst others in the family of religions ; and 
with the uniqueness of the Hebrew religion passes 
away the Divine pre-eminence of Christianity, as 
indeed Kuencn is candid enough to avow. 

3. The advocates of the new theory, whilst 
maintaining that it removes many literary diffi- 
culties, overlook the ominous fact, patent to most 
others, that it creates moral difficulties of a very 
grave and fundamental character. According to 
them, the priests of the era of the Babylonish 
Captivity wrote Leviticus, Numbers, and a great 



THE PENTATEUCH AND CRITICISM 35 

part of Exodus, whilst a great unknown prophet 
wrote Deuteronomy ; and they all conspired together 
to pass them off as the legislation of Moses ! 

Even admitting that their motive was pious, the 
means were not justified by the end. But if the motive 
were that often attributed to them by the ablest of 
the Higher Critics— namely, to secure for themselves 
the emoluments of office against the encroachments 
of other classes of officials — then their work was 
doubly atrocious. To say the least, the nation must 
have lapsed into a state of inconceivable obtuseness 
to allow to pass unchallenged forgeries so flagrant. 
The Israelites have always been a quick-witted 
race, and on other occasions have exhibited capa- 
bilities of keen criticism. Read Jer. xxvi., and 
note the sound sense of " the elders of the land," 
and you will see the mental calibre of the generation 
which is said to have been imposed upon by 
designing priests. The men who were so familiar 
with the history of religion in their land, as these 
elders showed themselves to be, and who dared 
resist the priests by passing wholesome strictures 
upon their murderous intentions, and who supported 
their arguments by appeals to precedents, were not 
the men to be duped into the belief that they had 
always possessed the rich literary and religious 
heritage contained in the Pentateuch, whereas the 
whole was a recent invention. They were not the 
men to suffer two or three priests to palm off upon 
them whole books, putting a yoke of ritual upon 
their necks, involving the expenditure of thousands 
of pounds annually, without inquiring into their cre- 
dentials. The supposition, besides reflecting seriously 



36 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

on the moral character of the priests, insults the 
common sense of the nation — a nation which for 
keenness of intelligence has always been in the van 
of ancient and modern civilisation. 

Read the Book of Deuteronomy, and judge for 
yourselves. One perusal of it from beginning to 
end, without note or comment, will do more to carry 
conviction into the mind than one hundred arguments 
deftly handled for or against. It is one of the 
grandest books in all literature. The writer of it, 
be he who he may, was one of the finest thinkers, 
one of the noblest poets, and one of the most 
devout writers the world has ever seen. The man 
w^ho was morally and intellectually capable of writing 
Deuteronomy was, for that very reason, morally and 
intellectually incapable of trying to deceive his nation 
by palming it off as the work of another. Morally 
incapable, because he could not stoop to deception 
even for the purpose of the religious improvement 
of the nation ; intellectually incapable, for a mind of 
his calibre would be too much pervaded by genuine 
humility to pass off his own work as the composition 
of a genius of the first magnitude like the Hebrew 
legislator. Only a man who believed himself the 
equal of Moses would dare ascribe his ow^n orations 
to Moses ; but such intellectual pride would be 
moral suicide. The two suppositions are wholly 
incompatible. 

The proceedings here described the authors of 
Lux Mundi adorn with the euphonious name of 
" dramatisation." I venture, however, to say that the 
common sense, the common conscience, of mankind 
will call it fabrication. And the Bible has always, 



THE PENTATEUCH AND CRITICISM 37 

thank God, been a book of common sense. The 
final court always is the common sense of the 
common people, who have no theories to uphold 
and no reputation to vindicate, but who recognise 
the truth when they see it. Advocates may exhibit 
their cleverness and their learning ; but the twelve 
men of common sense, without cleverness and with- 
out learning, sitting silently in the jury-box, have 
the decision in their own hands, and they seldom go 
wrong. Twenty-seven times the Book of Deutero- 
nomy declares that " Moses spake unto the children 
of Israel " the orations which it reports ; it pourtrays 
the environments of the lawgiver and of the nation 
with accuracy and fulness of detail ; it affirms that 
Moses, before his death, committed it to the elders 
of Israel to be carefully kept alongside the Ark. If 
that is the method to write a drama, which is the 
way to write history ? 

A drama indeed ! I can understand a drama like 
the Book of Job, which bears on its face evidences 
of its character, and which could make no difference 
to the world, whether it were poetry or history. It 
is a solitary episode without connection with history 
in the past or the future ; view it as biography or 
as poetry, it all comes to the same thing — it does not 
profess to influence the course of history. The same 
remarks hold true of Ecclesiastes. But the Book of 
Deuteronomy demands to be classed in a different 
category. It presents itself to us in vital connection 
with past history ; and we know that, as a matter of 
incontrovertible fact, it has more powerfully moulded 
the subsequent course of human events than any 
book ever published, — fashioning the life and worship 



38 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

of Israel, which at last culminated in the Divine 
Incarnation ! However much critics may endeavour 
to varnish the proceedings by calling them a drama, 
the common conscience brushes away all cobwebs 
of scholastic casuistry and calls them by a plainer 
and a blunter name. Read the book : can you in 
imagination associate trickery of any kind, from 
whatever motive, with its composition or promul- 
gation ? Its grand morality, its lofty poetry, its 
spiritual depth and richness stamp it as an honest 
book, the work of an honest man — honest to the 
core, honest out and out, through and through. The 
ancient prophets were no Jesuits ; Deuteronomy 
did not, could not, originate in Jesuitism. Whatever 
difficulties confront the traditional view, they are 
but literary and intellectual, whereas the difficulties 
connected with the modern view involve the gravest 
moral considerations. 

4. Observe further that the whole history of 
Israel is a distinct attestation of the truth that 
Israel's laws were substantially completed, and con- 
sequently the Pentateuch practically finished, in the 
wilderness. It is quite possible, and perfectly con- 
sistent with the Mosaic authorship, that Ezra or 
some other godly and inspired scribe, in after-ages, 
codified the laws ; but codification is not legislation. 
What we contend for is that Moses was the legislator. 
If the laws of Israel were not then made, when 
were they made ? We demand, not a conjecture, 
but a "scientific" answer. The judges arc never 
seen enacting laws, only governing according to 
them. The kings are never described as framing 
laws, only as obeying them, or, more frequently, 



THE PENTATEUCH AND CRITICISM 39 

breaking them. Who then made the laws, civil and 
ecclesiastical, if not Moses ? A most singular pheno- 
menon this — a nation, a state, springing up, and 
no account after its constitution in the wilderness 
of any attempt by king or elders, by monarch or 
council, to formulate laws for its government ; and 
yet the laws are there. It is possible to write a 
constitutional history of England, a constitutional 
history of Rome, a constitutional history of Greece, 
tracing the legislation in its changes and additions 
from century to century. But can you write a 
constitutional history of Israel other than a para- 
phrase of that contained in the Old Testament ? I 
do not inquire if you can attempt a reconstruction 
of her history, to evince your own subtilty of 
mind — Wellhausen and his school have essayed 
that ; but one thing is clear, that the old theocratic 
historians and the modern critical historians are 
diametrically opposed in their method of presenting 
and interpreting the story. What the former put 
first, the latter place last. However, the Old 
Testament itself is our ultimate authority ; and where 
on its pages, after the emergence of Israel from the 
wilderness, do you discover any attempt at the 
repeal of old laws or the enactment of new ones ? 
This absence of all reference to legislation in sub- 
sequent history separates Israel from all other 
nations, and suffices, almost of itself, to convince me 
that Israel began its career fully equipped with a 
body of laws sufficient to guide it in the course of 
its development. The nation began its life in Canaan 
with the Pentateuch, substantially as it is to-day 
as its most precious heirloom. 



40 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

5. Pass on to the theological bearings of the 
discussion. The modern negative view strikes at 
bottom against faith in the supernatural. Be it far 
from me to sug-crest that individual members of the 
Critical School have lost faith in the supernatural 
— men are often better than their systems, the heart 
is often sounder than the head. I am only arguing 
against the critical scheme. According to Dr. Driver, 
the inspiration of the Bible is " presupposed." 
But the question is, Can the presupposition be 
converted into a conclusion ? Personally I fail to 
see that it can. 

The authors of Lux Mtuidi^ sensitive to the dis- 
harmony between the Higher Criticism and the 
Christian faith as heretofore understood by the 
Christian Church, accepted the results of criticism 
hardly a century old, and set about modifying, if 
not mutilating, the faith which has weathered the 
storms of two millenniums. The fundamental 
question, however, is, Did Israel make the religion, 
or did the religion make Israel ? Our answer is, 
God made the religion, and the religion made Israel. 
The religion of Israel was a revealed religion ; not 
merely the product of the improved consciousness 
of the nation, but the fruit of the Divine love and 
the manifestation of the Divine purposes of grace. 
The religious consciousness of no individual, of no 
nation, improves save as it is influenced from with- 
out and from above. No ; it was not the expression 
of the national heart of Israel, but the utterance 
of the Divine Heart ; and, therefore, a supernatural 
religion, on a higher level of spiritual truth than the 
people in their corporate capacity ever attained to. 



ITHE PENTATEUCH AND CRITICISM 4 1 

A parallel is presented in the New Testament 
Christianity in its truth and purity was fully revealed 
in the first century, the permanent standard of faith 
and practice being then set up. Ever since, the 
Christian Church has been striving upwards to the 
attainment of the standard, — with many serious and 
protracted relapses, it is true ; yet no one will deny 
that Christian society occupies to-day a much more 
elevated platform in thought and conduct than it 
did at the beginning of our era. Similarly we hold 
that God gave Israel, at the commencement of 
their marvellous career, a body of truth, of laws, 
of institutions, to be unto them thenceforward an 
ideal, towards the realisation of which it was their 
duty in all the subsequent centuries to aspire. Thus, 
according to the traditional view, the religion of 
Israel is a revelation, carrying with it faith in the 
supernatural — in miracles, prophecy, and grace, for 
grace is the one thing supernatural for the sake 
of which every other supernatural exists. The 
English section of the Higher Critics also believe 
the Pentateuch to be a Divine revelation ; but 
how to harmonise their faith in it as a revelation 
with their criticism of it as a composition is what 
they have not yet succeeded in showing. For a 
while the two may live together ; but in the long- 
run the faith will overbear the criticism, or the 
criticism will wither the faith. 

6. Finally, the traditional view is in perfect accord 
with the testimony of Jesus Christ and His Apostles. 
This the Higher Critics admit; but they meet it 
by asserting that Christ did not concern Himself 
about literature, only about ethics and religion, and 



4^ tRliMEVAL REVELATION 

that the Apostles "did not know." When in this 
matter we appeal to Christ's authority, they appeal 
from His authority to the limitation of His know- 
ledge. Basing themselves upon the doctrine of the 
Kenosis, the authors of Liix Mtmdi teach that, 
modify the phraseology as they may in successive 
editions, the Lord Jesus shared the ignorance of His 
contemporaries as to the true history of religion, 
of which He Himself was the centre and goal ; for 
here the history of the books is largely, if not 
wholly, the history of the religion. 

Do these opinions sit easily on the mind ? For 
my part I cannot say that they do. It may be 
urged that the Lord Jesus Himself avows ignorance 
of the date of the Judgment Day. Yes ; once, 
and only once. He did profess ignorance touching 
one particular point, knowledge of which would not 
assist the moral development of the human race. 
But from one instance concerning a date in the 
far-off future are you prepared to draw a sweeping 
generalisation of universal ignorance, reducing Him, 
outside the sphere of ethics, to the level of His 
contemporaries ? Is it not more consonant with 
all that is sacred and reverend in the Bible to con- 
sider that confession of nescience on a single point 
as the exception which confirms the rule ? Every- 
where else He quietly asserts His perfect knowledge 
of what is in God, of what is in man, of what is 
in the Bible ; not in that blatant, egotistic manner 
which stamps a man a vulgar pedant, but with that 
calm assurance and serene restraint which always 
carry conviction. " That which we know we speak ; 
that which we have seen we testify." " For He 



tllE PENTATEUCH AND CRITICISM 43 

whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God ; 
for not by measure did God give unto Him the 
Spirit." " He knew them all, and there was no 
need that any should testify to Him of man, for 
He knew what was in man." 

Read the four Gospels, and the impression the 
Lord Jesus makes on the mind is that of universal, 
infallible knowledge ; all along we move in a circle 
of resplendent light, without the shade of a shadow. 
Not a single instance of tripping or mental un- 
certainty can be cited. That being the case, his 
acknowledgment of limitation concerning a future 
date, tJie concealment of which helps on the morality of 
the zvorld^ should be viewed, not as a proof of general 
ignorance, but of universal knowledge. Suppose 
to-day a man should say, — I have studied astronomy 
and geology, jurisprudence and theology ; I have 
gone the round of the circle of the sciences, with one 
exception — of the science of electricity I plead ignor- 
ance. Would you take his frank avowal of unac- 
quaintance with one branch an evidence of his general 
lack of knowledge? Rather would it not be taken 
as a proof of universal information ? I am anxious 
to press this home upon the attention of the younger 
brethren, for their adoption of the Higher Criticism 
has, I fear, already told upon their estimation of the 
Person of Christ. The force of the concurrence of 
the Saviour in the traditional view of the Old Testa- 
ment is neutralised by the authors of Lux Mundi 
by pleading His nescience. Bishop Ellicott, however, 
whose scholarship and sound judgment as an exegete 
are known in all the Churches, in his book Christies 
Comprobator^ maintains with much gravity and earnest- 



44 rRIMEVAL REVELATION 

ncss that the Saviour's opinion on the Mosaic author- 
ship of the Pentateuch is decisive, and ought to be 
final. 

The infalHble knowledge, not the infinite know- 
ledge, of the Lord Jesus on these and other subjects 
is founded on three considerations. First, the sin- 
lessncss of His nature. From our sinful, and conse- 
quently darkened nature, it is not safe to argue to 
His sinless, and therefore illumined nature. Sinless- 
ness carries with it illumination ; impeccability in the 
sphere of ethics implies infallibility in the domain of 
knowledge. Second, in His baptism the Holy Spirit 
was given not by measure unto Him. To imagine 
that He was ignorant of the true history of the Old 
Testament religion and writings, which concerned 
Himself more than the Israelites themselves, is to 
kill faith, however unintentionally, in the roots. 
Third, the union of the two natures and their intimate 
relation the one to the other. In former years the 
tendency of theology was to lay stress on the sup- 
posed fact that the Divine in Christ elevated and 
ennobled the human ; the tendency now is to the 
other extreme, that in the Incarnation the human 
depressed the Divine — a proof of the Unitarian or 
Rationalistic trend of modern thought. The doctrine 
of the Kenosis is pushed to such an extreme as to 
foster error. 

Bishop EUicott writes : " From the closeness of the 
conjunction [between the two natures], it is indis- 
putable that both the body and soul of Christ 
did receive, by influence of Deity wherewith they 
were united, qualities and powers above nature." 
" Surely," says the judicious Hooker, " as the sword 



THE PENTATEUCH AND CRITICISM 45 

which is made fiery doth not only cut by reason 
of the sharpness which it simply hath, but also 
burn by means of that heat which it hath from the 
fire, so there is no doubt but the Deity of Christ 
hath enabled that nature which it took of man to 
do more than man in this world hath power to 
comprehend." ^ And the conclusion of Hooker seems 
inevitable, that the human soul of Christ must have 
had an ever-present illumination, and, to use his 
own words, " must of necessity be endued with 
knowledge so far forth universal, though not that 
peculiar to Deity itself" The impression a frequent 
perusal of His life has made upon me is the same 
as that He made on St. Peter—" Lord, Thou knowest 
all things." Instead of seizing on one verse wherein 
He confesses ignorance of one future event, the one 
thing which He would not, and not which He 
could not, know,— instead of jumping at that one 
verse and waving it in triumph in proof of the 
Saviour's nescience, it is the one statement in the 
Gospel which, more than anything else, tries my 
faith. That He knew all things I can understand 
and believe ; that He was ignorant of one thing 
it is which staggers my intellect and strains my 
faith. Blessed Lord, Thou knowest all things ; Thou 
knowest how hard it is for one of Thy followers, 
at least, to believe that Thou wert ignorant of one 
single thing. In the blaze of light encircling Thy 
brow, I fail to discover one spot of darkness, and, 
didst Thou Thyself not point it out, mankind would 
have never detected it ! 

1 Eccl. Polity, Book Y. 54. 



CHAPTER I 

THE CREATOR AND THE CREATION 

IN this first chapter of Genesis, Moses gives in 
a pictorial, poetic way his views of the creation 
of the world. This was necessary as a legitimate 
foundation for his religious teaching. Without 
sound views of God as Creator, and of nature as 
creation, the construction of a correct theology is 
not possible. Divine revelation from beginning to 
end is founded on the truths here propounded. 
Wrong views of this fundamental doctrine imply 
distorted views concerning all other doctrines. 
Mosaic theology, therefore, properly begins with 
the creation of the world. Cut away this first 
chapter of Genesis, and the rest of the Bible will 
be but a splendid edifice without a foundation, a 
gorgeous castle hanging in the air. And how 
grandly Moses begins ! From the start the music 
beats harmonious, rich, and full : " In the beginning 
God created the heavens and the earth." 

Cuvier, the celebrated naturalist, writes that "a 
sublimer passage than this from the first word to 
the last never can nor will come from a human pen." 
J. G. Staib, an eminent German scholar and theo- 
logian, asks : " Whence do these chapters come ? 
I do not know. There they stand, and will ever con- 

47 



48 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

tinuc to stand, however much it has been sought 
to explain them away ; and there, doubtless, they 
will remain until the end of the world, until the 
conclusion of God's kingdom on earth joins hands 
with the beginning, and the light of the beginning 
can again be recognised in the light of the end, 
and the light of the end in the light of the beginning, 
that God may still be all in all." From a literary 
point of view, therefore, Moses at once struck the 
highest keynote. He is characterised by dignity of 
movement and sublimity of conception, which at 
once place him in the forefront of literary artists. 
Observe the fulness of his matter, the sonorousness 
of his cadences, the archaic dignity of his language, 
here and throughout the Pentateuch. Whoever 
composed these five books, without controversy he 
has a grandeur about him which strikes his readers 
dumb with amazement. View him simply as a 
writer, from the standpoint of literature, and where 
among his contemporaries, or indeed among his 
successors for centuries after, will you find his 
compeer ? 

I. " In the beginning, God ! " True to unsophisti- 
cated human nature, and in perfect accord with 
the whole spirit of the Bible, Moses does not 
attempt to prove the existence of God, A proof 
that God existed was redundant — in Moses' time 
mankind admitted too many gods. Instead of 
beginning with nature, and climbing up laboriously 
on a ladder constructed by the cunning hands of 
logic to nature's God, the writer boldly begins at 
the other end — at the top, with God ; and from 
this infinite height with swift wing descends to God's 



THE CREATOR AND THE CREATION 49 

works. Instead of the creation demonstrating God, 
God explains the creation. The Being of God is 
a primary truth, and in Holy Writ is everywhere 
taken for granted. He holds the same place in the 
moral world that axioms do in mathematics — He 
is self-evident, fundamental, necessary, not supported 
by but supporting every other truth. 

Moses writes no explanatory introduction, offers 
no humble apology. But having been on the 
mount with God, like an eagle he swoops down 
upon us majestically. From the loftiest altitude, 
from the sublimest verity, he comes down with 
transfigured countenance, dazzling his readers with 
the white light of eternal truth : "In the beginning 
God created the heavens and the earth." How 
much grander is that, and more impressive, than 
if he had carefully welded together small syllogisms 
to enable us painfully to reach the conclusion that 
there is a God. Moses' way is the Divine way. 
Only small, carping, peddling minds it is that 
demand a proof. If God condescend to demonstrate 
to us His existence, it will be, not by logic, but 
by revelation. 

The fact is — God cannot be proved ; if He could. 
He would not be God. However large the universe, 
still it is measurable, finite ; and from finite premises 
we cannot draw infinite conclusions. Belief in the 
existence of a Divine Being is independent of 
logic, has prevailed before the laws of logic were 
formulated, and is invincible to-day in minds 
innocent of all school learning. It is a truth, not 
of reasoning, but of reason ; not of logic, but of 
mind. " A God who can be proved," says Ulrici, 

4 



50 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

" is no God ; for the ground of proof is necessarily 
above the thing proved by it." In other words, 
to demonstrate by argument that God exists is 
an endeavour to ground Him on another truth, 
larger and stronger and more fundamental than 
Himself. But where is the truth that exists before 
God, is deeper and larger than He, independent of 
Him, but He dependent on it ? There is no such 
truth. God is the foundation truth, and before, 
beneath, or above Him there is none other. God 
exists in absolute independence, having the ground 
of His existence, not without, but within Himself 
alone. He is the bottom truth, extending like solid 
granite underneath the whole continent of matter 
and mind ; consequently all other truth must be 
built on Him, not He on it. His existence is not 
an inference from preceding premises, for the 
manifest reason that there are no premises. God 
is premise and conclusion, cause and effect, all in 
one, and accordingly transcends all laws of human 
argumentation. 

From this it follows that faith in God is universal, 
springing out of the very constitution of human 
nature, apart from and prior to all culture. Reason 
cannot deny God without incurring the penalty of 
self-stultification. Faith in God is an essential 
endowment of human reason. Hence, wherever 
man is, religion is. " If you travel through the 
world," says Plutarch, " well may you find cities 
without walls, without literature, without kings, not 
peopled or inhabited, moneyless and such as desire 
no coin, which know not what theatres or public 
halls of bodily exercise mean ; but never was there, 



THE CREATOR AND THE CREATION 5 I 

nor ever shall be, any one city seen, without temple, 
church, or chapel, without some god or other, 
which useth no prayers nor oaths, no prophecies 
and divination, no sacrifice either to obtain good 
blessings or to avert heavy curses and calamities — 
nay, methinks a man should sooner find a city in 
the air without any plot of ground whereon it is 
seated, than any commonwealth altogether void of 
religion and the opinion of the gods that it should 
either be first established, or afterwards preserved and 
maintained in that estate." So wrote the old Roman 
two thousand years ago, and his testimony still 
remains unshaken. Belief in God is native to the 
heart of man. This is what Tertullian meant when 
he exclaimed, " O human soul, who art by nature 
Christian ! " 

But though this truth is inwrought in the very 
fabric of the soul, and therefore cannot and needs 
not be logically proved, yet it is capable of justifi- 
cation, and often needs illustration. " For that 
which may be known of God is manifest in them, 
for God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible 
things of Him from the creation of the world are 
clearly seen, being understood by the things which 
are made, even His eternal power and Godhead" 
(Rom. i. 19, 20). Look at a sheet of paper. Ap- 
parently no marks, except those made with pen 
and ink, are decipherable upon it. But if you hold 
it up against the light, you will see other writing, 
not in ink, but in water. The manufacturer has 
inscribed in the foolscap his own name. Thus God 
seems to have engraved on the human soul in 
water-marks, nay, in blood-marks. His own mysterious 



52 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

name ; the strange hieroglyphs can never be erased. 
The idea of God is intertwined with the innermost 
fibres of our make. 

Moses did right when he began at the beginning, 
when he struck with distinctness the chord which 
has never been lost in human nature, when he 
clearly enunciated this fundamental truth, and held 
it up against the sky for all men to see : " In the 
beginning, God ! " The statement instantly wakes 
in the deepest recesses of the spirit a distinct echo ; 
we feel that it is, must be, true. " In the beginning 
God created the heavens and the earth." The 
innate belief of the soul is illuminated, its outlines 
are more distinctly sketched, by looking at them 
in the light of nature. " I asked the earth concerning 
God," says Augustine ; " it answered, I am not He ; 
and all that therein is made the same acknowledg- 
ment. I asked the sea and the depths, and all 
that move and live therein ; and they answered, 
We are not thy God — seek higher. I asked the 
winds ; but the air with all its inhabitants answered, 
I am not thy God. I asked the heavens, the 
sun, the moon, and the stars ; and they answered, 
Neither are we the God whom thou seekest. And 
I said to all things that surround me, Ye have 
told me concerning my God that ye are not He ; 
speak then to me of Him. And they all cried 
with loud voices, He made us." ^ They did not 
give to Augustine the idea of God — that he possessed 
already, else he would not have gone out in search 
of Him and catechised Nature concerning Him. 
But though incapable of imparting, they yet served 
' Confessions, x. 6. 



THE CREATOR AND THE CREATION 53 

to illumine, the idea, justifying to him the belief 
which already possessed his soul. 

II. The heavens and the earth were created, but 
God is uncreated. That, it would seem, is the first 
contrast in the author's mind. A question which 
every thoughtful man involuntarily asks is, How 
came God to be ? Moses' answer is. He did not 
come to be, He was, or, rather, He is. Here for 
the first time in the history of religious thought we 
come across the idea of a Being uncaused, uncreated, 
a Being who simply and necessarily is. This idea 
is of Mosaic origin, by which is meant that it is 
first to be met with in the books of Moses, which- 
ever way he obtained it, whether by philosophic 
reflection, direct revelation, or mediately by tradi- 
tion from his patriarchal ancestors. It is further 
developed in the new name Jehovah, which in 
Exodus God appropriates to Himself. This differen- 
tiates the theology of Moses from all heathen 
theologies. In these latter the creators are first 
created — that is, the gods of heathenism are creatures 
more than creators, they never attain the idea of 
absolute divinity. Behind them and before them 
was some dark power or force, called Fate or 
Destiny or something equivalent, originating them 
and dominating over them. The heathen mind 
discussed the origin of the Godhead more than the 
origin of matter — to them matter had no origin, but 
God had. According to Hindoo theology, Brahma, 
the fruitful parent of all creatures, was not self- 
existent — he had emerged from an egg. The 
Egyptian mythology, amid which Moses was brought 
up, had an elaborate astronomical system to illustrate 



54 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

how the gods proceeded from one another, and all 
from Osiris. In the Semitic cosmogonies outside 
Israel, the idea of a Creator dimly glimmers, but it 
never stands out bold and distinct, never extricates 
itself wholly from the forces of nature. Or, if among 
the common ancestors of the Semitic nations, it did 
once so exist, it had become lost like a river in 
the sands of the desert, till in the mud no one 
could tell which was river and which sand. In the 
Assyrian cosmogony, the reflection of this idea 
seems to be more of an after-glow than the morning 
dawn. The idea of a God self-existent, uncreated, 
finds no home in it ; the gods of Nineveh and 
Babylon were creatures, having a beginning, de- 
pendent on others for their existence. 

Neither in the Greek religion, poetry, or philo- 
sophy is the idea anywhere to be found of a God 
uncaused, uncreated, self-existent, without beginning 
or end. " The ancient Greek gods were not 
creators, were all created, had a beginning, were 
to have an end, stood within the order of nature, 
lived under the shadow of fate. Hesiod tells us 
that it was from the union of the ' broad-bosomed 
earth ' and the ' starry ouranos ' that the gods 
sprang. One of the Homeric hymns makes earth 
the spouse of the starlit heaven, the mother of gods. 
Pindar made gods and men of one race, sons of 
one mother. This ancient belief lived long and 
died slowly." ^ This is illustrated by that precocious 
child Epicurus inquisitively pressing the question. 
Who made Chaos? Not who made the gods, but 
who made Chaos, the maker of the gods ? From the 
* Fairbairn, C/Zy q/ God, p. 49. 



THE CREATOR AND THE CREATION 55 

Standpoint of the Greek religion no embarrassment 
was felt in answering who made the gods; the 
difficulty was who made the maker of the gods, who 
made Chaos? No Greek sage could answer. Living 
many centuries after Moses, these brilliant, daring 
thinkers of Greece, in their conception of the Deity, 
lag immeasurably behind the Hebrew legislator. 
Whereas they formulated perplexing and unprofit- 
able questions concerning the pedigrees of the 
gods, Moses, brushing all these cobwebs aside, steps 
into the sunlight, and in tones unmistakable says : 
" In the beginning God — God uncaused, uncreated, 
underived, God who is the Eternal, God created the 
heavens and the earth." In all heathen theologies 
matter is self-existent, and the gods are dependent, 
created ; in the Mosaic theology all this is reversed 
— God is self-existent, matter created and dependent. 
Who made Chaos? Put the question to Plato, 
the prince of uninspired thinkers, and he can offer 
no satisfactory solution. Address the question to 
Moses, and his answer is prompt, decisive, unfalter- 
ing : " In the beginning God created the heavens 
and the earth. And the earth was without form and 
void." He speaks from beside God, as an organon 
of God, as one having authority, and not as the 
rhetoricians and philosophers, nor even as modern 
scientists. How to account for this difference be- 
tween Moses and Plato ? How came Moses to think 
these high thoughts, to see clearly where the ablest 
thinkers of antiquity perceived nothing but dense 
darkness ? How came he to solve with apparent 
ease problems which they had not even the skill 
to propound ? To me there is but one answer 



6 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 



which covers the whole ground — that God was speak- 
ing through His servant Moses or through his an- 
cestors who transmitted to the after-time this high 
conception of God. Deny Divine inspiration to 
Moses, and he becomes forthwith one of the greatest 
enigmas of history. Refuse him Divine revelation, 
and how to account for the first verse of Genesis? 
how to account for the marvellous solution of the 
problem of the origin of all things — a problem so 
complicated that all the learning of Greece had not 
the skill to state it properly, much less to solve 
it rightly? Fichte says that this first verse contains 
more true wisdom than all the folios of ancient 
philosophy. Andrew Fuller declares that a child 
can learn in five minutes in this verse more than 
all the ancient sages ever knew. How to account 
for it? The supernatural cannot be suppressed. 

ni. A devout study of the chapter further dis- 
covers in it that God is not a physical unity, but 
a mysterious Personality, both one and many. The 
notion of unity obviously predominates, for this is 
the impression the perusal of it has always left 
on men's minds. It is the one fountain whence all 
the monotheistic religions flow. The story of the 
Creation deals a fatal blow to Polytheism. And, 
in the mind of the writer, one object doubtless was 
to undermine the colossal idolatry which was every- 
where weakening the religious affinities of the race 
and sapping the ethical foundations of society. But 
alongside of this dogma of the strict arithmetic.il 
Unity of God are discernible vague hints of a 
Plurality — not plurality of persons yet, nor of hypos- 
tases, but a veritable plurality nevertheless, the initial 



THE CREATOR AND THE CREATION 57 

Stage in the preparation of the mind for the fully 
developed doctrine of the Trinity contained in the 
New Testament. 

These fugitive fore-gleams of the doctrine of the 
Trinity are thickly scattered through the story. 
The first is seen in the first verse, " In the beginning 
God [Elohim, plural] created the heavens and the 
earth," where a plural nominative is joined to a 
singular verb. How to explain this unfamiliar 
syntactical construction? Futile is the answer that 
it is the usage of language; we want to know the 
reason for the usage. Moses, who made himself bold 
as seeing Him who is invisible, possessed in his 
thinking originality and independence enough to 
depart from the common usages of speech, if adher- 
ence thereto compromised the truth. The other 
answer, that the plural form is a relic of primeval 
Polytheism, may be right or wrong ; but that Moses 
introduced a polytheistic thought into the first 
sentence in his book, written to counteract idolatry, 
cannot be entertained. The unexpected conjunction, 
in a book intended to teach Monotheism, of a plural 
noun with a singular verb obscurely intimates a 
Plurality within the Unity, the kind of plurality, 
whether of powers or of persons, being left to future 
disclosures. 

Again, at the close of the chapter, is unexpectedly 
introduced another mysterious Plural: "And God 
said, Let Us make man in OUR image, after OUR 
likeness." Who are included in this wonderful 
"Us"? The view frequendy adopted that God 
and the angels are intended— the view advocated 
by Dclitzsch — is discounted by three considerations. 



58 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

First, no mention is yet made of the angels ; second, 
the angels are not said to have co-operated with God 
in the formation of man ; third, man is not said 
to have been created in the image of the angels, but 
in the image of God. Indeed, the question might 
legitimately be raised whether the angels, who are 
mere units, without family bonds, were formed in the 
image of the Triune One. Better and profounder 
is the contention of that learned Jew of the Middle 
Ages, Moses Maimonides, that by the " Us " here 
are to be understood God on the one hand and 
Nature on the other. In the production of the 
beasts of the field, the fowls of the air, and the fishes 
of the sea, God did not exercise His direct creative 
fiat, saying, " Let the creatures be," and the creatures 
were. But " God said. Let the waters bring forth 
abundantly the moving creature that hath life." 
" And God said. Let the earth bring forth the living 
creature after his kind." God does not produce them 
independently of Nature, nor Nature independently 
of God, but God works in and through Nature. 
Similarly, in the creation of man, God takes Nature 
into partnership. As in the production of the earlier 
animals He addressed Nature, so in the creation of 
man He continues to speak to Nature, saying, " Let 
us, Mc and thee, make man in our image, after our 
likeness ; thou shalt weave his body after the pattern 
already stamped on the animal world, and I will 
make his soul, his spirit, in the likeness of My own 
being and attributes. I will meet with thee there, 
in man." That, paraphrased and expanded, is the 
profound view of the Jewish commentator — a view 
which in its vast scope makes ample room for the 



THE CREATOR AND THE CREATION 59 

modern science of evolution ; and were I constrained 
to choose between the views of these two learned 
Jews — one among the most learned men of the 
Middle Ages, the other among the most learned of 
the present century — I would not hesitate in showing 
my preference for the theory of Maimonides, as more 
consonant with true exegesis. 

But a third view is possible — that here we should 
understand a Plural of Majesty. Much, of course, 
depends upon the signification we attach to the term. 
That God should condescend to observe the etiquette 
of Oriental courts, or speak in the self-magnifying 
style of earthly potentates, is inconceivable. God is 
never afraid of saying " I " ; that is His usual style 
throughout the Old Testament. But if we under- 
stand by it a real plural, based on fact and not on 
self-aggrandisement, to the adoption of this term into 
the already large household of theology there can be 
no objection. Manifestly the meaning is that God 
is not a bare, bald, physical. Almighty Atom, but an 
Ethical Unity, and an ethical unity implies ethical 
relations, for without relations ethics are impossible. 
Man is not yet created ; where then are the ethical 
relations? Obviously in the interior essence of the 
Being who speaks. In the Mosaic conception, God 
is not a physical but a Social Unit, for He speaks to 
others ; He is in social relations within Himself from 
eternity, and is therefore capable of entering into 
social relations external to Himself in time. That 
Moses or his early readers indulged in this meta- 
physical strain of reasoning is not for a moment 
intended ; but unmistakably the language conveys 
the idea that God is a Social Unit, that somehow 



60 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

Plurality belongs to His interior nature, without 
thereby destroying the simplicity of His Essence. 

Between these two extremities of the Creation 
epic are inserted other kindred suggestions, sufficient 
to set the imagination working without satisfying 
the reason : " The earth was without form and void ; 
and darkness was upon the face of the deep ; and 
the Spirit of God \Riiach EloJiin{\ was moving — 
brooding — on the face of the waters." What is this 
Spirit of God ? The Jewish rabbis understood it to 
be a mighty wind, the wind of God, which is also 
Professor Cheyne's interpretation. That the Hebrew 
word, like its Greek equivalent, primarily signifies 
wind or air is, of course, well known ; but the verb 
" brood " has reference to some wind which has life. 
Physical wind docs not " brood." The verb, there- 
fore, helps the noun over from its physical significa- 
tion to its spiritual equivalent. On the other hand, 
that Moses and his contemporaries conceived of 
the Spirit of God as a distinct hypostasis in the 
Divine Essence is to precipitate the historical 
development of the doctrine of the Trinity. And 
yet, on the face of it, the language signifies more 
than physical air in motion. An influence, emana- 
ting from God, for which the writer could find no 
apter title than Spirit, blew like a warm south wind 
on the recently created chaotic mass, and this Breath 
of God vitalised the dead matter, and gradually 
from the fermenting chaos evolved the present 
cosmos. Never again is the Spirit of God allowed 
in the Bible to drop out of sight. By degrees it 
assumes greater definiteness ; and by the time the 
New Testament is reached, it is no longer " It," but 



THE CREATOR AND THE CREATION 6 1 

"He." The Divine Influence has reached the dignity 
of a Divine Personality. 

Our attention is further arrested by the phrase, 
seven times repeated, " And God said." He created, 
not by a bare act of voHtion, as one might before- 
hand have expected, but by His Word. The Divine 
Will finds expression in a Divine Word, and by 
this Word all things, from their first inception on 
the Creation morn to their full completion on the 
evening of the sixth day, were created. In sub- 
sequent Scriptures frequent references are made to 
this Word of the Creation chapter ; and the uniform 
teaching is that God created, not by a bare act of 
will, but by the Utterance of His mouth. Further 
on this creative Word or Fiat finds its personification 
in the Wisdom of Proverbs. When we arrive at 
the New Testament, the poetic personification is 
superseded by a Divine Personality. The Word 
of Moses grew into the Wisdom of Solomon, and 
the Wisdom of Solomon into the Logos of St. John : 
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word 
was with God, and God was the Word. This was 
in the beginning with God. By Him was every- 
thing made, and without Him was nothing made 
that was made." 

In the tiny seed held on the palm of your hand, 
which the gentlest breeze can blow away, however 
much magnified by microscopic lens, you cannot 
perceive the summer rose. And yet, when the 
rose is exhibited before your wondering eyes, in 
all the wealth of its colour and the exquisiteness 
of its fragrance, you are obliged to believe that the 
rose was potentially in the seedling — roots, stem. 



62 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

petals, colour, aroma, and all. Thus reading the 
Creation account in the front page of the Bible, 
none could foretell, however minute the analysis, 
into what this mysterious Word would develop. But 
seeing the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the 
Valleys display their incomparable loveliness in 
the Gospels, we follow back the stalk through 
the Old Testament, till at last we discover the first 
germ in the first chapter of Genesis. In the doctrine 
of Creation is rooted deeply the doctrine of the 
Incarnation ; in the Creation story the doctrine of 
the Trinity finds its first adumbration. What 
marvellous correspondences between the beginning 
of the Bible and the end ! What wonderful har- 
monies fill the contemplative soul with gratitude 
and praise ! 

IV. Seeing that God is self-existent, and therefore 
eternal and self-sufficient, having, within the circle 
of His own nature, the fellowship requisite for 
blessedness, why did He create at all ? Luther's 
remark that before creation " He was in a birch 
plantation cutting rods," wherewith to punish people 
who ask impertinent questions, has not deterred 
theologians from propounding the query and pressing 
for an answer. Moses' reply is plain — He created 
because He willed. God's freedom to create or not 
stands out conspicuously in Old Testament theology. 
Invariably the Creation is traced up to its fountain 
head in the Divine Sovereignty. The Hebrew 
doctrine is that God of His good pleasure, in absolute 
freedom of will, chose to create, when He might 
have withheld His energising fiat, without either 
damaging His Godhead or diminishing His beatitude. 



THE CREATOR AND THE CREATION 63 

No external pressure, no outside necessity, no dark 
fate constrained Him to exert His omnipotence to 
people immensity with worlds. He was God blessed 
for ever. This is a Biblical truth, and should never 
be forgotten or ignored. It occupies a prominent 
place in Calvinism, which always, and with propriety, 
lays due emphasis on the Divine Sovereignty in 
creation and redemption, sometimes, — to its own 
detriment, an exclusive emphasis. Further than this 
the Mosaic theology does not go. 

However, when the question is examined in the 
reflex light of the New Testament, a complementary 
truth forces itself on the mind — namely, that behind 
the Sovereign Will lies the Divine Nature, whose 
ethical essence is love ; and love cannot deny itself 
or hide its light under a bushel — love must impart. 
This is the bonitas comviunicativa of the older theo- 
logians. Being essential love, God could not but 
communicate of His fulness. The nature, especially 
in an all-perfect Being, determines the will. The 
Divine impulse, if one may so speak, moved the 
Divine will to create. A Divine necessity lay at 
the root of creation — not a physical, but a moral 
necessity ; and moral necessity is the consummation 
of freedom. Let us not be frightened by a word. 
The idea of necessity is familiar to us as applied to 
God within the sphere of redemption—necessity lay 
upon God to punish sin, to lay the penalty of our 
transgression on the great Substitute. But this 
necessity did not cancel His liberty, making Him 
a prisoner to His own nature. The same principle 
holds good in the sphere of creation. Moral necessity 
is absolute, unconditioned liberty. Even we, in our 



64 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

limited capacity, will never understand *' the perfect 
law of liberty," till we experience our Christian 
impulses, our new nature, constraining us, with over- 
powering force, to the prompt and cheerful pursuit 
of all Christian service. 

" Nothing has given to Pantheism," writes Franz 
Hoffman, "a greater appearance of reasonableness, 
and consequently of truth, than the idea that every 
theistic theory proceeds necessarily upon the sup- 
position of a certain contingency of creation, and 
that the affirmation. Creation is a free act of God, 
is identical with the affirmation. It is a contingent or 
accidental act of God. But whosoever attributes 
contingency to God subjects Him, only in a manner 
exactly the opposite of the pantheistic, to blind fate." 
Perfect love is perfect freedom ; and the decree to 
create is the combined result of the union of these 
two high attributes of the Divine Being. " Thou art 
worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and 
power ; for Thou hast created all things, and for Thy 
pleasure they are and were created" (Rev. iv. ii). 

V. Inasmuch as a moral necessity lay on God to 
create, many distinguished theologians — Origen in 
ancient times and Delitzsch in our age — have main- 
tained that the act of creation is eternal, and 
that therefore the universe is strictly without a 
beginning. But they seem to overlook the counter- 
balance of truths, thereby driving the Divine neces- 
sity of creation into the suppression of the Divine 
sovereignty. The Bible, however, holds the one truth 
over against the other, thereby securing the due 
" proportion of the faith." But even were the 
doctrine of Eternal Creation true, as taught by 



THE CREATOR AND THE CREATION 65 

Origen and Dclitzsch, it should be carefully distin- 
guished from the materialistic dogma of the self- 
existence of the Creation as taught by some modern 
scientists. The former is theistic, distinguishing 
between eternal existence and self-existence, there- 
by making matter and its laws dependent upon God. 
The latter is atheistic, making matter eternal because 
self-existent, and therefore in complete indepen- 
dence of a Supreme Being. How remarkable that 
the writer of Genesis should steer clear of these 
quagmires! "In the beginning God created the 
heavens and the earth." 

According to Moses, God, at some definite moment 
in the remote past, came out of His solitude and 
broke on the silence of the eternal ages by uttering 
His creative word. The Hebrew poet describes Him 
as " setting a compass on the face of the deep," marking 
out in empty space the orbits of the stars. Borrowing 
this metaphor from the inspired bard, Milton repre- 
sents this initial act of creation with a majesty and 
dignity which only writers of the stateliest order 
can command : 

Then stayed the fervid wheels, and in His hand 
He took the golden compasses, prepared 
In God's eternal store, to circumscribe 
This universe, and all created things. 
One foot He centred, and the other turned 
Round through the vast profundity obscure, 
And said, Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds, 
This be thy just circumference, O world ! ^ 

By this act of creation, by which He imposed 
His own will on the universe, God is represented 

^ Paradise Lost, Book VII. 

5 



66 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

as transcending all the works of His hands — He 
independent of them, they not independent of Him. 
Yet this distinctness of the Creator from the creation 
must not be interpreted into separateness. The 
Word is followed by the Spirit, who 

Dovelike sat brooding on the vast abyss. 

The transcendence of God and the immanence of 
God — these be the two contrary, not contradictory, 
truths, which in their point of union uphold Hebrew 
theology, natural and revealed. 



CHAPTER II 

CREATION AND GEOLOGY 

THE first chapter of Genesis gives an account 
of the creation of the world ; but evidently 
the account cannot be history in the usual accep- 
tation of the word. For what is history ? The 
written or traditional testimony of men to a group 
of occurrences or a succession of events, of which 
they have either direct or indirect cognisance. 
Obviously, therefore, a human history is not possible, 
for men were not present to witness the beginning. 
In the beginning God alone was ; He was the sole 
spectator of the initial act of creation. Conse- 
quently this Creation story cannot rank as history 
alongside the memoirs of Napoleon or the annals 
of Tacitus. 

But clearly a natural history of the world is 
possible, as the result of the close study of the 
Creation itself, a patient research into the footprints 
and handprints of the Creator. This is Nature's 
autobiography, which it is the aim of scientific men 
to read in the rocks and transcribe into the 
printed page. Slowly they turn over Nature's 
ponderous leaves, and endeavour to read thereon 
their past history. 

Two things, however, should be always borne in 
67 



68 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

mind. First, that hitherto scientists have only 
turned over a few leaves of Nature's book ; and 
therefore the history of Creation already written 
by them is not complete. Second, that the leaves 
which they have turned over are much blurred, so 
that their decipherment is not always trustworthy. 
Every year they are obliged to modify their 
versions of what Nature really teaches concerning 
herself. This seems necessary to be said, because 
of the obvious proneness of specialists, who strenu- 
ously deny the infallibility of the Bible, to transfer 
that infallibility to their science. Whatever Science 
is, she is neither complete nor inerrant, she has 
neither read the whole of the book of Nature, nor 
has she always rightly construed the pages she 
has examined. No phenomenon is more common 
than for one generation of scientific men to amend 
the theories of their predecessors. 
\ The writer of Genesis, however, was not a man 
of science, and did not profess to write a scientific 
history. How then to account for this Creation 
story? That it is the mere product of a lively 
imagination, however pious and reverent, makes too 
great a demand on our credulity. Other nations 
furnish us with cosmogonies in abundance, but in 
them there is clear evidence of their human source. 
The imperfections and ignorance of the inventors 
are clearly stamped on their inventions, which teem 
with puerilities, absurdities, and are everywhere 
touched with the marks of our infirmities. But the 
cosmology of Genesis is in its conception religious, 
in its description sublime, and, if the testimony of 
able, learned geologists like Professors Dawson, Dana, 



CREATION AND GEOLOGY 69 

and Guyot is to be believed, harmonious to a 
wonderful extent, not indeed with the rash con- 
jectures, but with the established facts, of modern 
science. To me, therefore, there is but one theory 
possible : that the first author, be he who he may, 
received Divine illumination, that the Spirit of God^ 
which moved over the chaos of creation, brooded 
over the confusion of his mind, and evolved this 
chapter— a standing miracle in literature, the fierce 
assaults of infidel criticism notwithstanding. 

The supposition of Kurtz, popularised in this 
country in the picturesque pages of Hugh Miller, 
'that God vouchsafed to Moses a series of six 
visions, in which he saw as in a grand panorama 
the successive stages of the creative work, has been 
rendered untenable by the discovery of the Assyrian 
tablets, now in the British Museum. Reading the 
Mosaic version and the Chalda^an version, "from 
before the days of Abraham, we are at once struck 
with the vast superiority of the Mosaic, in its total 
exemption from all superstitious overgrowth ; but 
more striking than the differences are the resem- 
blances. The conviction is carried home to the 
mind that the one is borrowed from the other, or 
rather that the two flow from one common fountain. 
Where can that common source be found except 
in the family of Noah ? and where could Noah have 
obtained the information except from the doctrine 
of Creation as held by the antediluvian Church? 
Thus we are shut in to a belief in a primeval reve- 
lation granted to the first ancestors of the race, of 
which Moses is only the transcriber. 

That Moses had not in view to teach geology 



•JO PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

has been already conceded. No one, reading his 
account, would come away from it having any 
conception of the recent discoveries of geologic 
science. But it is one thing to write to teach science, 
another quite to write so as not to contradict 
science. It is a healthy instinct of the mind 
to expect, if not to demand, that revealed truth 
should not contradict natural truth ; and this is 
all that is here claimed for Moses. The harmony 
is negative, not positive. Something like super- 
natural tact was required to mould the expressions 
in such manner that the Mosaic account would be 
accepted in every stage of scientific development. 
The account is in agreement with all stages, in 
contradiction to none. 

" Had Moses written under the guidance of his 
own independent judgment — had he embodied 
merely the vague and puerile traditions of the early 
ages, or put on record his own speculative views 
and conjectures in natural philosophy — it is next to 
impossible that he could have framed a narrative 
containing descriptions so just, and expressed in 
terms so appropriate, as would not jar with subse- 
quent discoveries made in the material world. The 
narrative of Moses would have shared the fate of 
all the ancient cosmogonies delineated by heathen 
writers as exhibiting the traditions of their respective 
nations, and which are altogether exploded as — 
however suited to the simple character and limited 
capacity of an early, a dark, and credulous age — 
inconsistent with justcr and more enlightened views 
of the mundane system. But, on the contrary, it 
still retains a deep and immovable hold on the 



CREATION AND GEOLOGY ^I 

rational belief of the majority of men in the most 
civilised countries of the world ; and the reason 
is, that Moses, writing under the influence of Divine 
inspiration, seems to have been led, perhaps uncon- 
sciously to himself, to employ language which 
contains a latent expansive meaning, the full import 
of which time only can evolve, and which, when 
rightly interpreted, would be capable of adjustment 
with all the researches and discoveries which the 
progress of scientific light might shed on the works 
of God in all future time."^ 

Thus this first chapter is written with wonderful 
breadth. Whilst it is definite, exact, precise in its 
religious teaching, the great object in view, its 
phraseology on its material side is characterised 
by vagueness, elasticity, and is capable of accommo- 
dation to every stage of scientific knowledge. So 
far from being a drawback, this constitutes its 
distinctive glory : precision, definiteness in its teaching 
concerning God, elasticity and expansiveness in its 
references to natural phenomena. It neither ante- 
dates by premature disclosures the discoveries of 
science, nor, on the other hand, does it, like all 
heathen cosmogonies, contradict these discoveries 
when made. Those, be they believers or sceptics, 
who demand that the Bible, if a Divine revelation, 
should positively harmonise with science hardly 
know what they ask. Harmonise with science ! 
With what science ? The science of the nineteenth 
century or the science of the tenth or the science 
of the first ? If it accorded with either of these, 
it would conflict with the others. It will be soon 
^ Dr. Jamieson, Com., vol. i., p. 48. 



72 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

enough to insist on absolute reconciliation, when 
we learn what true science really teaches. In 
another hundred years, savants, yea, the common 
people, will smile at the crudities and mistakes of 
Tyndall and Huxley's science. The remark has 
much point that it is easier to reconcile Genesis 
with geology than to reconcile the last edition of 
Lyell's Geology with the first — the discrepancies and 
contradictions are fewer. 

I. To understand the drift of this Creation story, 
we ought to try to catch the writer's spirit. The 
account is manifestly written in the pictorial, poetic 
mode, the grand prophetic style, with ever-receding, 
ever-widening horizons ; and the preliminary duty 
of a faithful interpreter is to drink in the spirit of 
the document, to partake to as large a degree as 
possible of the enthusiasm of the author. Read this 
chapter audibly in your chamber, that your ear may 
catch its stately rhythm ; read it devoutly in a 
wondering mood, and you will instantly feel that all 
quibbles are here out of place, such as the controversy 
concerning the length of the Creation " days," — 
whether they signify twenty-four hours on the 
kitchen clock, or twenty-four million years on the 
great dial of the universe. In the presence of 
the rhythmic movement of the Creation work, such 
inquiries remind us of the man who, on the top of 
Snowdon, when the sun was rising like a ball of fire, 
round and large and red, broke on the awe-inspiring 
silence by asking in a tone of frivolity, Who won 
the Derby yesterday ? That Moses thought of the 
measurement of time is incredible. If you subjected 
him to cross-examination, and demanded of him 



CREATION AND GEOLOGY 73 

greater precision in his definition, he would probably 
have stared you vacantly in the face till you would 
blush crimson, because of the utter incongruity of the 
inquiry. The descent, the anti-climax, is ludicrous. 

Never require of a poet to define his meaning — 
he cannot attempt it without abdicating his high 
vocation. In my student days, fired with the ambi- 
tion of writing poetry, T published a poem. A 
carping critic, reviewing the work in a newspaper, 
quoted certain lines, and inquired contemptuously 
what could the meaning be. Sensitive as most 
young authors are, especially if the hot Celtic blood 
courses swiftly in their veins, I ventured on a reply 
and attempted a definition. When I beheld my 
poetry reduced to prose, tame though stately, and 
printed in small type, the conviction was carried 
home instantaneously to my mind that I had lost 
all my beautiful plumage — if ever I had any. The 
gloss, the colour, the glow were all gone, and the 
winged poet, who had hoped to carol at the portals 
of the morn, was a poor barndoor chanticleer crow- 
ing on the gate-bar. The heavenliest poet Wales 
produced this century told me he much liked the 
poem, and was specially captivated by the passage 
in question, all the more because of its mystic vague- 
ness ; but that the explanation I had ventured to 
offer did not improve it — a judgment all the more 
humiliating because of my prior consciousness of 
its truth. 

An exact, scientific exposition of an inspired poem 
is an absurdity. The spirit of criticism and the spirit 
of poetry or prophecy are the two contrary currents 
in the world of mind, the centripetal and centrifugal 



74 fRIMEVAL REVELATION 

forces— one binding to the centre, the other struggling 
to escape therefrom and break the chains of sense. 
You cannot understand the one by confronting it 
with the other. Criticism is the centre-seeking, 
poetry the centre-fleeing force, both doubtless 
necessary to keep the world in equipoise. The 
spirit of poetry seeks the vast, the boundless, the 
immeasurable ; it endeavours, so far as in it lies, to 
transcend the bounds of time and space. Read this 
chapter with the poet's eye and fire, and it will be 
true every jot and tittle. Not true in the material, 
scientific sense, cribbed, cabined, and confined in a 
fine-wrought iron cage ; but true in the large, 
expanding, ever-growing spiritual vision — as all true 
poetry is — truer far than even the poet himself 
knew, truer than science will ever perceive. 

Thoughts beyond their thoughts 
To those old bards were given. 

Never ask a poet for an interpretation of his dream. 
Never demand of a prophet an exposition of his 
prophecy, — be it prophecy with its face turned 
toward the past, as in the present instance, or with 
its face turned toward the future, as in the apoca- 
lyptic visions of St. John. " The prophets inquired 
and searched diligently, searching what or what 
manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in 
them did signify" (i Pet. i. lO, ii). They did 
not completely understand their own writings, did 
not fully comprehend their own thoughts. That 
tlic truths to which they gave utterance did not 
originate with them, that they were only the media 
of their transmission from a mysterious source 



CREATION AND GEOLOGY 75 

above and behind them, their consciousness clearly 
testified. 

This consciousness is universal among all imagi- 
native writers. Accordingly the great poets invoke 
the inspiration of the Muse. With the poetasters 
of the day this invocation is an empty form, with 
no heartfelt earnestness in it. With the poets of 
the first magnitude, however, it was far otherwise ; 
they felt the rush and swell of the tide of inspiration 
within them, the tide which betokened the shoreless 
ocean of living, self-moving truth. Whenever they 
allotted themselves a mighty task, they prayerfully 
besought the tide to return, they invoked the up- 
lifting influence of the celestial Muse. What is true 
of the ethnic poet is trebly true of the Hebrew 
prophet. This first chapter of Genesis, till we 
approach it with prophetic eye and fire, will baffle 
all attempts at a satisfactory interpretation. 

It begins at an infinite height : " In the beginning 
God created the heavens and the earth. And the 
earth was without form and void; and darkness 
was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit 
of God moved on the face of the waters." Do you 
not feel yourselves carried far beyond the boundaries 
of sense and science ? " And the earth was without 
form and void " — to Jul vabohu ; the weird assonance 
fills the heart with dread and terror. "And God 
said. Let there be light ; and there was light." 
Writers on oratory, from Longinus down, quote 
this as a specimen of the sublime in composition, 
the standard by which to judge other passages laying 
claim to this rare distinction. The Divine Word 
breaks on the eternal silence, and booms on, on, 



"J^ PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

on, through the boundless expanse of the infinite 
void. " And God called the light Day, and the 
darkness He called Night." How long was that 
night of darkness which hovered over the waters? 
How long the day which followed? Here Dr. 
Marcus Dods breaks in : " If the word ' day' in this 
chapter does not mean a period of twenty-four 
hours, the interpretation of Scripture is hopeless." ^ 
What a jarring discordant note is this, in the midst 
of the rich music of the Creation movement ! All 
this loftiness of thought and magnificence of style, 
after all, mean — twenty-four hours on the kitchen 
clock ! But even on Dr. Dods' own principle of 
interpretation, how can it be twenty-four hours, 
seeing the light only is called Day, whereas the 
darkness is called Night ? He should divide day 
and night equally, and make them exactly twelve 
hours each. But, according to Moses, the night was 
without a beginning, enveloping in its dark shroud, 
as was becoming, the confused, weltering, primordial 
chaos ; and the day was before the sun either rose 
or set. Consequently it could not signify a solar 
day, but a day of the Lord which He Himself had 
named, or, in the language of the great Augustine, 
a God-divided, not a man-divided, day. 

Attempt not to measure it, else you reduce the 
Creator into the dimensions of a maker of chrono- 
meters. " These are the generations of the earth 
and the heavens in the day that the Lord God made 
the earth and the heavens" (Gen. ii. 4). Does "day" 
here mean twenty-four hours ? Even on Dr. Dods' 
own method of interpretation it plainly includes six 
' Genesis (Expositor's Series), p. 4. 



CREATION AND GEOLOGY 



77 



times twenty-four hours. Indisputably the term 
" day " is used frequently— not less than one hundred 
times— by Bible writers in a vague, indefinite sense, 
synonymous with period, contracting and expanding 
according to the exigencies of the occasion. Can the 
Higher Critics or their followers suggest a more ap- 
propriate Hebrew term for period ? I am told they 
cannot It is not by taking language in a large 
pictorial sense, affording room for the imagination 
to flap therein its big, extended wings, and sail away 
from the finite to the infinite, that the " interpretation 
of Scripture is made hopeless," but by insisting on 
measuring its dimensions with an inch tape and 
making it fit the carpenter's rule. 

The best method of ascertaining the signification 
of the term in this passage is to ask what impression 
it left on the minds of its Hebrew readers. Not 
how German and English students understand the 
chapter, for these are divided into contentious bands ; 
but how did the Hebrew saints and seers themselves 
understand it ? The Bible is its own best interpreter. 
This Creation story was the staple of the literature 
of the ancient sages. Psalms and prophecies without 
number prove that it was widely read and much 
studied ; echoes of it continually resound throughout 
the Old Testament. Is there a single verse which 
indicates or suggests the idea of twenty-four hours ? 
Is not the drift of thought uniformly, without ex- 
ception, towards long reaches of time? What did 
Moses himself understand by it ? Were he catechised 
in his cold, critical, unemotional moods, he would 
probably have been embarrassed to give an answer ; 
his slowness of speech would have suddenly returned ; 



78 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

possibly he might momentarily acquiesce in Dr. 
Dods' twenty-four hours on the kitchen clock. But 
the mood in which he wrote is also the mood in 
which he could interpret — the high, poetic, prophetic, 
inspirational mood ; and happily Moses wrote 
another short poem, which directly reflects light on 
the Creation epic. 

Read the ninetieth Psalm, " A prayer of Moses, 
the man of God." That the authorship of this Psalm 
is contested, I of course know ; but men of com- 
petent scholarship pronounce in favour of its Mosaic 
authorship. But be the author who he may, it is 
clearly an echo of the Creation story, and therefore 
illustrates the Mosaic meaning. " Lord, Thou hast 
been our dwelling-place in all generations " — genera- 
tions, ages, periods, olains, the great time-word of 
the Old Testament. Occasionally, by the inter- 
preters, it is lifted from its temporal relations to 
signify eternity. " Before the mountains were 
brought forth, or ever Thou hadst formed the earth 
and the world " — do you not discern here the clear 
echoes of the Creation poem ? do you not feel that 
you are moving on the high altitude of the Creation 
chapter? — "even from everlasting to everlasting. 
Thou art, O God." "Everlasting": again the great 
word " olaviy " From olam to olam, from period 
to period, from age to age. Thou art, O God." 
Do you hear there the tick of the clock ? Does 
the pendulum swing within a mahogany case ? 
From olam to olam, from age to age, from ever- 
lasting to everlasting, — what an immeasurable swing 
the pendulum takes ! What cso7i is in the Greek 
is olam in the Hebrew. " For a thousand years in 



CREATION AND GEOLOGY 79 

Thy sight arc but as yesterday when it is past." 
St. Peter's exposition of this cannot be improved : 
" Be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day 
is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thou- 
sand years as one day." " Our days are passed 
away in Thy wrath ; we spend our years as a 
tale that is told. The days of our years are three- 
score years and ten," How brief our existence, 
how fragile our life ! " But Thou, O God, art — from 
olam to olam, from measureless age to measureless 
age." No ; Moses did not mean twenty-four hours. 
His imagination stretches out and away after 
limitless time. 

How did other Scriptural writers understand this 
epic ? What impressions did it make on their minds ? 
Fortunately we have their interpretation also — not 
prosaic, technical, scientific, but poetic, imaginative, 
glowing with religious emotion. Poets best under- 
stand poets. Take Prov. viii. 22-31 — a passage 
evidently based on the Creation chapter. We are 
so accustomed to it that our sense of its marvellous 
power is somewhat blunted ; the following paraphrase 
will not, therefore, be unacceptable : " The Lord pos- 
sessed me from the antiquities of the earth," — as 
though that, instead of being three thousand years 
old and one week over, were the remotest conception 
to which the human mind could reach. " I was with 
Him yom, yom— day, day, day after day — even with 
the Ancient of Days, before each of His works of 
old." Do you hear there the Bells of Aberdovey ^ — 
one, two, three ? " Before the tehom, before the 
springing of the fountains, before the mountains were 
^ A popular Welsh air. 



8o PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

settled, before the hills arose, before the primeval 
dust of the world, when He was preparing the 
heavens, when He was setting a compass on the 
face of the deep, when He made the rakia, or estab- 
lished the clouds to stand above, when He made 
strong the fountains of the deep, and put His law 
upon the sea : during all this time I was there, yom, 
yom — day, day ; I was the architect, rejoicing always 
before Him." ' 

Let us again turn to Job xxxviii. The poet has 
evidently studied the Mosaic story of Creation ; and 
his imagination catching fire, he paraphrases it in 
lano'uao-e which fills us with awe and wonderment : 

o o 

" Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words 
without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins like 
a man : for I will demand of thee, and answer thou 
me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations 
of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. 
Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest ? 
or who hath stretched the line upon it ? Whereupon 
are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid 
the corner thereof; when the morning stars sang 
together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? 
or who shut up the sea with doors, when it broke 
forth, as if it had issued out of the womb ? " etc. 
Can you read this sublime passage, and then ask, 
How long was God making all that, a week ? 
" There are here no narrow computations, no petty 
fancies." From Genesis to Malachi there is not 
a single verse which teaches or suggests that the 
Mosaic " day " was only twenty-four hours duration ; 

' Professor Tayler Lewis in Lange' s Com. (American 
Edition), p. 137. 



CREATION AND GEOLOGY 8 1 

the invariable tendency is to stretch it out to its 
utmost possibiUties, and then fill it to the brim with 
Divine wonders. The way wherein Hebrew saints 
and prophets understood the chapter, and not the 
view which modern commentators chance to take, 
determines the general drift and signification of this 
memorable story. 

II. From the time or duration of the Creation 
let us proceed to pass in rapid review the orderly 
arrangement of the work here delineated. 

According to Moses, during the first three days 
or periods, primordial matter, produced by the 
creative fiat, was differentiated into light and dark- 
ness, dry land and sea, the water above and the 
water below, that is, the water which rises and the 
water which falls. Then, during the three succeeding 
days or periods, first the inorganic world is duly 
arranged and prepared to be a fit abode for living 
creatures. Then is introduced the vegetable king- 
dom, for in the soil and the air food is already 
provided for its sustenance. Then follow birds of 
the air and fishes of the sea to disport in their 
respective elements. Thereafter the nobler animals, 
especially the mammalia, make their appearance, 
for in the luxuriant vegetation already prevalent 
ample provision is made for their comfort and sub- 
sistence. Last of all, when the earth is completely 
furnished, and all the environments properly adapted, 
man steps on the scene, a summary of all the pre- 
ceding works, and the sovereign lord of nature. Is 
not this also, in general outline, the order promulgated 
by geological science? 

However, on a question of this sort, it is better 

6 



82 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

to let scientists themselves speak. Dr. Romanes 
writes that " the order in which the flora and fauna 
are said by the Mosaic account to have appeared 
upon the earth corresponds with that which the 
theory of evolution requires and the evidence of 
geology proves." ^ Professor Haeckel, the most 
materialistic of all the evolutionists, in his history 
of creation, makes a similar admission. " Two great 
and fundamental ideas," he says, " common also to 
the non-miraculous theory of development, meet us 
in the Mosaic history of creation, with surprising 
clearness and simplicity, in the idea of separation 
or differentiation, and the idea of progressive develop- 
ment or perfecting. Although Moses looks on the 
results of the great laws of organic development, 
which we shall later point out as the necessary 
conclusion of the doctrine of Descent, as the direct 
action of a constructive Creator, yet in his theory 
there lies hidden the ruling idea of a progressive 
development and a differentiation of the originally 
simple matter. We can, therefore, bestow our just 
and sincere admiration on the Jewish lawgiver's 
grand insight into nature, and his simple and natural 
hypothesis of creation, without discovering in it a 
so-called Divine revelation." ^ To the same purport 
is the testimony of Sir William Dawson, a scientist 
who has rendered invaluable service to the Christian 
faith : " The order of this vision of the creative 
work, with which the Bible begins the history, is 
so closely in harmony with the results worked 
out by geological investigations, that the correspon- 
dences have excited marked attention, and have been 
* Nature, Aug., 1881. ^ History of Creatio?i, vol. i., p. 38. 



CREATION AND GEOLOGY 83 

justly regarded as establishing the common author- 
ship of nature and revelation." 

If Moses did not agree with geologists on questions 
relating to physical science, that need not have 
invalidated his authority in the department of religion 
and ethics ; but when he does agree, why deprive 
him of the credit? Why the eagerness, especially 
in a section of Christian ministers, always in this 
connection to belaud science at the expense of 
Moses? I only plead for ordinary fair play to 
Moses, such as would be accorded any Greek or 
Latin author. That there are minor discrepancies 
in details, in our present stage of knowledge, is 
possible, nay, probable ; but it is premature to saddle 
the responsibility for these on Moses. For what is 
theology ? Man's interpretation of the Bible. And 
what is science ? Man's interpretation of nature. 
Between these two interpretations there may be 
collisions, whilst all the time the two books, Nature 
and the Bible, may be in perfect accord. In his 
controversy with Mr. Gladstone a few years ago, 
Professor Huxley supposed he had conclusively 
convicted Moses of error, because in the first chapter 
of Genesis the creation of birds is placed before the 
creation of reptiles, a statement palpably contradictory 
to established geological truth. But really Professor 
Huxley only demonstrated that, among his many 
brilliant accomplishments, knowledge of Hebrew was 
not included ; and, further, that he did not take the 
trouble to consult the most ordinary commentary 
before hurling his charge against a document so 
venerable, for it is now generally understood that 
the taninniin of ven 21 include reptiles, whilst the 



84 PRIMEVAL REVELxVTION 

" creeping things " of vcr. 24 denote the smaller and 
lower mammals. It was Huxley, not Moses, who 
made the mistake. 

As Christian ministers it is our duty, whilst not 
blind to discrepancies existing in our present stage 
of incomplete knowledge, to enlarge principally on 
the agreements, the correspondences, the beautiful 
consonances between the Words and the Works of 
God. How came these harmonies about ? Do they 
not suggest that He, the work of whose fingers the 
heavens and the earth are, had also a hand in the 
composition of this ancient document ? " These are 
only some of the many wonderful harmonies between 
this old revelation and modern science. I would 
like to see the doctrine of Chances applied to this 
problem, to determine what probability there would 
be of a mere guesser or inventor hitting upon so 
many things that correspond with what modern 
science reveals. I do not believe there would be 
one chance in a million. Is it not far harder for a 
sensible man to believe that this wonderful apocalypse 
is the fruit of ignorance and guesswork than that 
it is the product of inspiration ? It is simply absurd 
that an ignorant man could have guessed so happily. 
Nay, more. Let any of the scientific men of to-day 
set themselves down to write out a history of creation 
in a space no larger than that occupied by the first 
chapter of Genesis, and I do not believe they could 
improve on it at all. And if they did succeed in 
producing anything that would pass for the present, 
in all probability in ten years it would be out of date. 
Our apocalypse of creation is not only better than 
could have been expected of an uninspired man in 



CREATION AND GEOLOGY 85 

the days of the world's ignorance, but it is better 
than Tyndall or Huxley or Haeckel could do yet. 
If they think not, let them take a sheet of paper 
and try."i 

This wonderful, complicated process reached its 
culmination and crown of glory in the creation of 
man the evening of the sixth day. Man, it is evident, 
though the last created, was the first in the thought 
and plan of the All-wise Creator. True to Aristotle's 
proposition, the posterior in appearance is the prior 
in idea. The first in realisation is the last in plan, 
and the first in plan the last in realisation — a 
principle pervading the Kingdom of Nature as well 
as the Kingdom of Grace. The thought of man is 
the dominant truth of the world, the proximate final 
cause of all that exists ; everything was planned in 
the light of this idea, fashioned and regulated with a 
view to its full embodiment in the first progenitor 
of the race. All lines, therefore, converge towards 
this one centre. The plan moves on without hasting 
and without resting till the Divine Image in a 
human form was placed on the apex of Creation's 
pedestal. 

Viewed physically man is a microcosmos. The 
custom prevailed, long before the birth of modern 
science, to regard man as a summary and condensa- 
tion, in his own person, of the wider cosmos around 
him, the head and representative of all the creatures 
which went before. One of the Christian Fathers 
gives expression to this truth very much in these 
precise terms. This also was the truth the Jewish 
rabbis strove to express metaphorically, when they 
^ Dr. Munro Gibson, A^-es before Moses, p. 71. 



86 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

set forth Adam in his creation of gigantic stature, 
commensurate with the dimensions of the world, 
but that gradually his physical nature contracted 
till it assumed the present six feet standard of height. 
What they meant manifestly was that man is a 
complete counterpart of the mundane system, that 
in the external world there is nothing which does 
not find its counterfoil in the human organism. Man 
is creation condensed. Modern science furnishes 
ample corroboration of this. All nature, animate 
and inanimate, is distinctly reproduced in the human 
organism. As a microcosmos, man is emphatically 
a physical being, the veritable centre of the realm 
of nature. 

On the other side of his being man is a microtheos 
— a reproduction on a finite scale of the substance 
and attributes of the infinite God Himself: "And 
God said, Let us make man in Our image, after Our 
likeness. So God created man ; in His own image 
created He them." Of the animals and trees the 
asseveration is made that they were created " after 
their kind." Their idea or type was imprinted 
within their nature in such manner that they could 
not break away from it. Species, so far as evidence 
goes, is unalterably fixed. One species cannot unite 
with another to produce a third. Hybrids have no 
power of multiplication. In her just austerity Nature 
strikes them with barrenness. No creature can raise 
himself, and become a member of a nobler family — 
he is tied down to his type by unbreakable chains, 
is created " after his kind," and can never escape 
from it. The "transmutation of species" is still a 
hypothesis, unverified by a single geological specimen. 



CREATION AND GEOLOGY 87 

The most eminent scientific men — Murchison, Agassiz, 
Owen, and others— have declared themselves in 
positive antagonism to it. Plants and animals are 
all tied down to their types. The varieties ever 
multiply, the type still abides. But of man Moses 
does not affirm that he was made " after his kind " — 
a most significant omission. Rather was he created 
after another " kind," capable of endless growth and 
development, till he would " become as one of the 
gods." Divinity is the pattern of humanity. There 
is in God a human and in man a Divine element — 
a truth to which human consciousness in all nations 
bears attestation. According to the Assyrian legend, 
man was modelled out of clay moistened with the 
blood of a god ; and according to the Greek, the 
human brain was kindled into mental activity by 
fire stolen from heaven. 

In our bodies we belong to the same grenus or 
family as the animals which perish, and like them 
are subject to physical laws. In our spirits, however, 
we belong to the same genus or family as God, and 
like Him are subject, not to physical, but to meta- 
physical laws. In this Mosaic doctrine of the 
creation of man in the Divine image is afforded us 
a clue to the mystery of the Incarnation. Because 
man, at the beginning of time, was created in the 
image of God, it was possible for God, in the fulness 
of time, to be made in the likeness of man. Postulate 
any other beginning to man than that taught by 
Moses, and the Incarnation becomes an impossibility. 
But as man was created in the Divine image and 
likeness, there is an original, fundamental correspon- 
dence or analogy between God and man. This 



88 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

doubtless is what is intended by modern writers 
when they speak of the essential humanity of God 
and the essential divinity of man. They mean that 
God and man are built on the same plan, put 
together on the same pattern. The scale differs, 
the plan is the same. 

More : not only is the doctrine of Moses con- 
cerning the creation of man in God's image the 
foundation of the New Testament doctrine of the 
Incarnation of God, making it possible and becom- 
ing ; but it is also the condition on which man 
may be adopted into the Divine family and made 
" partaker of the Divine nature." Originally, in an 
incipient state, we are the offspring of God, belonging 
to the same family or genus as the Divine Three — 
we are made, not " after our kind," but in a mysteri- 
ous way after the Divine kind. From the outset 
there was in contemplation the " becoming " of 
man like unto the Divine " Us." And when sin 
arrested our normal development, by the super- 
natural intervention of Divine Grace this possibility 
was restored to us. We may again receive the 
adoption of sons into the Divine Family, when 
Father and children will be of a homogeneous 
nature ; we may be born again, not of corruptible 
but incorruptible seed, and thereby repossess the 
Divine affinities. We, who are originally partakers 
of human nature, are capable of being made " par- 
takers of the Divine nature." The three doctrines 
of Incarnation, Adoption, and Regeneration are 
founded on the Mosaic doctrine of the creation of 
man in the Divine image. This latter it is that 
makes the former possible. So closely connected 



CREATION AND GEOLOGY 89 

are the beginning and the end of the Bible that, 
if the Mosaic doctrine of man's origin and nature 
is denied, the superstructure of Christian doctrine 
at once topples to the ground. 

The infidel taunt that Holy Writ depicts human 
nature in colours too dark possesses no truth. 
In one sense, it does delineate fallen humanity in 
language strong and awful, variegated by the lurid- 
ness of hell-fire ; but that is because it shows it in 
the past created higher than philosophy or science, 
or even poetry, ever dreamed, and because it 
exhibits it capable of restoration in the future to 
a higher altitude than ever before. The Bible 
magnifies human nature, and reveals to us the 
infinite possibilities therein concealed. Ask ancient 
philosophy. What is the origin of man? Greece 
answers, He grew from the ground like mushrooms 
in the fields of Attica. Egypt replies, He developed 
from the fertilising mud of the Nile, shone upon 
by the kindling rays of the sun. "According to 
the ideas commonly prevailing among the peoples 
of antiquity, man is regarded as autochthonous, or 
issued from the earth which bears him."^ Ask 
modern science, What is the origin of man ? She 
answers. He has unfolded from the ape, and the 
ape ultimately from the primeval slime in the 
bottom of the pool. Ask Moses, What is the origin 
of man ? And he answers in language lofty and 
clear, " God created man in His own image ; in 
the image of God created He him." The sublimity 
of the answer is a presumptive evidence of its truth, 
^ Lenormant, Beghinmgs of History, p. 47. 



CHAPTER III 

CREATION AND ASTRONOMY 

EARLY in the fifteenth century the ecclesiastical 
f authorities put themselves in opposition to 
the modern science of astronomy. Down to that 
time theology and astronomy were like twin sisters, 
dwelling together in peace. But in consequence of 
the sudden development at that period of astronomic 
science, the theologians were left behind. The Bible 
doubtless contains passages which popularly describe 
the earth as fixed and the sun as revolving : " The 
sun was risen upon the earth." " His going forth 
is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto 
the ends of it." " The sun also ariseth, and the 
sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where 
he arose." Another verse which did much militant 
service at that time was the following : " The world 
is established, it cannot be moved." " The world 
cannot be moved," said the Psalmist. " The world 
cannot move," said the theologians — a very different 
thing. However great the storms beating upon it, 
however furious the fire raging within it, the earth will 
not totter or stagger, says the Psalmist, its stability 
is assured. To that teaching science can offer no 
objection. But the theologians, mistaking popular 

90 



CREATION AND ASTRONOMY QI 

language for scientific statements, marshalled these 
verses in battle array, and with them combated 
the new theory that the sun, not the earth, is the 
fixed centre of the solar system. 

How far the Roman Church still adheres to 
the old dogma of the immobility of the earth I 
am not able to tell. But it is significant that as 
late as 1823, in the preface to a new edition of 
Newton's Principia, the two learned editors, Le 
Sueur and Jacquier, both of them Jesuit priests, 
felt obliged to give the following cautionary notice : 
" Newton, in his third book, adopts the hypothesis 
of the motion of the earth. We could not explain 
his propositions without making the same hypothesis. 
Hence we are compelled to assume a character 
different from our own, for we profess obedience 
to the decrees promulgated by the Pope against 
the motion of the earth." But be the position 
of the Roman Church what it may, Protestant 
theologians adopted, as usual, the new Copernican 
theory as soon as its truth was scientifically estab- 
lished. 

It was not the theologians only who were left 
behind by the rapid strides made in the memor- 
able discoveries of Galileo, Kepler, and Copernicus ; 
but the compact body of the so-called philosophers 
found themselves in the same unhappy predicament — 
a truth conveniently forgotten to the disparagement 
of the theologians. In the philosophy of the age 
the earth was viewed as the centre of the solar 
system. The supposed Mosaic teaching was abun- 
dantly confirmed by the Ptolemaic theory, of which 
all the philosophers from time immemorial were 



92 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

devoted adherents. The immovableness of the 
earth was a leading theme in the Aristotelian 
philosophy ; and, in the Middle Ages, Aristotle was 
not only king, but tyrant, over men's minds. When 
Galileo ventured to teach the motion of the earth, 
the ire of the ecclesiastics was straightway roused ; 
but behind and beneath the hostility of the 
theologians, and explaining it, was the bitter antagon- 
ism of the philosophers, whose faith in Aristotle 
was more implicit than in Moses. Theology has 
had to bear the brunt of the obloquy connected 
with the persecution of the above astronomers ; 
but a deeper examination of the subject will con- 
vince us that the responsibility should be divided 
between theology and philosophy— the Aristotelian 
philosophy then ascendant in Europe. Philosophers 
never tire of pouring contempt on the persecutors 
of those grand and noble men ; but who were the 
persecutors? Not those who sat in Moses' seat 
more than those who sat in Aristotle's chair. 
Theology was a helpless captive, bound hand and 
foot to the Aristotelian philosophy. Far be it from 
me to hold the theologians guiltless ; but let the 
blame be justly distributed. 

" The complaint of science is that theology has 
resisted her progress. Ought not the accusation 
to be shifted, if not retorted ? Is it not theology 
that has been unfortunately encumbered with 
physical science, or with the philosophemes which 
stood for science at some particular period ? In- 
terpreters of Scripture have allowed the prevailing 
theories of their o\\ n day .so to colour their statement 
of Bible doctrine, that natural discoverers of the 



CREATION AND ASTRONOMY 93 

next age have raised the cry, ' The Bible with its 
theology stops the way ' : — the fact being that it 
was not the Bible at all, nor even theology, which 
opposed itself to their discoveries, but only the 
ghosts of defunct philosophical or scientific opinions, 
clothing themselves in the garments of religious 
thought." ^ 

In every age, the foremost to admit the superiority 
of the Bible, and to bow down in humble adoration 
to the great God, the Maker of heaven and earth, 
have been the illustrious astronomers. What 
grander and more inspiring than the ever-memorable 
words of Kepler, with which he concludes his book 
on the Harmony of Worlds ? — " I thank Thee, my 
Creator and Lord, that Thou hast given me this 
joy in Thy creation, this delight in the work of 
Thy hands. I have shown the excellency of Thy 
work unto men, so far as my finite mind was able 
to comprehend Thine infinity. If I ever said aught 
unworthy of Thee, or aught in which I may have 
sought my own glory, graciously forgive it." Of 
our own Newton it is also recorded that he never 
mentioned the name of God without reverently 
uncovering his head. Real greatness is never dis- 
sociated from true reverence. But this science of 
astronomy, so calculated by the boundless visions 
it discloses to humble the pride of man, and to 
excite wonderment and praise, is converted, by men 
more distinguished for acuteness than loftiness of 
mind, into a weapon wlierewith to attack the Bible 
and undermine the religion founded thereon. 

I. The first class of objections urged against the 
^ Laidlaw, Doctrine 0/ Man, pp. 7, 8. 



94 PRLMEVAL REVELATION 

Mosaic narrative of creation are based on a mis- 
apprehension of the true signification of words. 
Because of the occurrence of the word " firmament " 
in the English translation, much ridicule has been 
poured on the devoted head of Moses, especially 
by the mob-orators of popular infidelity, the orators 
forgetting that Moses neither spoke in English nor 
wrote in Latin. Rakia^ the word used by Moses, 
is one of the most appropriate terms possible. The 
Authorised Version reads " firmament," but the 
marginal reading is " expansion," which more nearly 
approximates the original. The verb raka signifies 
to expand by beating, whether it be with the hand 
or with an instrument. Hence the word lends 
itself easily to descriptive poetry : " Hast thou then 
with Him spread — Jiannnered — out the sky, which 
is strong, and as a molten looking-glass ? " (Job 
xxxvii. 1 8). To set forth the appearance of the 
sky Moses employs the fittest word possible. Though 
not scientifically accurate, it is characterised by 
poetic truth. Throw yourselves back to the time 
of your childhood, when strange stirrings of soul 
began to ruffle the surface of your being, and did 
you not imagine the firmament as a thin plate of 
molten mirror, curved like a canopy over our world ? 
The word evidently signifies expansion, tenuity. 
But in the Septuagint it is translated arepecoiia, and 
in the Vulgate " firmamentum," both expressing 
solidity, in accordance with the conceptions prevailing 
in those times. 

If it be objected that the Mosaic term docs not 
perfectly accord with scientific truth, a sufficient 
answer is that Moses described the phenomenon as 



CREATION AND ASTRONOMV 95 

it appeared to the seeing eye. The same objection 
might be raised against kindred terms in every 
language. When the Romans spoke of " coelum," 
did they intend a " hollow " or curve scooped out 
of solid space ? When the Greeks spoke of ovpav6<;, 
did they simply mean a high or exalted place, 
according to the etymological derivation of the word ? 
When the English write of " heaven," do they mean 
that the sky was heaved up by mechanical or other 
forces ? When the Germans speak of " himmel," 
from /leimel/i, to cover, do they think of a roof to 
keep out the wet from the /leim or home of man? 
Technically it may be shown that each of these 
words contains an error ; practically each is true, 
the aptest term possible to set forth the facts as 
they appear to the poetic eye ; and in childhood, 
whether of the individual or the race, every eye is 
poetic. 

Another objection is founded on the Mosaic state- 
ment that light was created before the appearing of 
the sun, light being produced on the first day, whereas 
the sun and moon are expressly stated to have been 
" made " on the fourth. This objection has, in by- 
gone years, been urged with great merriment by 
infidel scoffers to the supposed discomfiture of Moses. 
" How did God create the light before the sun ? " 
sceptically queried Voltaire. In the well-known 
volume Essays and Reviews, this argument was in- 
vested with the dignity of a deliberate philosophic 
statement. In the then state of scientific knowledge, 
it drove the orthodox theologians hard, who could 
only attempt a refutation, in a vague way, by alleging 
that God on the first day created light in a state of 



g6 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

diffusion, but on the fourth gathered it all together, 
and focussed it in one central orb — a good refutation 
enough if proofs were forthcoming. Since then, how- 
ever, science itself has rallied to the help of faith, 
and demonstrated the existence of other sources of 
light than the sun. " Thus, at last," writes Professor 
Dana, " we learn, through modern scientific research, 
that the appearance of light on the first day, and 
of the sun on the fourth — an idea foreign to man's 
unaided conception — is as much in the volume of 
Nature as in that of Sacred Writ." '' The scientific 
hypothesis/' writes Professor Young, "that light is 
supplied by the emission of luminous particles has 
now been abandoned — of physical necessity aban- 
doned ; it is acknowledged by modern philosophers 
to be erroneous, and that there is no emission of such 
particles at all ; but, on the contrary, the light of 
day is the result of undulations of a subtile fluid 
quite distinct from the sun ; and but for the presence 
of this fluid there would be no light, whether the 
sun existed or not." So, instead of the light being 
dependent on the sun, the sun is dependent on the 
light ! 

Whatever be the ultimate fate of the undulatory 
theory of light, enough at all events has been estab- 
lished to redeem the Mosaic affirmation of the 
existence of light before the sun from all aspersions 
of ridicule or foolhardiness. The crux of the difficulty 
here is that, whilst Moses knew, as well as every- 
body else, that the light now flows to our earth from 
the sun, he yet deliberately taught the existence of 
light millions of years antecedent to the appearance 
of the sun. Was not that unaccountably strange in 



CREATION AND ASTRONOMY 97 

a man of ordinary common sense, which at least he 
was, his most rancorous critics being judges? Yes, 
unaccountable, except on the one hypothesis of his 
inspiration ; and if he begin at this lofty altitude, 
the probability is that he will maintain the same 
high level throughout. What used to be a laughing- 
stock to rationalists is now converted by science itself 
into a cogent proof in favour of the supernatural 
origin of the Mosaic account. 

Another disagreement, pithily put, and obviously 
endorsed, by Dr. Dods' is this : " Of a creation of 
sun, moon, and stars subsequent to the creation of 
the earth, science can have but one thing to say." ^ 
And that one thing, of course, is in antagonism 
to Moses. But who teaches the creation of the 
stellar worlds in the order set down by Dr. Dods? 
If the ripe and scholarly judgment of the great 
commentators counts for anything, not Moses. The 
only writers who endeavour to rivet this signification 
on him are the rationalists in theology and science, 
who, amid a multitude of divergent views, agree 
only in their desire to explain away the supernatural. 
Why turn the ear to the charming of rationalists, 
whilst deaf to the " concord of sweet sounds " emitted 
by the great theologians of the century ? Why 
side on minor points with authors whose avowed 
principle is the suppression of the supernatural, 
against the weighty judgments of commentators like 
Delitzsch, Lange, and Keil, who have, with micro- 
scopic minuteness, examined the whole subject ? 

The teaching of Moses seems perfectly clear and 
straightforward : " In the beginning God created the 
1 Ge?ieszs, p. 4 

7 



98 PRIMEVAT. REVELATION 

heavens and the earth." All the worlds, in their 
constituent materials, were ushered into existence the 
same time ; the earth and sun and moon and stars 
were all created in the beginning, whether in one 
whirling mass, as Laplace taught, or as separate 
entities, the narrative does not say. The how of 
creation is left to science, the zvJiat and the wherefore 
belong to theology. All things having been thus 
produced in a weltering, undigested mass, the work 
of differentiation and arrangement began, till in the 
fourth day the process of development is sufficiently 
advanced and the aerial space between is sufficiently 
cleared of clouds and mist, for the celestial luminaries 
to shine on the earth, and be signs to men by 
which to regulate their going out and their coming 
in. The sun, like the earth and the planets, was at 
first one chaotic fluid mass, opaque, non-luminous, and 
probably enveloped in darkness. Parallel with the 
preparation of the earth to receive animal and human 
life was the preparation of the sun and moon to 
be, not lights, but light-bearers, as the original word 
signifies, till on the fourth day they appeared, not 
only in a cosmical, but in an intelligible, useful 
relation to one another. It is possible that then 
light was placed in the light-bearers, becoming visible 
on the earth, and thereby regulating seasons and 
years and days. Moses does not say they were 
created on the fourth day, only made — ordained finally 
to the performance of their functions in their relation 
to this world and its inhabitants. 

II. The next argument against the Christian 
doctrine of Creation is based on the comparative 
insignificance of our earth. 



CREATION AND ASTRONOMY 99 

Taking a larger sweep, and commanding deeper 
respect, it needs to be examined in a truly reverent 
spirit. Whereas Moses gives a whole chapter to the 
earth, he only gives one sentence to the stars. This, 
remark unbelievers, gives the earth more importance 
in the Scriptures than belongs to it in the universe ; 
and in the volume of Revelation the earth should 
occupy the same relative significance as it does in 
the volume of Nature. In the two books, by the 
same Author, the emphasis should fall in the same 
place. To this argument new momentum was im- 
parted by the wonderful discoveries which necessarily 
followed the invention of the telescope. The whole 
expanse of limitless space was proved to be studded 
with millions of stars, each immeasurably larger 
than our poor earth. Compared to the vastness of 
creation, our planet is only as a leaf in the primeval 
forest, a grain of sand among the countless myriads 
on the seashore. Is it likely, then, that the Divine 
Being, who created all, and whose relation to the 
countless worlds of the far-off Milky Way is as close 
and intimate as to our toy-planet — is it likely that 
He would give so much prominence to the least in 
the realm of nature, as to make it the centre of 
His eternal thoughts, and the scene of the tragic 
revelation of Himself in His Son ? Is it reasonable 
to conceive that the Almighty would concentrate 
His thought and affection on this speck of a world, 
this infinitesimal dot in the immensity of space, as 
Moses leads us to expect, and the New Testament 
leads us to believe ? Why should He, seeing He is 
Creator of all worlds alike, and is as closely related 
to the one as to the other ? 



100 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

Tlic whole argument, if argument it may be called, 
proceeds on a false principle, a wrong view of the 
earth, of man, and of God. 

First, it implies an unsatisfactory view of the earth. 
Indeed, modern astronomy here comes to the aid 
of faith, for it inclines more and more to the opinion 
that our earth is really the absolute centre of the 
universe, probably the only world which is now or 
has ever been inhabited. So far as science can judge, 
the other worlds are in the process of being made, 
not " finished," as Moses declares our earth to be, 
and therefore not yet inhabited. In development 
our world is in advance of all others, the only one 
now fit for occupancy by physically organised beings. 
Of course, I believe in spiritual existences called 
angels, but spiritual beings do not require material 
abodes. If, then, our world be the only one hitherto 
peopled, the Mosaic view of the world as "geo- 
centric " harmonises with the deepest truth of crea- 
tion. Great names can, I am aware, be adduced 
as firm believers that other worlds than ours are 
inhabited. That intelligent creatures occupy the 
stars was a favourite hypothesis of Kant, in defence 
of which he was willing to risk much ; but evidence 
he had none, and that evidence is still lacking. 
According to Professor Ball, than whom a higher 
authority on astronomy our country does not boast, 
only Mars possesses the conditions necessary to life, 
and even of Mars he entertains doubts.^ 

The assertion that it is incredible that God should 
have created numberless worlds, and then leave 
them unoccupied, mere desolate wastes in infinite 
^ Story of the Heavens, p. 190. 



CREATION AND ASTRONOMY 



roi 



space, is more rhetorical than scientific, more im- 
posing to the imagination than convincing to reason. 
The force of this astronomical appeal to the imagi- 
nation was broken by Whewell, when he confronted 
it with the well-established facts of geology that 
millions of years were allowed to pass before this 
world was tenanted, the illimitable in unpopulated 
time neutralising the force of the argument from 
the illimitable in unpopulated space. And, as 
already intimated, so far as science goes, it rather 
inclines to the conclusion that the other worlds 
of our solar system, at least, have not yet reached 
that stage in their development which would make 
life on them possible or tolerable. 

Second, this reasoning, even if it be true, suffices 
not to still all the questionings of the soul ; our 
inquiry must be further pursued. Mind is of greater 
moment than matter ; and here, perhaps, the true 
solution is to be found. Though physically not 
measuring two yards long, man, in virtue of his 
mind, is of more importance than a whole universe 
of dead matter. Quality here overbalances quantity ; 
or, rather, there is no balance at all— no conceivable 
comparison between greatness and size, between 
mind and matter, between ethics and physics, 
between will and avoirdupois weight. "Man," says 
Pascal, "is a feeble reed, trembling in the midst 
of creation ; but then he is endowed with thought. 
It does not need the universe to arm for his destruc- 
tion. A breath of wind, a drop of water, will suffice 
to kill him. But though the universe were to fall 
on man and crush him, he would be greater in 
his death than the universe in its victory ; for he 



102 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

would be conscious of his defeat, and it would not 
be conscious of its triumph." Human intelligence 
it is that gives dignity to the earth, and lends 
weight to the " geocentric " doctrine of Moses and 
the Bible. It is not on the littleness of the earth, 
but on the greatness of man, that the Bible enlarges 
with never-tiring reiteration. Does not the suppo- 
sition underlie the whole fabric of Divine revelation 
that man is potentially the grandest creature God 
has formed ? We are accustomed to hear the 
angels pourtrayed as nobler and greater than he. 
In certain aspects such descriptions are true ; but 
there is another and a more permanent sense in 
which man is greater and nobler than they. 

At his start man is lower ; but in the course of 
his development he passes the angel, and achieves 
a height beyond the angel's reach. Man has folded 
in his nature possibilities of growth beyond the 
angelic nature. That God created man in His 
image, after His likeness, is the Mosaic teaching— an 
affirmation nowhere made of any other intelligence. 
The angel is, of course, a rational being ; but the 
creation of man involved certain peculiar characteristics 
which bring him nearer God, qualifying him to be 
considered, in a distinctive sense, the offspring of 
God. This consideration breaks the force of the 
argument from the magnitude of the visible universe. 
Under the shelter of its wings the Psalmist found 
relief: "When I consider the heavens, the work 
of Thy fingers ; the moon and the stars, which 
Thou hast ordained ; what is man that Thou art 
mindful of him ? and the son of man that Thou 
visitest him?" In these verses he compares the 



CREATION AND ASTRONOMY 103 

physical universe with physical man, and the over- 
whelming disproportion makes his faith stagger. 
Where does he find relief? In the contemplation 
of man as a moral intelligence. " Thou hast made 
him for a little while lower than the angels"— but 
only for a little while, for in God's plan concerning 
him he is destined to enjoy honour and glory beyond 
seraphim and cherubim. " Thou hast put all things 
under his feet," and if all things, then the angels 
are in subjection to him. (Ps. viii. compared with 
Heb. ii. 8, 9.) 

That the Mosaic view of the importance of this 
world and of man, in the first chapter of Genesis, 
is compatible with the dignity conferred on them 
in the New Testament, by the incarnation of God, 
must be patent to all. The right keynote is struck, 
and that of itself is surprising. That Moses should 
so describe the earth as to prepare the mind 
naturally to accept it as the suitable platform for 
God to be made manifest on it in the flesh is 
in itself calculated to excite wonderment. How 
came about this unexpected harmony between the 
beginning of the Old Testament and the beginning 
of the New ? between the Mosaic doctrine of Creation 
and the Johannine doctrine of Incarnation ? Apart 
from supernatural interposition, no adequate expla- 
nation is forthcoming. 

Third, the argument, founded on the physical 
insignificance of the earth, implies wrong views of 
God, picturing Him as an Oriental monarch, invested 
with infinite physical attributes, whilst destitute of 
moral character. The Bible, however, delineates 
God, not simply concerned about the vast and bulky, 



104 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

but as equally interested in the little and lowly, 
decorating the grass and watching the sparrows. 
Compatible with this Scriptural teaching, whilst the 
invention of the telescope led to an enlargement of 
our knowledge concerning suns and constellations, 
the simultaneous invention of the microscope opened 
up to our astonished vision a new world in the dust 
under our feet. The discovery of the infinitely 
great encounters the discovery of the infinitely 
little ; and, by counterbalance, they keep the mind 
in due equipoise. God is as watchful of the 
animalculse in a drop of water as He is careful of 
the galaxies in the ocean of space. 

More : it is a principle in the Kingdom of Heaven, 
" that the last shall be first, and the first last." " God 
chooseth the foolish to confound the wise, the weak 
things to confound the things which are mighty, and 
base things, and things which are despised, to bring 
to nought things that are : that no flesh should glory 
in His presence." " And thou, Bethlehem, in the 
land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of 
Juda ; for out of thee shall come a governor, that shall 
rule My people Israel." Is it not in consonance with 
these principles of the Divine procedure to elect our 
earth, one of the smallest among the thousands of 
creation, the Bethlehem of the universe, to be the 
scene of the grandest revelations of Himself ? History 
conveys to us the lesson that greatness and size seldom 
go together. China is a large country measured by 
superficial acreage, and the number of its people 
equals the population of Europe ; yet she cannot 
be considered truly great — so far she has left no deep 
mark on the religion, the intellect, or the commerce 



CREATION AND ASTRONOMY 105 

of the world. Think again of Assyria, a country 
measuring its thousands of miles square, and reckon- 
ing its soldiers and camels by hundreds of thousands ; 
but what addition did she make to the mental and 
moral wealth of the globe ? On the other hand, a 
country may be small, estimated by its surface 
mileage, and its inhabitants few compared with other 
nations, and yet reach the sublimest heights in 
knowledge and virtue. Palestine was no greater 
than Wales in surface dimensions, but it achieved 
greatness which for ever eclipses countries a hundred 
times its size. The Hebrew race, notwithstanding 
its arithmetical insignificance, left its mark deeper 
on the religion and morality of the world than any 
other people. Greece also, judged by its geographi- 
cal extent, was only one of the "small dust of the 
balance," and Athens was not larger than one of 
our Welsh towns. But what country grew more 
heroic men ? What city reared men of greater 
eminence in poetry, philosophy, eloquence, and art ? 
Without contradiction, size is not greatness. And 
if, in the Divine scheme of the universe, our earth 
holds a position unique in its moral grandeur out 
of proportion to its material measurement, it is only 
in unison with the general course of history. 

Besides, is it not probable that our world alone 
fell from its allegiance to the Creator, and violated 
the moral order of the universe ? If that be the 
case, it alone is a sufficient clue to the difficulty 
that God chose to become incarnate in our world, 
and not in one of the fixed stars a thousand times 
its size. Christian instinct, rather than Christian 
exegesis, has always persisted in interpreting the 



I06 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

Parable of the Lost Sheep in that light. " What 
man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one 
of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the 
wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he 
find it ? And when he hath found it, he layeth it 
on his shoulder rejoicing ; and when he cometh 
home, he calleth together his friends and neighbours, 
saying unto them. Rejoice with me, for I have 
found my sheep which was lost" (Luke xv. 4-6). If, 
then, the need for redemption was confined to this 
one lost world, the necessity for Incarnation and 
Sacrifice \\ould be likewise limited thereto. 

Or, to present the same truth in another way, if 
rebellion had broken out only in this province of 
the creation, the call for Divine intervention to 
stamp out the insurrection would also be restricted to 
it. " If, on the one hand," Dr. Chalmers says, '' God 
be jealous of His honour, and, on the other, there 
be proud and exalted spirits, who scowl defiance at 
Him and at His monarchy, then let the material 
prize of victory be insignificant as it may, it is the 
victory in itself which upholds the impulse of the 
keen and stimulated rivalry. If, by the sagacity of 
one infernal mind, a single planet has been seduced 
from its allegiance, and brought under the ascend- 
ency of him who, in the Scriptures, is called the 
god of this world ; and if the errand on which the 
Redeemer came was to destroy the w^orks of the 
devil, then let this planet have all the littleness which 
astronomy has assigned to it — call it what it is, one 
of the smaller islets which float on the ocean of 
immensity — it has become the theatre of such a 
competition as may have all the desires and all the 



Ck£ATlON AND ASTRONOMY 10/ 

energies of a divided universe embarked upon it. 
It involves in it other objects than the single re- 
covery of our species. It decides higher questions 
— it stands linked with the supremacy of God. . . . 
To an infidel ear, all this may carry the sound of 
something wild and visionary along w^ith it ; but, 
though only known through the medium of revela- 
tion, after it is known, who can fail to recognise 
its harmony with the great lineaments of human 
experience ? Who does not recognise in these facts 
much that goes to explain why our planet has 
taken so conspicuous a position in the foreground 
of history ? " ' 

This prominence given our world in the dramas 
of Creation and Redemption is not for our sakes 
only, but for the sake of all intelligences, of every 
rank and degree, throughout the whole universe ; 
" that, through the Church, might be known, to the 
principalities and powers, the manifold wisdom of 
God." Thus, again, we revert to the statement that 
our world is, and will for ever be, the centre of 
interest to the intelligent universe. Here are solved 
the deepest problems of mind and morality. We 
are, therefore, prepared for the frequent intimations 
scattered throughout the pages of the New Testament, 
that the Incarnate God will return in glory to the 
scene of His humiliation and death, and reign here 
in majesty world without end, making it the 
veritable centre of glory and influence ; thereby 
realising the seer's vision of a throne with a Lamb 
upon it, as if He had been slain, compassed about 
in close proximity by the redeemed of men, and 
^ Astronomical Discourses, vi. 



I08 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

at farther distances by other moral intelligences. 
The end comports with the beginning. How came 
Moses to give such a theory of the creation of the 
world and of man as to be universally felt to be 
the appropriate commencement to a history which 
has so glorious a termination, unless it were true? 
And if true, how came he to discover it at so early 
a period? It was not the discovery of Moses, but 
the revelation of God, either to him or to the first 
fathers of the race. 



CHAPTER IV 

CREATION AND EVOLUTION 

IN the first chapter of Genesis, three different 
words are employed by Moses to set forth the 
creative operations of God — " create," " make," 
" form " {para, asa, yatsar). Of these the word 
" create " is the strongest, denoting the supernatural 
exertion of Divine Power without the agency of 
secondary causes. God is the cause, the only 
adequate cause. The other words are of weaker 
signification, and denote the working of God, the 
great Plrst Cause, along the line of secondary causes. 
In looking over this chapter we are particularly 
struck with the judicious use made of these words. 
The word " create " is used in three connections, and 
where we find it the other words would apparently 
be inappropriate. The first time is in the first verse : 
*' In the beginning God created the heaven and the 
earth." Here it means the origination of matter 
out of nothing. In this first act God was the alone 
cause, to the total exclusion of all secondary causes, 
for these latter were not yet in existence. The 
second time is in ver. 21 : "And God created great 
whales, and every living creature that moveth, which 
the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, 

109 



no IMUMEVAL REVELATION 

and every winged fowl after his kind." Here it is 
applied to the first production of animal life. In 
this work also God was the only adequate cause. 
Secondary causes may have been utilised to the 
extent to which they would go ; but there was a 
point beyond which their influence could not reach 
— they could not by any possibility of combination 
produce life. " Spontaneous generation " is an ex- 
ploded doctrine. The third time the word " create " 
is used is in ver. 27 : " So God created man in His 
own image ; in the image of God created He him." 
Here it signifies the generation of mind. Secondary 
causes were already at work in all the creation, the 
laws of nature in full swing ; but there was a limit 
to their influence, beyond which they could not 
travel — they could not produce mind. 

Here then we find the writer of Genesis using the 
word which denotes the direct, immediate, super- 
natural operation of God only three times, in the 
creation of matter, the origination of life, and the 
production of mind — the three places where the line 
of continuity in modern evolutionary science breaks, 
the three places where the exponents of Materialism 
cannot find the connecting links. Just there, where 
the links are missing, the author of Genesis puts God. 
Is not this coincidence strange ? Is it designed or 
undesigned ? Either way it excites surprise. That 
Moses had the remotest conception of the modern 
theory of evolution is, of course, absurd. How then 
account for this singular correspondence ? Must we 
not suppose a Mind, behind the writer's, controlling 
the latter, and moulding unconsciously from within 
his thoughts into suitable expressions ? This three- 



CREATION AND EVOLUTION III 

fold recurrence of the word " create " will form the 
basis of my present remarks. 

I. TJie Creation of Matter.— The word "create" 
(dara) is of prime importance, being one of the key- 
words of Biblical theology. What then is its precise 
signification ? Etymologically it is believed by the 
best scholarship to mean " cut," " carve," " polish." 
But, as with all historic words, its precise import is 
determined, not by derivation, but by usage and 
the general tenor of the context. This word " bara," 
in Kal, is strictly applied to the Supreme Being, 
never to men ; and to Him, not in His natural, but 
supernatural, operations. " The word denotes," says 
Professor Tayler Lewis, " as its most usual sense, a 
Divine, supernatural act, such as man or nature of 
itself could not do. . . . It is the Divine, supernatural 
making of something new, and which did not 
exist before." " Bara is never used except of a 
Divine act," writes Bishop Perowne, himself an 
authority of no mean order ; " and it is quite certain 
that the writer intends to convey the impression of 
a creation called into existence out of nothing by 
the voice and will of God." " In the trite dispute 
of interpreters and theologians," writes Gesenius,^ 
" concerning creation out of nothing, some appeal 
to the word under consideration [dara'], as if it 
might be gathered from its very etymology and 
proper signification that the first chapter of Genesis 
teaches not a creation from nothing, but a conforma- 
tion of matter eternally existing. On the contrary, 
from the instances we have given, it will abundantly 
appear that the actual use of this word in Kal 
^ Thesaur. Heb,, p. 236. 



112 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

is altogether different from its primary signification, 
and that it is rather employed with respect to the 
new production of a thing (see Gen. ii. 3) than 
to the conformation and elaboration of material. 
That the opening clause of Genesis sets forth the 
world as first created out of nothing, and in a rude 
and undigestible state, while the remainder of the 
first chapter exhibits the elaboration of the recently 
created mass, the connection of the whole paragraph 
renders entirely plain." 

Let it not, however, be supposed that the Mosaic 
doctrine of creation out of nothing militates against 
the philosophical maxim. Out of nothing nothing 
can come {Ex iiiJiilo niJiil fit). This dictum, 
properly interpreted, is only an affirmation in a 
proverbial form of the principle of causality, that 
without cause there can issue no effect. Nothing 
has power to originate nothing. Nothing can do 
nothing. And if, prior to the beginning, nothing 
existed, the universe would have been a sheer 
impossibility. But, according to Moses, God existed, 
omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient ; He is an 
adequate cause — He, out of nothing, created the 
worlds. Whereas the heathen gods are represented 
as working with fuss and strain, the God of the 
Pentateuch " created the heavens and the earth " 
without any effort or the slightest tax on His 
strength. As the verb in Kal denotes, He per- 
formed the creative work with ease. 

This truth, that the act of creation implies not 
a new collocation or reconstruction of matter, but 
its absolute origination, may appear to us trite and 
commonplace. But who made it the common 



CREATION AND EVOLUTION I 13 

heritage of Christian nations ? When it was first pro- 
claimed, it was novel, startling, revolutionary. None 
of the sublimest thinkers of antiquity, outside the 
magic circle of Revelation, ever conceived it. Modern 
Materialism, as represented by Tyndall, Huxley, 
and Haeckel, affirms the eternity of matter. Ancient 
Idealism, as embodied in Plato, who combined in 
himself the gorgeous splendour of the poet with 
the keen penetration of the philosopher, made the 
same affirmation. Thus in their confession of faith 
modern Materialism and ancient Idealism have one 
article in common — the self-existence, and therefore 
the eternity of matter. To Plato God was only 
the Architect of the universe, having the rough 
material thereof ready-made to His hands ; only 
the Arranger of the unshaped hyle (v\v d/jLop(f>o<;), 
the hyle itself being the dark underground of the 
world. 

Moses, however, with eyes keener and pinions 
stronger, penetrates farther, and is, so far as history 
testifies, the author of the renowned dogma of 
absolute creation. How came Moses to give to 
thoughts, which " eye had not seen, nor ear heard, 
nor had entered into the heart of man to conceive," 
such dignified utterance ? How came he to soar 
so high, to fly so far ? To me there is but one 
answer — the Divine Wind was blowing under his 
pinions, carrying him beyond the region where 
created zephyrs blow. The Divine Afflatus was 
filling his soul, conveying him beyond the farthest 
boundaries of mere human genius. Deny his inspira- 
tion, and his writings become the greatest puzzle 
of literature. Deny, with some modern scientific 

8 



114 PRIMEVAL RF.VET.ATION 

infidels, the truth of the Mosaic doctrine of the 
genesis of matter, the problem still confronts you, 
How to account for the genesis of the doctrine? 

That the origin of matter is a subject lying out- 
side the province of human science has just been 
intimated. The act of creation took place but once, 
has not been repeated, and is therefore beyond the 
reach of observation and experiment. The postulate 
of Science, the assumption with which she begins 
her researches, is not the creation, but the existence, 
of matter. Accordingly Science may tell of matter 
since the beginning ; she has not a syllable to say 
of it in the beginning. " The idea of creation belongs 
to religion, and not to natural science. The latter 
may, indeed, give us information concerning its 
external history ; but it is not science, but religion, 
which must teach us the fact that God created the 
world. Of this fact Science from her own resources 
is able to tell us nothing. For, however far she may 
travel backwards, and pursue her investigations of 
the origin of all things, she is at last arrested by 
matter, by life, and by law. Whence this matter, 
the life that animates, the law that governs, it ? 
Science is utterly unable to inform us. For she 
always presupposes the existence of matter, and 
all her labours begin therefrom. The question con- 
cerning the origin of matter, leaving the region of 
sensible reality, passes into that of speculation or 
of faith. At this point, then, natural science ceases 
to be natural science, and becomes cither philosophy 
or religion." ^ Consequently, in the presence of this 
problem, Science is dumb. Dumb, did I say ? Far 
' Luthardt, Fundamental Truths^ pp. 72, ^;i^. 



CREATION AND EVOLUTION II5 

from observing silence on a question concerning 
which in the nature of things she is not competent 
to pronounce judgment, she makes here more din 
and clamour than usual. The less she knows the 
louder she asserts. What Tyndall, Huxley, and 
Spencer have to say touching the doctrine of origins 
are not scientific verities, but metaphysical hypotheses, 
and their dissertations should be so considered. 
They are not verified demonstrations, but daring 
speculations, the brilliant dreams of able men, bred 
from despair of arriving at a satisfactory solution, 
but dreams nevertheless. It may be objected that 
neither can the doctrine of creation as promulgated 
by Moses be scientifically verified, that it also is 
a dream. Assuredly, yes ; but compare the dreams ! 
The dreams of materialists, ancient and modern, 
are inconsistent, illogical, self-contradictory, explain- 
ing nothing, leading nowhither, and are unutterably 
depressing. But the dream of Moses is simple, 
harmonious, sublime, elevating, inspiring, explains 
the universe, and turns the key in the lock of creation. 
The conviction is secretly engendered that the dream 
and the facts correspond. Some dreams are truly 
Divine ! 

" The aim and effort of science," declares Tyndall, 
"is to explain the unknown in the terms of the 
known." ^ Doubtless a most worthy aim. " The 
whole process of evolution," again proclaims this 
eloquent child of Science, "is the manifestation of 
a Power absolutely inscrutable to the intellect of 
man " ; " it is by the operation of an insoluble 
mystery that life on earth is evolved." " A Power 
^ Fragments of Science, vol. ii., p. 356. 



Il6 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

absolutely inscrutable ! " "A mystery," that is not 
only unsolved, but "insoluble"! Is not this the 
language of despair ? Is not this impossibility of 
knowledge depressing to body and mind? Cannot 
Science explain the Unknown in the terms of the 
known ? Has Science, too, swollen with pride and 
vainglory, to put her finger on her lip in presence of 
the problem of the origin of things ? All honour to 
this illustrious child of hers for the courage to make 
the honest, frank, though humiliating confession. 
That is what theologians have consistently main- 
tained all along, that the doctrine of origins belongs, 
not to science, but to religion. " Through faith we 
understand that the worlds were framed by the word 
of God, so that things which are seen were not made 
of things which do appear " (Heb. xi. 3). " In the 

beginning ," says Science. Its votaries may 

exercise their ingenuity in inventing for the blank 
a name ; they may call it a '' Powder absolutely 
inscrutable," " a mystery that is insoluble " ; but 
the appellation only emphasises the ignorance. Take 
Moses' solution of the same problem : " In the 
beginning God ! " Suddenly athwart the millenniums 
there shoots a stream of white light. But God also 
is a mystery, you say. Yes ; a mystery of light, not 
a mystery of darkness ; and if we only give Moses 
time, he will tell us who and what this God is. 
Though unknown. He is not unknowable ; though 
mysterious, He is not insoluble. Though no man 
can find Him out to perfection, yet every man can 
know Him as his God and Father in Jesus Christ. 
" In the beginning God created the heavens and the 
earth." " He spoke, and it was done ; He com- 



CREATION AND EVOLUTION II7 

manded, and it stood fast." '' He called the stars by 
name," and out they trooped, a white obedient flock. 
Nature is based on the supernatural. 

II. TJie Creation of Life, — One characteristic 
feature of this chapter strikes us at once : that the six 
creation days are divided into two threes — the first 
three giving an account of inorganic, the second 
three of organic, nature. But the last work of the 
first three seems to stretch out and up, to bridge as 
nearly as possible the chasm between the two cycles. 
They may be presented to the eye thus : 

I. The Inorganic Era. 

1st day. Light cosmical. 

2nd day. Earth divided from the fluid around it. 

r I. Outlining of land and water. 
^^ ^^'' \ 2. Creation of vegetation. 

II. The Organic Era. 

4th day. Light, from the sun. 

5th day. Creation of the lower animals. 

^. , r I. Creation of mammals. 
6th day. \ r^ . . 

(.2. Creation of man. 

Not only is the analogy patent between the first 
and fourth day, the second and fifth, the third and 
sixth, but the work of each day seems to extend 
as nearly as possible to the work of the succeeding 
day. The eras partly overlap. Still, to make the 
hands clasp the intervention of God was necessary. 

According to Moses, in the production of animal 
life God intervenes directly and immediately. The 



Il8 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

Primary Cause is here at work, not possibly to the 
total exclusion of secondary causes, but in order 
to supplement their defect, and carry them beyond 
their natural limits. The materials at hand God 
utilised, and gave nature a lift to a higher level 
than it could in its own energies attain to. The 
production of animal life is the result of the direct 
supernatural intervention of God. God created. 
Here arises the question, How did He create 
animal life ? At one time Professor Huxley believed 
that the potency of all life lay enveloped in the 
slime in the bottom of the ocean, to which he gave 
the high-sounding name " Bathybius." Bathybius, 
however, nowhere existed except in the imagination 
of the able thinker who gave it a name. Some of 
us remember following, a quarter of a century ago, 
with considerable interest, the lively controversy 
then waging between Dr. Bastian on the one hand 
and Professors Tyndall and Huxley on the other 
concerning the " spontaneous generation " of life. 
How did the controversy end ? In the firmer 
establishment of the principle that out of the non- 
living life never emerges. But life is in the world — 
how came it ? Moses answers. By the direct inter- 
position of God. He traces life to the supernatural. 
According to him, life is something new, which 
entered the creation long after its start — not as 
the accidental result of the fermentation of chemical 
elements or the conjunction of mechanical laws, but 
as the consequence of the immediate energising of the 
]3ivine Power. 

The supernatural origin of life granted, again 
comes the question, How ? As a protoplasm or 



CREATION AND EVOLUTION II9 

an organism ? Did the Ggg exist before the hen, 
or the hen before the egg ? Did the cell precede 
the animal, or the animal the cell ? Evolutionism, 
of course, favours the precedence of the cell, the 
egg, the plasm. On this supposition the whole 
theory is based. But, so far as I can see, Moses 
favours the alternative view, that the organism is 
the fontal source of the seed : " And God said, Let 
the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, 
and the first tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose 
seed is in itself, upon the earth : and it was so." 
" And the earth brought forth grass, and herb 
yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding 
fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind : and 
God saw that it was good." " And God created 
great whales, and every living creature that moveth, 
which the waters brought forth abundantly, after 
their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind : 
and it was so." To practical reason it certainly 
looks more likely that the hen laid the egg than 
that the egg, without the conditions requisite to 
fructification and incubation, should evolve the hen. 

We would do well here to ponder the weighty 
words of Lord Salisbury, deliberately delivered by 
him as the President of the British Association of 
Science at the annual meeting at Oxford. He was 
speaking from abundant knowledge, and in the 
presence of the leading exponents of the evolution 
theory. After frankly conceding to Darwinism 
"that few are now found to doubt that animals 
separated by differences far exceeding those that 
distinguish what we know as species, have yet 
descended from common ancestors," the learned 



I20 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

Marquess proceeds : " There is much less agreement 
as to the extent to wliich this common descent can 
be assumed, or the process by which it has come 
about. Darwin himself believed that all animals 
were descended from ' at most four or five pro- 
genitors,' adding that 'there was grandeur in the 
view that life had been originally breathed by the 
Creator into a few forms or one.' Some of his more 
devoted followers, like Professor Haeckel, were 
prepared to go a step further, and to contemplate 
primitive mud as the probable ancestor of the whole 
fauna and flora of this planet. To this extent the 
Darwinian theory has not effected the conquest of 
scientific opinion ; and still less is there any una- 
nimity in the acceptance of natural selection as the 
sole, or even the main, agent of whatever modifi- 
cations may have led up to the existing forms of 
life. The deepest obscurity still hangs over the 
origin of the infinite variety of life. Two of the 
strongest objections to the Darwinian explanation 
appear still to retain their force." 

Lord Salisbury continues : " Lord Kelvin was the 
first to point out that the amount of time required 
by the advocates of the theory for working out the 
processes they had imagined could not be conceded 
without assuming the existence of a totally different 
set of natural laws from those with which we are 
acquainted. His view was not only based on 
profound mechanical reasoning, but it was so plain 
that any layman could comprehend it. Setting aside 
arguments from the resistance of the tides, which 
may be taken to transcend the lay understanding, 
his argument from the refrigeration of the earth 



CREATION AND EVOLUTION 121 

requires little science to apprehend it. Everybody 
knows that hot things cool, and that according to 
their substance they take more or less time in 
cooling. It is evident from the increase of heat as 
we descend into the earth that the earth is cooling, 
and we know by experiment within certain wide 
limits the rate at which its substances, the matters 
of which it is constituted, are found to cool. It 
follows that we can approximately calculate how 
hot it was so many million years ago. But if at 
any time it was hotter at the surface by fifty degrees 
Fahrenheit than it is now, life would have been 
impossible upon the planet, and therefore we can 
without much difficulty fix a date before which 
organic life on earth cannot have existed. Basing 
himself on these considerations. Lord Kelvin limited 
the period of organic life upon the earth to one 
hundred million years ; and Professor Tait, in a still 
more penurious spirit, cut that hundred down to 
ten. But on the other side of the account stand the 
claims of the geologists and biologists. They have 
revelled in the prodigality of the ciphers which 
they put at the end of the earth's hypothetical 
life. Long cribbed and cabined within the narrow 
bounds of the popular chronology, they have exulted 
wantonly in their new freedom. They have lavished 
their millions of years with the open hand of a 
prodigal heir indemnifying himself by present ex- 
travagance for the enforced self-denial of his youth. 
But it cannot be gainsaid that their theories require 
at least all this elbow-room. If we think of that 
vast distance over which Darwin conducts us, from 
the jelly-fish lying on the primeval beach to man 



122 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

as we know him now ; if wc reflect that the 
prodigious change requisite to transform the one 
into the other is made up of a chain of generations, 
each advancing by a minute variation from the 
form of its predecessor ; and if we further reflect 
that these successive changes are so minute that 
in the course of our historic period — say three 
thousand years — this progressive variation has not 
advanced by a single step perceptible to our eyes, 
in respect to man or the animals and plants with 
which man is familiar, we shall admit that for a 
chain of change so vast, of which the smallest 
link is longer than our recorded history, the biologists 
are making no extravagant claim when they demand 
at least many hundred million years for the accom- 
plishment of the stupendous process. Of course, if 
the mathematicians are right, the biologists cannot 
have what they demand. If for the purposes of 
their theory organic life must have existed on the 
globe more than one hundred million years ago, it 
must, under the temperature then prevailing, have 
existed in a state of vapour. The jelly-fish would 
have been dissipated in steam long before he had 
had a chance of displaying the advantageous varia- 
tion which was to make him the ancestor of the 
human race." According to the learned Marquess, 
" the laity may be excused for returning a verdict 
of 'Not proven.'" If in their calculations Lord 
Kelvin and Professor Tait be right, where will 
Professor Drummond find room for his " Ascent 
of Man," or rather his " Ascent of Woman " ? 

The Mosaic theology seems to teach lurther 
that God is not only the originator of the first 



CREATION AND EVOLUTION 



123 



life, but also the chief cause of the different kinds 
of life which have subsequently appeared. The 
chief cause, not the sole. " And God said, Let 
the earth bring forth grass, the herb, and the 
fruit tree, after his kbid!' " And God said. Let the 
waters bring forth abundantly. And God created 
whales, and every living creature that moveth, after 
their kind!' " And God said. Let the earth bring 
forth the living creature after his kind, and cattle 
after their kind-, and it was so." These words 
seem to imply that God and Nature were working 
in partnership — not God without Nature, nor Nature 
without God. The vital forces of the world were 
guided, fortified, and supplemented by the Supreme 
Force. The theory that originally there was but 
one species or kind, out of which all other species 
or kinds were evolved, here meets with apparent 
opposition. Singular the emphasis laid by constant 
repetition in the above verses on the phrase " after 
his kind." Materialistic scientists have expatiated 
much on the transmutation of species ; but their 
finely woven guesses are pronounced by spiritualistic 
scientists — and they are a host — to be mere myths. 
Instead of the myths they destroy, materialists 
invent myths [of their own. " A most extensive 
series of observations has shown how groundless is 
the notion of transmutations of species ; and not- 
withstanding the excitement caused by the Darwinian 
hypothesis with respect to the formation of species 
by natural processes, the most eminent men, such 
as Murchison, Agassiz, Owen, and others, have 
declared that there is no ground for presuming 
that species are transitory, while uniform experience 



124 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

shows that the established course of nature is decisive 
against the confused mixture of hybrids, whether in 
plants or animals, which are not fertile with others, 
which cannot be perpetuated, and usually die out at 
the next gradation." Environments can bring about 
marvellous modifications, but they have never been 
known to transmute one species into another. Not 
a single specimen in the transition state has ever been 
discovered. When a new species appears, its organi- 
sation is always complete. A wolf may become a 
dog — environments may account for the change ; but 
it is not known of either developing into a sheep. 
Art has evolved breeds ; but the chasm between 
" breeds " and " species " is wide. These breeds, as 
Professor Le Conte, who worthily attempts to reconcile 
Christian faith with modern Evolutionism, testifies, 
when they escape the influence of human domesti- 
cation, and arc left without manipulation in the 
hands of nature, always revert to their original 
type. " Natural selection compels reversion^' writes 
the Professor in italics. Singular that he does 
not see that, in that fact. Nature proclaims her- 
self an antagonist of transmutation, and when left to 
herself vigorously strives to obliterate all traces of the 
art of breeding. God has created plants, fishes, birds, 
animals, each ^^ after /lis kind'' \ and the barrier 
between one kind and another no effort of man 
can break down. So far as Science has read the 
records of the past, not a single instance can she 
point out in which Nature has allowed the partition 
walls between the species to be impaired. 

in. Creation of Man. — "So God created man in 
His own image ; in the image of God created He him." 



CREATION AND EVOLUTION 125 

What of the body of man ? Is it the immediate 
creation of God out of the dust of the ground, or 
His mediate creation through animals which existed 
before him ? A categorical answer is not returned ; 
the phraseology is indefinite enough to admit of 
either method. Professor Drummond has a very 
striking title to one of his chapters—" The Scaffolding 
left in the Body." The author's skilful marshalling 
of admitted and well-known facts made on my mind 
a deep impression. From the likenesses he pictures 
between the human frame and the animal organism, 
he comes unhesitatingly to the conclusion that man 
is developed from the animal, the animal from the 
primeval ascidian. The argument from the suc- 
cessive transformations of the human embryo— a 
subject which requires the profoundest examination 
by Christian philosophers— has not yet been answered 
to my satisfaction. 

But be that as it may, the direct or indirect 
formation of the body is left by Moses an open 
question. Wherein then does his teaching differ 
from modern evolutionary theories ? In this, — 
that God acted directly, immediately, that is, super- 
naturally, in constituting man the thinking, moral 
creature that he to-day is. Nature did not evolve 
him ; environments did not develop him ; and 
certainly he did not make himself. That Nature, 
in accordance with the usual plan of creation, was 
being prepared for the advent of man, that in her 
last works animal life threw out its tendrils as 
near as possible to rational life, is readily acknow- 
ledged. But there was a limit beyond which 
secondary causes could not travel ; here precisely 



126 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

the Creative Power came in, and — man was fashioned, 
the image and likeness of the Creator. Man may, 
if the phrase be allowed, be a supernatural develop- 
ment from a prior animal ; he cannot be the product 
of tiatural evolution, and that for two reasons. 

First, because in other apes, either in the historic 
or prehistoric periods, no tendency has been 
observed to transmute themselves into men. Is 
it not unaccountable, and therefore unbelievable, 
that millions upon millions of years ago there 
lived an ape, or perchance a pair, male and 
female, which passed the boundaries of animalhood 
and entered the territory of manhood, and that 
no ape ever since has crossed the frontier? 
Besides, the gap between the most advanced ape 
and the lowest developed man is too wide for 
Nature at one or two bounds to leap over. The 
largest gorilla brain is 34*5 cubic inches ; and, 
according to Professor Schaafhausen, the smallest 
human brain is 46 cubic inches. That Nature 
should at one bound advance from 34 inches to 
46 is admittedly impossible. Therefore materialistic 
scientists have resort to the Missing Link. But 
how came the link to be missed, such a large 
link, and the link nearest to man too ? Professor 
Haeckel, who has constituted himself the knight- 
errant of Materialism, answers by supposing a lost 
continent, Lemuria, submerged under the Indian 
Ocean ; and that, if we could only go down there, 
the Missing Link would be found ! How fruitful 
in suppositions materialistic science is ! This clever 
writer, who in intellectual grasp comes behind none 
of his school, is driven to imagine a continent, for 



CREATION AND EVOLUTION 127 

the existence of which not a tittle of proof is forth- 
coming, in order to support the evolution-thesis. 

On the other hand, take the Biblical view, that 
God either directly formed a new creature out of 
pre-existent earthly materials, summarising in him 
all His preceding works, or that supernaturally He 
developed a preceding animal, be he ape or any 
other creature, into the corporeal stature and mental 
condition of man : is it not simpler, more credible, 
more reasonable ? That creation on any theory is 
a mystery must be confessed ; but on the Scripture 
theory it is a mystery of light, whilst on the 
evolutionary theory it is a mystery of darkness. 
What the Biblical author lays stress on is, — that 
man is not the resultant of the operation of second- 
ary causes, but is the immediate work of the First 
Cause. 

But behind the body is the mind, the spirit that 
is in man. When I dwell inordinately on the 
meannesses and littlenesses of man, I feel no repug- 
nance to the evolution theory — I am almost willing 
that man should be considered wholly the descendant 
of the brutes. But when I consider his moral 
magnanimity, witness his sorrow and repentance, 
hear his prayer and praise, I feel that there is 
something in man that is come down from heaven, 
something Divine in the breast of man that has 
descended straight from the bosom of God. Pro- 
found consciousness of this made the ancient thinkers 
of Greece pourtray Prometheus as stealing fire from 
heaven to kindle the spirit which is in man. Look 
in his eye, and you behold the sparkle and glow 
of the Divine Fire. What is deepest, and therefore 



128 PRtMEVAL REVELATION 

truest, in heathen consciousness finds both its ex- 
planation and expression in the Mosaic record. The 
superhuman is the deepest human. Plato is right 
in saying that in every man there is a beast ; but 
equally true is it that within every breast dwells 
an angel, which battles with the beast to keep him 
in subjection. The beast within us — where did he 
come from ? I almost think the evolutionists are 
right, that he came from the brutes of the primeval 
forest, and ultimately from the primeval slime in the 
bottom of the sea. 

4 

Eglur y dengys y dyn 

O ba radd y b'o 'i wreiddyn. 

But whence is the angel within us derived ? 
Moses must be right when he teaches that he 
descended from God. Our highest nature is akin 
to the Divine. Let scientists theorise as they may, 
we feel that Moses has given the true philosophy 
of our origin. The evolutionists are possibly right 
in tracing a connection between our physical frame 
and the animal organisms — a connection, however, 
admitting, yea, demanding the direct intervention 
of the Creator. Moses is incontrovertibly right in 
tracing our moral nature to the skies, and beholding 
in it a mirror reflecting the Deity Himself. The 
beast and the angel, the animal and the Divine, 
both lodge in this breast of mine. 

Mere precisely comes in the possibility of the 
Fall. In reading Drummond's Ascent of Man^ I 
could detect no possible place in his theory for 
man's fall, I could see no room in it for sin at 
all. It is ascent, ascent, without break, and with- 



CREATION AND EVOLUTION 



129 



out retrogression, from plasm to animalism, from 
animalism to barbarous manhood, and from bar- 
barous manhood to civilised communities. But how- 
plausible soever the scheme appears on paper, how 
attractive soever the theory is made to look on his 
glowing pages, one grim fact confronts it from 
beginning to end— SIN. Evil is a fact. Wickedness 
is a terrible reality. No theory of the origin of man, 
however intellectually plausible, which provides no 
room for the origin of moral evil can recommend itself 
to the moral judgment. The Fall was not upward, but 
downward. Take Moses' account of the origin of 
the race, and the Fall becomes both possible and 
explicable. The triumph of the dragon in our 
nature over the angel, of the corporeal over the 
spiritual, of the lower nature over the higher — that, 
that is the Fall of man. The victory of bodily 
appetences over the dictates of conscience, the eating 
of the fruit contrary to the Divine injunction, 
constituted, according to Moses, our original Fall, 
and in the continued subjugation of the higher nature 
by the lower consists our present degradation. 
Verily the Mosaic theory comports well with the 
facts of consciousness. Man in his higher nature is 
the supernatural creation of God. 

IV. To conclude this chapter without directing 
attention to another creation, later than that of 
Adam, and more marvellous, were hardly right — the 
PRODUCTION OF THE GOD-MAN. As the Old Testa- 
ment begins with the creation of the First Adam, so 
the New commences with the generation of the Second 
Adam, the Lord from heaven. 

Jesus Christ — is He the product of evolution? 

9 



130 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

And if the theory collapses here, presumably it has 
broken down in other places. It is by no means 
denied that the world was being gradually prepared 
for the advent of the Christ ; but the preparation 
was negative, not positive ; and a negative morality 
could never produce a positive Saviour. Contem- 
plate the character of the Lord Jesus. How was it 
produced ? Did the rottenness of society in His 
day grow His holiness? Did the bigotry and 
narrowness of His nation produce His large- 
heartedness and magnanimity? Did the hypocrisy 
and intense selfishness of His contemporaries 
engender His infinite holiness and unparalleled 
self-sacrifice, which stained the Cross of Calvary 
with His heart's blood ? Development ! What 
was there in sinful humanity that could develop 
into a sinless Saviour ? Say what you will, before 
Bethlehem's Manger and Calvary's Cross the 
doctrine of evolution collapses like a pricked 
balloon. 

How then to account for Jesus Christ among men ? 
On the same principle as Adam is accounted for 
among animals — by the miraculous intervention of 
God. " The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and 
the Might of the Highest will overshadow thee, and 
the Holy Thing which shall be born of thee shall 
be called the Son of God" (Luke i. 35). The Lord 
Jesus is the unrivalled product of the direct creative 
power of the Almighty. The Birth of Bethlehem is 
a supernatural fact— no evolution of man, but the 
incarnation of God. God supernaturally interfered 
in the creation of matter, the origination of life, the 
production of mind, and the generation of Jesus 



CREATION AND EVOLUTION 



131 



Christ "Who can bring a clean thing out of an 
unclean?" Nature cannot, evolution cannot. But 
"what the law" — natural and moral— "could not do, 
in that it was weak through the flesh, God sent His 
own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin 
condemned sin in the flesh." 

These events, not clustered together so as to disturb 
our equanimity respecting the stability of natural 
laws, but scattered over untold ages, commencing in 
the far-off seon at the beginning of time, and cul- 
minating in Bethlehem in the fulness of time, are the 
four great miracles of history. " The first Adam was 
made a living soul, the last Adam a quickening 
spirit" (i Cor. xv. 45). Adam in Eden was only 
the recipient of spiritual life ; but Jesus Christ is 
a fountain of life, a quickening spirit, and therefore 
can impart life to others. Hence He is the Head 
of a new creation, and thereby is able to retrieve 
the disasters of the Fall. In one sense the Incar- 
nation completes the original creation ; in another 
it repairs the ruin and havoc wrought by the intro- 
duction of sin. 

Appropriately, therefore, the volume of Revelation 
ends with a new earth and a new heaven, wherein 
dwelleth righteousness. The end returns upon the 
beginning, but octaves higher. In Genesis is beheld 
an earthly Paradise ; in Revelation a Paradise which 
is heavenly. In Genesis a Tree of Life is seen 
growing in the midst of the Garden ; in Revelation 
the same tree grows in the midst of the Celestial City 
and on either side of the river. In Genesis a river 
went out of Eden, whence it parted into four 
branches ; in the Apocalypse is shown us a " pure 



132 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding " no 
longer out of the mountains of Armenia, " but out of 
the Throne of God and the Lamb," nevermore to be 
divided. To Father, Son, and Holy Ghost be the 
glory, world without end ! 



CHAPTER V 

THE CREATION OF MAN 

THE second section of the Mosaic narrative 
begins at Gen. ii. 4 : " These are the genera- 
tions [ioledotli] of the heavens and the earth." Ten 
times this formula is repeated in the Book of Genesis, 
each time on the introduction of a new subject. It 
is almost a pity that these internal demarcations 
are not more formally indicated in our Authorised 
Version. As Moses did not invent these "genera- 
tions" or family registers, it is evident that they 
were transmitted from ancient times, and sacredly 
preserved in the archives of the children of Israel, 
and utilised by him for the purpose of a religious 
history of the world. 

That he used ancient documents in the composition 
of Genesis seems to be a matter of common sense. 
Where then does his inspiration come in? In the 
balance of judgment displayed, in the infallible 
power to sift the spurious from the genuine, in the 
spiritual insight enabling him to lop off all 
excrescences, and to present to his readers only 
the true, the beautiful, and the good. Superior 
intellect is evidenced more by ability to separate 
truth from error than by power to assail or defend, 

133 



134 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

with ingenious plausibility and a vast exhibition of 
learning, certain specific theses. The mind which, 
by the power of insight, without the aid of the 
canons of criticism, is able at a glance to separate 
truth from the intermingling error, men usually 
honour with the name of genius. Having then in 
his possession documents giving the past history 
of mankind, Moses used them, not probably in their 
entirety, piecing them together mechanically, but 
with judgment and discrimination, such as any 
author, sensible of his responsibility, would naturally 
exercise. 

Passing from the first to the second section, 
our attention is at once arrested by a significant 
change in the Divine Name. In the first, the Creator 
is without exception denominated God (Elohim) ; 
in the second. Lord God (Jehovah Elohim). In 
the conversation, however, between the tempter 
and Eve, the less sacred but more general term God 
is employed — a minute variation bearing on its 
face the unintentional mark of verisimilitude. Hence 
the apparently sound critical conclusion of the exist- 
ence of an Elohistic and a Jehovistic writer. Pro- 
fessor Driver describes the style of the Elohist as 
" unornate, measured, precise " ; the Jehovist as 
" freer and more varied," " picturesque and flowing." 
Accordingly, wherever in the Pentateuch he comes 
across a verse or passage " picturesque and flowing," 
he puts it down to the Jehovist ; but where he meets 
with a matter-of-fact style, he credits it to the Elohist. 
In an analysis of words and phrases Dr. Driver is 
doubtless an expert ; but others probably have culti- 
vated a sense of style not inferior to his. Is it too 



THE CREATION OF MAN I35 

bold to say that the first chapter is as fully charged 
with poetry as the second, indeed, more so, inasmuch 
as the sublime ranks higher than the descriptive ? 

Postponing for the present the discussion relative 
to the respective meanings of Elohim, Jehovah, 
and Jehovah Elohim, let us proceed to examine the 
documents themselves. Writers of rationalistic 
proclivities revel in the occupation of enumerating 
the many disagreements between the two Creation 
narratives — the Elohistic and Jehovistic — in order to 
discredit their historical trustworthiness. The sugges- 
tion is, — Seeing the two accounts conflict, neither is 
correct. Here again Dr. Dods throws his great weight 
on the side of the destructive criticism. " The two ac- 
counts," he says, " which no ingenuity can reconcile." 
This asseveration is, in his estimation, so indisputable 
that it requires no corroboration or proof. More 
consonant would it be, it strikes me, with the 
sensitiveness of Christian feeling, if the eminent 
Scottish divine were less dogmatic in his pronounce- 
ments on the alleged "discrepancies." Personally I 
profit more by the authors who elicit the musical 
harmonies of the rich organ than by those who 
always thump their fingers on every cracked string. 
Dr. Dods brings out with his well-known ability 
the underlying lessons ; but our confidence in the 
inner teaching is shaken, when we are uncere- 
moniously told that the story is self-contradictory, 
and therefore erroneous. Men of common sense ask, 
and with propriety, Why is truth arrayed in the 
garment of error ? Is it truth ? Seldom is the kernel 
sound and palatable, if encased in a cracked shell. 
1 Genesis^ p. 2. 



136 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

Putting aside the inspiration of the author of Genesis, 
and viewing him simply as an able, learned, honest 
man, is it conceivable that he would clumsily join 
together two narratives, which on the face of them 
contradict each other, which any schoolboy could 
detect, but which he could not see ? The supposition 
is preposterous. Whatever the author of Genesis 
was, he was neither a fool nor a knave. Moses put 
the documents into his history because he perceived 
that they were essentially harmonious, and con- 
stituting a fit beginning to his religious history of 
the race. 

The contradiction is superficial, the harmony deep, 
real. The order of the creative work in the first 
chapter is — (i) vegetation, (2) animals, (3) man. In 
the second the order runs — (i) man, (2) vegetation, 
(3) animals, (4) woman. The last in the first chapter 
is first in the second. Is not the conclusion truer 
and more reverent that the writer beheld the differ- 
ences as well as we do, and that therefore the two 
accounts refer, not to the same work of creation, but 
that the first relates the creation of the earth in its 
totality, and the second the special preparation of 
that portion of the earth where human history was to 
find its starting-point ? And when the two accounts 
are minutely examined, it is found that in the first 
chapter the word employed is Jia-aretz^ signifying the 
earth as a whole, and in the second adainaJi^ denoting 
that " region," " land," or " field " where mankind, 
represented by their first parents, began their 
chequered career. Other reconciliations have been 
suggested ; and, where two or three are possible, 
no writer has the right, in an offhand manner, to 



THE CREATION OF MAN 137 

pronounce an adverse judgment. Be the author of 
Genesis who he may, he is not such a simpleton as 
to place palpable contradictions in the forefront of 
his history. Difficulties there are ; but difficulties 
are not discrepancies. 

In the first chapter Moses gives an account of 
the creation of man— the genus, the race— without 
descending to details : " So God created man in His 
own image ; in the image of God created He him ; 
male and female created He them." In the second 
he enters into particulars, tells us how God made the 
first human individual— not the race, but the pro- 
genitor of the race : " And the Jehovah God formed 
man, dust of the ground, and breathed into his 
nostrils the breath of lives ; and man became a living 
soul." With greater perspicuity than before, man's 
double relation, to God on the one hand and to the 
earth on the other, is set forth. 

I. The material side of his nature is explained: 
" And the Lord God formed— kneaded— man, dust of 
the ground." The figure is borrowed from an artist 
kneading clay, and modelling it into the human form 
Divine. But to take this metaphor as covering the 
whole ground would lead us astray. God should not 
be viewed as simply an artisan, from an extraneous 
standpoint impressing His idea or form upon plastic 
matter. Other Scriptures correct this teaching by 
representing Him as an immanent principle of life, 
moulding the material figure from within, so that the 
corporeity is not the investiture, but the growth, of 
the idea. 

What materials had God to knead ? The forma- 
tion of the human body was not a creation ex nihilo. 



138 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

but the reconstruction of matter already existent. 
In ver. 19 we read that "the Lord God formed 
every beast of the field and every fowl of the air out 
of the ground." But of man it is recorded that the 
Lord God formed him, not out of the ground, but 
out of the dust of the ground — a subtle distinction 
which carries in it a world of meaning. Consciously 
or unconsciously, the intimation is conveyed that, in 
the human body, earthly matter has reached the 
highest refinement, gross elements being sublimated 
to a point unknown in the animal world. He was 
made, not out of a clod, but of the finest dust ; in his 
fabric there is observable an extreme delicacy of 
texture. This comports well with the opinion that 
the Scriptural terms employed to denote the material 
wherewith our bodily frame was built designate, not 
matter in a coarse, undigested state, but in a condition 
of high refinement. Matter is carried as near the 
spiritual as practicable. " Thou shalt return unto the 
ground, for dust \apJiar\ thou art, and unto dust thou 
shalt return." " I also am formed out of the clay 
\chomer\ " — not the brickmaker's clay, rough and 
gritty, but the potter's, from which are manufactured 
vessels of honour for the king's use. 

But be that as it may, due prominence is here 
given to the material part of our nature. The same 
physical elements, which constitute the earth-soil, 
go to the making of the human body. Physiology 
gives the following list : " carbon, chloride, phos- 
phorus, fluorine, nitrogen, magnesium, silicum, 
aluminium, potassium, sodium, calcium, iron, man- 
ganese, titanium, oxygen, hydrogen." Science can 
reduce the body into all that ; but she cannot make 



THE CREATION OF MAN 1 39 

all that into a body again ! Therefore the Mosaic 
writer brings in the supernatural interposition of 
God. 

But how ? Two methods, at least, are conceivable. 
According to the first, God fashioned a model of 
clay, with all the external and internal organs 
complete, the muscles and nerves arranged in due 
order, all the joints closely compacted together, and 
then breathed into the inanimate statue, till the 
clay was converted into bone and flesh and ligaments, 
and the skin glowed with the pulsations of life. That 
is anthropomorphism, I confess ; but, being men, 
we cannot well escape from it, and, did we succeed, 
we would perhaps be farther removed from the 
truth than we are now. Man being made in the 
image of God, anthropomorphism is often theo- 
morphism. This is also the method in which the 
artistic mind of Greece conceived that Prometheus 
formed the first man. Into this form God is 
pourtrayed as breathing the spirit of life, till man 
became a living soul. As Elisha lay on the lifeless 
body of the child, and breathed into it till it revived, 
so God is pictured as waking man into self-conscious- 
ness with a kiss! A fitting beginning to the 
subsequent revelation of His love ! 

The other alternative is the method known as 
evolution. But two kinds of evolution are con- 
ceivable—naturalistic and supranaturalistic. The 
theory of evolution connected with the name of 
Darwin is the naturalistic, and teaches the procession 
of all that is from some original germ or cell, 
wholly in virtue of innate forces, called into activity 
by environments. It admits of no supernatural 



140 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

interference or Divine influence ab extra. To it 
whether God exists or not is a problem ; and if 
He does exist, it means nothing — He is of no good, 
does nothing. Eternal matter had enveloped in 
it the potency of all that is. Man proceeded from 
the animal, the animal from the fish, the fish from 
the tadpole, the tadpole from the eternal mud. To 
this theory of evolution the Bible from beginning 
to end, Moses no less than Paul, offers consistent, 
uniform resistance. To say nothing now of reason 
with its mathematical truths, and conscience with its 
inflexible moral principles, science miserably fails 
in the adduction of proofs. The most illustrious 
scientists are the most forward to proclaim this. 

Professor Boyd-Dawkins points out that in the 
palaeolithic age " man was present in Europe as 
man, and not as an intermediate form, connecting 
the human race with the lower animals." 

Professor Virchow of Berlin writes : " You are 
aware that I am now specially engaged in the study 
of anthropology ; but I am bound to declare that 
every positive advance which we have made in the 
province of prehistoric anthropology has actually 
removed us farther from the proof of such a con- 
nection [of man with the ape]. . . . When we study 
the fossil man of the quaternary period, who must, 
of course, have stood comparatively near to our 
primitive ancestors in the order of descent, or rather 
of ascent, we find always a viaii, just such men as 
arc now. . . . The old troglod}'tcs, pile-villagers, 
and bog-people prove to be quite a respectable 
society. They have heads so large that many a 
living person would be only too happy to possess 



THE CREATION OF MAN 14I 

such. . . . Nay, if we gather together the whole 
sum of the fossil men hitherto known, and put them 
parallel with those of the present time, we can 
decidedly pronounce that there are among living 
men a much larger number of individuals who 
show a relatively inferior type than there are among 
the fossils known up to this time. . . . Not a single 
fossil skull of an ape or an ' ape-man ' has yet been 
found that could really have belonged to a human 
being. Every addition to the amount of objects, 
which we have attained as materials for discussion, 
has removed us farther from the hypothesis pro- 
pounded." In the preface he says: "With a few 
individual exceptions, this protest has met with 
a cordial assent from German naturalists." His 
conclusion is : " We cannot teach, we cannot pronounce 
it to be a conquest of science, that man descends from 
the ape or any other animaiy^ 

Mr. Wallace, who shares with Darwin the glory 
of the discovery attached to the latter's name, 
but who rejects the Darwinian conclusion in respect 
of man, says: "The few remains yet known of 
prehistoric man do not indicate any material diminu- 
tion in the size of the brain-case. A Swiss skull 
of the stone age, found in the lake-dwelling of 
Meilen, corresponded exactly to that of a Swiss 
youth of the present day. The celebrated Neander- 
thal skull had a larger circumference than the 
average ; and its capacity indicating actual mass 
of brain is estimated to have been not less than 
75 cubic inches, or nearly the average of existing 
Australian crania. The Engis skull, perhaps the 
1 The Freedom of Science, pp. vi, 60, 62, 63. 



142 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

oldest known, and which, according to Sir John 
Lubbock, 'there seems no doubt was really con- 
temporary with the mammoth and the cave bear,' 
is yet, according to Professor Huxley, * a fair average 
skull, which might have belonged to a philosopher 
or might have contained the thoughtless brains of 
a savage.' Of the cave men of Les Eyzies, who 
were undoubtedly contemporary with the reindeer 
in the south of France, Professor Paul Broca says : 
' The great capacity of the brain, the development 
of the frontal region, the fine elliptical form of 
the profile of the skull, are incontestable character- 
istics of superiority, such as we are accustomed to 
meet with in civilised races.' " ^ 

When men such as these, acknowledged princes 
in the realm of science, thus speak, why the eager- 
ness on the part of Christian divines to at once 
modify the Christian faith to accommodate the 
new theory ? Of late years many theologians of 
repute, have written that between Christianity 
and evolution there is, and there need be, no 
incompatibility ; that, if from a lower animal a 
higher animal is developed by natural forces, the 
argument from design is strengthened — contrary, 
however, to the protests of many of the leading 
upholders of evolution, who maintain that teleology 
is demolished — ^just as a silver watch, which could 
itself manufacture a gold one, would reflect all 
the more credit on the original watchmaker. But, 
admitting that evolution invigorates Theism, does 
it help to a true anthropology? If it leaves God 
intact, does it leave man intact ? So far, I have 
' Theory of Natural Se Ice h'o?2, p. 336. 



THE CREATION OF MAN 1 43 

refused allegiance to the Darwinian evolution, partly 
in default of proofs, and partly, not in the interest 
of God, but in the interest of man. If man be 
a product of the evolution of nature, he cannot 
be more than the sum-total of all that preceded. 
Nothing can be ^-volved which was not first /«- 
volved ; nothing can come out this end of the 
evolution-machine which did not go in at the other 
end. This is one valuable service Joseph Cook 
rendered by his lectures — driving home the truth 
that between involution and evolution there must 
be an algebraic equation. If mind has come out 
this end in man, it must have gone in at the other 
end in matter ; or, if only matter went in the other 
end, only matter could come out this end — mind 
is only a function of matter. 

A modified form, however, of the doctrine of 
evolution is possible — that which I have named the 
supranaturaHstic. This admits of immediate Divine 
intervention at certain critical moments in the 
creation and development of life, by which God 
introduces new staple into the loom, new material 
into the machine. But these interventions should 
not be viewed as so numerous as to crowd the 
universe with miracles. The laws of nature are 
allowed to work out their own results for millions 
of years — results seen in innumerable varieties and 
improvements of species ; but where these laws have 
developed themselves to their utmost capacity, and 
can do no more and reach no higher, Biblical 
theology introduces the direct aid of the Maker of 
the machine. Professor Du Boys-Reymond, him- 
self a materialist, enumerates seven enigmas which 



144 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

naturalistic evolution cannot solve : (i) the exist- 
ence of matter and form ; (2) the origin of motion ; 
(3) the origin of life ; (4) the appearance of design 
in nature ; (5) the existence of consciousness ; 

(6) intelligent thought and the origin of speech ; 

(7) the question of Free Will. As bearing more 
especially on the subject of our present discussion 
listen to this eloquent man : " At some special point 
in the development of life on the earth, which we 
do not know, there appeared something new, hitherto 
unprecedented, a thing incomprehensible, like the 
essence of matter and force, and like the first begin- 
ning of motion. The thread of intelligence reaching 
away back into the endless past is snapped, and 
our knowledge of nature reaches a chasm, across 
which no bridge, no pinion can carry us. This 
new and incomprehensible thing is CONSCIOUSNESS. 
I am about to demonstrate, I believe, in a very 
conclusive way, that consciousness is inexplicable 
by material conditions, not only in the present state 
of our knowledge, which indeed every one admits, 
but that it will always remain inexplicable by such 
conditions." But, in the above places, where 
naturalistic evolution breaks down, the Biblical or 
supranaturalistic theory places God — the miraculous 
exertion of the Divine Power and Wisdom. 

The second alternative therefore is, that the 
human body was evolved from a prior animal 
organism, the fittest for the purpose, not by the 
unassisted operation of natural laws and forces in 
the keen struggle for existence, but by the super- 
natural aid of God Almighty. On either hypothesis 
the Mosaic allegation stands good that the human 



THE CREATION OF MAN 145 

body was formed — dust of the ground. The view 
that God fashioned man straightway out of clay 
would dovetail with the Mosaic teaching, but leave 
the traces of prior existences, the " scaffolding," in 
the body unexplained. The second view agrees 
quite as well with Genesis, whilst at the same time 
it accounts for the vestiges of reptile, fish, and animal 
observable in the evolution of the pre-natal human 
embryo. 

This view, formed on independent grounds, is, I 
find, favoured by that profound thinker and accom- 
plished scholar, Professor Tayler Lewis. After 
averring that the formation of man is "an entirely 
new creative act, and indeed the very highest," he 
adds : " But this does not exclude the idea that 
the human physical was connected with the previous 
nature, or natures, and was brought out of them. 
That is, it was made from the earth in the widest 
signification of the term. That it was not a mere 
plastic shaping, or outward mechanical structure, 
is implied ... in the non-passivity of the earth. 
There are immense difficulties connected with the 
idea of an outward Promethean image, a dead 
organisation which, although having the appearance, 
is really no organisation at all in the strict sense 
of the word, any more than the marble statue or the 
waxen image. No one supposes that the making 
of the human body was an immediate making ex 
niJiilo. It was made from the earth, and this earth 
had already had its nature, according to its varieties 
of carbon, nitrogen, etc. ; and these, as natures, con- 
nected with other natures, entered into the human 
body. If it is not a creation ex nihilo, which is 

10 



146 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

expressly contrary to the language of the account, 
we must suppose a connection with nature to a 
certain extent. What difficulty or danger, then, 
in giving to the phrase ' from the earth ' the widest 
sense consistent with the idea of man's having an 
earthly as well as a heavenly origin ? It is this 
latter idea, and the higher psychology connected 
with it, that furnishes to faith its shield against all 
mere theories of development that may proceed, 
with weaker or stronger evidence, from a naturalising 
science." ^ 

" All that we have is the fact that by some process 
the human body was brought from the earth, or that 
thus the human physical, coming from the lower 
physical, and through the connecting links, types, or 
moulds, as carried upwards by the Divine formations, 
was at last brought into the state, in which it was 
prepared to receive that Divine inspiration, which 
alone constitutes the species and makes it man. 
The primus homo was the first man thus inspired, and 
who became the progenitor of the species. The first 
Adam was made by the Divine Life raising the 
physical or animal into the rational. The Second 
Adam represents a higher inspiration, elevating the 
rational human to a close union with the Divine. 
Such is the analogy of the Apostle. Christ elevates 
the human, even as the first human, ' by the inspira- 
tion of the Almighty,' is the uplifting of the mere 
animal or physical that lay below. The second 
mystery is the greater, and our belief in it should 
take away any wonder or difficulty that may attend 
the first." 2 

* Lange's Com., p. 211. ' Ibid., p. 156. 



THE CREATION OF MAN I47 

II. We are now in a position to examine the 
second Mosaic statement that " God breathed into 
his nostrils the breath of lives, and man became a 
living soul." 

Plurality of lives is here ascribed to man. The 
first is a life akin to that of the plant, a life vv^hich 
proceeds without pause in the organism. Whether 
we be asleep or awake, working or resting, the 
internal organs discharge their functions, without 
asking our consent or reporting to consciousness 
their doings. This vegetal life, having its centre in 
the heart, is involuntary. The food is swallowed ; 
and this life instantly appropriates it, analyses it, 
directs each element to its proper channel, thus 
incorporating in the organism the aliment therein 
contained. What is this mysterious principle of life, 
which enables the internal organs, devoid of intelli- 
gence, to absorb what is conducive to health and 
vigour, and to expel all that is injurious and un- 
wholesome? All men truly vegetate, and this 
vegetal or plant life is the substratum on which all 
nobler life is built. 

The second is animal life, having its centre in the 
brain. As the vegetal life is the source of nutrition, 
so the animal life is the fount of sensation and 
locomotion. The more convoluted brain does not 
necessarily indicate greater intelligence, for it is the 
source of motor more than of thought power. 
" Advance in intelligence," says Professor Calder- 
wood, " and advance in complexity of brain structure 
do not keep pace with each other, they are not 
correlated so as to harmonise."^ 

^ Relation of Mind and Brain, p. 148. 



148 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

But over and above all is intellectual or spiritual 
life : " God formed man out of the dust of the 
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath 
[ruac/i] of lives, and man became a living soul 
[nep/ies/iy This word JiepJiesJi — soul — has reference 
to the two preceding sentences, and includes on the 
one hand the body, and on the other the spirit. In 
modern phraseology the soul is used in contra- 
distinction from the body, but in the Old Testament 
as inclusive of both body and spirit. For the 
understanding, therefore, of Biblical psychology it is 
expedient that the mind grasps the comprehensive- 
ness of meaning in the term "soul," that it is 
co-extensive with human nature on both sides, the 
physical and spiritual, gravitating in Biblical usage 
sometimes more to the corporeal and sometimes 
more to the spiritual signification. In Gen. i. 30 it 
is employed of irrational animals : " To every beast 
of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to 
everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein 
there is life, I have given every green herb for meat." 
The word for life here is the same word nepJiesJi, and 
is rightly translated in the margin "a living soul." 
Everything which liveth, therefore, according to 
Scriptural nomenclature, has a nephesh, a living 
soul. 

Take again the concomitant word ruach, spirit. 
On comparison of the passages where it occurs, we 
discover that it signifies the principle of life, and is 
therefore properly applicable to all living creatures. 
Thus we read in Gen. vii. 15: " And they went in 
unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, 
wherein is the breath [riiachy spirit] of life." If both 



THE CREATION OF MAN 149 

words then are equally applicable to every living 
creature, wherein consists their difference? In 
this : nephesh designates the life, ruach the principle 
of life ; the first denotes the effect, the second the 
cause — that invisible principle or force which issues 
in sensation and locomotion. 

Nephesh then is life, ruach the principle of life : 
on this ground man and the animal creation are 
on the same level. The superiority of man over 
his humbler confreres lies in the possession, not of 
the principle, but of the immortal principle of life, 
symbolised by Moses as the inbreathing of God 
into the nostrils of man. This act differentiates 
man from all terrestrial beings. There are then 
body, soul, and spirit, the soul being the middle 
term in which body and spirit meet in the unity 
of personality. 

Are we then to understand that Moses teaches 
the tripartition of human nature ? Many of the 
ablest expositors answer in the affirmative, among 
them the learned Delitzsch. However, after a 
sympathetic examination of the theory, I perceive 
no sufficient reason to discard the old view that 
man is composed of two parts, one material, the 
other spiritual — spirit and soul being only two names 
to designate the double side of the one immaterial 
substance. On the world-side it is soul ; on the 
God-side it is spirit. Consequently, when the con- 
nection between this immaterial substance and the 
material body is snapped in death, the former is 
no longer soul, but spirit. It is not the soul, but 
the spirit, which " returns to God which gave it." 
It is not the souls, but the "spirits of just men," 



150 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

that dwell on Mount Zion. The spirit embodied 
is soul ; the soul disembodied is spirit. This dis- 
tinction may not be universally applicable, no such 
distinction being perhaps possible ; but it is work- 
able, and solves to a large extent the difficulties 
of phraseology frequently occurring in the Old and 
the New Testament. 

This Divine inbreathing, what is its theological 
import ? In the production of life, short of self- 
consciousness, God simply utters the creative fiat, 
merely exerts His bare omnipotence, and the desired 
result is achieved. But in the creation of man 
God more than speaks — He breathes into him the 
spirit of lives. The Divine inspiration, not the 
Divine command, it is which makes him a man. 
Does not this intimate that in the creation of man 
there was included an element of Divine generation ? 
Moses is not afraid to use this word once and 
again. The heathen doctrine of emanation, as the 
necessary outflow of the Divine nature, must of 
course be repudiated ; but that it contained a sub- 
stratum of truth cannot be denied ; how otherwise 
could it have met with such universal acceptance ? 
That we are here touching on a great mystery 
we admit ; therefore our words should be reverent 
and circumspect. Still, even in the darkness it is 
not politic to shut our eyes. This Divine inspira- 
tion of man seems to be something between the 
necessary generation of the Son and the statutory 
production of the animal — a voluntary, as distin- 
guished from a necessary, emanation ; partaking 
on the one hand of the character of generation, 
sharing on the other the character of pure creation. 



THE CREATION OF MAN 151 

It follows, according to the Mosaic teaching, that 
in man there resides something uncreated, truly 
Divine, more than finite. This truth made itself 
felt in the ethnic consciousness, and found utterance 
in the Greek poet — " We are God's offspring." Not 
only we are fashioned by, but begotten of, God. 
Deep down in our spirits, when we seriously reflect 
upon it in the stillness of the night, we feel that 
we transcend the creation, that we are greater than 
the mere finite — if not In our powers, then in our 
wants. We are the progeny of God, veritable 
members of the Divine household. Though this 
conviction found expression in Greek poetry, it 
did not find its explanation in Greek philosophy. 
The true solution is only to be found in the Mosaic 
doctrine of creation. The Genesis narrative satis- 
factorily accounts for the tragic poetry of Greece, 
whereas on the materialistic hypothesis of evolution 
the highest poetry of the world remains for ever 
inexplicable. 

The Greek sentiment of constitutional affinity 
between God and man finds not only its elucidation, 
but its clearer articulation and larger expansion, in 
the Hebrew theology. From the Mosaic doctrine 
of the Divine inspiration of man, through deep 
pious meditation thereon, the prophets had awakened 
within them the consciousness which enabled them 
to have a glimpse of the natural fatherhood of God 
and the corresponding natural sonship of man. " Art 
Thou not our Father ? " " The Father of spirits." 
This vague, indefinite sentiment was at length pre- 
cipitated, reduced into a matter of fact, and intro- 
duced as the first link in the chain of genealogies 



152 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

in the families of Israel : " The son of Seth, the son of 
Adam, the son of God " (Luke iii. 38). This last link 
St. Luke would not have introduced as an imaginary 
embellishment ; for, if he took the liberty of adding 
a new link at the commencement, at the bidding 
of fancy, what guarantee should his readers have 
that he was not indulging in imaginary inventions 
all through his history? Hebrew theology had, in 
the roll of the centuries, consolidated itself into the 
hard fact here posited. Moses, at the commence- 
ment of the Old Testament, says : " God breathed 
into the first man's nostrils the breath of life, and 
he became a living soul." Luke's comment, at the 
beginning of the New Testament, is : " Adam, son 
of God." The inspiration of man in Genesis has, 
in the Israelite consciousness, developed, till in the 
fulness of time it blossomed into the filiation 
of man. Marvellous the analogies between the 
beginning and the end of the Bible ! How to 
account for them ? So far as I can see, there is 
but one explanation — a superhuman mind guided 
the entire process. 

In these chapters Moses lays down the primal 
basis of the subsequent doctrine of the natural 
Fatherhood of God and of the correlated doctrine 
of the natural Sonship of man. God is the Maker 
of the stars, but He is the Father of men. He 
is the Creator of the brutes, but He is the Begetter 
of spirits. In His first origination man derived 
from God some quality or principle — call it what 
you will — something truly, genuinely Divine, con- 
stituting him the son of God. Hence his ceaseless 
roamings beyond the boundaries of the finite and 



THE CREATION OF MAN 1 53 

limited into the boundless and the vast. Evidence 
of the Divine element in him is that he always 
seeks the Beyond, hankers after the Unknown. He 
is always attempting to escape from his limitations, 
battering at the partition walls of the finite ; and, 
when he cannot demolish the walls," he takes to 
his wings and flies away. He soars beyond the 
limits of time and space. He has an idea of the 
infinite, eternal, incomprehensible. Just think what 
that means ! It straightway marks him out as 
a comrade of the gods. Plato seeks to explain 
these longings, these endless flutterings of the spirit, 
on the hypothesis that they are dim reminiscences 
of our pre-existence in a higher state of being. 
Wordsworth interprets at the same time the Platonic 
philosophy and the Mosaic theology in the well- 
known lines : 

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: 
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, 

Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
And Cometh from afar : 

Not in entire forgetfulness, 

And not in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 

From God, who is our home: 
Heaven lies about us in our infancy. ^ 

How to account for the popularity of these 
words, the echoes of which never die within us ? 
Only on the supposition that they present a true 
explanation of our spiritual instincts, that the 
poet in language felicitous and musical gives 

1 Ode, Intimations of Immortality, 



154 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

eloquent tongue to the pent-up consciousness of 
the race. 

The ancients had a fable of the lost bells, sunk 
in the bottom of the sea ; but which, when the 
waves lay still, and the winds hushed, gently tolled, 
as if calling men to worship, their soft, pure notes 
being heard by the mariners on clear, starry nights. 
Have you never heard the tolling of the lost bells? 
In the cool of the evening, or under the light of the 
stars, when the turmoil of business had subsided, 
and the passions slept, did you not hear the bells 
calling you to church ? Did you not catch the soft, 
dying notes of heavenly music, gently welling up 
from the depth of your nature, a still, small voice 
as from eternity, soft and loving like the warbling 
of a blackbird at the burial of its mate, till you 
longed for home, for heaven, for God ? I need no 
German commentators to explain to me the Divine 
Inbreathing — I know the dream and the interpre- 
tation thereof. I have, time and again, listened to 
those bells gently summoning me to worship ; I 
have bowed my knees in the mystic twilight in 
the dales and on the hills ; I have sobbed out in 
broken accents the words, Abba, Father ; and I 
have felt the Divine Breathing fresh in my face as 
in Eden, warm, sympathetic, enlivening, like the 
south wind over a garden of roses ; and from the 
midst of bodily infirmity, intellectual torpor, and 
spiritual lethargy, I have risen a living soul, claiming 
my sovereignty over the creatures, and my 
fellowship in God's family, and all this by Right 
Divine ! 

III. The two constituent parts of human nature 



THE CREATION OF MAN 155 

the material and spiritual, are joined in the Unity 
of Personality. 

Modern thought has been in the habit of laying 
stress on the contrariety of body and mind. It 
has viewed the body as the prison, not the palace, 
of the soul ; a shackle, impeding the free movements 
of the spirit, instead of an organ or instrument 
facilitating its acts of thought. But Hebrew theology 
took a diametrically opposite view. In man, as 
God made him, body and soul form a harmonious 
human personality. So far from being a hindrance 
or clog, the physical nature is a help, and essential 
to the ideal humanity. A pure spirit may in the 
nakedness of its essence carry on mental operations ; 
I am speaking of the human spirit. Mind without 
body, spirit without corporeity, is not man, but man 
mutilated, divided, broken. Consciousness of this 
truth made the ancients look upon death as the 
King of Terrors. To them the dissolution of the 
body meant the disintegration of the man. And 
they were right. To their thinking the other world 
was Sheol, the Land of Shades ; life was not extinct, 
but it only dimly smouldered ; consciousness was 
not eliminated, but it had lost all vividness. The 
colours were all washed out of the life. Therefore 
life in union with the body, however impoverished, 
was deemed incomparably preferable to life with- 
out the body. The immortality of the soul was, 
of course, from the outset an article of their creedj 
or, rather, not an article, but the substratum of all 
their belief To them, however, sheer annihilation 
was almost preferable to the mere immortality of 
the naked soul. They shuddered at the thought of 



156 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

Sheol, where the spirit survived, a pale, thin, attenuated 
skeleton of its former self. The poet embodies the 
Hebrew thought on the matter : 

I go whence I shall not return, 
Even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death ; 
A land of thick darkness, as darkness itself ; 
A land of the shadow of death, without any order. 
And where light is as darkness. ^ 

In death there is no remembrance of Thee, 
In Sheol who shall give Thee thanks ? ^ 

This feeling of indescribable depression in the grim 
presence of death, so observable in the Hebrews, 
possessed the Greek mind even more fully. Homer 
makes one of his departed heroes say that he would 
prefer leading the life of a swineherd on the earth to 
dwelling in the land of the shadow of death. The 
Greeks, like the Hebrews, believed in the immortality 
of the soul ; but viewing matter as essentially evil, to 
them the body was the prison of the soul ; conse- 
quently the doctrine of the resurrection of the body 
never glimmered through their darkness. The 
Hebrews, on the contrary, starting from the right 
premises as set forth by Moses in the Creation story 
— that matter is not in itself evil, and that conse- 
quently the body is not an unequal yoke-fellow to 
the spirit, that matter and mind are necessary to the 
realisation of the Divine ideal of humanity — gradually 
groped through the darkness of the grave into a dim 
apperception of the doctrine of the Resurrection. By 
this it is not intended that they, by meditation alone, 
would have arrived at this doctrine ; but that the 

' Job X. 21, 22. ^ Ps. vi. 5. 



THE CREATION OF MAN I57 

Creation story afforded a ground in their religious 
consciousness for a belief in the doctrine, gradually 
revealed, that, as the union of body and soul forms 
an integral part of the Divine idea of man, these 
two constituent factors would not remain for ever 
separate, and that the body would yet be rescued 
from the power of the grave. 

Greek philosophy fitfully taught the immortality of 
the soul ; to teach the immortality of the body would 
be in flat contradiction to one of its fundamental 
principles — to wit, the inherent evil of matter. But 
Hebrew theology, establishing itself on the Creation 
story, had ample room in it for the doctrine of the 
immortality of man in the totality of his dual nature 
— the survival of the soul through death and the 
resurrection of the body in the last day, the two 
thenceforth to be indissolubly and for ever united. 
The doctrine of the Resurrection rests foursquare on 
the Mosaic doctrine of Creation. It is not an ex- 
traneous speculation, thrown in as compensation for 
the trials, conflicts, and deprivations of our present 
pilgrimage, a gilt appendix to the volume of life, but 
a truth essential to salvation, laying hold of the core 
of humanity, and without which the Divine ideal 
of man would for ever remain fragmentary and 
incomplete. 

In his creation man was a compound being, each 
constituent necessary to the realisation of the Divine 
order. Sin broke up the unity, and by death 
sundered what God had joined. The Salvation in 
Christ is a salvation of body and soul, not only that 
its virtues might be co-extensive with the ravages 
wrought by sin, but that man might be restored to 



158 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

his pristine perfection. Thus the fully developed 
doctrine of the Resurrection in the New Testament 
is the complement, indeed the consequent, of the 
Genesis doctrine of Creation. Are not these corre- 
spondences wonderful? The teaching of Moses in 
Genesis concerning creation furnishes the foundation 
for the teaching of Paul in the New Testament 
concerning the resurrection of the dead. Is there not 
in Scripture a progressive evolution as amazing 
as anything Science has discovered in Nature? 
Assuredly the Maker of Nature is, in a profound 
sense, the Author of Scripture. 



CHAPTER VI 

MAN IN EDEN 

IN the first two chapters Adam is a generic name, 
without a capital letter : '* And God said, Let Us 
make man [adam] in Our image, after Our likeness." 
In the third chapter the generic is converted into 
a specific or proper name, denoting not the genus, 
but the individual Adam. On the precise meaning 
of the term scholars are, as usual, divided. The 
most accepted signification is that Adam means 
earth. An objection, however, has been raised 
against this derivation, because of the improbability 
that the Creator would give His noblest creature 
a cognomen applicable to his lower, not his higher, 
nature. Hence attempts have been made to trace 
it to damah—\.o be like, to resemble : " Let Us make 
man. Our likeness." Determined never to be left 
behind, a few rationalists, demurring to the above 
explanations, trace it to the Ethiopic amuthig— 
pleasant, agreeable, handsome. Doubtless the reply- 
is pertinent: "Certainly not, if man's primitive 
condition were that which the Higher Criticism, in 
spite of history as well as revelation, is determined 
it shall be. The squalid dweller in the cave, sur- 
rounded by wolves, and bones, and stone axes, and 

159 



l6o PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

hardly distinguishable from his beastly companions, 
would be the last to be called, or who would think 
of calling himself, the agreeable one." 

I. After his creation, Adam was placed in the 
Garden of Eden. Modern science lays much stress 
on environments, attributing to them, as much, if 
not more influence than to organism itself, in the 
formation of character. Environments doubtless 
exert powerful influence also on human career and 
destiny. And, before detailing to us the life of the 
first man, Moses very properly first describes his 
surroundings. He presents us with three circles. 
First, the earth in its entirety, in its virgin, un- 
cultivated condition, waiting to be won over to, 
and subdued by, the intelligence of man. Second, 
a region of country which he calls Eden, a land of 
delight, variegated doubtless with hills and dales, 
pastures and forests. Within this region man was 
created. The third, an inner circle yet, an enclosed 
park, called a Garden, into which man was transported 
after his creation. 

In the first paragraph, describing man's formation, 
the writer employs the past tense. In the second 
he uses the present, which seems to hint that, in 
the writer's time, the geography of Eden was still 
ascertainable. Into the probable vicinity of Eden 
the researches of archaeologists and scholars have been 
multitudinous and protracted. Seven localities, at 
least, from North India to North Europe, have been 
ingeniously advocated. But the two lands which 
have found most favour are Babylonia and Armenia, 
and of these the balance of probability favours the 
latter. Further on, the Cainitcs are said to have 



MAN IN EDEN l6l 

removed away from Eden eastward to Nod, justifying 
the inference that the descendants of Seth, notwith- 
standing the expulsion of the race from the Garden, 
continued to live in the ancestral land, of Eden. 
Therefore, when the deluge overtook the world of 
ungodly men, Noah's ark rested on the Ararat 
range of mountains, the main watershed of Armenia. 
The point, however, on which stress should be 
laid is, that, according to Moses, man's original 
environments were all perfect, his outward sur- 
roundings offering him no temptation to fall away 
from his integrity. Eden, meaning pleasantness, 
the Septuagint rightly renders Paradise, signifying 
the beautifully wooded park, in front of a secluded 
Oriental mansion, where grow all manner of trees 
and evergreens, and where gambol all kinds of 
animals, and where carol all sorts of birds — all 
for the delight of man. "And the Jehovah God 
planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He 
put the man whom He had formed." That this 
Garden was abundantly irrigated, and grew all 
kinds of trees, the history testifies. An ideal 
home for an innocent being ! Whenever subsequent 
writers wish to set forth scenery of extreme beauty, 
and fertility of excessive abundance, they always 
compare it to this Garden of the Lord's planting : 
" He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her 
desert like the garden of the Lord." "Thou hast 
been in Eden, the garden of God." " This land, 
which was desolate, is become like the garden 
of Eden." Like aroma clinging to the garment 
or sv/eet scent to the tresses of the hair, the 
memory of that happy state continues to haunt 

II 



1 62 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

humanity in all its remote wanderings. We have 
never been able to shake off the fragrance of Eden. 

In the mythologies of the East and of the West 
frequent references are made to celebrated gardens 
— to the garden of Adonis by the Assyrians, and 
the garden of the Hesperides with its golden apples 
by the Greeks, the entrance to which was carefully 
guarded by mysterious dragons, an echo, it would 
seem, of the cherubim which guarded the gates 
of Eden. As among these nations these traditions 
are nothing more than myths, why, it is asked, 
should similar stories among the Hebrews be 
treated as sober, matter-of-fact history ? The 
question is perfectly legitimate. But the subject 
may present itself in another aspect : are all the 
ancient myths mere subjective fancies, or are 
they embellished reminiscences of the race of 
primordial facts ? That the drapery is woven out 
of the imagination of these nations is conceded ; 
but does not the manufacture of the gorgeous 
raiment prove that there was an interior truth to 
wear and uphold the raiment ? Men do not 
make garments to hang upon nothing. These 
mythologies point to a primeval truth ; the gardens 
of Oriental mythologies and classic poetry to a 
real, veritable garden in the far-off past, near the 
fount of universal history. If truth is not found 
here, where is it to be found? Are men to be 
for ever victims of illusions, pursuing truth, but 
never able to overtake it ? God is not an almighty 
Jester. 

Compare the Mosaic delineation of the pristine 
condition of man with his degraded state as pictured 



MAN IN EDEN 163 

by evolutionary theorists. In Genesis man is created 
of full stature, the image of his Maker, a true 
civOpcoTTo^, with figure erect, and eyes turned sky- 
ward, under the fostering care of his Heavenly 
Parent. Instead of turning the newly formed and 
inexperienced human creature into the open high- 
land, exposed to the attacks of wild beasts, to 
contend with inferior but fleeter animals for a 
morsel of food, He placed him in an enclosed 
garden, adorned with trees for ornament and use. 
How otherwise in the presence of ravenous brutes 
could the permanence of the human species be 
guaranteed ? 

The environments were ideally perfect. Poetry 
has not been able to pourtray a lovelier condition, 
and earth can furnish no apter simile than Paradise 
to set forth the beatitude of heaven itself. If 
man sin, the blame cannot be laid at the door 
of his Maker or to the charge of his circumstances. 
On the other hand, contemplate his primitive 
degradation as painted by the cunning hand of 
Professor Drummond. He sits at night perched 
like a monkey on the branches of the primeval 
forest, forbidding in countenance, covered with 
hair ; in the daytime moving stealthily about, some- 
times as biped, sometimes as quadruped, and by 
low-bred cunning over-reaching other animals in 
his search for food, voraciously devouring uncooked 
meat, — half-starved, savage, repulsive. How could 
the evolutionary man fall, when there were hardly 
lower abysses for him to fall into ? Or, rather, how 
could he help sinning in this awful, cruel struggle 
for existence? The evolutionary theory gives the 



1 64 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

lie direct to the universal recollection of the race of 
a golden age in the times of old. Moses, however, 
depicts this golden age, or rather this golden hour, 
in man's history ; and in the proper place pourtrays 
his degradation, a worse because a moral degrada- 
tion ; but he gives a satisfactory exposition of it, 
and assigns to it an adequate moral cause. Accord- 
ing to Moses, man became the lowest because he 
was the highest. Only the best is capable of the 
worst. 

II. Moses next indicates the duties devolving 
upon Adam in his state of innocence : " The Lord 
God took the man, and put him into the garden 
of Eden to dress it and to keep it." " And out of 
the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the 
field, and every fowl of the air, and brought them 
to Adam." Here then are the two great branches 
of all agriculture — the cultivation of plants and the 
domestication of animals. 

The first part of Adam's duty consisted in the 
diligent " dressing " of the ground. God's primal 
command to man was, " Multiply, and replenish the 
earth, and subdue it." The virgin state of the earth 
was not that of arable cultivation. After the millions 
of years, in which her laws operated unmodified 
by man. Nature was in a state of comparative 
wildness, though not of obdurate refractoriness, to 
which she was reduced after the introduction of 
sin. Man was introduced on the scene with a view 
to " subdue " it — i.e. to cultivate the soil, to check 
the rank growths, to promote the development of 
what was useful and beautiful. The work began in 
Paradise. God Himself planted a garden in Eden, 



MAN IN EDEN 165 

as a model to man of what he was to accomplish 
in regard to the whole earth. 

Even had man never sinned, he was not destined 
to remain always in the first Garden, but to go 
out and make other gardens like it. Proper it 
was that he should commence in the Garden of 
Eden, in an enclosure not too large, in the then 
tractable state of nature, for his own labour to 
dress it, and extensive enough to supply all the 
physical wants of himself and family. But as 
population increased, mankind were to extend their 
cultivation beyond the Garden, to the district called 
Eden, making it also a garden, a well-cultivated tract. 
As the inhabitants still multiplied, they were to 
continue to extend the area of cultivation, to reclaim 
waste lands, till gradually the whole earth would 
be converted into a fertile garden, and the desert 
made to blossom as the rose. The task of "sub- 
duing " was to be continuous, stretching out in 
all directions, in proportion to the increase of 
population. The labour would neither be exhaustive 
nor go unrewarded. As long as man maintained 
his normal relation to his Creator, the soil would 
respond readily to his cultivation ; but if man 
entered on a career of rebelliousness against God, 
Nature would divert to a course of disobedience to 
man, her subjugation becoming more strenuous and 
difficult. 

To the planting of the Garden of Eden to be 
a fit abode for man, chap, ii., vers. 5 and 6 
probably refer : "In the day the Lord God made 
every plant of the field before it was in the earth, 
and every herb of the field before it grew ; for the 



l66 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, 
and there was not a man to till the ground. But 
there went up a mist from the earth, and watered 
the whole face of the ground." Bunsen, Baden- 
Powell, Driver, and others make these statements 
contradictory of the first chapter, where the prior 
creation of vegetable and plant life is described. The 
majority of commentators, however, limit their appli- 
cation to the district, the history of which is here 
specially narrated. 

Take first the Authorised rendering as above. 
According to this the meaning is, that God made the 
universe, plant and herb, things great and small, by 
His word, in a supernatural way. The natural way 
is for plants and herbs to grow under the influence of 
sunshine and rain, and in response to the " tilling " of 
the earth by man. But the first plants and herbs 
were created, when there was no rain upon the earth, 
and no man to till the ground — an affirmation of the 
supernatural by the denial of the natural. 

Dr. Jamieson adopts another rendering: "The 
truth is, there is no room for speculation upon the 
subject, as the meaning of the sacred historian, 
which is rather obscurely and confusedly given in the 
English Version, is, when rightly brought out from 
the original text, both clear and definite." After 
referring to a well-known rule of Hebrew grammar, 
that every, followed by a negative, produces the sense 
of none, he continues : "If, then, we regard the title or 
superscription prefixed to this section as ending at 
the word ' created,' conformable to the reading in the 
Scptuagint Version, and the section as beginning with 
the words ' in the day,' the whole passage as 



MAN IN EDEN 1 67 

rendered by Rosenmliller, De Wette, Tuch, and 
others will stand thus : ' These are the generations 
of the heavens and the earth when they were created. 
In the day when the Lord God made earth and 
heaven, then no plant of the field was yet in the 
earth, and no herb of the field yet grew; for the 
Jehovah God had not caused it to rain upon the 
earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. 
But there went up a mist from the earth and watered 
the ground.' " ^ 

The point of the narrative seems to be that, in that 
particular spot where Eden was situated, new species 
of plants and trees were produced nearly contem- 
poraneous with the creation of man, for they were 
necessary for his sustenance, and he was necessary 
for their cultivation. To produce them without him 
would be to consign them to inanition ; to create him 
without them would be to expose him to starvation. 
" God does everything beautiful in his season." 
Certain classes of plants, herbs, and trees thrive in a 
wild state ; others only flourish under human over- 
sight. If they be not sown anew every year, they 
will not run wild, but will actually die out. For their 
existence they are dependent upon Divine creation ; 
for their continuance they are dependent upon 
human cultivation. To this class belong the cereals 
and the vegetables requisite for the comfort of man. 
It is a singular coincidence, indisputably attested 
by geologic science, that wheat, fruit trees, certain 
domestic animals, and man appeared contempora- 
neously on the face of the earth. What would be 
the good of producing breadcorn millions, or even 
^ Com.y in loco. 



1 68 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

hundreds, of years before man? To their continuous 
growth man was necessary ; and doubtless to this 
species of plants and herbs the sacred historian refers. 
The words plant, field, and grew do not occur in 
the first chapter at all. Grasses and w^eeds, the 
food of animals, thrive without cultivation ; but the 
higher flora demand constant care and supervision. 
They were not therefore produced till the two 
indispensable conditions of their cultivation were 
introduced — heavy dew to irrigate the soil and man 
to take the oversight of them. Singular also that, 
through the geological millenniums, no perfumes 
were wasted on the desert air. Aromatic herbs only 
appeared, so to speak, in the human period. Corn 
for food and scents for pleasure mark, the advent of 
man, the coming of the king. 

The second branch of agriculture is the domesti- 
cation of animals. Which of the two branches is the 
more important it is difficult to tell. In Greek 
mythology a controversy is reported to have arisen 
between Athene (Minerva) and Poseidon (Neptune) 
concerning their right to give a name to a certain 
city. The senate of the gods resolved to settle the 
dispute by promising the preference to whichever of 
the two that would give the most valuable present 
to the inhabitants of the earth. Thereupon Poseidon 
struck the ground with his trident, and immediately 
there issued from the earth a horse. Athene, follow- 
ing his example, struck the earth with her spear, and 
up sprang an olive tree. But even then there was a 
difference of opinion which was the more valuable 
gift — the olive or the horse, the cultivation of plants 
or the domestication of animals. Without contradic- 



MAN IN EDEN 169 

tion, these two are the most useful gifts of Heaven 
to mankind. God committed to man the sovereignty 
of the animal creation, saying : " Have dominion over 
the fish of the sea, and over the fowls of the air, and 
over every living thing that moveth upon the earth." 
This sovereignty consists in two things. First, it 
confers on man the right to slay the creatures he 
requires for his sustenance. The inference sometimes 
drawn that permission was not given man to eat 
meat till after the Deluge is gratuitous. What we do 
not read in the Bible is clearly imprinted on our 
nature — man is constituted a flesh-eating creature. 
The charter granted to Noah was only a republi- 
cation of the Creation charter, which men by sin had 
forfeited. Second, this original sovereignty further 
confers on man the right to subordinate the animals 
to his purposes and make them his auxiliaries in the 
work of cultivation. They were not "helps meet" 
for him, but they were intended to be helps all the 
same, and very valuable helps too. It was man's 
prerogative to tame, train, and accustom them to 
the yoke. 

Accordingly the story tells us that God brought to 
Adam the beasts and the fowls "to see what he 
would call them." In the first chapter God bestows 
on man the abstract right of sovereignty ; here He 
confers it de facto. The author takes for granted 
that he is writing for men of common sense — not for 
critics who exercise their ingenuity to extract from 
him every species of folly. Where the grammar and 
vocabulary will admit of more than one construction, 
it is our imperative duty to adopt the one most 
congruous with sound sense and the general drift of 



\yO PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

the passage. The history evidently does not intend 
that the ravenous beasts of the forest, or the wild 
game of the mountains, were made to pass before 
Adam ; but only those animals and birds gathered 
within the Eden enclosure, and fitted by their gentle 
nature to become useful to him in his pursuit of 
agriculture. As God had stamped His image on 
man, so man was to impress his likeness on the 
world — to Jiumanise nature, to spiritualise matter. 
The animals and birds were brought to him that he 
might enter on his sovereignty, that by naming them 
he might prove his superiority to them, and demon- 
strate his power to reduce them to subjection. To 
name implies, not the arbitrary affixing of a name 
to nominally distinguish one animal from another 
— an outward label, but to understand the nature, to 
discern the purpose, and to ascertain the use. The 
man who names is king ; the creature named is 
subject. That law is eternal and inviolable. So far 
as man can name is he king ; till he can name, his 
sovereignty is but nominal. Ever since, the creation, 
animate and inanimate, has been passing before man 
to be named — that is to say, to be understood ; and 
till you understand a thing you cannot truly name 
it— you cannot classify it and reduce it to service 
in our work-a-day world. What is science? Only 
nature, living and non-living, passing before man, 
that man may study it and understand it, and give 
its various objects a name, and thereby exercise his 
lawful dominion over the realm of nature. Scientists 
have made merry over this Genesis story ; but viewed 
aright, it is only the Hebrew way of describing the 
first rudiments of natural history and natural science. 



MAN IN EDEN I7I 

Adam was beginning to do in Eden what agri- 
culturalists are advised to do in our own country — 
to farm scientifically ; and this they cannot do with- 
out understanding the nature of the animals and 
the quality of the soil ; and, in proportion as they 
understand, they will name. 

III. Here, however, we are confronted with the 
questions : In what sense are we to understand 
that God planted a garden in Eden ? Do the 
words signify more than general creation ? In what 
sense are we to understand that God brought the 
animals to Adam to be named ? In other words, 
had the first man the benefit of the direct tuition 
of God? Did the Divine Being become his friend 
and instructor? After some hesitation, I am con- 
strained to return an affirmative answer. Popular 
theology is wont to speak of God visiting the 
Garden, and holding communication, face to face, 
with Adam, as He afterwards did with Moses ; and 
popular theology, I believe, is right. 

Pause to consider what this means. A Divine 
theophany must be assumed — that God, in the form, 
though not possibly in the reality, of man, appeared 
to Adam, and undertook Himself the task of giving 
him his first lesson in the art of living. The 
foundation of the Old Testament theophanies is 
laid in the creation of man in the image of God. 
Hard terms are often used of the anthropomorphism 
of the Bible, and occasionally theologians themselves 
indulge in epithets the reverse of complimentary. 
Moses, however, clearly teaches, and the Bible every- 
where assumes, the theomorphism of man ; and 
the theomorphism of man involves the anthropo- 



172 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

inorphism of God. The concave exhibits the form 
of the convex. 

Holy Writ speaks of the Form of God, and that 
He took upon Him the Form of man ; and the 
two Forms, says Moses, are originally congruous 
and correspondent. That being the case, the theo- 
phanics of God do not come upon the mind with 
a shock and a surprise. What nobler in the world 
than the human Form ? Do you think it worthier 
of Deity to appear in a cloud of glory, or a sudden 
flash of light after the similitude of pantomime 
lightnings, than in the human form Divine ? We 
must beware lest in our anxiety to eschew Anthro- 
pomorphism we fall into downright Materialism. 
The human body is the compendium of the ex- 
cellences of all prior existences. Men of science 
should be the last to protest against the appearances 
of God in the form of man. According to their 
own creed, it is a form which has taken untold 
ages to build up ; the utmost the earth, and perhaps 
the universe, after many millions of years of travail, 
has brought forth ; the chief among ten thousand 
created forms, and most of them lovely ; the elect 
of more creatures than the sand on the seashore, 
that have been destroyed, age after age, on purpose 
that it might become more perfect. In this human 
form God appeared unto Adam, and initiated him 
into the first principles of civilised life. "As Jehovah 
God (vers. 15, 16) is named as the cstablisher of 
the order of life, of natural science, or of the 
human knowledge of it ; of marriage and of the 
law of the family (vers. 21-24); as the judge and 
founder of the religion of the promise, and of the 



MAN IN EDEN 1 73 

moral conflict on the earth, of the earthly state of 
sorrow and discipUne (chap. iii. i); and, finally, as 
the immediate director of human chastity and the 
author of human clothing (ver. 21), — so also here, 
in the beginning, He is represented as the first 
Planter, the Founder of human culture, which is as 
yet identical with human cultus or worship." ^ 

It is asked. Is it not degrading the Eternal to 
picture Him thus planting a garden, and instructing 
man in the first elements of husbandry ? I answer, 
Is it more humiliating than to create the chaotic 
mud ? More lowering than to make the insect, the 
toad, the reptile, and the rodent ? Our conceptions 
of what is honourable and becoming on the one 
hand, and of what is humiliating and dishonouring 
on the other, must be formed by other than the 
conventional standards set up by the European 
nobility. To God nothing is lowering or dishonour- 
ing, except the sinful, the immoral. The Divine 
condescension thus placed in the foreground of 
human history, at the commencement of the Old 
Testament, will prepare us for that infinitely greater 
condescension at the beginning of the New Testa- 
ment, when God became man, not in similitude but 
in verity, and had to learn the first rudiments of 
human culture. In Genesis He is an instructor in 
husbandry ; in the Gospels He is an apprentice to 
carpentry ! 

Granting that God was the teacher, what aptitude 

had man to learn? What were the intellectual 

endowments with which he began life ? Genesis 

does not furnish us with a direct answer ; yet data 

^ Lange, Com., 171 loco. 



174 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

enough arc supplied here and elsewhere for us to 
draw an approximately correct conclusion. 

Two extreme views have been advocated. Of 
course, materialistic evolutionists, so far from repre- 
senting man as " made a little lower than the angels," 
declare him to be made but infinitesimally higher than 
the brutes. He was Jioino alalus — had no language, 
could not speak, had really nothing to express. Many 
theologians, on the contrary, have exhausted their 
rich store of elegant diction to pourtray the exalted 
condition, intellectual and moral, in which man was 
created. Dr. South, with his stately eloquence, 
declares that Adam was " the most splendid specimen 
of the race the world ever saw, fair as an angel, holy 
as a seraph," that " an Aristotle was but the rubbish 
of an Adam, and Athens but the rudiments of Para- 
dise." And Aristotle himself teaches that man's 
reason, before the Fall, was, compared with ours, 
as the bird to the tortoise. They conceive him 
endowed with a native intuition, penetrating with a 
lightning glance into the hidden secret of natural 
objects and phenomena, enabling him to cleave every 
difficult problem right down to its very base. 

The truth doubtless lies, as usual, in the golden 
mean. Obviously at his creation man's mind was 
empty of all positive knowledge. There w^as nothing 
in the mind except the mind itself, the innate truths, 
if the expression may be allowed, inwoven into his 
very texture ; and even these had not attained unto 
mental consciousness. Knowledge, in the shape of 
information, obviously he had not. The contents of 
the mind were nothing ; but what about the size 
and strength of the mind itself? Believing, as we 



MAN IN EDEN 1 75 

do, that he was the immediate creation of God, we 
cannot refuse to believe that he was enriched with 
mental powers of the first magnitude ; and that, 
exempt from the obscuration of sin, he acquired 
knowledge with a rapidity and ease unknown to the 
most opulently gifted of his posterity. In capacity, 
I doubt not, he equalled, probably surpassed, the 
most brilliant of his descendants. 

The same truth holds good on a smaller scale of 
the fossil men. Their craniums incontestably prove 
that, though in the amount of knowledge they, 
in the nature of things, were inferior to modern 
races, their brain-power was not an atom less. 
Judged by capacity, not by the amount of their 
information, they will bear favourable comparison 
with men who lead the vanguard of modern arts 
and sciences. And in mental capacity, our belief 
in Adam's supernatural formation compels us to 
place him in the foremost rank. Add to this his 
sinlessness ; and his facility in the acquisition of 
knowledge and the inerrancy of his conclusions 
form an inevitable corollary. Given a teacher of 
such consummate mastery as God, and a pupil of 
such quick receptivity as Adam, and his strides 
in knowledge must have been beyond our ability, 
limited from within and without, to adequately 
realise. 

Which language was the medium of communi- 
cation between God and him, and between him 
and Nature, may not be determined in our present 
state of knowledge. But suppose it was Hebrew, 
which our fathers believed had strong claims to 
priority, and scholars can now hear the distinct 



1/6 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

echo of that first man's words, and discern in them 
the working of his mind. How hard to invent 
language, to create a new word ! And when a 
new word, hke " agnosticism," is introduced into 
a language and finds a home there, it is but a 
new combination of old vocables. How difficult to 
create a new root ! Adam's mind, however, threw 
out new words like sparks from the anvil ; but 
we should not forget that the Almighty it was 
^\•ho was wielding the hammer. According to 
Moses, Adam was not a Jionio alaluSy a non- 
speaking man, but was creatively gifted with the 
faculty of speech. This power God did not allow 
to lie dormant, but adopted measures to draw it 
out into healthful exercise. The immediate acquisi- 
tion of knowledge is to us a mystery ; yet the 
possibility of mastering a language, and of speaking 
it, without undergoing the painful drudgery of 
learning, is demonstrated to Christian believers by 
the miracle of the Pentecost, when twelve unlearned 
apostles were inspired to preach in new tongues, of 
the existence of which, much more of their grammar, 
they were previously in absolute ignorance.-^ 

Professor Drummond has devoted the fifth chapter 
of his well-known book to prove that man was 
at first speechless : "If evolution is the method 
of creation, the faculty of speech was no sudden 
gift. . . . Before Homo sapiens was evolved, he must 
necessarily have been preceded for a longer or shorter 
period by Homo alalus^ the not-speaking man. . . . 
The alternative theory of the origin of language, 

' May I refer the reader for a discussion of the miracle 
of the Gift of Tongues to my Studies in the Acts? 



MAN IN EDEN I^^ 

universally held until lately, and expressed in so 
many words, even by the eighth edition of the 
EncyclopcBdia Britannica, that 'our first parents re- 
ceived it by immediate inspiration,' has the same 
relation to exact science as the view that the world 
was made in six days by direct creative fiat 
But to make Speech and fit it into a man, after all 
IS said, is less miraculous than to fit a man to make 
Speech." 

It will be observed that the Professor begins this 
interesting paragraph with an "if." All hinges on 
that "if." Mf" Professor Drummond's theory of 
evolution be right, then the question of the origin 
of language is settled in the manner he describes • 
but "if" his theory be wrong, then his opinions on 
the origin of language are "airy nothings." It is 
simply a question whether Moses or Drummond is 
right. According to the latter's theory, Nature 
having once been started, is self-contained, works out 
Its results slowly, and brooks no interference from 
without. All its wonders are slow growths, and not 
"something quick." But our argument all along has 
been that Nature does receive assistance from with- 
out, and that, when that assistance is vouchsafed, 
Nature hastens her paces and performs " something 
quick." God created animal life— it was a super^ 
natural act ; not a gradual growth, but " something 
quick." In his Natural Law in the Spiritical 
World, Professor Drummond lays much stress on 
the scientific truth that out of the non-living the 
living cannot come ; hence the necessity of Regene- 
ration by the Spirit. But in his Ascent of'^Man 
this "natural law" is conveniently dropped. God 

12 



178 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

created mental life — it was a supernatural act ; not 
Nature evolving man by her own unaided resources, 
but, assisted by God and under the Divine impulse, 
she did " something quick," something she could not 
do of herself throughout all the cycles of time.^ 

According to Genesis, the man God produced was 
not a savage, dwelling in the terrible primeval forest, 
scrambling among brutes hardly lower than himself 
for a precarious living, but a civilised being, richly 
equipped with all mental endowments. " To make 
Speech and fit it into a man, after all is said, is less 
miraculous than to fit a man to make Speech." 
Were that the only alternative — either speech for 
man or man for speech — Professor Drummond would 
be right. But the theological view includes both. 
The man of Mosaic theology was much fitter to 
make speech than the savage of evolution. Accord- 
ing to Moses, God fitted man to make speech, and 
qualified him more abundantly than Drummond will 
admit. On the other hand, He fitted speech for 
man : instead of letting man grope in the dark to 
construct a vocabulary. He took him at once into 
fellowship with Himself — He spoke to man, and 
encouraged man to speak back, so that, from the 
outset, there was intelligent intercourse. Even on 
the score of breadth of view, the Bible far transcends 
the onesided theories of human science. God made 
Adam confront the animal creation on purpose to 
excite within him the power of thought — thought 
being the only lawful sceptre of man's kingship— 
and thought always strives for utterance in articulate 
speech. 

' See Dr. Watts' Ascent of Maji Examined. 



MAN IN EDEN 1 79 

God did not give Adam a language ready-made, 
as the Professor imagines we believe, with grammar 
and dictionary complete ; but He started him on 
the right track, and what was thus begun under 
Divine superintendence Adam evolved in accordance 
with the principles of mind. The supernatural here, 
as elsewhere, is only the beginning of the natural. 
It is supernatural only in respect of what precedes ; 
it is the true natural in respect of what follows. 
God started the machinery of speech by direct 
intercourse with man ; then man was left to develop 
language in strict accordance with psychological 
laws. But how could man thus " quickly " acquire 
mastery of speech ? Whether it was quickly or 
slowly I cannot tell. But we, who believe in the 
supernatural Gift of Tongues in the second chapter 
of the Acts, cannot on the score of incomprehen- 
sibleness refuse credence to the supernatural Gift 
of Speech in the second chapter of Genesis. The 
supernatural always is incomprehensible. Beyond 
the circle of light there is always a larger circle of 
darkness. 



CHAPTER VII 

UNITY AND ANTIQUITY OF MAN 

WHAT was the length of the interval between 
the creation of Adam and that of Eve ? The 
story furnishes no answer. Those who adopt the 
literal interpretation of the six days are constrained 
to crowd all the events of the second chapter into 
a few hours in the evening of the sixth day. The 
creation of Adam, his translation into the Garden, 
the naming of the animals, the deep sleep which fell 
upon him, and the extraction of the woman from 
his wounded side, followed each other in rapid suc- 
cession, the whole process extending over only a few 
hours. But those who understand the term "day" 
in the narrative as signifying an indefinite period 
are under no necessity to thus crowd events of the 
greatest import into a few fleeting hours. Divine 
procedure is never characterised by undue haste. 
Reason postulates a considerable period. Time was 
required for Adam to possess his soul in patience, to 
acquire self-control, and to have his consciousness 
awakened into healthful activity. The story shows 
God holding fellowship with him, instructing him in 
his duties, spiritual no doubt as well as earthly ; and 
the improbability is great that God would throw 
the newly made creature into a state of unnecessary 

i8o 



UNITY AND ANTIQUITY OF MAN l8l 

agitation and excitement. Leisure was given the 
man to survey his inheritance, to study his surround- 
ings, to ascertain his longitude and latitude on the 
ocean of being upon which he had been suddenly 
launched. Weeks may have transpired, probably did 
transpire, during which he was under the immediate 
tutorship of his Maker, being initiated into the truths 
and rites of religion, and learning the duties 
devolving upon him as the sovereign lord of the 
terrestrial creation, and gradually exercising his 
organs of speech, and acquiring mastery over the 
principles of language. 

At the termination of this period of solitariness, 
except for the colloquies between him and his 
Maker, " the Lord God brought to him the beasts of 
the field and the fowls of the air " — his companions 
in the Garden, whose habits and characters had 
formed the objects of his close scrutiny — to test his 
knowledge, to bring his observations to a practical 
focus, and to excite in him a healthy desire for 
natural science, which then was synonymous with 
natural religion. That God demanded of His creature 
to invent appropriate names for the various animals, 
names which would not be arbitrary signs but 
accurate indices to their inner natures, at the spur 
of the moment, without opportunity for observation 
and reflection, runs counter to all the principles of 
sound sense. The invention of an appropriate nomen- 
clature, applicable to the animal world, was doubt- 
less the culminating point of a previous course of 
instruction. 

The termination of one course was preparatory 
for the commencement of another : *' And the Lord 



1 82 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

God said, It is not good that the man should be 
alone. I will make him an help meet for him " — his 
counterpart; not like in likeness, but like in differ- 
ence. As God is a Social Being, so man, fashioned 
in His image, was intended for society. There- 
fore the " not good " is privative, not positive ; it 
is the defect of incompleteness, not the imperfection 
of make or ideal. The continuance of this privative 
state would eventuate in hurtful results. Conse- 
quently God prepares man for the consummation 
of his creation. By waking within him, not a lust- 
ful, but intelligent, desire for human intercourse — 
the germ of what was afterwards to grow into the 
w^hite flower of pure, holy love — He took him, as 
is His wont with rational creatures, into active 
partnership with Himself As the animals and birds 
passed before him, each fitted to be a companion 
to the other, the question inevitably arose in his 
mind, possibly to his lips, for innocence always 
speaks to itself. Why was he an exception? Why 
was he a singular among all the duals of nature ? 
A sense of separateness stole over him, and 
simultaneously awoke in his breast a keen yearning 
for mutual intercourse. The sense of deficiency having 
been excited, God could now proceed to meet the 
want, for the law of supply and demand rules in 
the Kingdom of God as well as in the realm of 
commerce. Adam having been created a moral 
creature, endowed with free will, God would not 
without his passive consent even provide him with 
a " help meet " — so jealous is He of the liberty of 
His creature. Now that the longing is roused, 
the satisfaction of his need follows. 



UNITY AND ANTIQUITY OF MAN 1 83 

" The Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon 
Adam, and he slept." It is no ordinary, but a deep 
sleep from the Lord, wherein all the bodily members 
and organs, losing sensation, became practically 
functionless. The word is used in other passages 
(Gen. XV. 12; i Sam. xxvi. 12) to indicate that 
kind of sleep in which supernatural dreams and 
visions are vouchsafed. In the Septuagint it is 
invariably rendered eKcnaai<^, a trance, wherein the 
mind stands, as it were, out of the body, more 
wakeful in proportion to the profoundness of the 
physical sleep, and clearly apprehending the process 
going on. Hence the ancient tradition among the 
Hebrew people, recorded by Josephus, that the 
" whole scene of the formation of Eve was visible 
to the mental eye of Adam." While Adam was 
thus asleep, in a kind of hypnotic trance, his body 
insensible to pain, '' the Lord God took one of 
his ribs " — according to the Targum of Jonathan, 
the thirteenth from the right side ! — " and closed 
up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib which 
the Lord God had taken from man builded He a 
woman, and brought her unto the man." The story, 
doubtless, sounds strange in our ears, and though 
we have read it scores of times its weirdness never 
diminishes. 

In this language many see only a figurative 
method of setting forth the truth that woman is 
of the same essence as man. What we call the 
essence, the ancients styled the bone. Welsh people 
still speak of the marrow of a subject. No doubt 
there is much truth in this ; but it is not the whole 
truth. Woman was in a mysterious way taken 



1 84 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

out of man, so that man and woman were an 
arithmetical unity. How was she taken ? I can- 
not tell ; it was a miracle, and miracles are not 
explicable, else they would not be miracles. We 
must remember that we are moving in the region 
of the supernatural. 

Irrev^erent scoffers have pronounced the whole 
transaction unutterably ridiculous ; many are the 
witticisms bandied about at its expense. But revolve 
the matter well in your minds. What better sub- 
stitute have you or they to offer ? Women are 
here ; the first woman was formed somehow. How ? 
To build her out of clay, as Adam, in popular 
theology, was created, is perfectly conceivable, and 
that probably is the method human reason would 
have suggested. But is to make her out of mud 
a more respectable way than to form her out of 
flesh ? Is the building of her out of moistened 
dust a method more honourable and worthier the 
Divine than to make her out of the bone of the 
man to whom she was to be indissolubly joined 
in the holy estate of matrimony ? I trow not. Or 
take the modern evolutionary view, that woman 
came out of the gorilla or chimpanzee — do you 
mend matters ? Is not the Divine evolution of 
woman out of man quite as honourable as her un- 
divine evolution out of a monkey? Aye, more 
reasonable on a priori grounds ; and more reason- 
ableness is an evidence of greater plausibility, unless 
facts to the contrary be forthcoming, which here 
is not the case. 

Prompted by unprofitable ingenuity, many good 
and able men have speculated as to the physical 



UNITY AND ANTIQUITY OF MAN 1 85 

condition of man in his state of loneliness. Jacob 
Bohme and the thcosophists generally hold that he 
was androgynous, and had the mystic power of 
self-propagation. Farther back we find Maimonides, 
the most philosophic expounder of Judaism, strongly 
supporting the same view, that " Adam was created 
man and woman at the same time, having two faces 
turned in two opposite directions, and that during 
a stupor the Creator separated Havvah [Eve], his 
feminine half, from him, in order to make of her 
a distinct person." That, it appears, was the 
rabbinical exposition of the passage under con- 
sideration ; consequently, some Christian divines 
believe that to this view the Lord Jesus referred 
when speaking of man and woman as at their 
creation of " one flesh." Remarkable that this was 
the prevalent view among the most advanced nations 
of antiquity, and the view expounded by Plato in 
the Banquet'. "In the beginning there were three 
.sexes among men, not only the two which we still 
find at this time, male and female, but yet a third, 
partaking of the nature of each, which has dis- 
appeared, leaving only its name behind. In fact, 
the Androgyn existed then in name and in reality, 
being a mixture of the male and female sexes, 
though to-day the name is only used as a reproach. . . . 
Now, said Jupiter, I will divide [men] into two. . . . 
Now when their nature had been bisected, each 
half beheld with a longing its other self " — hence con- 
jugal love. Lenormant evidently adopts this view: 
"Following our Vulgate Version, which agrees in 
this with the Greek Version of the Septuagint, we 
are in the habit of stating that according to the 



1 86 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

Bible the first woman was made of a rib taken 
from Adam's side. Nevertheless, there is serious 
reason to doubt the exactness of this interpretation. 
The word qcla used here signifies in all other 
passages of the Bible where we meet with it, 'side,' 
and not ' rib.' Philologically, then, the most 
probable translation of the text of Genesis is : 
Yahvch Elohim caused a deep sleep to fall upon 
the man, and he slept ; He took one of his sides, 
and closed up the place with flesh. And Yahveh 
Elohim formed the side which He had taken from 
man into woman, and He led her to the man. . . . 
So much for the account in the Jehovist document ; 
in the Elohist, we have, in the first place, ' Elohim 
created man in His image ; . . . male and female 
created He them.' The use of the plural pronoun 
seems at first sight to suggest the notion of a pair 
of two distinct individuals. But farther on this 
pronoun seems, on the contrary, to apply to the 
nature of a double being, which, being male and 
female, constituted a single Adam. ' Male and 
female created He them, and He blessed them, and 
named their name Adam.' The text says Adam, 
and not Jiadddni with the article, and the following 
verse proves that the word here is taken as an 
appellation, a proper name, and not as a general 
designation of the species." ^ 

But why this futile and vain theorising? Why 
not accept the unvarnished tale in its simple lyric 
meaning ? The teaching of Moses is, that woman 
was made, not naturally but supernaturally, out of 
man. Do we not meet in the New Testament with 
' Begi7inings of Histo7-y, pp. 63-5. 



UNITY AND ANTIQUITY OF MAN 1 8/ 

Its significant counterpart— man made, not naturally 
but supernaturally, out of woman ? — " And the 
angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost 
shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest 
shall overshadow thee : therefore also that Holy Thing 
which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son 
of God." " In the fulness of time God sent His Son, 
made of a woman." ^ Those who believe in the Man 
made of a woman experience no difficulty in giving 
credence to the story that woman was made out of 
man. Both are miracles, fitting counterparts one 
of another. 

Waking out of his sleep, and beholding his other 
self, Adam rapturously exclaimed : " This, now, this 
at last, this is what I longed for, bone of my bone, 
flesh of my flesh ; she shall be called Woman, because 
she was taken out of Man." It is an exclamation 
of gladsome surprise at the realisation at last of his 
desires. Dr. Pye Smith renders it : " This is the 
hit." "And though such a translation," adds he, 
" may appear strange, and even vulgar, it appears 
necessary for the preservation of rigorous fidelity. 
The word properly means a smart, bold, successful 
stroke, and is used to signify hitting the precise time 
of any action or requirement. In this first and 
primitive instance, it is equivalent to saying. This 
is the very thing that hits the mark, this reaches 
what was desired." The joy reveals the sense of 
loneliness he before experienced ; and when the 
vacant niche in the heart was suddenly occupied, in 
the native simplicity of spotless innocence he gave 
expression to his gladness in an abrupt ejaculation : 
^ Luke i. 35 ; Gal. iv, 4. 



1 88 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

"This is it. She shall be called Isha, for she was 
taken out of Ish." Some think that they see here 
the first birth of poetry. Probably ; love is always 
singing. 

Thus far the first man has been uniformly styled 
Adam, or tJie Adam, according to whether man 
generic or specific is intended. Now, however, a 
new term is introduced — IsJi ; wherefore, woman 
is, in the feminine, called Isha. Here arises the 
interesting question, Seeing IsJi and IsJia are Hebrew, 
in which language did Adam speak? It is a 
question around which much human interest spon- 
taneously gathers, for we would much like to know 
the caressing words which Adam first addressed to 
his wife, the language in which they conversed. 

As hand in hand they passed, the loveliest pair 
That ever since in love's embraces met ; 
Adam, the g-oodliest man of men since born, 
His sons ; the fairest of her daughters, Eve.^ 

Havernick writes : " Some have urged that these 
\isJi and is]id\ and other names need not be con- 
sidered original, as they may have been translated 
into the Hebrew. But that the author at least 
regarded them as original Hebrew words, and did 
not permit to himself any meddling with them, 
appears from the following considerations : (i) The 
etymologies adduced are opposed to such an opinion, 
inasmuch as the given interpretations of the proper 
names are intelligible only on the supposition that 
these words themselves are Hebrew. These names, 
with their meanings, form an essential clement in the 

• Milton, Book iv,, p. 98 



UNITY AND ANTIQUITY OF MAN 1 89 

history, and hence the credibility of the latter stands 
intimately connected with that of the name and its 
signification. (2) Where names had been altered or 
translated, we find the practice of noting this care- 
fully observed in Genesis (chaps, xiv. 7, 8, xxiii. 19, 
xxviii. 19); and from this we may infer that the 
other proper names are conscientiously retained in 
the Hebrew idiom ; otherwise analogy would have 
led to the name which had been translated into 
Hebrew being given in its original form." 

One's sympathies naturally side with the grand 
old Hebrew, and historically it has many precedent 
claims over other languages. One speech prevailed 
down to the Deluge ; that speech was transmitted 
to the new world by Noah and his sons, which 
continued to prevail to the Babel confusion of 
tongues. One would fain believe that this primitive 
language was preserved in the line of Heber, and 
transmitted through Abraham to the Israelites. But 
this pious opinion, once fondly cherished by many- 
learned men, seems destined to be dissolved in the 
crucible of philological science. As is well known, 
one of the striking peculiarities of the Hebrew is 
its three-letter roots, a phenomenon wholly alien to 
all languages outside the Semitic group. Of late, 
attempts have been made to trace the three-letter to 
two-letter roots ; and the success, which has attended 
these researches, has weakened the belief that Hebrew 
was the original language, and engendered a faint 
hope that, underneath the present accretions, the 
primitive substratum will yet be found. 

I. In this original institution of marriage, the 
sacred indissolubleness of the union is clearly incul- 



190 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

cated, the standard of marital chastity and domestic 
peace being held aloft in the forefront of human 
history. " Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish 
the earth, and subdue it," constituted the charter God 
granted to the first human pair. 

This injunction contemplates the distribution of 
the human species all over the world, and as we look 
round about us to-day through all the zones, "from 
Greenland's icy mountains to India's coral strand," 
we find no region uninhabited by man. Beyond all 
other creatures, in other respects stronger than he, 
he possesses powers to adjust himself to his environ- 
ments, which make him always and everywhere the 
master of the situation — the creator, not the creature, 
of circumstances. This universal distribution of the 
human race is a phenomenon unique in the animal 
kingdom. Most plants when transplanted, most 
animals when deported, from the land of their 
nativity, gradually droop and die. Beyond certain 
perfectly definable climatic belts they will not prosper 
and thrive. The anthropoid apes, for instance, the 
animals whose configuration bears the strongest 
resemblance to the human frame, are all confined to 
the tropical area. They lack the hardy endurance 
and the equilibrating capabilities of human kind. 
But man's distribution is co-extensive with the globe. 
He lives, labours, and multiplies on the five con- 
tinents, gladly braves the rigours and severities 
of the Frigid Zone, and triumphantly defies the 
sweltering heat of equatorial climes. " Those other 
animals," writes Professor Macalister, " which, like 
the rat, have spread over large tracts of the globe, 
are characterised by an early maturity, a capacity 



UNITY AND ANTIQUITY OF MAN I91 

of feeding upon almost any form of food, and a 
rapid rate of multiplication. Man presents us with 
characteristics in all respects the most diverse from 
these : he has the longest period of helpless infancy 
of any animal, and is slow in attaining maturity 
(one-fourth of his life, at least twenty years, having 
passed before his full growth is perfected) ; he is 
also able to use only a limited number of substances 
in their natural conditions as food. Mankind also 
multiply at a slow rate ; thus, while within the past 
fifty years, forty-five persons have descended from 
a single pair of royal parents in Britain, in the 
same period of time one pair of rats would, at their 
ordinary rate of increase, have had a progeny of at 
least as great numerically as the whole population 
of England. Yet, in the face of all these dis- 
abilities, man has, by his own exertion, become a 
cosmopolite." 

Whilst marriage is thus on the one hand for the 
sake of the race, on the other it is intended for 
the discipline and enrichment of the individual life. 
By love matrimony is elevated to the region of 
the spirit, and becomes essentially ethical. Without 
love marriage is mere simulacrum, nothing more 
than a civil contract, on the low level of a com- 
mercial bargain. But by love it is ennobled and 
transfigured, and becomes symbolical of the deeper 
verities of the higher life. " This is a great mystery ; 
but of Christ and the Church I speak." As the same 
law rounds the dewdrop that determines the circle 
of the sun, so the principle of marriage is funda- 
mentally the same as that of the mystic union 
between Christ and believers, the Church having 



192 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

proceeded supernaturally from His bleeding side 
as the woman proceeded supernaturally from the 
wounded side of her husband. 

Marriage being thus physical and spiritual, the 
union should remain unimpared till dissolved in 
death. " Therefore shall a man leave his father 
and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and 
they shall be one flesh." Whether these words be 
the remark of Adam or the inspired comment of 
Moses on the institution of marriage, as is the 
more probable by the conjunction " therefore," — his 
usual mode of introducing his own observations, — 
their far-reaching significance is equally manifest. 
The inspired comment, I said, because in the New 
Testament the words are ascribed to God Himself. 
Listen to the Saviour's exposition of this Mosaic 
truth : " The Pharisees also came unto Him, tempting 
Him, and saying unto Him, Is it lawful for a man 
to put away his wife for every cause ? And He 
answered and said unto them. Have ye not read, 
that He which made them at the beginning made 
them male and female, and said, For this cause 
shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall 
cleave to his wife : and they twain shall be one 
flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but 
one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, 
let no man put asunder. They say unto Him, 
Why did Moses then command to give a writing 
of divorcement, and to put her away ? He said 
unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your 
hearts suffered you to put away your wives : but 
from the beginning it was not so. And I say 
unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except 



UNITY AND ANTIQUITY OF MAN 193 

it be for fornication, and shall marry another, com- 
mitteth adultery : and whoso marrieth her which is 
put away doth commit adultery " (Matt. xix. 3-9). 

Thus there are traceable in the history of the 
ordinance of marriage three periods. The first 
when the union was inviolable— the law as instituted 
in the time of man's innocence. The second, follow- 
ing upon man's transgression, when God had to 
relax the law of matrimonial morality. The principle 
in virtue of which this was permissible is known 
in theology as that of accommodation. You apply 
it to the sick. You do not require the same amount 
of work nor demand the same high standard of 
excellence from the infirm, the aged, and the decrepit, 
as you do from those whose health is robust and 
limbs are athletic. So when mankind fell, and lusts 
grew wild and passions rank, God in infinite mercy 
lowered the standard, and permitted conjugal divorce- 
ment. The high ideal of wedlock had been univer- 
sally departed from, wives had become a barterable 
merchandise. Parents selected partners for their 
children without considerations of physical beauty 
or spiritual compatibility ; love, the core of marriage, 
was non-existent. Under circumstances so deplor- 
able, how could it otherwise be than that family 
jars and irritations should be frequent and violent? 
To prevent these domestic contentions culminating 
in murder, a law of divorcement was established 
even in Israel— an improvement on the surrounding 
Paganism, where not law, but individual caprice, 
determined the matrimonial relation. Moses, like 
every wise lawgiver, legislated, not for an ideal, 
but for an actual state; consequently he enacted 

13 



194 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

laws, not absolutely but relatively the best, the 
best under the prevailing circumstances. This was 
a period in the history of the world of sad moral 
degeneracy. With Christianity, however, began a 
third period, when the law of Paradise is again made 
supreme. Through the incarnation of Christ and 
the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, new life is being 
gradually infused into the race ; and with the 
possession by humanity of additional strength, of 
fresh inspiration, the standard of morality is exalted 
to its Paradisiacal position ; and subsequent history 
testifies to the gradual approximation of men to 
their once lost, but now restored, ideal. 

II. Another lesson of no less importance is taught 
mankind by this Creation story, — that God created 
man male and female, one of each sex, and that 
therefore monogamy should be the law of life. 

In reviewing this phase of the question we again 
perceive three periods parallel with those already 
discussed. The first is, of course, the Paradisiacal. 
Had mankind continued in their original perfection, 
this fundamental law of life would have remained 
inviolably sacred. But, alas ! the animal nature over- 
came the spiritual, and from being in subjection 
to, it attained to dominion over, the reason and 
conscience. As a dire consequence, the bonds of 
matrimony were unloosed, and polygamy established 
itself as the uniform custom. Plurality of wives 
had entered the antediluvian world, as evidenced 
by the history of Lamech, who dedicated his poem 
to his two wives, Adah and Zillah. Even in the 
elect nation polygamy could not be safely forbidden ; 
the Mosaic law aims, therefore, not at its suppression. 



UNITY AND ANTIQUITY OF MAN I95 

but its regulation, so as to inflict on society as 
slight an injury as possible. But polygamy, or 
"concubinage," as it is termed in Scripture, does 
not mean adultery or fornication, the penalty for 
which in the Mosaic legislation was death ; but a 
legalised marriage, the acknowledgment by statute, 
as the mouthpiece of public opinion, of plurality 
of "lawful wedded wives," with the concession to 
the monogamic principle that the first had the 
primacy of all the others. 

Sad to think of the prevalence of concubinage 
even in Israel. Nothing can better exhibit the shock- 
ing degradation into which mankind had sunk than 
the legalised relations which obtained between the 
sexes. So blunted had become the moral sense, 
that even in the family of the godly concubinage 
prevailed, not only without censure, but often with 
the approval of the lawful spouse. Abraham thought 
polygamy no sin, nor did Jacob condemn it in 
himself or children. Gideon, the celebrated judge 
of Israel, had many wives, and threescore and ten 
sons. The pious Elkanah, the father of Samuel, 
had two wives. David, the sweet singer of Israel, 
had several wives, and received the wives of his 
predecessor on the throne into his harem (2 Sam. 
xii. 8), not for the indulgence of sinful passions, but 
as a matter of custom and expediency. Solomon 
had seven hundred wives and three hundred con- 
cubines, not, however, to gratify sensual lust, as is 
popularly imagined, but to maintain his pre-eminence 
among Eastern monarchs, the royal pomp being 
measured in those days by the magnitude and 
splendour of the royal harem. 



196 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

To absolutely forbid polygamy, to try to stem 
this wild, irresistible torrent of sensuality, by a 
prohibitory statute in the then immature state of 
the conscience, private and public, would be to 
court inevitable defeat. To endeavour forthwith 
to eradicate the evil would be tantamount to the 
overthrow of the entire race. But what could not 
be accomplished by direct prohibition, could be 
partly alleviated by prudent regulation, and its 
evil results reduced to a minimum. This is all 
the Mosaic legislation dared attempt. But whilst 
nothing more patently demonstrates the inherent 
evil and the unrestrained self-will of man than this 
riotous trampling under foot of all the pure sanctities 
of marriage, on the other hand nothing exhibits 
the power of revealed religion more advantageously 
than, whilst permitting it as a necessary evil, it 
has gradually so quickened the moral sensibilities 
that now, in all Christian communities, plurality 
of wives is viewed with righteous abhorrence. 

With Jesus Christ arrived the third period. His 
Church again raising aloft the Creation standard 
of monogamy. By the incarnation of the Divine 
Son in our nature, and the indwelling of the Divine 
Spirit in our hearts, the spiritual forces have been 
rallied, and the ethical principles of wedlock have 
been vindicated, and marriage is once more a holy 
ordinance, if not a Divine sacrament. 

III. From this story of the creation of one man 
and one woman, St. Paul draws the inference that 
" God hath made of one blood all nations of men, 
for to dwell on all the face of the earth" (Acts 
xvii. 26) 



UNITY AND ANTIQUITY OF MAN 197 

The unity of the human race is practically a 
demonstrated truth of science. Observing the wide 
differences between the varieties of mankind, between 
the African black and the Caucasian white, Agassiz 
and other Christian scientists felt constrained to the 
conclusion that, though all men were homogeneous, 
yet they had separate origins ; that God had con- 
temporaneously created divers pairs, in a plurality 
of localities widely separated from one another. 
But the more the question is investigated, the more 
general is the trend of scientific belief that the 
Mosaic presentation of the facts is correct. Marvel- 
lous the change of opinion which has come over 
rationalistic scientists on this subject! Formerly 
they were wont to stoutly maintain that the differ- 
ences between the various races were so great, that 
it was impossible they could have descended from 
a single pair. To-day they assert that not only all 
men, but all men and all animals alike, are indis- 
putably the offspring of a single progenitor. What 
they pronounced impossible forty years ago, they 
consider an established verity to-day. And yet this 
is the science in favour of which we are bidden to 
turn our backs on the Bible. How sober the Mosaic 
account compared with these wild theories! how 
carefully it avoids the extremes which exert such 
powerful fascination over scientific minds ! 

That Moses here states the exact truth is con- 
firmed by considerations based on the physical 
nature of men. That the difference is great be- 
tween the Negro and the Greek, the Malaysian and 
the Teuton, is incontrovertibly plain. But when 
we remember that in Adam and Eve was lodged 



igS PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

humanity in its entireness, and therefore all possible 
germs of mental and physical developments ; and 
that man, beyond every other creature, has power 
to adjust himself to his surroundings, these adjust- 
ments effecting gradual modifications of his animal 
structure ; the organic variations, however marked, 
are not wholly inexplicable, not beyond the pale 
of probability. But the fact which weighs most, 
perhaps, is that when men and women, at the 
extreme poles of divergence, are united in marriage, 
their offspring increase in all the prolific qualities, 
without any signs of physical or mental deteriora- 
tion, but rather exhibit an increase of strength. 
As remarked in a former chapter, hybrids are 
struck with barrenness, they all die off with the first 
generation ; but cross-breeding among men results 
in the improvement of the species, thus showing 
that fundamentally the five races of men are one ; 
and that Moses is right in teaching that all men 
are members of one family, and that consequently 
good-will should prevail among them, based on the 
fact of universal brotherhood. 

But mind, even more than body, is the most 
determinate characteristic of men ; and nothing is 
more evident than that all minds are fundamentally 
the same. Draw a map of the human mind, and it 
will bear scrutiny in the five zones. The laws of 
logic dominate in Africa as they do in Europe. The 
same psychological text-books, which we place in the 
hands of our young men, need not be changed in a 
single iota in the universities of India. Algebra and 
Euclid are as intelligible in China as they are in 
England. This universal prevalence of the same 



UNITY AND ANTIQUITY OF MAN 199 

mental laws among the Malaysians and the 
Caucasians, among the Hottentots and the Eskimo, 
powerfully indicates sameness of origin, in accordance 
with the Mosaic teaching. 

When we penetrate into the moral region, the 
evidence continues to gather in volume and strength. 
The will, the heart, the conscience are everywhere 
the same ; so that the saying is true that the white 
man is God's image in ivory, and the black man His 
image in ebony. The will is free in every climate ; 
love finds its home in every bosom ; and conscience, 
whenever and wherever awakened, answers to the 
same voice, and acknowledges the same obligations. 
Man is one in his Fall, one also in his Redemption. 
Sin is the same the world over, and in every 
country Grace triumphs. The legend tells us that, 
on the expulsion of our first parents from Eden, 
the cherubim smashed the Gates of Paradise ; and 
that so violent were the blows, the fragments flew 
all over the w^orld. This is spiritually true. Frag- 
ments of Paradisiacal truth have doubtless been 
scattered wherever mankind have travelled ; portions 
are clearly discernible in the religions of China, of 
India, of Persia, and of Arabia. Their original glow 
and sparkle is still seen amid the incrustations of 
superstition and vice ; but by-and-by all these frag- 
ments will be gathered together, and welded into 
one homogeneous whole, and there shall be " one 
flock and one Shepherd." The unity of the human 
race is reflected in the unity of truth, and consum- 
mated in the unity of the way of Salvation. 

IV. Closely connected with the unity of mankind 
is the question of their antiquity. Biblical chrono- 



200 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

logy continues in a state of uncertainty, the principle 
on which the ages of men are calculated having not 
yet been fully elucidated. Consequently a margin 
of one or two thousand years is not unreasonable. 
But so far as inquiries into this subject have been 
pushed, there is a consensus of opinion that Moses 
teaches the existence of man for about six to eight 
thousand years, and no longer. Scientific sceptics 
have for nearly a century been heaping obloquy on 
the Mosaic chronology, ridiculing the time-penury 
of Moses as compared with the scores, yea, the 
hundreds of thousands of years accorded to man by 
ethnic history and geological investigations. No- 
thing carries home more convincingly to the mind 
the thorough reliableness of the Mosaic records than 
to see Science, in its infant days demanding for man 
a history stretching backward hundreds of thousands 
of years, in its more mature days obliged to confess 
that, after all its wild and extravagant hypotheses, 
Moses' chronology may yet prove to be true. 
Prodigal sciences, like prodigal sons, at last return 
home. 

Earlier in the century the opponents of Biblical 
revelation strove hard to discredit the Mosaic 
chronology by appealing to the histories of other 
nations. Chinese astronomy was alleged to go back 
at least fifteen thousand years. Professor Legge, 
however, the greatest living authority on Chinese 
literature, declares, without fear of contradiction, that 
China has no authentic history before 1154 B.C. — 
just about the time of the exodus from Egypt, 
though their "Book of History" may contain true 
traditions extending back a thousand years earlier. 



UNITY AND ANTIQUITY OF MAN 201 

Another attempt was made to marshal Babylonia 
and Assyria as witnesses against the Hebrew 
chronology. Berosus, the Babylonian priest, a con- 
temporary of Malachi, was sought after to demolish 
Moses, the Hebrew lawgiver. Is it not evidence of 
grave moral obliquity that learned men should show 
readiness to believe Berosus in preference to Moses ? 
What has Moses done to excite against him the 
bitter antagonism of these men who cry, Not Moses, 
but Berosus ? But Professor Rawlinson says that the 
allegation that sidereal observations had been made 
at Babylon for above four hundred and fifty thousand 
years, is sufficiently met by the fact that, when 
Aristotle commissioned his disciple, Callisthenes, to 
obtain for him the astronomical lore of Babylon, on 
Alexander's occupation of the city, the observations 
were found to extend, not to four hundred and fifty 
thousand years, but to nineteen hundred and three. 
Professor Sayce, after an exhaustive examination, 
pronounces the opinion that no tablets or monu- 
ments can claim a greater antiquity than about four 
thousand four hundred years. Moses still stands 
honoured and revered, whereas the Berosus' long- 
lived dynasties are demonstrated to be fanciful 
inventions. 

Later, driven away from China, and from Assyria 
and Babylonia, rationalistic writers have sought refuge 
in Egypt. Manetho, the Egyptian priest, living a 
century later than Malachi, was led forth to testify 
against Moses. According to him, the Egyptian 
dynasties had continued unbroken for thirty thousand 
years. His testimony was to be preferred to that 
of Moses. Then the assertions of Manetho found 



202 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

support in the sculptured zodiacs in certain Egyptian 
temples, declared by experts to be seventeen thou- 
sand years old ! The discomfiture of Moses was 
pronounced complete. Champollion, however, the 
first to decipher the hieroglyphics, translated the 
zodiacs, and, behold ! the famous zodiac of Denderah, 
which was alleged to have undermined the trust- 
worthiness of Genesis, was only contemporaneous 
with the reign of Augustus Caesar, while that of 
Emeh belonged to the age of Antoninus ! 

One is amazed at the readiness with which the 
romances of heathen writers are swallowed and de- 
fended by able men, for no other conceivable reason 
or motive than the disparagement of Moses. The 
more, however, ancient contemporary histories are 
criticised, the more secure sits Moses in his seat. 
So many violent attempts have been made to dis- 
lodge him without the slightest success, that the 
faith has been engendered in some of us that present 
and future attempts in the same direction are doomed 
to the same inane failure. 

Historic science failing them, writers of anti-supra- 
naturalistic tendencies sought confirmation to the 
extreme antiquity of mankind in natural science. 
Here again mental intoxication set in. Man was 
declared to live in pre-glacial times. If human 
remains were found in the same deposit as that 
of the mammoth, then man must have existed in 
the mammoth age. It did not occur to them to 
argue the other way, that the mammoth must have 
lived down to the human age. That, however, is 
Professor Owen's verdict : " The present evidence 
does not necessitate the carrying back the date of 



UNITY AND ANTIQUITY OF MAN 203 

man in past time, so much as bringing the extinc 
post-glacial animals towards our own time." Sir 
J. W. Dawson sums up his examination of these 
theories in these words : " What evidence the future 
may bring forth I do not know, but that available 
at present points to the appearance of man, with 
all his powers and properties, in the post-glacial 
age of Geology, and not more than from six thousand 
to eight thousand years ago." ^ And as late as 1 894, 
at a meeting of the British Association of Science, 
Professor Boyd-Dawkins and Sir John Evans, 
the two men most competent to pronounce an 
authoritative opinion, declared that no proofs are 
forthcoming in support of the theory of glacial or 
pre-glacial man. Moses and Science once more 
stand shoulder to shoulder ! Berosus and Manetho 
have fallen discredited ; Moses stands, though often 
impeached, with his character unsoiled and his 
authority unshaken. How to account for this miracle 
of history ? 

Others, again, base their argument against the 
Mosaic chronology on the long period of time 
necessarily required for the growth of languages, 
and the development of the arts which embellish 
civilised life. Assuming that man once sucked an 
ape and began life a speechless savage, the demand 
for longer reaches of time for him to unfold his 
faculties is by no means extravagant. But that 
is simply begging the question, taking for granted 
the very point in dispute. But on the Mosaic 
hypothesis that man began life, not as a savage, 
but in a state of civilisation, and richly endowed 
1 Fossil Man ^ p. 246. 



204 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

with the gift of speech, the received chronology 
seems to meet all the requirements of the case. 
If from the Latin of imperial Rome, under the 
eye of Christian civilisation and enlightenment, have 
sprung Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese, 
mutually unintelligible, notwithstanding the conser- 
vative restraints imposed on language by literature, 
written and printed, it is not beyond the bounds 
of credibility that the three thousand languages and 
dialects prevailing to-day should have all emerged 
from the one primordial tongue in the course of the 
millenniums. The more thoroughly these questions 
are sifted, the more firmly grows the conviction that 
the Mosaic teaching concerning the comparatively 
recent origin of man is right. At the commencement 
of these inquiries Science gets intoxicated, makes 
extravagant statements ; but, in each case, as re- 
searches are further carried, she is gradually sobered, 
and has reluctantly to recant. Moses still holds his 
ground, alone calm and immovable amid the strife 
of words and the clash of theories. 



M 



CHAPTER VIII 

man's innocence and probation 

ANY moderns strongly incline to the view that 
the story of the Fall is a myth. All other 
nations have their myths; the records of their 
infancy are not histories, but the spontaneous, 
unconscious growths of imagination running riot, 
before the critical faculty is excited. If that be 
true of all other nations, why make an exception 
of the Hebrews ? They also were men subject to 
the same mental laws as other people. 

It is observable, however, that the advocates of 
the mythical theory do not tell us what they pre- 
cisely mean by a myth, and a great deal of confusion 
arises from lack of definition. Much of what passes 
for broad thought is loose thought ; laxity is mis- 
taken for breadth. These writers speak glibly of 
philosophical and historical myths: what is the 
difference? So far as I can judge, in a philosophica 
myth the facts grow out of the ideas. Individual 
thinkers, or the collective thinkers, of early ages form 
certain conceptions of the nature and sequence of 
things ; to express these abstract thoughts they con- 
sciously or unconsciously embody them in fictitious 
narratives ; these manufactured narratives are then 

205 



206 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

transmitted to subsequent ages as veritable, real 
history. The ideas create the facts. In a historical 
myth, on the other hand, the ideas are the investiture 
of the facts either by growth from within or trans- 
ference from without. There is a substratum of 
facts, but the facts are swollen, exaggerated, multiplied 
by the excited imagination always on the look 
out for the marvellous, till the history becomes 
wholly untrustworthy. Either way the antediluvian 
chapters of Genesis are declared undeserving of con- 
fidence. This theory leaves us in total ignorance 
of all that transpired before the Deluge — a theory 
which I for one cannot accept. But why should 
the Hebrew account be regarded differently from 
the myths of other nations ? A sufficient reason, 
I believe, is found in the consideration that, if God 
was pleased to elect the Hebrews to be the deposi- 
taries of the truth concerning God and man, as 
many of the advocates of the mythical theory admit, 
it is not probable that facts of the greatest moment 
in the life of the race, such as our creation, temptation, 
and fall, would be wholly overlooked. And if given 
at all, they might as well be given in a true as 
in a fictitious garb. 

Is the Genesis account, then, to be considered 
poetry ? Here again the question arises, What 
is poetry? Whatever it is, it cannot be the con- 
tradiction of history, but rather its interpretation ; 
not the denial of truth, but its highest, completest 
expression. In this sense I have no objection to 
view these chapters as poetry, for poetry is the truest 
history, history written from the inside rather than 
from the outside, and therefore incomparably truer 



man's innocence and probation 207 

than what often passes as history in the schools. 
When a boy I read the history of Richard III. in the 
school-books of the period ; I knew the date of his 
birth and of his death, the dates of all his battles, 
and could write an essay on his life. A little later 
I read Shakespeare's play of Richard, and for the 
first time I understood the English king. Shake- 
speare unravelled the history of the inner man, told 
how the king thought and felt, showed the workings 
of his heart and brain. I have known Richard 
ever since, Shakespeare's tragedy being a truer 
picture of Richard than Green's history. But the 
tragedy is not a contradiction of the history, rather 
its explanation and transfiguration. The first 
chapters of Genesis are poetry, undiluted poetry ; 
but on that account they need not cease to be 
history. Cannot poetry be history, and history 
poetry ? Chateaubriand regards the Mosaic account 
as poetry ; Professor Stanley Leathes, on the other 
hand, takes it " for what it undoubtedly is, plain and 
simple prose." ^ I perceive no contradiction or dis- 
agreement between the two views— poetry may be 
history, and history poetry. Do you know anything 
more poetical, more tragical, than the history of 
Great Britain? When the right poet will arise to 
present our campaigns of conquest and our wars 
in defence and for the extension of liberty, the 
promiscuous struggles of voters at the election 
booths, and the noisy battles of eloquence on the 
floors of the two Houses of Parliament, he need 
not invent or fabricate— the materials will be ready- 
made to his hand. All he will have to do will be 
1 Structure of the Old Testament, p. 123. 



208 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

to marshal his facts, and array them in language 
fitting and picturesque, like the uniform of the British 
soldier. 

All nations look back to a golden age of the 
world, a Paradisiacal period in the history of the 
race. But why was that age golden ? Because 
the actual and ideal then kissed ; history was 
poetry, and poetry history. Among the nations 
of antiquity the Hebrews alone look forward to 
another golden age when the lion and the lamb 
shall lie down together, and the leopard like an ox 
will eat grass. Christian nations have caught this 
optimistic tone from the Hebrews, and are now 
expectant of a period when poetry and history, 
long divorced, will again embrace ; when the actual 
and ideal, now gradually approaching, will finally 
meet and coalesce. 

I. Looking, therefore, upon these chapters as 
both poetically and historically true, let us con- 
template man in the state of his innocence ^ as he 
came fresh from the hands of his Maker, in the 
initial stage of his development. 

His physical nature is perfect, without weakness 
or flaw. In our bodies there lurk the seeds of 
disorder. These seeds have not yet developed, 
and by proper care may not work in us irreparable 
mischief Nevertheless they are here, a source of 
peril and anxiety to us as long as we live. Adam, 
however, was thoroughly free from all germs of 
sickness. By this is not intended that his body 
was created intrinsically immortal. That is the 
view, perhaps, popularly taken ; but students of 
our nature say that the organs of the body would, 



man's innocence and probation 209 

in the nature of things, wear themselves out, tliat 
the human machine would of necessity stop revolving. 
In consonance with science, the Bible, as I under- 
stand it, assumes that physical immortality was 
not a native endowment, but was to be superadded 
as the reward of holiness. The immortality of 
man, in the totahty of his being, according to the 
Bible, has its foundation in ethics, not physics. 
The soul was created immortal, but the body mortal : 
that is the teaching of Moses as well as Plato. But 
before the eyes of man God held out the hope of 
the immortality of the body ; which, however, was 
to be the gift of God as a reward of true-hearted 
loyalty. As death was to be the wages of sin, so 
exemption from death was to be the reward of 
obedience. Had Adam not yielded to temptation 
he would have never died, not because his corporeal 
nature was endowed with physical immortality, but 
because God had ordained means whereby, as a 
sign of His favour for moral steadfastness, his life 
might be indefinitely prolonged. These means were 
connected with, probably embodied in, the Tree of 
Life in the midst of the Garden. 

How should this Tree of Life be viewed ? Did 
it occupy this position, and possess this virtue, 
simply as the result of Divine appointment? In 
other words, had God not so ordained, would it 
differ in nothing from ordinary trees ? Did God 
take any apple tree, and by arbitrary enactment 
make it a Tree of Life, without any miraculous 
metamorphosis of the tree ? Of course, no limits can 
be laid to the Divine Omnipotence, except those 
prescribed by the Divine Wisdom. Possibly those 

14 



210 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

thcoloci^ians are right who maintain that the virtue 
lay wholly, not in the tree itself, but in the Divine 
ordainment. But personally I favour the other 
view. The preferences of God have always a basis 
in fact — God does all things, not according to the 
caprice, but the counsel, of His will. This tree was 
probably generically different from all other trees. 
What the difference was surpasses our power to 
discover ; but emphatically it was a Tree of Life — 
by participation in the juice of its fruit or the sap 
of its bark the physical life would be invigorated 
and prolonged. More than any other passage the 
Divine colloquy in Gen. iii. 22, 23 sheds light upon 
it : " Behold, the man is become as one of Us, to 
know good and evil : and now, lest he put forth his 
hand, and take also of the Tree of Life, and eat, 
and live for ever ! " An intimation is here contained 
that the fruit of this tree had the power to impart 
bodily immortality, apart from all considerations of 
holiness of character ; but through sin man forfeited 
his right to partake thereof. Did God gather to- 
gether into this tree in the centre of the Garden the 
quintessence of all cosmical life, thereby constitu- 
ting its juice the veritable elixir of immortality, and 
once more illustrating that history and poetry 
embrace? In the prosecution of industrial and 
mechanical avocations, inevitable was it that acci- 
dents should occur, that the chisel should cut the 
flesh, and the stone crush the foot — the belief of 
Albcrtus Magnus, notwithstanding, that the first 
man would have felt no pain, though he had been 
stoned with heavy stones ; but in the leaves of the 
Tree of Life was medicine for all his sicknesses. Now 



MAN'S INNOCENCE AND PROBATION 211 

healing virtues are distributed in a hundred plants 
and more, specific plants being remedies for specific 
diseases ; but in the Tree of Life were probably 1 
concentrated the medicinal virtues of all the vege- 
table creation, and special virtues of its own in 
addition, and thus it was a universal panacea against ' 
all evil. Was it not in this the Creation symbol of 
the Gospel Tree of Life, " which bears twelve manner 
of fruit, each month giving its fruit, and the leaves 
of the tree are for the healing of the nations"? 
" And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their 
synagogues, and healing all manner of sickness, and 
all manner of disease among the people." Thus 
man's corporeal immortality was not a native endow- 
ment, but was to be superadded in consequence of 
participation in the Tree of Life, which participa- 
tion was to be permitted as the reward of dutiful ^ 
obedience. 

Man's intellect was a worthy inhabitant of ^ 
his physical tenement, perfect in all its facultiies 
harmonious in all its emotions. By this, however, 
is not to be understood that his mind was replete ^ 
in respect of contents, for obviously there was a 
moment in his history when no truth consciously 
dwelt within him. On the other hand, there was 
no error, no depravity, no impurity in the cask to 
taint ever afterwards with its bitter taste all the 
sweet waters. His was a perfectly transparent 
mind in a perfectly sound body. 

Neither was he left to the uncertain gropings of 
his own unaided faculties— God became his tutor. 
What more consistent than that the God, who 
showed such solicitude in his creation, should con- 



212 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

tinuc His special guardianship, and Himself under- 
take his education ? Be the story true or not, it is 
certainly harmonious, and harmony is one of the 
indubitable notes of truth. 

What then was the educational process ? Did 
God fill the first man with knowledge ready-made ? 
Certainly not ; but by a combination of circum- 
stances He set revolving his mental faculties — He 
made him think. " And out of the ground the Lord 
God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl 
of the air ; and brought them unto Adam to see 
what he would call them : and whatsoever Adam 
called every living creature, that was the name 
thereof." In education, as is well known, there are 
two methods of teaching. The first crams the mind 
with information, converting the mind into a ware- 
house where facts of every kind are safely stored. 
This is an excellent method to pass examinations 
as now conducted, which gauge your stores of 
knowledge rather than measure your powers of 
thought. Hence many a young man, whose univer- 
sity career was most brilliant, falls behind in the 
race of life, where ability, not memory — originality, 
not receptivity — counts. There is another method, 
deemed by all competent judges to be superior. 
According to this the teacher endeavours to make 
the child think. He does not supply him with 
manufactured knowledge, but strives to induce him 
to discover truth for himself This was also the 
Divine method in the instruction of the first man — 
God did not so much put in as draw out. He did 
not take Adam, saying, This is the name of this 
creature, and that is the name of the second ; but 



man's innocence and trobation 213 

He brought the animals to Adam " to sec what he 
would call them"— He made Adam think, and 
thought is the mother of speech. Adam gazed on 
the animals, thought into their nature, and as he 
thought so he named them. Adam thought deep 
down into the roots of things and of language. 

Pleasant is it further to reflect that man's moral 
nature rhymed beautifully with his intellectual and 
physical nature. The greatest harmony prevailed in 
this human trinity. But to represent man as stand- 
ing perpendicularly between God and Satan, perfectly 
neutral between good and evil, is hardly correct, 
indeed not correct at all. In his creation the in- 
clination of his nature was in the direction of virtue ; "> 
his instincts all moved Godward. His heart gravitated 
towards God. A natural affinity obtained between 
the human and the Divine, between the spirit of man 
and the soul of goodness. As since the Fall human 
nature leans to the side of evil, so before the Fall 
it inclined to the side of virtue. The Fall reversed 
the natural inclination of our nature. This natural 
bias towards God and goodness the older theologians 
styled original righteousness ; and the natural prone- 
ness of human nature to evil they named original 
sin. But in neither case is the original tantamount 
to the acquired. 

Be it then clearly apprehended that the human 
heart at its creation was not an empty vessel, to be 
gradually filled with love to God or love to sin. It 
was already full. Love is the first experience of 
man. The babe learns to love before he learns 
anything else ; his little heart bubbles up with love 
to his mother before a single idea finds conscious 



214 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

lodgment in his intellect. True, it is but the love 
of instinct ; yet by degrees love of instinct will 
develop into love of will. Similarly with Adam. 
He possessed love to his Creator — love of instinct it 
may be, but love nevertheless ; and here emerges 
the question, How to develop love of instinct into 
love of will? How to convert the love, which has 
its origin in human nature, into love having its root 
in human liberty? 

" God created man in His image, after His like- 
ness." Most of the Greek fathers, misled probably 
by the Septuagint translation, which, departing from 
the Hebrew, puts the copulative conjunction between 
" image " and " likeness," argued that a difference 
obtains between the two terms. Subtle and ingenious 
were the distinctions they drew. Neither are many 
modern theologians content with the view that the 
two words are synonyms, added for the sake of 
weight and emphasis. Some say that the difference 
is that the " image " denotes the spiritual substance 
of the soul, whereas the " likeness " refers to the 
moral character, which is detachable from the sub- 
stance. In accordance with this view, man through 
sin lost the " likeness," the moral qualities analogous 
to the Divine moral attributes becoming obliterated. 
Instead of affinity there came repulsion. The 
" image," nevertheless, continued, the substance of 
the spirit remained intact ; hence men after the Fall 
are said to be in the Divine image, though not in 
the Divine likeness. The spiritual substance persists, 
the moral character has disappeared. Others assume 
that the " image " indicates man in his original created 
state, and " likeness " man as he was destined to be 



man's Innocence and probation 215 

in the future as the result of a conthiucd course of 
development, man after having reached his full moral 
stature. " God created man in His image " : that is 
man at the beginning of his career, man in a state of 
innocence, man in the actual, before his nature began 
to unfold its hidden potentialities. " In His like- 
ness " : that is man as he was intended to be, man 
in a condition of holiness, man after having reached 
the Divine ideal, at the topmost goal of his develop- 
ment. One is the acorn, the other the full-grown 
oak. And here we encounter the same problem as 
before, How to make the acorn grow into the oak ? 
How to make the actual man arrive at his ideal? 
How to elevate a state of innocence into a state of 
holiness? In other words. How to transmute the 
goodness, which has its origin in human nature, into 
goodness having its root in human liberty? How 
to develop love of instinct into love of will ? The 
problem of the will here emerges, the crux of the 
theology as well as of the philosophy of the Fall. 
II. This has led us to man in a state oi probation. 
It should never be forgotten that the will is the 
only fount of ethics, that nothing is moral which 
does not proceed from the will. Man, therefore, 
being essentially a moral creature, subject to moral 
law, it is of prime importance that the will be rightly 
developed. But how to develop the will ? We have 
already seen how the body and mind were developed 
— namely, by exercise. Precisely in the same manner 
is the will to be drawn out and strengthened — 
by calling upon it to choose between good and 
evil, good and evil in their initial stages, in their 
lowest, easiest forms. This precisely is the purport 



2l6 t^RlMEVAL REVELATION 

of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil ; and 
because it takes its place so naturally at the begin- 
ning of the story of human evolution — and not 
only so naturally, but so necessarily — I view the 
account, not as a fanciful, mythical embellishment, 
but as literal history ; and the more literal, the 
more poetical and philosophical. Its philosophy 
demonstrates its historicity. What manual labour 
was to Adam in Paradise — means to strengthen 
his body ; what the secrets of animal nature were 
to his mind — means to invigorate his intellectual 
faculties : that, and nothing else, was the Tree of 
Knowledge of Good and Evil to his will — a simple 
but indispensable means to awaken it into healthful 
exercise, to start it rightly on a course of moral 
development. It was a tree of moral, not intellectual, 
knowledge, placed necessarily at the threshold of 
ethical evolution to train and guide the human 
will aright. In Hebrew thought the essence of 
knowledge is not intellectuality, but morality ; not 
metaphysics, but ethics. 

The popular idea is that God in His pure 
sovereignty, without any necessity, placed this 
stumbling-block on the way of our progress in 
goodness ; and that, if He had not made the appoint- 
ment, men would not have sinned. The probation 
is looked upon as a superfluous appendage to 
man's history, arbitrarily added by the Creator. 
The prohibition to eat of the Tree of Knowledge 
of Good and Evil is viewed as a positive command- 
ment, i.e. an enactment capriciously enjoined by 
God in the exercise of His sovereignty, without 
any necessity for it, and which we slyly think it 



man\s innocence and probation 217 

were somewhat better for Him, and a great deal 
better for us, if it had never been given at all. 
The popular idea, however, is essentially mislead- 
ing. That it was positive in the sense that God 
could give a different test is true ; but if man were 
to grow in morality, it could be done only by 
bringing him face to face with an edict enjoining 
this, forbidding that. This rock of offence was on 
our way already ; and all God did was to indicate 
its place by erecting upon it this commandment 
like a lighthouse, to warn man not to run his 
little vessel upon its jagged teeth. Parental mercy, 
not pedagogic severity, it was which put up the 
lighthouse. The cross-roads, where good and evil 
begin to separate, were not planned by the Divine 
Sovereignty ; they existed in the eternal nature of 
things. All that God did was to put up the 
Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil as a finger- 
post on the crossing, and on it inscribed in 
large legible letters, The way of obedience is the 
way of life ; the way of disobedience is the way 
of death. Was it not love in the Almighty to set 
up the fingerpost ? Every rational creature must 
travel past these cross-roads, where good and evil 
begin to separate, and make his choice accordingly. 
The angels journeyed this way, a mighty host. One 
section took to the right, and are to-day established 
for ever in purity and peace ; the other section took 
to the left, and are now bound in chains of darkness, 
reserved unto the judgment of the great day. Im- 
perative was it that men should also pass along 
the same road ; but so great was God's solicitude 
for our welfare, and His anxiety that we should 



2l8 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

develop safely past the dangerous crisis of our 
history, that He erected a fingerpost on the crossing 
to caution us against taking to the path of self-will : 
" In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely 
die." The God of the Bible is not given to cunning, 
ensnaring man by craftiness into evil ; but open- 
hearted, open-minded, and in the condescending 
power of love setting up the Tree of Knowledge, 
not to hinder, but to help, our development in 
goodness and felicity. The same tender love, which 
afterwards erected the Tree of the Cross on Calvary, 
to deliver man from under the dominion of sin, 
set up the Tree of Knowledge to preserve man from 
lapsing into its power. This same love extends in 
a continuous unbroken stream from Adam to Christ, 
from Eden to Calvary — at the beginning small and 
still, at its consummation broad and irresistible. In 
the Mosaic teaching are visible the tender fibres 
of the more mature Christian theology. The realm 
of morals is subject to a law of development as 
real as that which governs in the kingdom of 
nature. 

A trial-command being necessary in the nature 
of things, God is represented as reducing it into 
as simple and easy an ordeal as possible. Any 
hard task, such as a sudden summons to the first 
man to choose between good and evil in their higher 
and more complex forms, would transcend his will- 
power, hitherto lying dormant. The trial should 
be on the level of his experience, and strictly within 
the scope of his capacity. On this ground alone is 
the simplicity of the probation explicable. " And 
God commanded the man, saying. Of every tree of 



man's innocence and probation 219 

the garden thou mayest freely eat ; but of the Tree 
of Knowledge of Good and Evil thou shalt not cat ; 
for in the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely 
die." Can you conceive a simpler, easier ordeal ? 
I candidly confess, I cannot. I can easily imagine 
a severer test, but I cannot picture a simpler. If 
God had commanded him to abstain wholly from 
all food for twenty-four hours, if He had forbidden 
him to partake of the fruit of any tree for that space 
of time, the trial would have been a trifle severer, 
though not very severe even then. But the actual 
test is incomparably easier — so easy that it demands 
abstinence only from one tree, whilst free access 
is accorded to all other trees. The extreme sim- 
plicity of the test suggests the divineness of its 
origin : man writing from the riches of his imagina- 
tion would assuredly have fixed on a more difficult 
task. " Of every tree of the garden thou mayest 
freely eat ; but of the Tree of Knowledge of Good 
and Evil thou shalt not eat of it." Of every tree 
except one. What could be simpler? The test 
lies on the level of moral childhood. The devil 
in the temptation was harping on the one tree 
interdicted ; he said nothing about the thousand and 
one trees allowed. Prohibition to eat of one, per- 
mission to eat of the thousand — that was the ordeal, 
and human imagination may be challenged to invent 
an easier. If man therefore fell, he fell without 
the slightest provocation, and is for ever without 
excuse. 

But was not the prohibition in itself an incitement \ 
to evil ? If this objection were valid, legislation of 
any kind were inexpedient, and government would 



220 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

become impossible. Law properly understood re- 
presses, not encourages, evil. St. Paul, it is true, 
declares that the law wrought in him all manner 
of concupiscence. Socrates also says that he never 
had any desire to travel beyond the boundaries of 
Athens till an edict was promulgated that he should 
be confined within its walls. Similarly Charles 
Lamb testifies that, walking in a garden with liberty 
to eat freely of any fruit he liked except the one 
luscious peach ripening against the wall, he felt a 
strong longing for the one fruit forbidden. " Stolen 
waters are sweet." This experience is true to human 
nature, but to human nature warped and defiled, in 
which disorderly desires already exist ; in a heart 
pure and upright there is no evil propensity to 
respond to external solicitations. What to a dis- 
honest man might be an incitement to robbery, in 
the heart of a man of sound probity would find no 
echo. The Divine interdict, therefore, was neither 
cause nor occasion, direct or indirect, to rebelliousness 
on the part of our first parents. 

Not only was the test as simple as Divine Wisdom 
could make it, but the environments were in every 
way favourable to a successful issue. Were Adam, 
an innocent, inexperienced man, forbidden to eat of 
the fruit of any tree, whilst exposed to the scorching 
heat of day or the shivering cold of night, and 
suffering from the keen pangs of hunger or thirst, 
his continuance in his original integrity could hardly 
be expected. Hardly, I say, for we read of One, 
who in the midst of the dreary wilderness, far away 
from human habitations, surrounded by wild beasts, 
enduring the sharp paroxysms of hunger consequent 



man's innocence and probation 221 

on His long fast of forty days and forty nights, yet 
successfully resisted temptation, refusing to partake 
of food except in strict accordance with the Divine 
Will — a triumph of virtue, under disadvantageous 
circumstances, unparalleled in the annals of the race. 
But Adam was placed in a garden ; his bodily 
appetences were abundantly satisfied and his sur- 
roundings were in every way excellent. He had 
every aid to go through his probation triumphantly. 
Many a man cannot be as good and pure and 
wholesome as he might, because of his unclean, 
dismal, ungodly surroundings, which act like a heavy 
drag upon his better aspirations. Adam, on the 
contrary, had no adverse circumstances to contend 
with — he was a sinless man, with ideal environments, 
in a perfect abode. The trial was reduced to a 
minimum, whilst the advantages were multiplied to 
a maximum. Can you imagine an improvement in 
one single iota ? To suggest that the trial should 
be dispensed with altogether is simply to demand 
the impossible. Given a rational creature, a trial 
of some kind is a necessity ; for there can be no 
development of the moral nature without self- 
determination, a decisive act of free will, and this 
is possible only in the presence of a command. 

But why not a moral command ? For the obvious 
reason that the positive must always precede the 
moral, that the reign of the external prepares the 
way for the dominance of the internal. That is 
the case in the family. Through a series of positive 
commands, issuing from the father or mother, or both, 
the child is trained to apprehend the moral ; and if 
failure ensue in the positive, much more would it in 



222 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

the moral sphere. The same principle is followed 
in the Divine education of the world at large. The 
Mosaic legislation for the religious culture of Israel 
is chiefly positive, to train mankind to habits of 
obedience. When these habits are formed, the 
outward ceremonialism is dismissed, and men are 
thrown back upon their inner moral principles ; 
under the Christian dispensation men are guided by 
the inner law written in the heart. The dog is not 
allowed to follow freely his own impulses — he is 
broken in, trained, disciplined by a series of positive 
commands and prohibitions, which are not contrary 
to instinct. The canine nature is seen to better 
advantage in the dog carefully trained by positive 
commandments than in the dog running wild in the 
streets. Thus man had in him the dormant capacity 
for highest morality. That, instead of being a 
reason for permitting him to work out at random 
his instincts, constituted a reason why he should 
be trained, disciplined, and taught obedience — not 
obedience simply to his own impulses, but obedience 
in the sense of submission to a higher Will, external 
to himself In this alone morality first emerges. 
Human nature shows to better advantage trained 
than untrained, and it cannot be trained except in 
the presence at the outset of positive regulations. 
The first postulate of morality is the recognition 
of a higher Will. 

The object in view, as already intimated, in the 
subjection of man to a disciplinary course, prescribed 
by an external Will, was the fortifying of his will 
in favour of God and goodness. In the develop- 
ment of the human will two stages are discernible. 



man's innocence and probation 223 

The first is that wherein the will blindly follows 
instinct — a state of unconsciousness of good. But 
that is not the highest form of character. By 
freely, deliberately resolving in favour of good, and 
in antagonism to evil, the will gradually fuses with 
goodness, and reaches the second permanent stage 
of its development — not a state of unconsciousness 
of good, but a state of unconsciousness in good. 
Thus through the identification of the will with 
the propensities, and all with goodness, a state 
of perfect freedom is attained, resembling the free- 
dom of the Supreme. God possesses infinite liberty 
of will, restricted by nothing outside His own nature 
— He is infinitely free to choose ; but His will is 
so inextricably bound up with goodness that it 
is impossible for Him to choose evil. Had Adam 
endured the trial in a spirit of obedience, he would 
have gradually mounted up to the enjoyment of 
Hberty in the Divine likeness — a state in which 
it would not be possible for him to sin. 

With the Christian, his nature already rent and 
torn asunder by sin, the problem is. How to 
make the instincts move along the rails of the will ? 
His will, since conversion, is determined for good ; 
it unmistakably points to God as the magnetic 
needle to the pole, with probably slight variations 
and disturbances ; but always in calm weather, 
when the storms of the passions have subsided and 
the allurements of sense have passed away, it settles 
steadfastly in the direction of God. His instincts, 
however, rebel and gravitate earthward. " For the 
good that I would I do not : but the evil which I 
would not, that I do. . . . For I delight in the law of 



224 PRIiMEVAL REVELATION 

God after the inward man : but I sec another law 
in my members, warring against the law of my 
mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law 
of sin which is in my members" (Rom. vii. 19-23). 
In the case of the Christian the problem consequently 
is, How to make the instincts move on the lines of 
the will, the law of the members obey the law of 
the spirit? 

In the case of the first man, however, the problem 
was the very reverse, to wit, How to make the will 
move in the direction of the instincts? The instincts 
like young tendrils were all climbing Godward 
and heavenward. The history of the Tree of Know- 
ledge of Good and Evil is only an account of the 
Divine Method of training the human will in the 
same direction, so that, instead of the will de- 
pending on the instincts, they, like Virginia 
creepers, might cling to it, finding in it their sure 
support, and adorning it with all the beautiful flowers 
of Eden. Thus the natural and moral would be- 
come one ; and in this oneness man would attain 
perfect liberty — not liberty from law, but liberty in 
law, liberty similar to that of the swallow on the wing. 
Liberty, swallow : in Hebrew the two words are the 
same {dcror). Behold the swallow of a summer 
evening : how swiftly she shoots through the serene 
air, how gracefully she curves to the right and to 
the left, how elegantly she soars upwards or darts 
downwards! She is the very embodiment of the 
idea of liberty. This was the kind of freedom Adam 
was destined to enjoy had he remained loyal to his 
Maker ; and the trial command was given on purpose 
to lead him on to the higher reaches of this liberty. 



man's innocence and probation 225 

to that exalted region where the nature of man melts 
into the soul of goodness, and the will of man sur- 
renders itself wholly to the will of God, so that 
temptation would fall irresponsive at his feet, finding 
in him, body, soul, and spirit, not one vulnerable 
point. 

God's probation of Adam was graciously designed 
to lead to his progress in holiness and advancement 
in happiness ; the devil's temptation it was which 
led to his downfall and sin : a distinction which 
should be always borne in mind. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE TEMPTATION AND FALL 

WE cannot escape from the question, Is this 
account to be viewed as myth, legend, 
poetry, or history ? It strikes one at once that, 
if it be not unworthy or puerile as myth or poetry, 
it cannot be incongruous or unnatural as history. 

I. Waiving for the present the discussion of the 
central facts, there are subsidiary considerations 
which at least suggest, if they do not justify, its 
historic truth. Mention is made of two trees, the 
Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good 
and Evil ; it is affirmed that a serpent seduced 
our first parents by persuading them to eat of the 
forbidden fruit, and that, listening to the blandish- 
ments of the tempter in preference to the voice 
of God, they fell into sin, and thence into wretched- 
ness. Turning to heathen mythologies, we find all 
these features reproduced, not with the same moral 
proportion and mental sobriety, but still with their 
resemblance unmistakable. 

Take, to begin with, the Babylonian tradition, in 
which various references arc made to the serpent. 
Mr. Chad Boscawcn's recent book contains an 
impression of a Babylonian seal, discovered by the 

226 



THE TEMPTATION AND FALL 227 

lamented Mr. George Smith, and now exhibited in 
the British Museum, giving a pictorial representa- 
tion of the Temptation, almost identical with the 
samplers wrought in thread by our grandmothers, 
and still hanging on the walls of our country houses. 
Two human figures are limned, sitting one on each 
side of a tree, from the branches of which are 
suspended bunches of luscious fruit, and, behind 
the woman, rearing his head above hers in the 
direction of the fruit, is the undulating form of a 
serpent. What Moses says in words the Babylonian 
seal teaches in symbols. Take again the following 
Babylonian hymn, composed at a date anterior to the 
seventeenth century before Christ — that is, about or 
before the time Abraham left Ur of the Chaldees : 

That which was forbidden by my God, 

with my mouth I ate; 
That which was forbidden by my goodness, 

in my ignorance I trampled upon. 

Again in the same hymn : 

The forbidden thing did I eat ; 

The forbidden thing did I trample upon. 

Again, if we examine the Aryan traditions the 
basal notes are the same. They expatiate on the 
fertile garden on the tableland of Asia, with its two 
trees and four rivers. In that garden the first pair 
began life, exempt from guilt, free from turpitude, 
holding fellowship with Vishnu (the Sanskrit God). 
At last, listening to the enticements of 7iaga, a 
serpent — a term in which some have detected an 
echo of the Hebrew word nachash — they kept not 



228 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

their first estate, but fell under the dominion of 
evil. At length, however, the serpent's head is 
trampled under the foot of a strong man of the 
human race, and his influence thereby destroyed — a 
distinct echo of the promise of the Seed of the 
Woman to bruise the serpent's head. 

In the Persian records the resemblances are still 
more striking. In them also is pourtrayed a garden, 
where is " neither day nor night, nor icy wind nor 
burning heat, nor sickness which is the cause of 
numerous deaths, nor defilement produced by the 
dsvas." In the midst lies a placid lake, from which 
the waters of immortality flow forth in four rivers. 
The two mystic trees are growing there also, 
possessing extraordinary qualities for good or for 
evil. " In this garden, Yama, the first man passes 
his existence in the enjoyment of Edenic blessedness, 
till falling into sin he is cast out and given up to 
the power of the serpent, who finally brings about 
his death by horrible torments. A later form of the 
legend makes the first pair live one thousand years 
in abiding fellowship with Ormuzd (the good God), 
humble in heart, pure in thought, word, and deed, free 
from every evil and defect, and anticipating heaven 
as the reward of their continued innocence. By-and- 
by, however, an evil demon sent by Ahriman (the 
wicked God), and assuming the guise of a serpent, 
intrudes himself into their peaceful abode. First, he 
instils into their minds suspicious thoughts concern- 
ing Ahuramazda ; then, becoming bolder, offers 
them the fruit of the wonderful Tree of Life, or of 
another tree which he causes to spring up beside it ; 
and finally completes their seduction. As a conse- 



THE TEMPTATION AND FALL 229 

quence evil inclinations arise within their hearts, their 
moral excellence departs, the happiness which they 
have hitherto enjoyed disappears, they arc banished 
from their garden home. Becoming dwellers in the 
bleak and sterile country beyond the precincts of 
Paradise, they betake themselves to hunting, and 
begin to clothe themselves with the skins of wild 
beasts." ^ 

In all these legends do you not clearly discern 
distinct echoes of the Mosaic history of the Fall ? 
How to account for these striking similarities ? Evi- 
dently they were not the creations of these several 
nations in independence of each other — they must 
have had one common source in the remote past. 
Myths or legends analogous to each other, giving 
embodiment to general truths, may simultaneously 
grow up, without international relations, in different 
countries. Myths concerning the Fall may thus 
arise. A restlessness characterises man, wherever he 
dwells and whichever state he is in. Be he rich or 
poor, learned or illiterate, the discord pervades his 
life, and deeper than the dissonance is the protest 
against it. How to account for this discordant 
condition ? Men, howsoever divided, are constrained 
by one common force to attribute it to a moral 
cataclysm somewhere near the source of human 
history. Myths spring up independently of each 
other, but similar in import and construction, because 
proceeding from one common underground of ex- 
perience. But when this mishap is connected with a 
tree and a serpent, an interdict on the tree and the 
disregard thereof by the first man, and all this by 

* Lenormant, ContemJ>orary Review, Sept. 1879 and 1891. 



230 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

different nations having but few other things in 
common, the difficulty of explaining their likeness 
is increased. The figures are, if one may say so, 
fanciful ; there is no common substratum in human 
experience to sufficiently account for their contem- 
poraneous appearance in literature and theology. 
The reason for the resemblance must be sought, not 
in the subjective working of fancy, but in a primitive 
objective source, a historic tradition stretching back 
to a remote past. 

Preference is given to the Hebrew account over 
the Hindoo and Iranian myths, because of its superior 
theological proportion and literary sobriety. It is 
free from redundancies and deficiencies ; it has no 
striking exaggerations or palpable defects. It stands 
foursquare to human experience. In all heathen 
mythologies the facts are more or less disfigured ; 
but, instead of invalidating the Mosaic account, the 
disfigurements pay tribute to it, and demonstrate 
the existence of the story before the dispersion of 
the nations from their original home. It is a part 
of their common dowry. The prevalence of the 
legend in countries widely separated, so far from 
discrediting the Mosaic account, tends directly to 
prove that it had an objective historic basis. If the 
Genesis writer does not here record the truth, 
historical as well as doctrinal, then mankind are 
ignorant of the circumstances of the direst calamity 
which befell the race ; and whilst maintaining that 
much truth has been made known by the combined 
action of the revelation of God and the inspiration 
of man, the truth concerning our Fall — the most 
important to us next to the truth respecting our 



THE TEMPTATION AND FALL 23 1 

Salvation, and around which the minds of men have 
always wistfully revolved endeavouring to peer into 
its secrets — has been concealed from our view. If 
we believe in the revelation of truths of minor im- 
portance, I cannot bring myself to believe that this 
should remain unrevealed. St. Paul evidently believed 
in the historicity of Genesis, for once and again he 
bases an argument on the story of the serpent ; and 
I have sufficient respect for St. Paul to assume that 
he would not found an argument on a legend. A 
legend may answer a good purpose as an illustration 
in a discourse, but will not serve as a foundation for 
the superstructure of an argument. 

II. Be the drapery mythical, legendary, or poetic, 
the central facts remain incontestable, underlying all 
subsequent history, and refusing to be ignored or 
explained away. 

First, there must have been a first man and first 
woman. Without a first there cannot be a hundredth. 
One is the foundation of all numbers. The primeval 
existence of Adam and Eve is a postulate of the 
existence of the 1,500,000,000 of mankind to-day. 
Second, the first man and woman must have lived 
somewhere. Even on the evolutionary hypothesis, 
that " somewhere " must have been a locality favour- 
able to their first leap upward to manhood, and to 
their continuance thereafter in that developed state. 
A climate of extreme inclemency on the one hand, 
or of excessive heat on the other, would impede, 
not promote, their unfolding. The soil must have 
been genial, the climate temperate. All this coincides 
exactly with the Mosaic narrative. Third, the first 
man and woman must have had a beginning, and 



232 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

therefore of necessity a commencement in moral 
development, intellectual enlightenment, and manual 
labour. There must have been a first step in each 
of these pursuits. What more natural than that 
man's first occupation should be that of a tiller of 
the ground to satisfy his physical necessities, that 
his mental education should start with the study of 
the use to which he might convert the animals around 
him, and that his moral development should begin 
by the subjugation of the bodily appetences to the 
government of reason ? The w^hole story so far wears 
the aspect of verisimilitude. Fourth, humanity has 
lapsed into sin, and, consequently, into misery. 
Human sin atheistic science may, but human 
misery it cannot, deny. Theistic philosophy, how- 
ever, has never controverted either ; on the contrary, 
it has taxed to the utmost its ingenuity to account 
for the undeniable moral disorder, and the consequent 
physical suffering of the race. " All have sinned ; 
there is none righteous, no, not one," is the testimony 
of philosophy no less than of the Bible, of Greek 
sages no less than of Hebrew prophets, of heathen 
poets no less than of Christian apostles. 

From the universality of sin, philosophy has in- 
ferred that the fountain must have somehow become 
troubled and embittered. The manner it cannot 
explain, though it has often made the attempt. 
But of the fact of a Fall, and that near the be- 
ginning of history, it entertains no manner of doubt. 
" If moral evil be a reality, then it must have had 
a commencement, and that commencement must 
be sought for in the great head of humanity, the 
primus homo from whom all the race has descended. 



THE TEMPTATION AND FALL 233 

The hypothesis that sin may have broken in upon 
mankind at a stage later than the beginning is not 
one that has ever been seriously formulated. The 
solidarity of the race and the law of heredity in 
morals render it at least the more probable assump- 
tion that the spiritual decay under which the race 
now pines fell upon it in the person of its original 
progenitor. No system of philosophy that recognises 
sin to be a reaHty entertains a suspicion that the 
first sinner was not the first man. It may offer 
explanations as to how sin arose that are inconsis- 
tent with the Biblical account, saying that sin is of 
necessity involved in the conception of a finite 
being, or in the historical transition of humanity from 
a state of nature to a state of culture ; but it does 
not call in question that sin did arise, that man did 
not enter on the stage of time in a state of sin, but in 
a state of innocence, and that he passed from the 
one to the other through his own personal volition." ^ 
These four facts are incontrovertible, apart alto- 
gether from the Mosaic account. They are insisted 
upon in ethnic poetry, mythology, and philosophy. 
Deny the inspiration of Genesis, disregard the 
Mosaic presentation, the facts still remain, consti- 
tuting the foundation on which is constructed both 
Hebrew and Christian theology, nay, the basis on 
which natural religion itself is built. An honest 
avowal of these four facts will make room in their 
due time for all the great doctrines of Christianity. 
Underneath all religions, natural and revealed, mytho- 
logical and historical, underneath all poetry and 
philosophy, lie these facts, hard as granite, and 
1 Whitelaw, Patriarchal Times, pp. 93, 94. 



234 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

laying hold on the core of history. Being the first 
postulates of the historical conscience, they are in 
a sense independent of Moses and all other writers. 
What claim then do we advance on behalf of 
Moses? Not that he first revealed the facts, for 
these belong to natural as well as supernatural 
theology ; but that he first presented these facts in 
a credible historical setting. The authenticity of 
the central facts, so clearly and concisely presented 
to us, goes a long way to prove that the frame is 
not altogether the filigree of imagination. Natural 
facts are described under supernatural light, thus 
forming a proper basis for the supernatural religion 
which is to follow. 

III. Behind the serpent and inspiring it was the 
tempter, a wicked invisible spirit. As man derived 
his inspiration from God, so the serpent derived its 
inspiration from the devil. 

The evil spirit is not here mentioned by name ; 
and yet one cannot seriously read the narrative 
without suspecting a secret evil power behind. The 
obvious incompetency of the brute serpent to the 
achievement of the task of tempting two rational 
beings necessitates the mind to peer behind the 
curtain, and seek an adequate cause. Of the serpent 
it is said that it was more subtil than all the beasts 
of the field ; but its subtilty was not equal to think- 
ing, speaking, arguing — in all this it transcends the 
limits of brute intelligence. Accordingly every 
sincere reader feels instinctively that the serpent 
hides a mystery, that it is not the source, but the 
channel, of evil. 

Moses does not name the tempter : did he know 



THE TEMPTATION AND FALL 235 

the devil was the inspirer of the serpent ? Probably 
not ; and if he did know, Divine Wisdom did not 
think it proper to reveal the doctrine of the existence 
of evil spirits to mankind in the period of their 
childhood. The doctrine of evil as embodied in 
a host of malicious spirits was not for the childhood, 
but for the manhood, of the race. Belief in evil 
spirits, always lying in ambush for them, would 
overwhelm mankind with disaster— they would fear 
the devil more than God ; consequently demon- 
worship would usurp the service of Jehovah. On 
the Khassia hills, where a successful mission is carried 
on by our Church, though the natives believe in 
a good God as well as in evil spirits, the worship 
is wholly offered to demons. The good God, argue 
these subtle thinkers of the mountains, need not 
be conciliated ; but the demons must be flattered, 
cajoled, worshipped, else they will send upon us 
misfortunes and pestilences. Neither were the 
Hebrews in the days of Moses, nor for centuries 
after, sufficiently robust morally to bear the revelation 
of the doctrine of evil spirits— they would misuse 
it to the subversion of their high destiny. As it 
was, they continually lapsed into nature-worship, 
the 'adoration of the gods representing the forces of 
nature; from demon-worship they were graciously 
preserved, because the doctrine of evil spirits remained 

unrevealed. 

But, though the devil is not specifically mentioned, 
his presence looms in the blackness of the mystery. 
A serpent speaking, arguing, theologising ! Behind 
the serpent there must be a dark evil intelligence. 
The basis of the doctrine of the devil in subsequent 



236 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

Scriptures is found here ; there is a void which 
needs to be filled. The devil, assuming the shape, 
or probably using as an instrument, a real material 
serpent, took advantage of man's probation to graft 
upon it his temptation. How the devil attained 
knowledge of the newly created pair, and their where- 
abouts, is a mystery we cannot fathom ; not because 
of the intrinsic profundity of the problem, but 
because of our total ignorance of the conditions 
and capabilities of incorporeal existences. Milton's 
glowing picture of the devil's hazardous voyage of 
discovery, from the nether darkness through the 
empty spaces of the universe, excites within us a 
sense of admiration for the genius which could draw 
such a masterly picture ; but it contributes nothing 
to our theological knowledge. 

More to the point is the contention of Kurtz, 
Delitzsch, and others, that the evil spirits, in their 
pristine holy estate, were the inhabitants of this 
planet, and that in consequence of their insurrection 
against the Sovereign Will, the earth became toJm 
vabohu — without form and void. Thus they place 
the fall of the angels in our earth, and historically 
between vers, i and 2 of chap. i. of Genesis. To 
those who love the strange and abnormal, the 
supposition is full of weirdness and fascination. 
However, I see no Scriptural or other support 
to it beyond the indisputable fact that evil and 
good spirits are acquainted with the history of 
man, are cognisant of the geography of the earth, 
and live in contiguity to it. What the nature of 
the connection is we cannot tell ; that it exists from 
the beginning seems indisputable. 



THE TEMPTATION AND FALL 



237 



To the temptation of Adam and Eve by the evil 
spirit doubtless the Lord Jesus refers in John viii. 44 : 
" He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode 
not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. 
When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, 
for he is a liar, and the father of it." The crime 
laid to his charge is that of murder, not simply 
of manslaughter ; and murder always carries with 
it intention, purpose, deliberateness. This drives 
home to the devil the direst, blackest crime without 
any extenuating circumstances. " He abode not in 
the truth, because there is no truth in him." The 
worst men in this life are not totally destitute of 
conscience ; they have in them grains of truth which 
form a basis for the Gospel to rest its fulcrum upon. 
But in the devil not a vestige of conscience is left ; 
" in him there is no truth," not an atom. 

This fell, cunning foe it was which approached 
our first parents in Eden to tempt them to their 
ruin. He was not permitted to appear as an angel 
of light ; persuasion to eat of the forbidden fruit 
by one bearing such heavenly credentials would 
almost necessarily compel credence. He draws near 
in the guise of a serpent, the vilest creature on 
earth, the only brute which manufactures poison. 
That the serpent before the Fall differed in shape 
or organism from the serpent tribe of the present 
day is a gratuitous assumption of the older theo- 
logians — geology proves the contrary. To serpents 
human nature has an instinctive aversion, which 
cannot be wholly ascribed to the " enmity " mentioned 
in the sentence God pronounced on the serpent. 
A similar aversion exists between humanity and 



238 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

most reptiles, not altogether as the consequence of 
the curse, but from a healthy, natural shrinking of 
human nature. Had sin never entered the world, 
mankind would have shrunk from snakes, for snake- 
bites would be poisonous then as they are now. 
I do not believe the lithe form, the shining skin, 
the glittering eye of the brute had, as described 
by some writers, any fascination for the first woman 
— her feminine nature instinctively recoiled from 
such a reptile. 

What then was it that arrested her attention and 
commanded her regard? That the reptile should 
speak ! The miracle overwhelmed her sense of the 
moral. Instead of judging the miracle by the 
moral, she judged the moral by the miracle — a 
temptation against which the Lord often warns the 
Israelites in the subsequent books of the Pentateuch. 
Later on we read of Balaam's ass which spoke. 
In the New Testament, the phenomenon of the 
Gadara swine rushing headlong to the sea, under 
the frightful ferment wrought in them by the 
entrance of evil spirits, has arrested attention and 
provoked discussion. In some mysterious way both 
good and evil spirits seem to have the power to 
exert subtle influence on animal nature. According 
to the Genesis record, the serpent spoke. Eve, who 
was a help meet for Adam in intellect as well as 
in other respects, knew that speech was not a 
quality inherent in the animal world. The miracle 
created surprise and wonderment, prepared her to 
subordinate the moral to the physical. Milton 
represents the case differently — teaching that Eve, 
in her ignorance, did not suspect that the faculty 



THE TEMPTATION AND FALL 239 

of Speech was not innate in the serpent. The 
devil, he says, chose the serpent, 

Fit vessel, fittest imp of fraud, in whom 
To enter, and his dark suggestions hide 
From sharpest sight ; for in the wily snake, 
Whatever sleights, none would suspicion mark, 
As from his wit and native subtilty 
Proceeding ; which, in other beasts observed. 
Doubt might beget of diabolical power, 
Active within beyond the sense of brute. ^ 

The Speaker's Commentary apparently adopts the 
poet's fancy : " The reason why Satan took the form 
of a beast remarkable for its subtilty may have been 
that so Eve might be the less upon her guard. New 
as she was to all creation, she may not have been 
surprised at speech in an animal which apparently 
possessed almost human sagacity." If she were so 
new to creation as all that, she could know nothing 
of serpentine sagacity any more than of serpentine 
speech. But is this a probable presentation of the 
case? There is nothing in the serpentine form or 
face to suggest the power of speech ; I would sooner 
expect it in a dog, an ape, or a horse. The subtilty 
possibly refers to the sinuousness of form, not to the 
degree of intelligence. Slyness is not intelligence. 
It was the unexpected, not the expected, power of 
speech in a reptile that arrested Eve's attention. 
This miracle of speech in a dumb beast it was which 
produced surprise and wonderment, and prepared her 
to subordinate the moral to the physical. 

Men in every age are prone to test the ethical by 
the miraculous, instead of judging the miraculous 
' Paradise Lost \ Book IX. 



240 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

by the ethical. Here, I believe, is the explanation, 
so far as such an explanation is possible, of the 
success of the temptation — only I state it meta- 
physically, whereas Moses states it historically. 
Many questions may be here urged, such as, How 
could the devil speak in Hebrew or whichever 
language was spoken by Eve ? How did he know 
of the commandment prohibiting the first pair to 
eat of the forbidden fruit ? Was he near at the 
theophany of God in Eden, and heard the con- 
versation between the Creator and His creature ? 
Or was he prowling about the Garden, and learnt 
of the interdict by overhearing the conversation of 
the man and his wife ? The difficulties in the way 
of implicit belief in the historical accuracy of the 
details are many and serious, and could not be 
accepted were it not for the greater difficulties of 
relegating it to the limbo of legend and myth. Say 
that the story of the serpent is an allegory, and 
it follows that the judgment on the serpent is an 
allegory, and the first promise of the Seed of the 
Woman to bruise the serpent's head vanishes away. 
We cannot make one part allegory, and the rest 
history. If the promise is historically true, the 
whole narrative stands with it. The difficulties of 
rejecting the story are incomparably greater than 
those of accepting it, and the consequences incom- 
parably more serious, none less than reducing into 
myth or legend the protevangel, the fundamental 
promise of salvation. 

But why did God permit the serpent thus to 
approach Eve at all ? The answer that it was the 
work of the devil does not solve the problem. The 



THE TEMPTATION AND FALL 24I 

question of the man Friday in Robinson Crusoe 
at once occurs — " Why God not kill the deebil ? " 
Not only the first rise of evil in the angelic nature, 
but the Divine sufferance of it to be extended to the 
human race, and its uninterrupted continuance in the 
world all these millenniums, are problems unfathom- 
able so far by finite intelligences. When the drama 
of evil shall have been completed, the end may throw 
light upon the beginning ; at all events, the ways of 
God will be justified to the conscience, though not 
perhaps comprehended by the intellect. 

IV. The temptation took two forms : first, it 
instilled into the mind narrow, suspicious thoughts 
of God's goodness ; second, it sought to sever the 
connection in thought between transgression and 
punishment. These constitute the two fundamental 
forms of temptation in every age. 

First, the tempter insinuates that God was un- 
necessarily severe, harsh, and arbitrary. The tempter 
pretends to love man, and to be more solicitous 
for his well-being than God — he beautifully baits 
the hook : " Hath God indeed said. Ye shall not 
eat of all the trees of the garden ? " The Hebrew 
may convey the meaning, " Hath God said. Ye 
shall not eat of every tree of the garden ? " but from 
the context, and especially the conjunction, it is 
obvious that the meaning is, " Ye shall not eat of 
any tree." The insinuation is that God prohibited, 
not one, but every tree, and that therefore His 
austerity was unreasonable. Eve answers : " No, 
not every tree, only one; we are forbidden to eat 
of one under penalty of death." The leaven is not 
long before it begins a process of fermentation. 

16 



242 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

" Oh, only one ; why did He forbid that one? There 
must be some reason — that one must be superior 
to all the others ; God is jealous of you, and knows 
that by eating of it you will be on equal terms 
with Himself, knowing good and evil." He thus 
ascribes jealousy to the Almighty, the attribute 
uniformly ascribed to the gods in all heathen 
religions, the attribute which constitutes the funda- 
mental heresy of all mere human thinking concern- 
ing God. According to Herodotus, not love, but 
jealousy, is the ethical essence of all pagan deities. 
Zeus is especially jealous of men, and puts every 
obstacle in the way of their progress. "This is 
the root of bitterness " that has ever after corrupted 
all religions of man's devising. 

The second point in the temptation is the sever- 
ance of the connection between transgression and 
punishment : " Ye shall not surely die " — you may 
take of the fruit, punishment will not follow. This 
radical fallacy has persisted in the human mind down 
to the present hour. You discover it in its popular 
form in all the criminals of the age, who imagine 
that they can sin and not be caught, that they can 
break the law and escape the punishment threatened 
for its violation. Mentally they break the absolute 
connection between sin and punishment. This 
fundamental mistake makes itself palpably felt in 
some of the current theological systems of the day. 
The denial of the absolute need, and the substitu- 
tionary character, of the Atonement, arises from 
the belief that no necessary, indissoluble connection 
subsists between sin and its penalty. Behold here 
the self-contradiction of error. The first thought in 



THE TEMPTATION AND FALL 243 

the temptation is the austerity of God, forbidding 
what He had no need to forbid, making that sin 
which was no sin. The second thought is the laxity 
of God, that, notwithstanding His prohibition. He 
would repent Him of the execution of the threatened 
penalty. Let it, however, be a fixed principle in 
all our thinking, that sin and punishment are 
indissolubly bound together. If we sin, the penalty 
must inevitably fall, either on us or on our Surety. 
Punishment cannot be severed from sin, though, 
through the grace of God, it can be severed from 
the sinner. 

The cunning casuistry of the serpent beclouded 
the intellect of Eve, and excited within her curious 
desires. The attractive appearance of the tree helped 
forward the temptation. Injurious growths generally 
wear the colours of gaiety and gaudiness, whereas 
the wholesome vegetables are usually robed in 
sombre hues. " And when the woman saw that 
the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant 
to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one 
wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and 
gave also unto her husband with her ; and he did 
eat." St. Paul, however, draws a distinction betw^een 
Adam and Eve, evidently founded on this passage : 
" Adam was not deceived ; but the woman being de- 
ceived was in the transgression" (i Tim. ii. 14). The 
serpent beguiled Eve by its subtilty ; her intellect 
becoming dimmed, she was consequently enticed 
into evil— a touch of nature which makes all women 
kin. But Adam was not deceived— he transgressed 
with the eyes of his understanding wide open, he 
sinned slowly, deliberately, he threw all the thought- 



244 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

fulness of his nature into his act, and this it was 
which constituted the enormity of the Fall. He 
broke the commandment because he preferred break- 
ing it to keeping it. " Adam was not deceived." 
Milton fancifully describes Adam taking the fatal 
step from love to his wife — Eve without Paradise 
being dearer to him than Paradise without Eve. 
But the guilt of the Fall cannot be thus mitigated — 
he loved the creature more than the Creator, the 
bias of his nature was reversed. The Fall was not the 
result of a sudden impulse, but of a will consciously, 
deliberately, knowingly choosing the path of dis- 
obedience, preferring sin to God. The probation of 
God, designed to develop good, by the temptation of 
the devil was converted into an instrument to evolve 
evil. The fatal step was taken, the sin was com- 
mitted, the equilibrium was lost. The Fall is a fact. 

V. Accordingly the Mosaic narrative saddles man 
with the responsibility of sin. 

True, the evil spirit is represented as the inau- 
gurator of sin. It was he who sowed the corrupt 
seed in the human heart, it was he who scattered 
tares in the field of the Divine Husbandman ; but 
the devil's seduction did not destroy Adam's responsi- 
bility. The devil and man were in partnership ; 
but this did not imply limited liability. The two 
were alike steeped in guilt, though perhaps not to 
the same extent. 

Moses clearly exonerates God from any culpability 
for the existence of sin, or any responsibility for 
its introduction into the world. God is set forth as 
forbidding sin before its entrance, and condemning 
sin after. This at once marks a crreat elevation 



THE TEMPTATION AND FALL 245 

in the Mosaic conception of the Divine Being. The 
Greek divinities, it is well known, were essentially 
immoral ; the idea of holy gods, clean in the inward 
parts, had not dawned upon the Greek mind. Other 
nations, such as the Parsees, conceived of two gods, 
one good, the other evil, thus evincing that in their 
minds the idea of holiness was separable from that 
of divinity. They did not conceive of goodness, 
holiness, cleanness as, in logical phrase, essential, 
not accidental, attributes of a Divine Being. A god 
might be virtuous or he might be vicious. But Holy 
Writ from the outset assumes goodness as a necessary 
attribute of Godhead. The first time He inter- 
mingles in human history, He prohibits evil, con- 
demns sin. This initial opposition to evil develops 
later on into essential holiness, an attribute without 
which God could not be God. In the New Testa- 
ment this same truth makes a further advance, and 
blossoms into essential love. " God is Love." This 
continuity in the Biblical lines of thought, broadening 
and deepening but never breaking, as they stretch 
forward, cannot but deeply impress every thoughtful 
reader, differentiating as it does the Hebrew and 
Christian revelation from all the other so-called 
" Sacred Books " of the East. Whereas these latter 
lower the tone of morality as they proceed, the begin- 
ning being loftier and purer than the end, the Bible 
grows in spirituality of conception and purity of 
sentiment from age to age, ennobling and enlarging 
its idea of the Divine character, uplifting the standard 
of human morality — the end, whilst growing out of, 
yet transcending, the beginning. 

The Mosaic teaching, in respect of the Divine 



246 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

attitude towards sin, excels not only that of con- 
temporary religions, but calmly avoids the rocks 
on which much modern theology makes shipwreck. 
Rothe, for instance, constrained by the necessities 
of his system, drives the responsibility for the exist- 
ence of sin back on God : " The effort to separate 
evil from all connection with the Divine causality 
must ever remain an idle undertaking." ^ Once and 
again he recoils from this position, as was inevitable 
in a man of his fine moral sensibilities ; but a theo- 
logical giant though he was, he was bound in the 
meshes of his own argument. Other writers, less 
able and less reverent, have along other routes reached 
the same staggering conclusion. The discussion of 
these theories belongs to the province of dogmatic 
theology, and I only mention them here to point 
out that Moses, in the early dawn of revelation, 
steered clear of the immoral conceptions of the 
ancients, and of the metaphysical speculations, equally 
immoral, of moderns. Though the first to state the 
profound problem of evil, he betrays no excitement, 
no improper eagerness to arrive at a solution ; but, 
whatever the solution be, God must be viewed as the 
antagonist, not the creator, of moral evil. 

The Divine character, according to Moses, is un- 
tarnished. God prohibits sin before, condemns it 
after, its commission. A healthy moral instinct, 
illumined doubtless from above, postulates for God 
complete immunity from sin. This truth stands out 
in the forefront of his writings, and by it all sub- 
sequent revelations must be judged. What better 
test of doctrine can any one desire ? Reading the 
' Efhik, ii., p. 180. 



THE TEMPTATION AND FALL 247 

brilliant productions of modern theologians of restless 
genius, we are in danger of becoming bewildered, 
and plucking the forbidden fruit. Let us, however, 
adopt it as our guiding principle that whatever theory 
traces sin up to God, directly or indirectly, posi- 
tively or negatively, that theory stands condemned. 
Gabriel, as pourtrayed by Milton, guarding Eden, 
and searching therein for the evil spirit, of whose 
arrival he had been apprised, with his wand touched 
a toad crouching at the ear of the recumbent Eve, 
and at the touch up sprang a devil. Young theo- 
logians need that wand, for error comes to them, not 
in the guise of a toad, repulsive to refined sensibilities, 
but, more dangerous, arrayed in all the splendours of 
an angel of light, attractive and imposing. But here 
is a wand for their use — God is eternally, uncom- 
promisingly inimical to evil. Touch with it the 
theories launched upon the sea of speculation in the 
name of philosophy ; if they cast a shadow, even that 
of a passing cloud, upon the Divine character, they 
must stand self-convicted. " Let God be true, and 
every man a liar." 

Seeing that the cause of sin is not in the Creator, 
we are shut in to the conclusion that its origin must 
be in the creature. 

Leibnitz, in his celebrated Theodicee, accounted 
for the rise of evil by reason of the finiteness of 
the creature. Doubtless there is a sense wherein 
this is true. Given the idea of God, infinite in 
goodness, and the possibility of sin is inconceivable. 
But whilst this is true of infinite or absolute, it is 
not true of finite or relative, goodness. Relative 
goodness carries with it the possibility of evil — the 



248 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

possibility, not the necessity. Herein many brilliant 
writers have made a shipwreck of the faith, 
making sin a necessity instead of a possibility of the 
finite. Others again, Hegel for instance, make sin 
an inevitable accompaniment of development, thus 
converting the Fall into a rise, and sin into an in- 
dispensable link in the chain of progress. Hegelian- 
ism, however, takes for granted what it first of all 
ought to prove — that there was but one way for 
a movement forward of humanity, the one through 
sin and suffering. Moses, with a deeper, truer insight, 
I believe, shows that there were two roads to a 
forward movement — one upward along the path of 
obedience, the other downward along the path of 
self-will. Upon the choice man made depended 
whether his movement forward should be a move- 
ment upward or a movement downward. Adam 
is represented standing at the cross-roads, God ex- 
horting him to climb the upward path, the serpent 
beguiling him to take the downward. As the down- 
ward appeared the easier, the downward he took. 

In the Mosaic teaching, therefore, sin is traced 
up to the free will of man, the power of self-deter- 
mination with which he was endowed at his creation. 
Allowing all legitimate influence to external tempta- 
tions and motives, yet the ultimate motor power 
of the will lies within the will itself. Man has a 
supreme power of self-determination ; in the power 
of free will he touches the infinite, and is " as God, 
knowing good and evil." He here reaches out to 
the unconditioned and absolute. To inquire, there- 
fore, for the cause of sin behind self-will is parallel 
to seeking the cause of the universe in Nihilism, or 



THE TEMPTATION AND FALL 24O 

the cause of God outside His own essence. " Who 
asks the efficient cause of an evil will ? " asks 
Augustine. " There is no efficient in the case, only 
a deficient. Whoso would ask to see darkness, or 
to hear silence, let him ask reason of the unreason- 
able, that is, of sin." ^ Man was free to choose good 
and pursue it ; he was also at liberty to elect evil 
and follow it. By deciding in favour of good, he 
would be acting in deepest harmony with the natural 
laws of the physical world, with his own original 
constitution, yea, in unison with all the moral laws 
of the Divine government. By deciding for virtue, 
he would be observing all the laws of rationality, 
human and Divine, and giving his nature unrestricted 
play to evolve all its latent capabilities amid the 
most advantageous surroundings. 

But for some inexplicable reason he departed from 
the path of righteousness to pursue false ideals. 
" God created man upright, but they found out many 
inventions." Inexplicable reason, I said ; I might 
go further, and say that Adam's choice, and con- 
sequently his Fall, is not only inexplicable, but 
unreasonable — that is, without reason, contrary to 
reason. It runs counter to all the laws of reason, 
human and Divine. No wonder, therefore, that the 
origin of evil is a mystery, a " mystery of lawless- 
ness." " Sin is the transgression of law," of all law, 
moral and mental ; a mystery consequently it will 
ever remain, not because of its profundity like the 
Divine Being, but because of its contradiction to 
all principles, human and Divine. This makes the 
origin of it incomprehensible, and a philosophy of 
1 Z>e Civitate Dei, cap. vi. 



250 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

it impossible. The philosophy of the Rise of Man, 
or of the Way of Salvation, is practicable, for it 
takes place in accordance with law ; but the philo- 
sophy of the Fall of Man is beyond the pale of 
reason — the Fall was not the observance but the 
violation of all law. Freedom of will was perverted 
into arbitrariness of choice, and arbitrariness or 
caprice excludes the possibility of rational explana- 
tion. Hence the Bible never degrades the word 
" freedom " by applyimg it to the capriciousness of 
the sinner. Freedom {ekevOepla) is sacredly pre- 
served by all Biblical writers to designate the free 
growth of men in good, in virtue, in holiness, in 
congruity with all that is deep and innate in human 
nature. The word they invariably apply to the 
sinner in his pursuit of evil is not liberty, but bond- 
age. This uniform practice by so many different 
writers seems to point up to a superintending Mind. 
From not properly observing the Scriptural usage, 
and consequent limitation of meaning, in these two 
terms, many of the angry controversies of the past 
have arisen. Freedom in its metaphysical sense is 
equally applicable to saint and sinner ; in its theo- 
logical, Scriptural sense to the saint alone. Hence 
Erasmus entitled his book De Libera Arbitrio^ 
whilst Luther called his De Servo Arbitrio ; but 
manifestly they were employing words in different 
significations. Philosophically Erasmus was right, 
that freedom in the sense of liberty of choice belongs 
to all men indiscriminately. Theologically Luther 
was right, that freedom in the good sense, the 
Scriptural sense, is predicable only of the good, 
sinners being in " bondage to sin." 



CHAPTER X 

THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE FALL 

THE Creator not being responsible for the rise of 
sin, the idea of it did not enter as an integral 
part into His plan of the world. Nevertheless God 
foresaw its introduction, and made due provision 
for its ultimate extirpation. When the constructors 
in her Majesty's navy sketch a man-of-war, the idea 
of shipwreck finds no place in the plan ; the ruling 
thought is not how to make it sink, but how to 
make it swim. The thought of life, not of death, 
dominates all. Yet present to the mind of the naval 
architects is the possibility of accidents ; consequently 
they provide watertight compartments and order 
lifeboats and swimming-belts. The idea of ship- 
wreck, however, is not an integral part of the plan 
of the ship. It is an accidental, not an essential, 
attribute of the man-of-war. In like manner the 
idea of sin does not enter into the Divine world- 
plan ; but, foreseeing the disaster, God made due 
preparations to rescue those plunged in the furious 
waves. Chronologically salvation was not an after- 
thought of the Divine Mind, logically it was. 

I. For the impending transgression of Adam, the 
Supreme Being threatened death : '* In the day thou 

251 



^^2 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." The question 
naturally arises, Did Adam die? Was the verbal 
menace followed by its actual execution? The 
answer must be that man died forensically — that is, 
in the eye of Divine Justice he forfeited all claims 
to life. He stood condemned in the sight of his 
Maker. 

But was not the offence — " the eating of an apple " 
— too trivial to be visited with capital punishment ? 
Are there no degrees in punishment as there are 
in sin ? No doubt ; but the smallest punishment 
possible for sin, in the nature of things, is death. 
Guilt, however small, calls upon it the displeasure 
of the Almighty ; the Divine disfavour implies the 
withdrawal of the Divine fellowship ; and the with- 
drawal of the Divine fellowship involves spiritual 
death. A tendency is manifest in the present day, 
indeed the tendency has been formulated into a 
theological system in the Ritschlian school, to view 
guilt as wholly subjective. The Bible, however, 
from start to finish, it appears to me, contemplates 
sin as an objective reality, something truly terrible 
between man and God, intercepting all agreeable 
intercommunion, something which cannot be removed 
by a wave of the hand or annihilated by a wish, 
whether human or Divine. A leading principle, 
underlying all Biblical theology, is that guilt is a 
grim, terrible, objective reality, and that the smallest 
degree of guilt involves judicial death. 

This is not to be interpreted as signifying that 
there are no degrees in Divine punishment ; the 
principle of proportion runs through all Scripture : 
*' They that sinned without law shall also be judged 



THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE FALL 253 

without law." " He that knew the will of his Lord, 
and did it not, shall be beaten with many stripes." 
What I wish to say is, that the first stripe is death. 
Taking man in his relation to God, a smaller punish- 
ment than death cannot be imagined, though in 
death depths underlie depths. Adam sinned, and 
sinning, died. Consider the traitor at the bar of 
justice. The moment the verdict of guilty is re- 
turned, and the sentence of death is pronounced, the 
criminal is in the eye of the law dead. He forfeits 
all rights — all rights to property, to liberty, yea, to 
existence itself. If he be permitted to breathe 
another week, he owes it to the clemency of the 
Crown. Thus Adam, forfeited all rights to Eden, to 
the Divine favour, to life itself ; and if he is permitted 
to live on, it is wholly through the prerogative of the 
Divine Mercy. 

Following the disorganisation of his objective 
relations to God came the subjective disorder in his 
inner nature. To forensic followed moral death. 
" Followed," I say deliberately ; for it is true, I think, 
to the deepest teaching of Holy Writ that objective 
guilt is the cause of moral corruption. As Justifica- 
tion is the objective cause of Sanctification, that is 
to say, it furnishes a sufficient reason for the purify- 
ing of the nature, so the condemnation of guilt is 
the objective cause of inward depravity. 

In propounding this statement I differ, I know, 
from the Westminster Catechism as well as from 
eminent divines, not only of the Arminian, but also of 
the Calvinistic school. Take Dr. Strong, for instance, 
whose excellent Body of Divinity is so highly 
spoken of and deservedly recommended to young 



2 54 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

theologians. He assumes that Adam must have 
sinned inwardly before he transgressed outwardly, 
that he had become internally depraved before he 
had become externally guilty — guilt is founded on 
inward pollution. Analogically he holds that Re- 
generation precedes Justification, that the renewing 
work of the Spirit within must logically, not chrono- 
logically, go before the justifying act of the Father 
without, that as faith is the fruit of the new nature, 
and an essential condition precedent to forgiveness* 
then the new nature in its embryonic state must 
already exist. This is also the view of Dr. A. A. 
Hodge in his Outlines^ though not of the elder 
Hodge. I have been brought up in another way of 
thinking, and the more I reflect on it the more fully 
persuaded I am of its validity. A leading principle 
in all the theological teaching of the late Dr. Lewis 
Edwards of Bala — a man who, for strength of intellect 
and profoundness of insight, bore favourable com- 
parison with his better known English and Scottish 
contemporaries — was, that the objective is the pri- 
mary reason for the subjective. In the domain of 
theology this principle may be applied to the 
doctrine of the Fall and the doctrine of Justification. 

Let us take the latter first, as it will reflect light 
on the former. Because a man is justified he is 
sanctified ; because he is first made righteous he is 
afterwards made holy. The readjustment of the 
objective relation of man to God makes it possible 
for the Holy Spirit to dwell in the heart to cleanse 
it from all dead works. But is not faith an evidence 
of a new nature? Yes, of a new nature following, 
not preceding. Justifying faith is not the fruit of a 



THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE FALL 255 

renewed nature ; truer is it to say that the renewed 
nature is the fruit of justifying faith. A man, whilst 
yet in a state of ungodliness, may attain to faith, 
an unregenerate man can believe, therefore God by 
faith justifies the ungodly. That, it seems to me, 
is the only view which properly correlates all the 
doctrines of Christianity, and which imparts sincerity 
to our appeals to unbelievers to return, believe, and 
live. Divine co-operation is not thereby excluded, 
for the Spirit works on men before He works iji 
them ; but it does shut out the theory which makes 
the subjective the reason for the objective, thereby 
reversing, as it seems to me, the whole Pauline 
process. 

The same principle holds good in our theory 
respecting the Fall : the objective should be viewed 
as the basis of the subjective. Adam's guilt was the 
ground of his subsequent defilement — his guilt did 
not arise in consequence of his inward impurity, 
but his inward impurity arose in consequence of 
his guilt. But how could he have incurred guilt if 
he had not sinned, and how could he have sinned 
unless he were moved thereto by unholy lusts ? The 
first half of the question suggests what is true, the 
second half what is false. Adam could not incur 
guilt without sin ; but he could without sinfulness. 
Sin preceded sinfulness, the act went before and deter- 
mined the state. As Dorner well says, " The thought 
of evil is not an evil thought." The first sin of 
Adam consisted in an outward act, not in inward 
state or desire. To desire of the fruit of the Tree 
of Knowledge of Good and Evil was no sin ; it 
was the natural instinctive working of the bodily 



256 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

appetences. Had he resisted the desire, he would 
have passed through his ordeal unscathed ; his 
innocence, so far from being soiled, would have 
grown whiter, his virtue stronger. The sin was not 
in the desiring, but in the eating ; not in the inward 
state, but in the outward act. Had he not eaten he 
would not have fallen. But does not the Saviour 
teach that lust is adultery? Precisely, for adultery 
is an evil In itself, a flagrant breach of the moral 
law. But eating of the fruit was not an evil in 
itself, it was no violation of a moral but of a positive 
commandment ; consequently the longing for it was 
no sin. The act it was which constituted the sin. 
Therefore, sin is the cause of sinfulness, the outward 
act is the explanation of the inward state, the 
objective guilt the reason for the subjective depravity. 
In accordance with this is the maxim which has 
been adopted by the majority of theologians since 
the Middle Ages : " In Adam a person made nature 
sinful; in his posterity nature made persons sinful." 
Or, as paraphrased by Laidlaw : " In the first man's 
sin, the individual ruled the nature ; ever since the 
nature rules the individual." ^ Man first fell to a 
condition of guilt, and thereby contracted sinfulness 
of nature. However much Adam desired the fruit, 
so long as he resisted he stood in his integrity ; 
had he finally withstood, his triumph would have 
secured a happy termination to his probation. Had 
there been nothing in the fruit to excite desire, his 
probation would have been only a sham ; but be- 
cause "the tree was good for food, and pleasant to 
the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one 
' Doctrine of Ma?i , p. 219. 



THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE FALL 257 

wise," because it was pre-eminently calculated to 
excite desire, it was ordained as a trial-test Sinless 
man can sin— that is the mystery of the Fall. An 
ungodly man can believe — that is the mystery of 
the Rise. As guilt is forensic or legal death, so 
defilement is moral or spiritual death, the connection 
between the heart and the Fountain of Life having 
been wholly severed. 

Immediately the breath leaves the body, man is 
as dead as he will be twelve months hence — not as 
putrid, but as dead. The decomposition will in- 
crease, the death not. Or take another illustration. 
The moment the tree is severed from its roots it is 
dead, out-and-out dead. The foliage may not wither 
straight off; yea, new leaves may sprout out the 
following spring, fed by the sap hiding under the 
bark — a phenomenon often witnessed ; but all the 
time the tree is wholly dead. The putrefaction is 
not complete, the death is. Thus with Adam. The 
hour he sinned he was cut off from communion with 
his Maker, the Water of Life no longer gushed up 
in the depths of his spirit, pure and clean. Not the 
connection was damaged, but wholly severed : the 
death was complete. His leaves may not straight- 
way drop off, though at once they show a limpidity 
and sereness not seen before ; his intellectual life 
may sprout out in the arts and sciences ; but all the 
same he is forensically and spiritually dead. The 
corruption may increase, the death not. " In the 
day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." 

This double death of the sinner the old preachers 
of Wales illustrated by an apt simile — a man con- 
victed of murder and sentenced to pay the extreme 

17 



258 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

penalty of the law. The man is lying under sentence 
of death. But before the day of execution arrives, 
he catches the jail-fever, and is sick unto death in 
his cell. The man is doubly dead, dead by law and 
dead by fever. Thus the sinner is lying under the 
condemnation of the law. And not only he lies 
under a verdict of death, but the jail-fever holds 
him in its terrible grip, every year tightening its 
grasp. Man is both guilty and polluted, condemned 
and sick, dead by law and dead by fever. 

Sin, however, not only entailed upon mankind legal 
and spiritual, but is the only adequate explanation 
of physical, death : " By one man sin entered the 
world, and death by sin" (Rom. v. 12). Many good 
men go away from these words with the notion that 
St. Paul, and consequently Moses, taught that till the 
entrance of sin death was unknown in the creation. 
A little reflection, however, suffices to show that the 
subject discussed is not death of animals, but death 
of men — " and so death passed upon all menl' not all 
animals, " inasmuch as all sinned." Augustine and 
other patristic writers perceived as clearly as we do 
that death reigned from the beginning in the irrational 
creation. Many of the animals named in the first 
chapter of Genesis are by nature carnivorous, created 
to live by devouring others. The teaching of Moses, 
as interpreted by St. Paul, is that the separation of 
body and spirit in man is the consequence of trans- 
gression : " Death is the wages of sin." 

In an earlier chapter the opinion was expressed 
that the human body was created mortal, in con- 
sonance with the universal reign of the law of 
mortality in all materially organised creatures ; but 



THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE FALL 259 

that, had man maintained his normal rectitude, 
mortality would have been swallowed up of life. 
The body mortal would have never deteriorated into 
a body dead ; the material and spiritual elements in 
the human organism would have never been sundered. 
The law of mortality in the body would have been 
counteracted by the stronger law of the spiritual life. 
Had man continued in his integrity, the body as well 
as the spirit would have attained immortality. The 
New Testament speaks of the sudden change which 
will take place in the bodies of those who believe 
at the Lord's Second Coming ; the mortal by some 
mysterious metamorphosis will put on immortality. 
Similarly had the Fall not taken place, the grey 
fathers of the race would have escaped the natural 
law of decay, the body would have been clothed 
upon with a vesture of immortality, or, more pro- 
bably, access would have been uninterrupted to the 
Tree of Life, whose ambrosial fruit would renew 
the vigour of the body and confer upon it the power 
of endless life. Through sin, however, men were 
excluded from participation in its fruit ; and that 
exclusion is itself a direct execution of the sentence, 
"Thou shalt surely die." In consequence of sin, 
man was left to the unfailing operation of the physical 
law of decay ; thus " by one man sin entered the 
world, and death by sin." By nature man is mortal ; 
only by sin does he become dead. Augustine, with 
his usual insight, explaining Rom. viii. 10, 11, 
writes: "'If Christ be in you, the body is dead 
because of sin.' Paul is most careful to say ' dead,' 
not ' mortal.' The body was mortal by its nature, 
yet that mortal did not become dead but on account 



26o PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

of sin. . . . And again, ' He that raised up Christ 
from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies.' 
Paul says not ' your dead bodies,' as before he had 
said ' the body is dead,' but ' shall quicken,' says 
he, 'even your mortal bodies,' and that in such a 
way that not only shall they not be dead, but also 
no longer mortal." " Dust thou art, and unto dust 
shalt thou return," gives expression to a universal 
law of nature. Had Adam persevered in his 
obedience, the dust would have been spiritualised 
and immortalised ; but because of his transgression 
this law of nature proved stronger than he, it asserted 
its supremacy by the dissolution of the physical 
organism. 

n. The Fall of Adam, however, concerned not 
himself alone, but furthermore his posterity. 

Moses presents this truth in the form of history. 
Adam is alleged to have begotten a son in his own 
image, not in the image of God ; and the history of 
his descendants leaves the impression on the mind 
that they are all gone astray. " All flesh corrupted 
its way on the earth." Meditating on these facts, 
St. Paul deduced from them the famous doctrine of 
"original sin." It is beside my purpose, and be- 
longing more properly to the province of dogmatic 
theology, to discuss this doctrine at length, though 
perhaps no doctrine more imperatively demands a 
restatement in the present day. Yet it were expe- 
dient to examine one or two points in the Mosaic 
narrative in the light of its interpretation by St. 
Paul. People object to bring the Apostle to expound 
Moses. But why? They do not object to long 
citations from German rationalists, but if Paul is 



THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE FALL 261 

quoted they at once sound the bugle of rebellion. 
But Paul, in my humble estimation, throws more 
light on Moses than any other writer, ancient or 
modern ; no one has a firmer hold of the spiritual 
kernel of the Mosaic theology. 

In the first place, Paul fixes the responsibility of 
the introduction of sin on " one man," Adam. This 
is the way wherein he accounts for the universal 
prevalence of evil. As sin is universal, the first 
offence must have been committed by the first man, 
when all humanity was gathered together in one 
personality. In the second place, St. Paul traces the 
stream of human evil to its fountain head in the " one 
offence " of the " one man." The " one offence," of 
course, was the partaking of the forbidden fruit. 
The subsequent offences of Adam are not referred 
to at all, either by Moses in the narrative or by 
St. Paul in his commentary thereon. Evidently, then, 
the other offences were private, concerning no one 
but the individual Adam — they do not concern us 
at all, nor had they any influence in determining the 
course of history. But the "one offence" concerns 
us as much as him ; it brought sin upon us, and 
death, and all our woe. It is the one hinge on which 
the destiny of the race hung. Without contradiction 
that " one offence " of that " one man " bears a closer 
relation to posterity than the other sins of Adam. 
What was that relation? 

The usual modern answer is, that Adam's relation 
to us was that of solidarity, a term invented by the 
erratic but profound genius of the founder of the 
Positive Philosophy. This truth the older theologians 
expressed by saying that Adam was the natural head 



262 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

of the race, or, in other words, the one common 
" root of bitterness " from which all mankind sprang. 
Theological thought has been long accustomed to 
view humanity as a tree, and of necessity the worm- 
wood in the root imparts its bitter taste to the 
sap in all the branches. The corruption of our first 
parents infects their whole progeny. Modern science 
has, no doubt, brought into greater prominence the 
organic unity of the race ; but it has by no means 
created the idea, for this pervades the whole of 
Sacred Writ. Recent speculations, however, have 
taught the nineteenth century to throw more 
emphasis upon it. The solidarity of the race is 
now a truth of philosophy as well as of theology. 
Mankind are viewed as one immense living organism; 
the whole is responsible for the welfare of each part, 
and no damage can be inflicted on the part but it 
forthwith enfeebles the whole. But the first man 
sustained a more vital relation to the organism than 
any subsequent individual, for he was the primary 
cell, from whose loins all others came, and defilement 
in him meant depravity in them. A bitter fountain 
emits an unwholesome stream. If you plant diseased 
seed in the ground, you cannot expect to gather a 
strong, healthy crop. 

All this is true of Adam in the totality of his 
life. It is the uniform working of natural law, and 
as applicable to his second, third, and fourth sin 
as to the first, though one cannot but think that 
in its application to common life by extremists, 
wedded to a favourite theory, its influence is some- 
what exaggerated. The theory of heredity occupies 
a large place in much of the theology and the 



THE CONSEQUENCES OE THE FALL 263 

philosophy of the century. The river of innate 
turpitude is described as increasing in volume and 
momentum from generation to generation, till the 
impression is unmistakably left on the mind that 
" original " or hereditary sin, instead of gradually 
disappearing, is growing darker, more turbid, and 
more invincible with the roll of the millenniums. 
But is this teaching true? Is original sin one tinge 
darker in the babe born to-day, the child of three 
generations of thieves and drunkards, than it was 
in the first babe which graced our planet ? Have 
we not heard from our own pulpits sermons preached 
with intense passion and overpowering influence on 
the gradual increase of sin in the race — the drunken- 
ness of the grandparent intensifying itself in the 
father, this again descending with added momentum 
to the child, till drunkenness appears unavoidable, 
a physical necessity, in this particular family ? But 
is not all this an exaggeration of the truth ? That 
the principle of heredity is a power within certain 
limits is undeniable ; modification of the fibres and 
tissues of the body is possible ; acquired habits 
become transmitted instincts, with always a strong 
tendency, however, to revert to the original type. 
But man, besides being a physical, is also a spiritual 
being ; and if Traducianism, to the exclusion of 
Creationism, were the whole truth, this theory might 
suffice to account for the deplorable phenomena 
of human Hfe. " But the individual is not a mere 
manifestation of the race. God applies to the 
origination of every single man a special creative 
thought and act of will." The theory of heredity, 
true within certain limits, is not adequate to 



264 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

explain all the improvement or deterioration in 
families. 

Even in the animal world its inadequacy is felt. 
The most perfect specimen of the horse witnessed 
in this country was a cob-mare, the property of an 
acquaintance of my own. She was pronounced by 
the Times newspaper the most perfect specimen 
of horseflesh in the kingdom. In the days of her 
youth she carried away all prizes in the most im- 
portant agricultural shows. Her advent was adver- 
tised on big placards on the walls of the towns she 
visited as the greatest attraction of the show. Yet 
she was a mare without a pedigree, a chance colt 
cast on the mountains of Pembrokeshire. Neither 
is the principle of heredity sufficient to account for 
the appearance of men of genius. Genius does not 
beget genius. Men of genius come from the most 
unexpected quarters, and vanish as suddenly as 
they appear. Genius is a spark dropped into the 
human mind from outside the planet. It kindles, 
it flames, it dies. Take Shakespeare, the greatest 
poet of England. Were his parents more richly 
endowed intellectually than their neighbours ? Did 
his children inherit his gifts ? Or take Williams 
of Pantycelyn, the great Welsh hymnologist. It is 
not known that his father and mother inherited a 
larger share of the Divine afflatus than the other 
farmers of Carmarthenshire ; and it is a well- 
established fact that none of his descendants in- 
herited the celestial flame. In every individual a 
spiritual element enters, powerfully modifying the 
operation of the hereditary principle. Drunkenness 
in Wales is not hereditary. Out of drunken families 



THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE FALL 265 

have come many of our most respected citizens, and 
out of godly families some of the most infamous 
prodigals. 

The transmission of evil, simply according to a 
law of nature, does not suffice to account for the 
Scriptural doctrine of original sin. If the law of 
nature, Like begets like, were the only factor in 
the problem, Eve should have at least equal 
prominence with Adam. Eve was first in the 
transgression ; her nature contracted evil probably 
before her husband's, and yet in the Scriptural 
presentation of the doctrine Eve has no status. 
Not by one woman, but by one man, sin entered 
the world, and death by sin. Eve was a conjoint 
root of the race ; the pollution of her nature passed 
into her offspring quite as much as that of her 
husband's ; yet the responsibility of the moral 
abnormity is fixed not on Eve, but on Adam — a 
strong evidence that he sustained a relation to 
posterity different from that sustained by Eve. 
What was this difference ? In so far as the principle 
of heredity or natural headship is concerned, both 
are on a par. 

It would, therefore, appear that a fuller and more 
adequate answer than that of natural headship 
must be sought. Paul lays the stress of the 
argument, not on the first man's corrupt nature, 
but on his "one offence." That one it was which 
affected the future destiny of his race ; the objective 
is here again the ground of the subjective. Why, 
then, that "one offence" more than his other 
transgressions? Here the so-called federal theology 
steps in and answers — Because Adam was the 



266 1>R1MEVAL REVELATION 

natural head, God constituted him also the Covenant 
representative of the race ; by that " one offence " 
he broke the covenant, and once broken it no longer 
existed. Hence the importance attached to the 
" one offence " ; it was not merely a private but a 
public sin — the one sin which was public, and 
therefore the one sin by which the future destiny 
of mankind was settled. That the word " covenant " 
is not used in this connection forms no objection, 
though many incline to the opinion that to it 
Hosea refers, vi. 7 : " They like Adam have trans- 
gressed the covenant." The term " solidarity " is 
not yet a hundred years old, and yet figures largely 
in the writings of those who demur to the term 
" covenant," which to say the least goes back some 
centuries. The question, however, is, Was the 
relation subsisting between the first man and God 
of the nature of a covenant, or was it an individual 
transaction wholly based on natural justice? 

Let us examine the relation. The commandment 
interdicting the Tree of Knowledge to man was, 
we hold, more than a commandment ; it was a 
commandment in the form of a covenant. Dr. 
Buchanan writes : "In the words of Bishop 
Hopkins, ' If God had only said. Do this, without 
adding. Thou shalt live, this had not been a covenant, 
but a law ; and if He had only said, Thou shalt 
live, without saying. Do this, it had not been a 
covenant, but a promise. Remove the condition, 
and you make it a simple promise ; remove the 
promise, and you make it an absolute law : but, 
both these being found in it, it is both a law and a 
covenant.' " Personally I attach no importance to 



THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE FALL 267 

this mechanical reasoning of good Bishop Hopkins, 
and I have introduced it as leading to a more 
satisfactory statement by Dr. Buchanan himself: 
" In this form the law continued to be binding on 
man by its precept, but God condescended also to 
bind Himself by His promise, and became, in the 
expressive words of Boston, 'debtor to His own 
faithfulness' to make that promise good. A new 
element was thus introduced into man's relation to 
God : he was still a creature dependent on the power, 
and subject to the law, of his Creator ; but he was 
now advanced to be a 'confederate' with Him, and, 
as long as he continued to obey, could look to Him 
as his covenant God. 

" But there is a wider difference still between the 
Moral Law, considered simply as the law of man's 
nature, and the law in its positive form, as a Divme 
covenant of life. The law, as it was originally 
inscribed on the moral nature of man, was a PER- 
SONAL rule of duty,— it laid an obligation on each 
individual singly,-and held him responsible only for 
himself; but the law, as it was subsequently promul- 
gated in the form of a Divine covenant, was a 
Generic constitution, imposed by supreme authority 
on the first father of the human race, as the repre- 
sentative of his posterity,-and extending far beyond 
his individual interests, so as to affect the character 
and condition even of his remotest descendant. He 
was constituted, by Divine appointment, the trustee 
for the whole race which should spring from him ; 
and was placed in the deeply responsible position of 
their covenant head and legal representative. He 
was a party to the covenant, not simply as a private 



268 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

individual, acting for iiimsclf alone, but a public 
person, invested with an official character, and 
acting also for others. He could not have assumed 
this office, or acted in this capacity, of his own will ; 
he must have been constituted the legal repre- 
sentative of his posterity by the same Supreme 
Will which enacted the law under which he was 
placed." ^ 

The form in which Dr. Buchanan presents the 
subject may appear slightly old-fashioned, but that 
does not detract from its substantial truth. Had 
Adam loyally observed the commandment, Hfe 
eternal would have been the reward of himself and 
his descendants alike ; but as he disobeyed, he 
incurred the penalty of death for himself and his 
posterity. *' Death is the wages of sin " — the wages. 
Between the transgression and the penalty there is 
a relation of strict justice. The punishment is an 
equivalent of the trespass. Immortal life, however, 
is not the wages of obedience, but rather its reward. 
The richness of the life to come would be unspeak- 
ably greater than the wages of obedience ; between 
them there could be established no relation of 
equation. The reward would infinitely transcend 
wages, would be infinitely richer, grander than the 
just deserts of obedience. Adam, therefore, did not 
stand on the basis of mere natural right ; he was 
placed by God in an arrangement, or constitution, or 
compact, or covenant — call it what you will — different 
from, and transcendent to, the mere constitution of 
nature. 

It is objected that mankind were not a consenting 
' The Cunningham Lecture on Justification, pp. 2']2, 273. 



THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE FALL 269 

party. But was our previous consent necessary? 
Man's consent was not obtained prior to his creation ; 
yet his creation took place. No one objects, for the 
act of creation was to the advantage of man ; to be 
was better than not to be. Correspondingly our 
consent was not necessary to the establishment of 
a Divine covenant with the race. Were the covenant 
in any way to our disadvantage, our preceding ac- 
quiescence might have been deemed needful, which 
means that no covenant at all could be established 
between God and His rational subjects. But seeing 
that the covenant was in every detail arranged, not 
to our loss, but to our immense gain, securing us 
benefits to which, on the mere basis of nature, we 
had no title, our concurrence was rightly deemed 
superfluous. The covenant did not imperil, but 
improved, our position. If Adam fell, he and we 
would have been treated on the principles of strict 
equity ; not one stripe would have been added to our 
punishment beyond the requirements of strict justice. 
In regard of punishment men would be as if no 
covenant existed, treated exactly on the ground of 
natural justice. On the other hand, had Adam 
maintained his uprightness, the blessings conferred 
would have been on a scale infinitely larger than the 
simple merit of his obedience. When, therefore, it 
is maintained that Adam was the covenant head of 
his race, we teach that God placed the human race 
in a better position than if left simply to the con- 
stitution of nature. The covenant was not to our 
prejudice, but to our interest, and therefore worthy 
of the Divine Benevolence, which always overflows 
the boundaries of bare justice. And as by a 



270 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

covenant we went down, so also, says St. Paul, by 
a covenant we come up. 

III. Having essayed to establish that Adam was 
our head, not simply according to the arrangement 
of natural law, but also according to the higher 
constitution of a covenant law, let us advert to the 
consequences which necessarily overtook the race in 
consequence of the treason of their representative. 
These consequences are generally summed up under 
the one general term "original sin." Disregard, if 
you like, the Mosaic and the Pauline explanation 
of its origin, you cannot deny the reality of its 
existence. 

All sin, be it original or acquired, is composed of 
two elements : first, guilt or forensic death ; second, 
depravity or moral death. 

Original sin impHes original guilt. Men before 
they reach the age of responsibility are labouring 
under the burden of guilt. We are born in sin, and 
therefore in guilt, for there is no sin without guilt 
as its first necessary constituent. The idea of sin 
without guilt contains a contradiction. But mani- 
festly it is not personal guilt. This opens up to us 
the terrible vista of generic or race guilt. Adam 
drew on himself personal guilt, for his conscience 
charged him directly with a gross dereliction of 
duty ; but what was to him personal sin became 
to his posterity generic sin. Think not this an idle 
abstraction. We belong to our race even more than 
to ourselves ; and the better and greater we grow, 
the more real will this generic sin appear to us. 
Those who are irretrievably sunk in selfish indi- 
vidualism may object to the imputation to us of the 



THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE FALL 27 1 

guilt of the Fall ; but those of expanded sympathies 
and noble aspirations do not complain, they only 
lament ; and their noblest effusions, forgettini^ self- 
interest, contain expressions of generic contrition for 
the generic sin. 

The doctrine of the imputation of Adam's sin to 
us is not a doctrine of revelation merely, the con- 
coction of narrow minds ill trained in political 
economy, but lies foursquare on the economy of 
nature. Deny the Bible, what better will you be ? 
You cannot deny nature. Men, unlike the angels, 
were not all created independently and simul- 
taneously ; we were created one organism, proceeding 
the one from the other by natural generation ; and 
here the fact of natural generation forms the basis 
to the doctrine of imputation, which does not mean 
a theological fabrication of logical cobwebs, but the 
honest recognition of the deepest natural verity. 
The noblest spirits of the race are the first to 
acknowledge, and the loudest to proclaim, that we 
lie under a doom outside the circle of our individual 
life. The " one offence " of Adam cast its shadow 
upon all subsequent history, made sick the whole 
body of humanity. 

Yet it is expedient to add that there is no reason 
to suppose that a single soul has ever perished on 
account of Adam's transgression. The first offence 
entailed the condemnation of all, the damnation of 
none. Eternal punishment will only overtake those 
who of their own free will prefer darkness to light, 
take the side of Adam against God, and thereby 
voluntarily give in their concurrence to the stipu- 
lations of the covenant. In the Divine Way of 



272 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

Salvation ample provision has been made for the 
recovery of believers, and of children who die under 
the age of responsibility. Only those who sin wil- 
fully will be consigned to perdition. 

By " total depravity " is not signified that man's 
nature has become out-and-out wicked, that his 
ungodliness is such that it cannot be aggravated, 
that his inward pollution has reached the farthest 
verge of possibility. In logical phrase it denotes, 
not the " intension," but the " extension," of sin, that 
every faculty of the mind is tainted, every power 
corrupted — not to the greatest extent possible, but 
to such an extent that the whole bias of the mind 
is away from God and towards evil. Whereas prior 
to the Fall the inclination of human nature was 
steadily towards God, thereafter that inclination 
became reversed, and pointed directly away from 
God and towards evil. No faculty has escaped the 
taint, hence the term " total depravity " ; but no 
faculty has fallen into a state of unmitigated, irre- 
mediable corruption. Though the soul is at enmity 
with God, yet it is capable of much that is noble 
in social and artistic life, and even of responding 
to Divine appeals as the echo answers the voice. 
Though no direct communication takes place be- 
tween God and the sinner, the power for communi- 
cation, though injured, has not been lost — the power 
of echo, the answering voice, still remains. Man is 
a sinner, but not yet a demon. 

Every man, therefore, starts life with a burden of 
inborn sin ; he runs the race set before him " weak 
in the ankle-joints from his mother's womb." His 
innate bias is away from God and goodness ; and 



THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE FALL 273 

though to please his own pride he may raise objec- 
tions, yet really in the bottom of his heart he does 
not object, but rather delights in the evil propensity 
of his nature, and by his delight gives his approval 
to the whole scheme or constitution, in virtue of 
which he became what he is. 

But lest any one's ultimate salvation be jeopardised 
by the innate depravity of the soul, God in His 
infinite grace has provided counteracting influences 
in His revealed Word and the "strivings" of the 
Holy Spirit. Whatever be the innate power of 
original sin driving us to red ruin and disaster, it 
is fairly and squarely encountered by the resisting 
power of the Word and the Spirit. If the former 
prove victorious, it will be because it has been 
strongly recruited by the power of the sinner's own 
free will. Thus God in His infinite consideration 
has provided for original sin a sufficient counterpoise 
in the illumination of His Word and the strivings 
of His Spirit. 



18 



CHAPTER XI 

THE PROTEVANGEL : DAWN OF HOPE 

SOON after their transgression God drew near to 
the guilty pair : " They heard the Voice of 
the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool 
of the day." The question here distinctly arises, 
Were our first parents favoured with theophanies 
before the Fall? Two answers have been returned. 
Delitzsch replies, No : " God now for the first time 
holds converse with men in an outward manner, 
corresponding to their materialisation and alienated 
state." Keil, on the contrary, answers. Yes : " God 
held conversation with the first pair in a visible form, 
as a father and educator of His children, and this 
was the original mode of the Divine revelation, not 
coming in for the first time after the Fall." 

This latter view best commends itself to my 
judgment, not only on the general principle that 
we have no right to believe that God would do more, 
and reveal Himself more intimately, to His rebellious 
than to His obedient children, but also on the ground 
that men, in their state of virtual infancy, required 
direct enlightenment and visible assistance. With 
mankind in their adult, mature state communion of 
spirit with spirit may suffice ; but in their infantile 

274 



THE PROTEVANGEL : DAWN OF HOPE 275 

inexperience and ignorance, more reasonable and 
appropriate was it that God should appear to them 
face to face, and give them through the medium of 
the physical senses the necessary instruction. At 
all events, though not directly authenticated, the 
belief that God should at stated intervals appear to 
the sinless progenitors of the race in the guise, though 
not in the reality, of man, to hold communion with 
them, thereby helping them on in knowledge and 
virtue, is not inconsistent with the Genesis narrative, 
but is rather presupposed. 

At the usual time of the appearing of the Divine 
Visitant, " in the cool," or according to the marginal 
reading, " in the wind of the day," when by a well- 
known natural law the breezes, towards sundown 
gently blow, carrying refreshment and renovation to 
the languid body consequent on the heat and labour 
of the day, " they heard the Voice of the Lord God 
walking in the garden." Farther on we read of the 
Word of the Lord approaching men, by which is 
generally understood the Second Person in the 
Godhead drawing near in the way of benediction 
and grace. Here, however, it is not the Word, but 
the Voice. In other Scriptures the Voice of God 
frequently indicates a thunderstorm. Take, for in- 
stance, the twenty-ninth Psalm : " The Voice of 
the Lord is upon the waters ; the God of glory 
thundereth. The Voice of the Lord is powerful ; the 
Voice of the Lord is full of majesty. The Voice of 
the Lord shaketh the wilderness [i.e. the roll of the 
thunder overhead makes the ground throb underneath]. 
The Voice of the Lord maketh the hinds to calve"— 
that is, the flash of the lightning and the crash of the 



2^6 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

thunder affright the hinds, which in their sudden 
alarm cast their young before the time. That is a 
possible meaning in this passage also. That day rose 
cloudless and serene in Eden. In the process of the 
day Adam and Eve sinned ; in the evening, towards 
sundown, the black clouds gathered, the artillery of 
heaven boomed — the thunders roared, the lightnings 
flashed. Our first parents had never heard thunders 
before nor seen lightnings ; and, conscious of guilt, 
they hid themselves among the trees of the Garden — 
a faithful picture of great sinners in a thunderstorm 
in every age and clime. What was the thunderpeal ? 
Only a blast of the trumpet, announcing the coming 
of the Judge. Immediately the assizes open, and the 
culprits stand their trial. 

Probably, however, this view is too theatric. 
Preference should therefore be given to the quieter 
and more sober view, which represents God ap- 
proaching the first man in the " human form Divine," 
walking in the Garden, at the sound of whose foot- 
fall they feared and fled. Doubtless they expected 
the usual arrival of their Divine Counsellor. Their 
hearts wildly beating, and catching a sound as of 
a " going in the top of the mulberry trees," they 
cast wistful glances, each adding to the terror of 
the other, and, when at last the familiar voice was 
heard, away they fled like guilty hounds from Him, 
who had always come to them with fulness of 
blessing. " Conscience does make cowards of us all." 

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind ; 
The thief doth fear each bush an officer.^ 



^ Shakespeare, Henry VI. 



THE PROTEVANGEL: DAWN OF HOPE 277 

The Hebrew for trees may be singular or plural. 
Some adopt the singular, according to which Adam 
and Eve are pourtrayed as hiding themselves between 
the branches of the Tree of Life, in the hope of 
recovering there what they had lost through eating 
of the Tree of Knowledge. Either way it amounts 
to the same thing — men are alienated from God and 
dread His presence. But though they will not seek 
Him, He will seek them. " And the Lord God 
called unto Adam, and said unto him. Where art 
thou ? " This does not signify that the man had 
wandered beyond the circle of the Divine know- 
ledge, only beyond the range of the Divine com- 
munion. Having been summoned to the Divine 
Presence, and made their lame confession, judgment 
is pronounced upon the culprits in the order of 
their transgression— the serpent, the woman, the 
man. 

First of all, God judges the serpent : " And the 
Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast 
done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above 
every beast of the field ; upon thy belly shalt thou 
go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy 
life." That the serpent in its original form belonged 
to the genus of cattle and beasts, and was not a 
crawling reptile, was an opinion held by the older 
commentators, and even by many moderns. Others 
with greater propriety see no change of structure 
in the serpent, only that her natural state is aggra- 
vated. Whereas before she meandered along grace- 
fully in the open, she now hides like a guilty thing 
in dark corners, a terror to everybody and by every- 
body abhorred. " Going upon the belly " is not a 



2/8 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

penal degradation from an erect posture, but the 
gait natural to its organism. 

"It is," says Professor Owen, " a palaeontological 
fact, that the ophidian peculiarities and complexities 
of organisation, in designed subserviency to a prone 
posture and a gliding progress on the belly, were 
given, together with the poison apparatus, by the 
Creator, when, in the progressive preparation of the 
dry land, but few, and those only of the lower 
organised species, now our contemporaries, had been 
called into existence — before any of the actual kinds 
of mammalia trod the earth, and long ages before 
the creation of man." 

This quotation is made, not with the simple pur- 
pose of showing that the serpent of geologic and 
the serpent of historic periods are in natural con- 
figuration identical, but for the further and more 
important purpose of proving that the diction wherein 
the curse is couched is too ample, the language too 
large, for the natural serpent ; that, overlapping into 
the spiritual world, it finds its fitting object, not in 
the gliding, sinuous form hiding in the deep morass, 
but in the Spirit of Evil which found in it his fittest 
embodiment, whether in fact or figure. Upon him 
as the first instigator of evil the curse primarily fell, 
without present mitigation or hope of future ameliora- 
tion in his condition : " Dust shalt thou eat all the 
days of thy life." 

That the sin of the devil is beyond remedy, his 
fall beyond recovery, seems to be the consistent 
teaching of Holy Writ. This appears from two 
considerations. First, the sin of the tempter is self- 
originated, and to self-originated sin it would seem 



THE PROTEVANGEL; DAWN OF HOPE 279 

there is no redemption. With man sin is not self- 
originated ; this bitter herb is the produce of a rotten 
seed dropped into his heart from another world. It 
is an exotic, an element foreign to his nature, and 
therefore separation between him and it is possible. 
The angels 

by their own suggestion fell, 
Self-tempted, self- depraved: man falls, deceived 
By the other first ; man therefore shall find grace, 
The other none. In mercy and justice both. 
Through heaven and earth, so shall my glory excel : 
But mercy first and last shall brightest shine.^ 

Though a sinner, man is capable of salvation. But 
to the devil evil is indigenous ; it grew up without 
any outward incitement, and consequently seems to 
be inextricably intertwined with the fibres of his 
being Second, whereas the sin of man, though 
fraught with important consequences, began at the 
bottom of the scale, at the farthest remove possible 
from direct antagonism to God, the sin of the devil 
started at the summit, in flat contradiction to the 
sovereignty of the Almighty. His first sin was his 
greatest. Anything more heinous than the deposition 
of the Godhead and the usurpation by himself of the 
throne he can never again attempt. The essence of 
his sin is selfishness, a direct insolent attempt to 
make self supreme. Therefore he is incapable of 
self-denial in any form-he sacrifices all to himself, 
himself to nothing. Selfishness, however, is not the 
essence of human sin. True, men " serve the creature 
more than the Creator," but that creature need not 
always be self; indeed, oftener than not, it is some 
1 Paradise Lost, Book III. 



28o PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

Other creature. Among men, as there is disinterested 
virtue, so there is disinterested sin. Those therefore 
who endeavour to express the whole philosophy of 
sin by the one word " selfishness " are hardly correct. 
From these facts is deduced the conclusion, that 
the devil has somehow identified himself with evil, 
a divorce between him and sin being not practicable. 
He is beyond salvation ; his wounds are everlasting 
because incurable. 

In the case of man also the verdict of "Guilty" is 
returned, but " Guilty with extenuating circumstances." 
His sin is not beyond remedy, which seems to be the 
reason why God interfered graciously on our behalf, 
whilst He delivered the angels which kept not their 
first estate "into chains of darkness, to be reserved 
unto judgment." In pronouncing judgment on human 
sin, He holds out hope of pardon for the sinner. God 
curses the serpent, curses the ground, but He nowhere 
curses man. The maledictions of heaven descend 
after the Fall a heavy shower ; but, as we say in 
Wales, it is rain through sunshine, and serves to 
paint, on the black thunderclouds overhanging the 
Garden, a beautiful rainbow of promise. The guilty 
pair are driven out of Paradise, but, marching arm- 
in-arm, sad and disconsolate, their countenances 
brighten, their eyes sparkle, as, passing out through 
the portals of Eden, they behold with admiration 
the lovely Bow of the Covenant of Grace overarching 
their sky. Hope still remains. Herein is the clue 
to the Greek fable of Pandora's box. 

I. The first man is here placed in a state of 
discipline : " Cursed is the ground for thy sake ; in 
sorrow shalt thou eat it all the days of thy life ; 



THE PROTEVANGEL: DAWN OF HOPE 28 1 

thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee " 
(vers. 17, 18). ''For tliy sake'' is capable of two 
interpretations. 

Because of thy sin the earth must be blasted with 
comparative barrenness. So close is the connection 
between the moral and physical, that the transgres- 
sion of man brought down a devastating blight upon 
nature. The apostasy of man meant the thraldom 
and the frustration of the energies of nature, " as a 
kingdom falls with its king." Commenting accord- 
ing to his wont on this passage, St. Paul gives us 
as far-reaching a piece of imaginative writing as can 
anywhere be found ; but, because it is imagination, 
let no one think it is fiction. " The creation was 
made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason 
of Him who hath subjected the same in hope. . . For 
we know that the whole creation groaneth and 
travaileth in pain together until now " (Rom. viii. 
20-22). A thinker of less ethical intensity than St. 
Paul might call this description morbid, exaggerated, 
sentimental. But view nature from a moral stand- 
point, and every word finds its instant justification. 
Account for it as we may, a wail of sorrow pervades 
the universe. The wind, coursing along, moans in 
every tree and mourns round every corner. Go to 
the seaside, and every wave dies with a groan. Listen 
to the blackbird — whilst there is unutterable sweet- 
ness in his whistle, yet underneath all his notes there 
is an undertone of sadness. There is not a bird in 
the forest which does not touch the minor key. Hear 
the bleating of the lamb, and note therein the tremor 
of sorrow. Ascend up to man, and suffering 
dominates his history. There are languages like the 



282 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

Welsh, tearful and burdened with grief, half blown 
away by the wind. Very significant is it that the 
first word of Greek poetry should be " Alas ! " 
" Alas ! Linus." To most of us no poetry is so de- 
lightful as that which helps us to weep, no music 
so sweet as that which carries infinite sadness in 
its heart. 

Everything in nature seems abortive ; nothing 
realises its destiny, achieving the full purpose of its 
creation. When man fell, nature grew sick ; the 
curse of God laid hold of the core of the world ; the 
whole creation " groaneth and travaileth in pain " like 
a woman in childbirth. Inhabitants of towns may 
think the language exaggerated, " sicklied o'er with 
the pale cast of thought," but countrymen know 
better. Not so far from truth as might at first sight 
appear is the ancient fancy that the world is a living 
animal. Near my native home lies a swampy meadow. 
On calm, frosty nights screams of anguish were often 
heard ; men would grow ill in sympathy with the 
pain of creation. I myself heard the groaning, time 
and again. Ever since, St. Paul's figure has been 
to me the most vivid and real in all literature. The 
simple folk of the neighbourhood often heard it, and 
their vivid imagination pictured nature as a lady in 
white slain by her unappeasable foes. Science ex- 
plains the phenomenon by the contracting power of 
frost, cracking and rending the swamp. But oh, the 
scream of pain, the cry of agony, from the very heart 
of creation, making the flesh shiver as in the presence 
of a disconsolate ghost ! Science cannot explain that. 
However, Moses in Genesis and Paul in the Romans 
furnish the solution : " Cursed is the ground for thy 



THE PROTEVANGEL: DAWN OF HOPE 283 

sake." " For we know that the whole creation groaneth 
and travaileth in pain together until now." 

" Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth unto 
thee." The idea is not that now thorns and thistles 
were first created, but that, instead of unfolding into 
their full splendour and usefulness, they would 
deteriorate into stunted, dwarfish growths, unable 
to realise their true destiny. The thorns, fully 
developed, make the rose bushes, which gratify the 
eye with the richness of their colour, and delight the 
nostrils with the sweetness of their fragrance. The 
thistle, fully unfolded, produces the glorious cactus 
flower ; but under the curse it has been frustrated 
and marred, has become a prodigal among the herbs 
of the field, and is an eye-sore and vexation of 
spirit to the husbandman. What was intended 
for use and ornament has been perverted into 
physical evil and abortion. Clearly perceiving 
the close connection between the moral and the 
physical. Bishop Butler long ago taught that the 
laws of nature are favourable to virtue, but inimical 
to vice. His argument refurbished and applied to 
Providence is Mr. Matthew Arnold's well-known 
saying that " there is in the world a power, not 
ourselves, making for righteousness." But the 
power, which protects righteousness, at the same 
time militates against unrighteousness. From the 
beginning until now, when man rebels against God 
nature revolts against man ; when man refuses to 
yield to the Supreme the harvest of a holy life, 
the earth declines to give to man the fruit of her 
increase. Because of the apostasy of humanity. 
Nature has been turned aside from the normal path 



284 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

of her development. A truth this much accentuated 
and enlarged upon by the prophets of Israel, and 
abundantly verified in the present day by a com- 
parison of the fertility of the land in Christian and 
in heathen countries. 

Another signification of the phrase ^^ for thy sake " 
is, for thy good, to promote thy well-being. That 
this is exegetically correct may be questioned, but 
the truth this interpretation conveys is undeniable 
and in deepest harmony with the whole tenor of 
Holy Writ. Idleness, ease of life, abundance of 
luxuries without corresponding labour, would only 
aggravate our sinful condition. To sinless man 
the ease of the Paradisiac life were a boon, for his 
leisure he would utilise to pierce more deeply into 
the secrets of nature and to cultivate closer fellow- 
ship with the spiritual world. To a man already 
weighted with sinful propensities, however, too much 
leisure would only multiply his opportunities to 
sink deeper in the mire. Never stand still in a 
bog ; safety consists in passing on as rapidly and 
lightly as possible. In mercy God made hard labour 
a condition of the continuance of life : " And the 
Lord God said. Behold, the man is become as one 
of Us, to know good and evil : and now, lest he put 
forth his hand, and take also of the Tree of Life, 
and eat, and live for ever : therefore the Lord God 
sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the 
ground from whence he was taken" (vers. 22, 23). 
Originally he was placed inside the Garden " to dress 
it and keep it," — where he would meet with diffi- 
culties enough to stimulate his powers of invention, 
but where his efforts would be exempt from 



THE PROTEVANGEL: DAWN OF HOPE 285 

exhaustion, continuousness, and over-fatigue. In 
the Edenic state the inherent intractableness of 
nature would present opposition enough to call 
forth whatever mechanical skill and artistic capa- 
bilities he possessed. The idea that sin was indis- 
pensable to the rise of the arts and sciences has 
here no countenance. Is it not nearer the truth to 
say that, instead of hastening, sin delayed their 
development ? But in consequence of the Fall he is 
sent out of the Garden to till the surrounding district, 
which was less amenable to cultivation than the 
enclosed park. Add to this the impoverishment 
of the soil as the result of the curse, and you will 
perceive that the labour which was before enjoyable 
and exhilarating is converted into a burden and a 
vexation. Yet in this lies the hope of man's 
recovery ; this hard task is allotted him quite as 
much in mercy as in judgment. 

With the expulsion of man from Paradise began 
the Economy of Divine Grace : " So God drove 
out the man ; and He placed at the east of the 
garden of Eden Cherubim and a Flaming Sword 
which turned every way." Who was the driver ? 
Divine Justice ? Not it alone, else it would drive 
man to hell-fire before stopping. In whose hands 
is the Sword of Flame? In the hands of Justice? 
Nay, else man would have been forthwith executed ; 
but in the hands of the Cherubim — symbols, where- 
ever they are found, of Divine Grace. Without 
entering into the intricate discussion concerning the 
nature, form, and functions of these mystic figures, 
suffice it to say that wherever they appear they are 
always emblems of God's presence to bless. We 



286 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

live now, therefore, under a mixed dispensation. It 
is not all justice, for the Cherubim stand there, the 
unmistakable representatives of God's mercy. It 
is not all grace, for the Sword of Flame is there, 
always ready to execute judgment. Yes, a glittering 
sword is ever brandished in front of guilty man, 
mysteriously " turning every way," and by its strange 
revolutions driving him back to the path of duty 
and obedience. If he wander far, the sword will 
smite him all of a sudden. But the sword is in the 
hands of Divine Grace — longsuffering and forbear- 
ance characterise all Divine visitations. The truth 
here emblemed is that man now lives under a 
complex dispensation of punishment and discipline. 
He is sent forth to the wilderness to till its arid 
soil ; but, cultivating the earth, he refines his own 
heart ; uprooting the thorns and thistles in the field, 
he eradicates simultaneously the lusts and covetous 
desires growing rank in his own nature. Man is 
drilled to restraint on the one hand, to holiness on 
the other. The course is long, but the final issue 
will be compensation enough for all the trials of 
the journey : " No chastening for the present seemeth 
to be joyous, but grievous : nevertheless afterward 
it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto 
them who are exercised thereby" (Heb. xii. ii). 
True this of the individual, true also of the race. 

Not long ago an ever-memorable view of the 
heavens was witnessed, a grand panorama, on the 
coast of Cardigan Bay. As the day was drawing 
to a close, big black clouds gathered themselves 
together for miles upon the horizon. At a distance, 
they seemed like the wreck of ten thousand worlds 



THE PROTEVANGEL : DAWN OF HOPE 287 

scattered about in wildest confusion, mountains and 
towers thrown helter-skelter together, crags and 
precipices piled on one another in rankest disorder, 
and here and there a valley turned upside down in 
the midst of chaos. Gradually the sun descended 
the slope of the firmament, and became lost to sight 
behind the huge mass of solid darkness. Presently 
it was evident that a terrible struggle was going on 
in the west ; anon the fringe of the chaos became 
tinged with gold, the dark mass heaved up and 
down in endless convolutions, ere long it shattered 
into ten million rose leaves — there they lay like a 
harvest of red roses in most lavish profusion ; and 
the sun set, having transfigured the clouds, and rose 
the following morning, having utterly chased them 
away. Thus looking back to the history of the 
Fall in the third chapter of Genesis, in the far-off 
horizon of time, we see big, black, ominous clouds 
gathered together and hiding Paradise from view. 
Presently God is seen descending the brow of the 
heavens, towards sundown, in the cool of the evening. 
One might rashly conclude that He also is lost in 
the weltering ruins. But anon the fringe of the 
chaos begins to be tinged, the promise of the 
woman's Seed to bruise the serpent's head gilds 
the clouds with brightest gold, the dark mass begins 
to break, the whole firmament of history is variegated 
with light and shade and all the seven colours ; 
gradually the whole scene will be transformed into 
the unsullied light of the everlasting day. 

From the dark we generally obtain the bright. 
From the dark earth comes the gas which lights our 
homes. From the bitterest herbs are extracted the 



288 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

most efficacious medicines. From the blackness 
of coal are evolved the most sunlike diamonds. 
Under the overruling Providence of God, sin will 
also be made to redound to the glory of His name, 
and to contribute to the good of our race. This 
reconciles us to the fact. As we read Genesis and 
witness the havoc and devastation it works there, 
our souls tumble up and down within us, and we 
marvel in the depths of our spirits that God should 
permit such a monster to obtrude his presence in the 
world ; but when we glance over the last chapter of 
the Revelation of St. John the Divine, and behold 
the new heaven and the new earth wherein dwelleth 
righteousness, our sorrow is turned into joy. Studying 
the opening chapters of the Bible, we are immeasur- 
ably saddened at the sight of man banished from 
his home into the wilderness ; but when we follow 
him through all his labyrinthine wanderings and see 
him emerge out of the howling desert, and safely 
sheltered, not under the green bowers of another 
Eden, but in the stately mansions of the New 
Jerusalem, polished after the similitude of a palace, 
we praise God for the necessity which sent him a 
wanderer. 

II. Let it be further marked that "unto Adam 
also, and unto his wife, did the Lord God make 
coats of skins, and clothed them." 

" God knoweth," said the tempter, " that in the day 
ye eat thereof your eyes shall be opened." Writers 
of rationalistic sympathies declare this to be a step 
forward in knowledge, a discovery of value, and sin 
to be necessary in order to make it. Hence the Fall, 
they say, was a Fall upward. To reason thus, how- 



THE PROTEVANGEL : DAWN OF HOPE 2B9 

ever, is altogether to miss the point of the narrative. 
There is an opening of eyes, which is loss, not gain. 
" He lifted up his eyes, being in torments." The 
enlightenment here is in the bad, not the good, sense. 
Hear the confession of the young man, raw and 
green, after his first visit to London. He met there 
with a man of plausible appearance and fair words. 
He listened and followed, thinking the company 
reflected distinction on himself, and was the first step 
in the ladder of social advancement. Submitting to 
his bland persuasion, he followed him into a house of 
entertainment ; he came out — robbed of his money, 
despoiled of his watch, divested of his self-respect. 
His eyes were opened, and he saw that he was naked. 
Was that an advance, a development, a fall upward 
in his career ? Ask him, and his eyes, glowing like 
flames of fire, will give you the lie direct. Better 
be blind than see the revelry. In his country home 
he saw God and Nature and Goodness ; to evil he 
was blind. The opening of his eyes to the midnight 
orgies is the one damnable spot in his history. The 
promise always ends in bitter disappointment and 
sore humiliation. That was exactly the opening of 
the eyes Adam and Eve experienced. Incited by 
curiosity. Eve beguiled Adam to join her to look 
behind the curtain. What did they see ? Sin, guilt, 
fear, shame, death. Better had their eyes never been 
thus opened ! 

But before they were naked, now they are clothed ; 
is not that progress? Is not raiment generally an 
index to a man's place in the scale of civilisation? 
Where pure savagery prevails, men go utterly naked ; 
the moment they emerge from unmixed barbarism, 

19 



IgO PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

they go about partly clad ; where civilisation is firmly 
established, men garment themselves from the crown 
of the head to the sole of the foot. Nakedness is a 
sign of barbarism, clothes of civilisation. This reason- 
ing, however, is more plausible than true. Even now 
the two extremes of existence are, by the highest 
art, always represented in a state of nudity — the 
babe and the god. The babe is not ashamed of its 
nakedness, not because it wants sensibility, but 
because it lacks sinful consciousness. Where the 
motions of sin are absent, drapery is superfluous. 
At the other end is the god. A god clothed is no 
god. Art at its highest is always nude. The ideal 
needs no clothing, having no defects to hide. The 
need of clothing arises with the consciousness of 
imperfection. Hence, where the sense of the ideal 
is not awakened, and the consciousness of disagree- 
ment between body and spirit is not evoked, as in 
the babe and barbarian, clothing is a redundancy. 
On the other hand, where the ideal is reached, where 
no discord between the corporeal and spiritual obtains, 
as in the god, raiment is superfluous. 

Adam and Eve in their Paradisiacal state expe- 
rienced no conflict, no rent in their consciousness ; 
the ideal and actual corresponded : hence no shame, 
and therefore no clothing. But once they sinned they 
became painfully conscious of the dissonance, and in- 
stinctively endeavoured to ignore the gap by covering 
it. In the first instance, then, clothing denotes a 
consciousness of moral delinquency. But the fact 
that they are ashamed is to their credit. The more 
the shame, the worthier of respect ; and thus, 
secondarily, clothing becomes a sign of civilisation. 



THE PROTEVANGEL : DAWN OF HOPE 29 1 

The devil sinned, and is not ashamed ; always in 
the presence of God he is insolent, sarcastic, brazen- 
faced. His shamelessness is his damnation. On the 
other hand, the shame of Adam and Eve affords a 
sure evidence that their reclamation is possible. Had 
men not sinned, would they ever remain unclothed ? 
I cannot tell. But art is not dependent on fashions ; 
it aims at nobler ideals than the reproduction of 
Elizabethan costumes or the imitation of Parisian 
modes. Perfect art is perfect nudity. 

Adam and Eve "sewed fig leaves together, and 
made themselves aprons." "But unto them God 
made coats of skins, and clothed them." Where did 
the skins come from ? Here we are confronted with 
a problem which has much exercised the theologic 
mind — Is sacrifice a human invention or a Divine 
appointment ? The supposition that our first parents, 
remorseful and deeply conscious of their need of 
pardon, should endeavour to propitiate the offended 
Judge by the offering of a sacrifice carries with it 
no intrinsic incongruity. Many able theologians, 
therefore, such as Bahr and Tholuck, have adopted, 
with variations, this view. But for this instinct of 
human nature to embody itself in a suitable outward 
ceremony time was requisite— more time than the 
history seems to allow. Hence I incline to the 
view that sacrifice is a Divine institution, not in 
contradiction, but rather in perfect conformity, with 
the deepest instincts of human nature. To me there 
is poetic grandeur in the view that as God offered 
the last sacrifice on Calvary so He officiated at the 
first sacrifice in Eden ! I like to trace the scarlet 
line of continuity, without a break, all the way from 



292 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

Paradise to Golgotha ! With the skins of the animals 
slain in sacrifice He clothed the nakedness of the 
shame of the first sinners. This is not distinctly 
stated ; but we should remember that a period longer 
than the Christian era is compressed into two or 
three chapters in Genesis. In the reflected light of 
the remainder of Divine Revelation, and in the light 
of the human nature shared by us as well as by 
them, we must try to fill the hiatus. 

Assuming the Divine origin of sacrifices, can we 
imagine that God gave the trembling, astonished 
spectators no enlightenment concerning its import? 
The promulgation of the promise, the institution of 
sacrifice, the investiture of Adam and Eve, their 
expulsion from the Garden, the placing of the 
Cherubim and the Sword of Fire to the east of 
Eden, was not a transaction of five minutes. Pro- 
bably it took as many hours, nay, as many days, 
when God and our first parents were in constant 
fellowship, and when the latter learnt more about the 
way of Salvation than we are ready to give them 
credit for. Whereas the older theologians probably 
magnified their knowledge, moderns seem to delight 
in reducing it to the lowest possible minimum. 
Indeed, their knowledge is represented as so misty 
and vague that it differs in nothing from blank 
ignorance. The golden mean is doubtless the best. 
They possessed not the definite conceptions of New 
Testament saints ; at the same time they could not 
have been left to dreamy, uncertain guesswork, with- 
out a firm rock for faith to put down the sole of her 
foot. Adam, Abel, Enoch, Noah believed. The 
question naturally arises. What in ? They must have 



THE PROTEVANGEL: DAWN OF HOPE 293 

had a firm grip on some of the fundamental trnths 
of revealed religion, else they could never have 
withstood steadfastly the terrible shock of ungodliness 
in the antediluvian world. In the primal revelation 
a foundation sufficiently strong must have been 
given to bear the superstructure of the following 
millenniums. 

Whatever may have been the limitations of Adam's 
knowledge of Salvation, our knowledge is clear and 
definite. The best solution to the mystery of the 
Fall through the first Adam is the mystery of the 
Rise through the Second Adam. Call to mind once 
more St. Paul's parallel and contrast between them. 
Whatever objections we may be inclined to urge 
against the arrangements of God's Providence, they 
are all more than met when we review the ordinances 
of His Grace. " By the disobedience of one many 
were made sinners." Against such an arrangement 
our will rebels, we protest in indignant tones ; why 
should the disobedience of Adam involve us in sin ? 
Why should an act performed six thousand years 
ago entail misery on me ? Why should it embitter 
my time and imperil my eternity ? Why am I 
subjected to suffering because of what another did 
millenniums before I was ushered into existence? 
Such impious questionings do arise in the heart, and 
there is no suppressing them. " By the disobedience 
of one many were made sinners." Is there any 
remedy ? Yes ; " so by the obedience of One many 
shall be made righteous." We have no objection to 
partake of the benefits which come through Christ : 
that should reconcile us to the ills which came 
through Adam. What is it any of us have to 



294 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

complain of? Do we complain that God should 
so arrange the events of Providence as to make us 
partakers of the sin of our race without our know- 
ledge or consent? This is the way wherein Divine 
Revelation meets us — God is this very moment 
holding out to us the relief which we need, He offers 
to extricate us from our racial and personal sin, on 
the simple condition of implicit trust in Him. 

Close to the disease is the cure. The Israelites 
were bitten by serpents in the wilderness. Many 
a speculative man in the camp might wonder why 
God should create serpents. They are not good 
for food, neither are they good for service ; appar- 
ently they are good for nothing except to bite and 
kill. He might utter violent complaints against the 
Divine Wisdom and Goodness in creating serpents 
at all. But if the God who made the serpent to 
bite ordered another Serpent of Brass to heal all 
who turned their eyes in its direction, certainly 
the ground of complaint is taken from under his 
feet. So speculative Englishmen wonder that God 
permitted sin to contaminate our nature, and utter 
their murmurs accordingly ; but when God has 
from the beginning provided a way to wash away 
the stain, surely it were wisdom on our part to 
hold our peace and silence our objections. In the 
West Indies there grows, it is said, a tree called the 
machaneel. Its appearance is specially attractive 
and its wood particularly beautiful ; it bears an apple 
resembling our golden pippin. This fruit looks 
tempting and smells fragrant ; but to eat of it is 
certain death. So poisonous is its sap or juice 
that, if a few drops fall on the hand, it blisters the 



THE PROTEVANGEL : DAWN OF HOPE 295 

skin and inflicts acute pain. The Indians were 
wont to dip their arrows in the juice, that, wounding 
their enemies, they might poison them. No doubt 
many a poor, stricken man felt prompted to blame 
the wisdom of the Creator for making a tree so 
fair to the eyes, yet so deadly in its sap and fruit. 
But Providence has so appointed it that one of 
these trees is never found but near it grows a white 
wood or fig tree, the sap of which, if applied in 
time, soothes the irritation occasioned by the poison 
of the other : counterparts these of the two trees in 
the Garden of Eden. This fact equalises things 
wonderfully. Thus people complain because the 
Tree of Knowledge was placed in the same garden 
as man. And without contradiction, to us who 
can only perceive the surface of things, it does look 
strange. But it is forgotten or overlooked that God 
planted there also the " Tree of Life in the midst of 
the garden," equidistant from all the corners. Sin 
looks pleasant to the eye ; men desire of it, eat, 
and die. But the remedy is at hand. " Is there 
not balm in Gilead ? Is there not a physician 
there ? Why therefore is the hurt of the daughter 
of My people not healed?" 

Are you burdened with the multitude of your 
sins ? God has grace enough to wipe them all away. 
" For the judgment was by one offence to condem- 
nation, but the free gift is of many offences unto 
justification." You may demur to the sentence of 
condemnation because of one offence, it may appear 
harsh, severe, arbitrary ; but over against it is the 
free gift unto justification, despite not one, but one 
million offences. " By one offence death reigned by 



296 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

one," and you find grave fault that one man through 
one offence should entail misery on the millions of 
mankind ; but over against it is the assurance, " much 
more they which receive abundance of grace and of 
the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one 
Jesus Christ." After balancing the accounts, there 
remains a " surplus [Trepicrcreia] of grace." God's 
character is vindicated. 

III. Contemplate further the seminal promise of 
Salvation. " I will put enmity between thee and 
the woman, and between thy seed and her seed ; he 
shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his 
heel," are the words addressed by God to the foe of 
man. Three stages are discernible in this promise 
of victory. 

The first is the engendering of enmity between the 
serpent and the woman, the tempter and the tempted. 
The alliance between the evil spirit and Adam and 
Eve is abruptly sundered. The sudden revulsion 
of feeling which possessed our first parents on the 
discovery of their nakedness and shame, the sense 
of fiery indignation kindled in their breasts against 
the duplicity of the seducer, were favourable to win 
them over once more to the side of God and good- 
ness, and to establish perpetual hatred in them to 
the spirit of evil. That they sinned oft in after-years 
cannot be doubted ; still to the spirit of evil they 
presented uniform hostility. The ve^se, " And 
Adam called his wife's name Eve, because she was 
the mother of all living," contains an intimation 
that they now passed over from a state of sin to a 
state of grace. Formerly Adam called his wife Isha ; 
^ow he names her Havvah (Eve) — a change of name 



THE PROTEVANGEL : DAWN OF HOPE 297 

indicative of a change of objective relation to God 
and subjective relation to sin. They passed over 
from a state of condemnation to a state of salvation. 
After this the curtain is practically dropped on the 
unhappy pair. Not once again are their names 
recorded in the Old Testament, except perhaps in 
Hos. vii. 6, and there the reference is doubtful. On 
the pages of the four Gospels their names are not 
recorded once, except in St. Luke's genealogical table. 
The Lord Jesus mentions Abel and Noah, Abraham, 
Isaac, and Jacob, Moses, David, and Isaiah ; but not 
once do the names of Adam and Eve drop over His 
sacred lips. Divine propriety dictates reserve respect- 
ing the man and woman who wrought such a terrible 
catastrophe in the Divine government of the world. 
" They themselves were saved, yet so as by fire." 

The second stage is the antagonism between the 
serpent's seed and the woman's seed. That these 
terms convey an ethical, not a physical, meaning 
is clear. Immediately after, the human race is seen 
divided into two seeds or camps, that of Cain and 
that of Seth. The inner, ethical relation between 
them is enmity. It began in the murder of Abel, 
the woman's seed, by Cain, the serpent's seed. The 
enmity has been restrained, checked, civilised, but 
it has never been extinguished : " All that will live 
godly shall suffer persecution" (2 Tim. iii. 12). The 
whole of 'Church history, whether under the Old 
or the New Testament, is only an account of this 
Holy Crusade, the warfare between the seed of the 
woman and the seed of the serpent, between the 
forces of good and the forces of evil, between the 
Church and the world. In Old Testament times 



298 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

the victory oftenest lay with the brood of the serpent ; 
once and again the Church was so hard pressed 
that the very last sparks of true religion seemed 
on the verge of extinction. The tide of battle 
flowed in favour of the seed of the serpent, and 
the permanent victory of evil over good was well-nigh 
secured. 

The third stage arrived when all the energies 
of good were gathered together in One — pre- 
eminently the Seed of the woman. There is ever- 
more a tendency in evil and in good to gather into 
a head, to concentrate themselves in distinguished 
personages. The forces of nature raise mountains ; 
the forces of mind produce geniuses ; the forces 
of evil produce villains ; the forces of good make 
saints. In accordance with this general law, though 
not in virtue of it alone, the seed of the woman 
culminated at last in the Seed par exxellence : " In 
the fulness of time God sent forth His Son, made 
of a woman." Singular that the Seed of the Woman 
should be the term used. Everywhere else it is 
the seed of the man — the seed of Abraham, the 
seed of David : here the Seed of the Woman. The 
singularity of the name points to an anomaly in 
the Seed ; is it a dark prefiguration of the mystery 
of the Incarnation? 

At last the Seed appeared, turned the tide of 
battle, and secured the ultimate triumph of the 
human race over all the powers of darkness. The 
serpent and the Seed met in a terrible encounter 
in the wilderness : " Then saith Jesus unto him, 
Get thee hence, Satan : for it is written, Thou shalt 
worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou 



THE PROTEVANGEL : DAWN OF HOPE 299 

serve. Then the devil leaveth Ilim" (Matt. iv. 
10, 11). In this encounter man wins the victory. 
Adam fell in a garden ; Christ stood in a wilderness. 
Adam apostatised in the midst of plenty ; Christ 
remained steadfast when He was an hungred. " The 
devil Cometh, but he hath nothing in Me." " Now 
is the judgment [Kpla-L^] of this world : now shall the 
prince of this world be cast out" (John xii. 31). 
" Now is your hour, and the power of darkness." The 
two champions meet, the Champion of Good and 
the Champion of Evil. What is the issue of the 
combat ? — " Having spoiled principalities and powers, 
He made a show of them openly, triumphing over 
them in Himself" (Col. ii. 15). Victory always 
rests, not with the party who wins the first battle, 
but with the party who wins the last. The devil 
conquered man in Eden ; man conquered the devil 
on Calvary. Ever since the Seed of the woman 
is routing the seed of the serpent ; the kingdom 
of light is ever enlarging its territory, and the 
reign of darkness is contracting in the reverse ratio. 
The victory of good is now certain ; and we only 
await the cry of the angel : " The kingdoms of 
this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord 
and of His Christ, and He shall reign for ever 
and ever" (Rev. xi. 15). 

This is one of the distinctive notes of Revealed 
Religion, Hebrew and Christian — faith in the 
ultimate triumph of good over evil. All heathen 
religions, Aryan and Semitic, hug to their hearts 
the incubus of pessimism ; according to all of them 
the ages degenerate, mankind deteriorate. Gold, 
silver, brass, iron— that is the order of history, till 



300 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

it reaches its goal in the destruction of the race. 
But turn to the Hebrew reh'gion, and you come 
across a wholly different class of ideas. Admitting 
a terrible Fall in the past, it cherishes hope in the 
human breast, hope of victory over the powers 
of sin and suffering, till at last it culminates in 
Christian optimism — a blessed assurance that God 
is stronger than the Devil, that Good will triumph 
over Evil, that Virtue will conquer Vice, that 
Health will overcome Disease, that Life will swallow 
up Death. Of all the literatures of antiquity, the 
Hebrew Bible alone is optimistic. How do you 
account for it ? 



CHAPTER XII 

CAIN AND ABEL : EVIL AND GOOD 

AT the birth of her firstborn, Eve rejoiced greatly, 
and " called his name Cain, saying, I have 
gotten a man — Jehovah." Whatever be the precise 
signification of the phrase, it indubitably demon- 
strates that large, ennobling thoughts were fermenting 
in her mind, and that she was not in a state of 
helpless ignorance concerning the Promised Seed. 
She knew that, if the child were not Jehovah Himself 
in human nature — according to Luther's translation, 
in which he is followed by Schmidt, Pfeiffer, Baum- 
garten, and others — he was at all events a special 
gift of Jehovah, a pledge of the Divine favour.^ But 
observing the odd, queer ways of her firstborn, his 
sullen disposition, his irascible temper, his fierce 
looks, the mother did not feel so hopeful and buoyant 
at the birth of the second child ; therefore she called 

1 ''The use of the name [Jehovah] is significant, though 
we cannot think that Eve already knew this name of God, 
which was first revealed to man at a later period of his 
history, and which is of Hebrew origin, whereas that language 
probably did not exist until the time of the dispersion at 
Babel. Yet, doubtless, the historian expresses the true 
meaning of Eve's speech, which she spoke, inspired by that 
help which had been graciously given her of God"' (Keil, 
Com., in loco). 

301 



302 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

his name Abel, which, being interpreted, is vapour, 
vanity, grief. Some suppose that this name was 
given him retrospectively by succeeding generations 
in view of his premature death ; but seeing Eve 
named the first and the third — Cain and Seth— 
it is more natural to assume that she named the 
second also, calling him Abel — Breath, Vanity, a 
sure indication of her then inward experience. 

Only three of Adam's sons are mentioned by 
name — Cain, Abel, Seth ; but the historian distinctly 
adds that " the days of Adam, after he had begotten 
Seth, were eight hundred years, and he begat sons 
and daughters." Considering that his life extended 
to nine hundred and thirty years, his family in the 
course of nature must have grown very numerous. 
Only three, however, are known by name, because 
probably they were the three eminently destined 
to influence subsequent history. The others were 
ordinary men and women, possessing no marked 
features, requiring no special mention, endeavouring 
as best they could to discharge the duties of every- 
day life, exhibiting the virtues and subject to the 
infirmities which have characterised the race through 
all time. But Cain, Abel, and Seth were not 
ordinary men ; their names are mentioned with 
anathema or affection down to the present day. 

For all practical purposes, Abel and Seth may be 
reckoned as one, for they were of the same ethical 
type, and ordained to fulfil the same function in the 
history of redemption : " Eve bare a son, and called 
his name Seth : For God, said she, hath appointed 
me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew " 
(iv. 25). How did she know? If simply in the 



CAIN AND ABEL : EVIL AND GOOD 303 

power of maternal instinct, what a grand, intelligent, 
holy woman she must have been ! More probably, 
she received, as Rebecca did in after-years, a revealed 
intimation respecting the particular line in which 
the Promised Seed should appear. Genesis is a 
record of Divine revelation, but not a full record, 
especially of the earliest dispensation. It is easy to 
perceive by the language and religious customs of 
the antediluvian saints that they obtained communi- 
cations from heaven, which are not detailed, only 
assumed. To estimate this primitive history at its 
proper value, it is expedient that wc bear in mind 
that the busy life of two millenniums is condensed 
into two chapters. Godly imagination, illumined 
by scholarship, and guided by common sense, must 
fill the gaps. 

The two brothers grew up. The elder became a 
tiller of the ground, helped his father to dig, sow, 
plant, and reap, led an agricultural life. The second 
became a shepherd, watching over flocks of sheep 
and goats and herds of cattle — an avocation for which 
his 'gentle, amiable disposition singularly fitted him. 
The milk was now wanted for the fast increasing 
family, the wool and skins were needed for garments, 
the carcases required for sacrifice, and probably also 
for food. One boy was told off to look after the 
land, the other to supervise the flock. " Abel was a 
keeper of sheep ; but Cain was a tiller of the ground." 
Thus the Bible account upsets the theory favoured 
by rationalists and materialistic scientists, that man- 
kind began life as hunters, then became shepherds, 
and last of all developed into agriculturalists. 

The two callings possibly indicate different dis- 



304 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

positions in the two brothers. Cain was passionate, 
strong-willed, self-reliant, conscious of energy suffi- 
cient to conquer the intractableness of the soil and 
countervail the effects of the curse. Abel, on the 
contrary, was quiet, meditative, sympathetic, much 
addicted to solitary thinking, always ready to help 
man and beast. What Esau and Jacob were in the 
family of Isaac, that probably were Cain and Abel 
in the household of Adam. People speak of family 
likenesses, but there are family unlikenesses too. 
Have you observed how opposite are the tendencies 
of those two boys of yours? One is wild, adven- 
turous, untamable, talks of going to sea, and wants 
to know what a lion-hunt in Africa is like, and 
there he will be sooner than you imagine. The 
other is retiring, thoughtful, studious, horrified at the 
idea of going to the primeval forest to fight lions and 
tigers ; but is determined to go to the more renowned 
universities, there to contend valiantly with men 
harder to beat than any wild beasts in African or 
Indian jungles. In the first family these consti- 
tutional differences were likely more marked and 
pronounced than in families since. Adam and Eve 
comprehended the genus : he was the typical man, 
she the typical woman. In them every specific type 
of character and variety of disposition had their 
roots ; from their loins, therefore, men of diametri- 
cally opposite propensities sprang. Types in men, 
like breeds in animals, may gradually be hardened, 
stereotyped, perpetuated ; but at the dawn of history 
they had not had time to set. The greatest variety 
prevailed in the family of Adam ; hence intermarriages 
between brothers and sisters in his home, apart from 



CAIN AND AHEL : EVIL AND GOOD 305 

the necessity of the situation, were justifiable on the 
deepest physiological ground. 

I. Whilst there existed probably a marked differ- 
ence in the physical constitutions and intellectual 
predilections of the two brothers, Cain and Abel, 
yet the main difference was moral. Cain remained 
in a state of unregeneracy, whereas Abel became heir 
of the promise that the Seed of the woman should 
finally triumph over the seed of the serpent. '' By 
faith," writes the author of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews, " Abel offered unto God a more excellent 
sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness 
that he was righteous, God testifying to his gifts ; 
and by it he, being dead, yet speaketh " (Heb. xi. 4). 
That is the apostolic commentary on this passage 
in Genesis, and, following it, we cannot go far 
astray. 

The two brothers differed in their worship of God, 
because they fundamentally diverged in the ruling 
principles of their lives. Abel possessed faith, and 
faith has always regard to the Divine and super- 
natural. Faith is not a natural faculty in the soul, 
like reason, imagination, memory, or conscience, but 
a supernatural gift. " Faith is the gift of God," but 
a gift always bestowed on those morally qualified 
to receive it. Natural faculties are imparted at 
birth ; therefore, if without them in infancy, we must 
be without them the remainder of our days. But 
faith, being a Divine gift, we may obtain at the age 
of twenty, forty, or sixty. Faith thus presupposes 
a supernatural revelation, the supernatural subjective 
demanding a supernatural objective on which to la}- 
hold. Abel believed. Believed in whom ? In God. 

20 



306 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

But what did he know about God to believe in Him ? 
Here comes in the revelation the Supreme was 
pleased to make of the purposes of His grace to his 
parents immediately after their transgression — the 
promise of the Seed to bruise the serpent's head, 
the institution of the symbolical rite of sacrifice, the 
setting up of an organised mode of worship to the 
east of the Garden of Eden, in front of the Cheru- 
bim and the Flame of Fire. That is the Super- 
natural Revelation which again brought hope to man. 
I designate it supernatural, because the mind working 
upon nature would have never discovered it. It is 
not a discovery of Adam, but a revelation of God. 
In a few verses is related tl;e pith and substance of 
a transaction extending, no doubt, over several hours, 
and which, if reported in full, in its attenuated form, 
would illumine many a phrase which now appears 
dark — dark because we do not take the trouble to 
spread It out, that w^e may see the inner contents. 
Adam and Eve, in the full vigour of their intellect, 
fresh and strong, notwithstanding the stain of sin, 
pondered deeply, no doubt, over the gracious revela- 
tion the Almighty had vouchsafed them. They con- 
versed much about it, assisting each other to apprehend 
Its full significance ; and If the conjecture of some 
of the most pious, as well as of the most learned 
commentators, be right, that God did not at once 
withhold His theophanies, but that, as occasion 
required, He appeared visibly to men, in accordance 
w^ith the Intimations contained in this fourth chapter, 
and solved many a riddle which w^as too hard for 
their unaided understanding, the resultant intel- 
ligence was not inconsiderable. What they them- 



CAIN AND ABEL : EVIL AND GOOD 307 

selves had received and understood, they naturally 
strove to impress on the minds of their children, for 
on the faithful transmission and the strict observ- 
ance of these truths depended the present and future 
salvation of the race. What more reasonable than 
that they should tell them the story of the Fall, 
expatiate on the promise of the Seed of the woman 
to destroy the works of evil, give accurate account 
of the institution of sacrifice, its symbolical meaning, 
the regulations concerning its observance, the Divine 
instructions to them concerning the meat-offering and 
the burnt-offering— the two offerings whose history 
is clearly traceable from Eden down to Calvary? 
The first family was a Church, where religious in- 
struction was imparted and religious observances 
were maintained. Sufficient evidence is the public 
worship of the two brothers at an appointed time 
in an appointed place. Cain listened, understood, 
but his heart gave no vital response. Abel heard, 
drank in the glad tidings, believed in God's method 
of salvation, conformed his life thereto, and his faith 
was counted to him for righteousness. Cain, says 
St. John, was of the "wicked one" — the firstborn 
of the serpent's brood ; Abel trusted in the Divine 
assurance of the ultimate triumph of good over evil — 
the firstborn of the woman's Seed. The antithesis 
is not physical or intellectual, but ethical. Instead 
of moral affinity, there is spiritual repulsion. The 
conflict of the ages begins. 

II. The moral difference between the two brothers 
manifested itself in their public worship. 

The Bible does not concern itself — nor does any other 
book — so much about the secret devotion of private 



308 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

individuals, as with religion in its public character, 
as it affects the course of sacred history. Misappre- 
hension of this truth has blurred the sight of many 
expositors. If others were not present w^hen Cain 
and Abel made their oblations, who would be alive 
to tell the story? The fact that the narrative has 
come down to us is proof enough that there were 
other witnesses of the scene here depicted. At the 
birth of Seth Adam was one hundred and thirty 
years old (chap. v. 3) ; the historian joins the birth 
of Seth to the martyrdom of Abel, the two events 
doubtless occurring within an interval of a few years. 
This enables us to fix approximately the date of 
the events here recorded — when Adam was about 
one hundred and twenty years old. 

" In process of time it came to pass that Cain 
brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto 
the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings 
of the flock, and of the fat thereof." " By faith Abel 
offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than 
Cain." Putting these texts in juxtaposition, we 
gather that the first family had an established order 
of worship, an order enlarged, developed, and care- 
fully reduced to writing in the Hebrew economy. 
Beautiful is it to think that between the Church 
before, and the Church after, the Flood, there was 
an unbroken continuity in the method of worship. 
By this is not intended that in elaborateness and 
environments great differences did not prevail, but 
that the central nucleus was under every dispensation 
identical. If the Mosaic sacrificial system is repre- 
sented as an absolutely new beginning, where is the 
much-vaunted doctrine of development ? 



CAIN AND ABEL: EVIL AND GOOD 309 

The first family had evidently a stated time to 
appear before the Lord. The two brothers met 
simultaneously at the altar to offer their oblation : 
"In process of time"; in the margin, "at the end 
of days." What time was this ? The majority of 
commentators, so far as I am able to learn, favour 
the view that the words refer to a sacred festival, 
probably at the end of harvest, wdien all Adam's 
family were wont to meet to render thanksgiving to 
God. Throughout the antediluvian and patriarchal 
eras, however, I detect no trace of special festivals, 
and am therefore reluctant arbitrarily to insert one 
here. Consequently the view that the reference is 
to the end of the days of the week, the Sabbath day, 
commends itself to me. 

Already the "seventh day " stands forth as speci- 
ally blessed and hallowed. In this chapter Lamech 
speaks of " seven " and " seventy times seven." In 
the story of the Deluge, Noah reckons time by the 
mysterious number seven. All this constrains us to 
conclude that a week of seven days is an institu- 
tion co-eval with humanity, founded really, not 
artificially, on the creation week. The sun divides 
time into years, the moon into months, the diurnal 
rotation of the earth on its axis into days ; the 
Sabbath alone divides it into weeks. 

Not many years ago, not only avowed sceptics, but 
theologians of repute, infected by the spirit which 
was in the air, denied the primeval antiquity of the 
Sabbath. Professor Davidson, w^hose scholarship 
commands universal respect, in his Introduction to 
the Old Testament devoted several pages to demon- 
strate that the Sabbath is an institution no older 



310 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

than the age of Moses. Since then, Assyrian and 
Babylonian monuments have spoken ; and what 
do they disclose ? Calendar tablets, preserved in the 
royal library '^ \oSurbanipal, the Sardanapalus of 
the Greeks — co^jies of Accadian inscriptions dating 
back, according to Mr. George Smith, to beyond 
2000 B.C., centuries before Abraham left Ur of 
the Chaldees — show the Sabbath to be even then 
a venerable public institution. The very word 
" Sabbatu " is distinctly visible ; the seventh, four- 
teenth, twenty-first, and twenty-eighth days of the 
month of Elul are distinctly styled " Sabbaths." 
Elsewhere the Sabbath is paraphrased as a "day 
of rest for the heart," and the regulations for its 
observance are as strict and rigorous as any pre- 
scribed by Jewish Pharisaism. Is it not perfectly 
safe to assume that these old Accadians, living the 
centuries immediately following the Flood, obtained 
the Sabbath as a precious heritage, from the world 
before the Flood ? And is it not remarkable that 
every new discovery in archaeology corroborates the 
historical veracity of the Bible ? A critic, demurring 
to Copernicus' theory of the solar system, said : " If 
the worlds were constructed as you say, Venus would 
have phases like the moon ; she has none, however ; 
how do you answer that ? " The illustrious astro- 
nomer, possessing his soul in patience, with great 
reverence replied, " I have no answer to give to that ; 
but God will be so good as to permit that an answer 
to this difficulty be found." Soon after, the newly 
invented telescope was directed towards Venus, and, 
lo, Venus had her phases like the moon. Sceptical 
critics through the centuries raise new objections 



CAIN AND ABEL: EVIL AND GOOD 31I 

against the Bible, and doubtless will continue to do 
so ; and, because the answer is not ready when the 
objection is first urged, they raise a shout of triumph. 
But God is always " so good " as in time to furnish 
His Church with an answer. Bclicvv in the Bible, 
judging from past experience, await the further dis- 
closures of Oriental archaeology without a tremor. 

The further inference, that the first family had 
a fixed place whereat to offer their worship, is 
incontrovertibly legitimate. Cain did not repair to 
one altar and Abel to another, but the two met at 
the one appointed sanctuary — an open-air sanctuary 
may be, but a sanctuary all the same. Where was 
that? The last verse of the preceding chapter 
furnishes the answer — to the east of the Garden 
of Eden, where God "placed" the Cherubim and 
the Flaming Sword. The word for " placed " is 
the root of the term Shekinah, and throws con- 
siderable light on the narrative. God gave there 
a visible sign of His presence. To us, with our 
metaphysical modes of thinking, this is hard of 
realisation. Yet if we believe in the Bible at all, 
we must believe in the Flame of Fire called the 
Shekinah, a supernatural Radiance, a resplendent 
Cloud, scattering brilliance all around. It appeared 
unto Abraham like a burning lamp ; to the Israelites 
in the wilderness it became a cloud of glory; 
in the Tabernacle it dwelt a bright Flame, with 
the Eye of God all aglow like a sun in the 
centre. This physical token of the Divine Presence 
was also granted the Church before the Flood. 
There it was, to the east of Eden, a live Flame, 
hovering over and between the Cherubim— in shape 



312 PRniEVAL REVELATION 

like a curved sword or scimitar, coiling and whirling 
in strange convolutions. 

There the first family regularly assembled for 
public worship, at length a large congregation. 
Statisticians have put down the population of the 
world at the time of Abel's death at some tens 
of thousands. In 1852, the descendants of Jonathan 
Edwards, the illustrious American divine, agreed to 
celebrate the centenary of his death. How many, 
think you, came together ? Not less than two 
thousand. And if President Edwards, in one hundred 
years, multiplied into two thousand people able to 
join intelligently in the festivities, it is a presump- 
tive proof that the first family did not increase 
at asmaller ratio. A grand spectacle that ! Adam 
and Eve, Cain and Abel, and the other sons and 
daughters, meeting every Sabbath morn at the 
appointed hour, to the east of the Garden of Eden, 
in front of the Cherubim and the Flame of Fire, to 
adore the God who had created them, against whom 
they had rebelled, but who had graciously promised 
to forgive them on their penitence and faith ! 

That a prescribed mode of worship was already 
laid down and recognised the story unmistakably 
suggests. Our first parents observed the directions 
they received from God, offered their sacrifices, and 
brought up the children to follow their example : 
" At the end of days it came to pass that Cain 
brought of the fruit of the ground an offering 
[mincha I unto the Lord ; and Abel brought [a 
m.incha] ; he also brought of the firstlings of the 
flock, and of the fat thereof" That rendering is 
believed to convey the correct meaning. 



CAIN AND ABEL: EVIL AND GOOD 313 

The mincJia consisted of corn, or corn niculc into 
bread (Lev. ii. i, 3, 12), an offering due from man as 
creature to God as Creator. Of course, it is not 
meant that the Levitical law was then estabHshcd, 
or that the writer of Genesis " projected " that law 
into primeval history ; but that this law, given to 
and observed by the first family, was the foundation 
upon which the later legislation was built, the germ 
around which the Hebrew religion entwined. Abel 
as well as Cain, according to the story, presented 
this meat-offering. But over and above that, Abel 
brought a burnt-offering, thereby confessing his sin- 
fulness, acknowledging the just forfeiture of his life, 
and that forgiveness was possible only through 
the surrender of a substitutionary life. That these 
thoughts were expressed in theological terms is not 
of course maintained ; but they were present as 
unformulated truths, constituting the staple of his 
intellectual and spiritual experience. Abel offered 
the fruit and the lamb : hence the use of the plural 
in the Epistle to the Hebrews in designating his 
" gifts " ; and hence also his offering is said to be 
" fuller," completer, than that of his brother. 

How came Cain to offer only of the fruit of the field, 
whereas Abel offered of the fruit and of the flock ? 
Idle is it to say that each offered of that which he 
had. To imagine that Cain, an agriculturalist, had 
no sheep or cattle of his own, is absurd. Abel offered 
of the two kinds ; so could Cain if he wished. The 
only rational explanation is that Cain, in the proud 
self-reliance of unbelief, indulged in will-worship. 
As the serpent persuaded his parents to disregard 
the Divine injunction in the Garden, so he now 



314 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

persuades Cain to break through the divinely 
established method of drawing near to God. Un- 
belief issued in disobedience. Cain refused to submit 
to God's revealed way of saving the world, did not 
see the reasonableness of salvation by blood, for he 
was not painfully conscious of the guiltiness of sin. 
He went in for fruits and flowers. Culture, poetry, 
music were the great things of life in his estimation ; 
and it is a singular fact that the arts and sciences, 
according to this fourth chapter, had their rise, as 
we shall presently see, among his descendants. From 
the first outset, the spirit of culture presents itself in 
antagonism to the spirit of true religion. 

Religion, however, is not hostile to culture, but 
inclusive of it. Abel, whilst not despising fruits and 
flowers, yea, is ready to give science and art their 
due place in the service of God, feels that the first 
great need of life is reconciliation, expiation, pardon ; 
and, exercising full trust in the Divine mercy 
and wisdom, draws nigh to God in the divinely 
instituted way. The unbelief of one led to defiance, 
the faith of the other to loyal, whole-hearted obedi- 
ence. The radical antagonism in the heart-principles 
manifested itself in the character of their observance 
of the rites of public worship. Let no one imagine 
that Christian believers are opposed to the highest 
culture ; on the other hand, we welcome and en- 
courage it : we only oppose it as a substitute for 
religion. As the embellishment of life we hail it ; 
as the foundation of character we repudiate it. Life 
must rest on piety, and piety is founded in sacrifice. 

III. In exact conformity with their personal char- 
acter as manifested in their public worship was God's 



CAIN AND ABEL: EVIL AND GOOD 315 

treatment of them in return : " God had respect 
unto Abel and to his offering ; but unto Cain and 
to his offering He had not respect." " Abel received 
testimony that he was righteous, because God bare 
witness to his gifts." 

Picture the scene. At the appointed time, Adam 
and Eve, Cain and Abel, and possibly the other 
children and grandchildren, assemble together to 
worship, to the east of Eden, in front of the Cherubim 
and the Flame of Fire. Cain and Abel are the 
officiating priests, as heads probably of their respec- 
tive clans. Cain offers of the fruit of the field ; Abel 
places on the altar, in addition to the fruit of the 
field, the firstlings of his flock and the fat thereof. 
The congregation looks on in reverent awe. " And 
the Lord looked keenly at Abel and at his offering ; 
but at Cain and his offering He did not look." What 
can the meaning be? Many answers have been 
given, of which two deserve special mention. 

The first is that, as God continued to hold inter- 
course with men by visible appearances in human 
form, as intimated by His conversation with Cain 
in the succeeding paragraph. He now came out of 
the invisible, and by some well-known token, per- 
haps in human language, signified His acceptance of 
the one, and His rejection of the other. But the 
second seems to me most in accord with the teaching 
of Holy Writ, to wit, that God answered by fire. 
That was the usual way in later times in which God 
signified His satisfaction : " And there came a fire 
out from before the Lord, and consumed upon the 
altar the burnt-offering and the fat, which, when all 
the people saw, they shouted and fell on their faces " 



3l6 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

(Lev. ix. 24). It may be objected that that was 
subsequent to the promulgation of the Mosaic law. 
But as Moses was writing for Hebrews, who under- 
stood this language in a particular sense, it is not 
probable he would use it in a different sense in the 
first narratives. Accordingly, Theodotion, the Greek 
translator of the second century, translates it boldly 
eveiTvptaev — He kindled or set on fire. As Cain and 
Abel and the congregation were waiting in rapt 
expectancy, the Flame of Fire was seen to move 
uneasily about, growing redder and brighter, till 
presently a flash of lightning shot forth and con- 
sumed the offering of Abel, whilst that of Cain was 
left unsinged. Abel is accepted, Cain rejected. 
There and then, in the presence of the congregation, 
"Abel obtained witness that he was righteous, God 
testifying to his gifts." The exposition that the 
witness Abel received, and after him Enoch, refers 
to posthumous testimony by Scriptural writers, 
though advanced by scholars of renown, I cannot 
but consider shallow in the extreme. The Bible 
expressly states that they obtained the testimony ; 
the modern exposition that we receive it, not they. 
What comfort would that be to them ? 

I prefer the view that Abel himself, by the Divine 
token of the acceptance of his sacrifice, obtained 
witness that he was righteous, an inward assurance 
that he was reconciled to God, the truth which In 
Christian theology is known as assurance of personal 
justification. " He obtained witness that he was 
righteous." That he was holy ? No ; he was not 
holy yet, but he knew he was righteous. This is 
the mystery of the way of salvation, that a man 



CAIN AND ABEL: EVIL AND GOOD 317 

may be justified before he is sanctified, that lie may 
be made perfectly righteous before he is made 
perfectly holy. Did we see Abel in the service that 
Sabbath morning, peace like a river filled his soul, 
serene contentment sat on his countenance, un- 
speakable joy beamed out of his eyes. On his way 
home there was greater elasticity in his step, more 
lightness in his tread, hardly did the daisies bow 
their heads under the sole of his feet — he had 
obtained assurance that the malediction of sin had 
passed away from his person for ever ! 

This assurance which Abel enjoyed ought to be 
a permanent fact in the experience of all believers. 
This should not be an exception, but the rule of the 
religious life — the assurance that, having believed, 
we shall not fall under condemnation. Do Christians 
now obtain this infallible testimony ? I do not ask 
if we are perfectly holy, but I do ask if we are 
perfectly righteous. How can we attain this assur- 
ance ? In the same way as Abel obtained it — by 
exercising faith in God through sacrifice. His 
offering was only a type, but he had a large, half- 
seeing, half-blind trust that the true sacrifice would 
be offered ; and his faith laid hold, not of the little 
lamb from his own flock, but on another Lamb, a 
Lamb which God had reared on His own farm, 
" the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world " — 
slain, not only in God's, but also in man's estimation. 
God, by accepting his gifts, testified to the righteous- 
ness of his person. How may men now obtain 
assurance of salvation ? By clearly apprehending 
that God has accepted our sacrifice, even Jesus 
Christ. His offering of Himself received the Divine 



3t8 primeval revelation 

approval ; the fire descended and devoured the 
sacrifice. Devoured the sacrifice ? Nay, rather the 
sacrifice devoured the fire. The fire consumed 
Abel's sacrifice, and Abraham's, and Aaron's ; the 
sacrifices disappeared, but the fire continued to burn 
on and on and on. But when it fell on Calvary, 
instead of the fire consuming the sacrifice, the 
sacrifice extinguished the fire. I know of no one 
who has given a more striking expression to this 
truth than a farm labourer in Flintshire. When 
one of his young mistresses was dying of consump- 
tion, the mother asked the servant to administer 
spiritual consolation to her in her great depression. 
Retiring to the field, placing his back against an 
oak, the godly servant put together a few lines of 
poetry, and repeated them to the evident comfort of 
the young saint. I venture to append a translation : 

The sky above my head 

Was turned to darkest night, 
Nor sun nor moon nor stars 
Could shed a ray of light ; 
And Justice stern, 'mid thunders loud, 
Was shooting lightnings from the cloud. 

My guilty conscience woke, 

It filled my soul with dread ; 
Its voice I'll ne'er forget 

Whilst on the earth I tread ; 
In anguish sore away I fled, 
Not knowing where to hide my head. 

I turned me to the law 

In hope there rest to find, 
I asked in accents low 

For calm and peace of mind ; 



CAIN AND ABEL: EVIL AND GOOD 319 

Escape, said she, away— oh ! flee 
For very life to Calvary. 

'Mid thunders loud and lon^- 
With all my might I sped ; 
Around me lightnings played 
Like soldiers scarlet-red ; 
I reached the Mount, both faint and sad, 
And saw the Saviour crimson-clad. 

Although my flesh be grass, 

And all my bones but clay, 
'Mid lightnings red I sing- 
God washed my sins away ; 
The Rock upholds me in the flood, 
The lightnings die in Jesu's blood ! 

On Cain, however, the service had a contrary effect : 
"Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell." 
When anger is nursed in the breast, it cannot be 
concealed in the face ; the scowl and darkened 
visage indicate the inward tumult. Then follows 
the interview between Jehovah and Cain. How 
are we to understand it? As an embodiment in 
language of the conflicting thoughts which were 
contending for the mastery in the heart of the elder 
brother ? Scarcely, for the train and the quality of 
the thoughts are such as would not rise spontane- 
ously in the breast of an angry man. Hence the 
inference that God, appearing to Cain, expostulated 
kindly, patiently with him. Marvellous the solici- 
tude of God respecting the first family! Wonder- 
ful the condescension which prompted Him to talk 
to them as a man talketh to a friend, striving to 
guide their feet in the paths of peace. " Jehovah 
said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth, and why is thy 



320 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

countenance fallen ? If thou doest well, shalt thou 
not be accepted or have the excellency ? and if thou 
doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee 
shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him." 
So archaic and elliptical is this language that 
commentators are driven hard to fix on the right 
meaning. 

Three interpretations have been advanced and ably 
supported. The first is that Cain, being the elder, 
had the right of primogeniture, a right undefined, 
but evidently founded on a law of nature. Yet 
Abel, by his loving, placid disposition, had probably 
supplanted him in the affections of his parents. Now 
it was made clear that Abel was also the favourite 
of Heaven. " And Cain was very wroth, and his 
countenance fell." The Creator thereupon, in His 
infinite benignity, condescended to reason with this 
moody, wayward man: Why art thou wroth? If 
thou doest well, if thou believest the revelation 1 
have made of a promised Deliverer, and in attestation 
of thy faith bringest the prescribed offerings, thou 
also shalt be accepted of Me, and thou shalt have the 
excellency, the pre-eminence over thy brother, thou 
shalt enjoy the rights of primogeniture, and as the first- 
born thou shalt rule over him. But that God should 
thus argue about birthrights does not seem to me 
worthy of the solemnity of the occasion, or befitting 
the dignity of the Speaker. 

The second is an advance on the first, and concerns 
itself about moral character, not natural rights : Why 
art thou wroth, and why is thy countenance fallen ? 
Do well, and the consciousness of uprightness in the 
inward parts will illumine thy countenance, drive 



CaIn Anid abel: evil and good 32! 

away the dark frown, and cause thee to look up 
joyously. But if thou docst not well, if thou trans- 
gressest, and yet declinest to bring a sacrifice of blood 
to expiate thy guilt according to the revelation I 
have made of My will, sin lieth at the door— at thy 
door, not Mine; thou alone art responsible for thy 
rejection. Sin like a coiled serpent croucheth at the 
door of thy heart, craving for mastery over thee ; 
but beware that thou yieldest not to the temptation 
—instead of sin ruling over thee, rule thou over it. 
Thus God mercifully warns Cain to nip his envy in 
the bud, for, if cherished, it would assuredly obtain 
dominion over him ; and once envy, cruel as the 
grave, would get the rulership, it might drive him to 
murder and all atrocities. How His Spirit wrestled 
with this moody, choleric man to check him in his 
downward career ! 

The third interpretation, whilst not excluding the 
second, concerns itself about the acceptance by Cain 
of the revealed way of salvation. The word em- 
ployed for sin ichattath) is the technical term in the 
Pentateuch for sin-offering : " If thou doest not well 
a sin-offering lieth at the door or gate of Paradise, 
where are the Cherubim and the Flame of Fire ; 
submit to My revealed will, and offer thy sin-offering, 
and thou wilt obtain My approval." Either of these 
interpretations yields a good sense ; but the last 
appears to me to coalesce best with the drift and 
current of Scriptural theology, for it must be always 
borne in mind that pubHc worship, not private 
religion, is the theme of the Old Testament — public 
worship, to be sure, as an infallible index of private 
morality. 

21 



322 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

But Cain would not be mollified : " And Cain 
talked with Abel his brother. And it came to pass, 
when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against 
Abel his brother, and slew him." How horrible! 
Cain, the firstborn child of humanity, a fratricide! 
How awfully must have burnt his ire ! How un- 
governable must have been his passion ! He imbued 
his hands in his own brother's blood. How came he 
to do it ? St. John answers : " He was of the wicked 
one." The devil wrought ruin and disaster to our 
first parents in the Garden ; he is now working havoc 
among their children. Tell me that there is no 
devil, that human nature is alone responsible for 
all the atrocious deeds and dark villainies of his- 
tory, and I utterly despair of its salvation. But 
tell me that there is a devil behind, a fiendish spirit 
as the prime instigator of the horrors and massacres, 
and I feel a load lifted from my heart— humanity 
is not quite so bad as I thought, I have yet hope 
of its ultimate reclamation by the help of Grace 
Divine. 

Jewish tradition says that Cain, seeing a crow, 
having killed another, dig a hole in the ground to 
bury its victim, took the hint, excavated a grave — 
the first human grave opened on the earth — and 
interred the bloody corse of his brother, in the hope 
of concealing his own more gory sin ! As if Cain 
had not as much brain as a rook I Having thus 
disposed of his brother, he directed his steps home- 
ward, and, passing on his way one of the four 
rivers which watered Eden, bathed in its cooling 
waters, laved his throbbing temples, washed away 
the bloodstains from off his hands. But nay, human 



CAIN AND ABEL: EVIL AND GOOD 323 

blood will not wash. The stain remains, says folk- 
lore, on the oaken floor where it fell. 

Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood 
Clean from my hand ? No ; this my hand will rather 
The multitudinous seas incarnadine, 
Making the green one red. ^ 

To that primeval home the shades of night came, 
but no Abel. Her maternal instincts fearing evil 
had befallen her favoured son, Eve did not rest. 
Early the following morning the other sons and 
daughters were organised into search-parties ; but 
their explorations were without success. Inde- 
scribable was the agony and bewilderment in that 
first home at the first break in the family circle. 

The Sabbath came round again, and even the 
mysterious disappearance of Abel must not interrupt 
the rites of religion. So the large family assembled 
as usual to the east of Eden, in front of the Cherubim 
and the Flame of Fire. As the service was pro- 
ceeding, God out of the Flame addressed Cain, 
" Where is Abel thy brother ? " This colloquy was 
not in private, else there would have been none to 
report it. " And Cain said, I know not ; am I my 
brother's keeper ? " Do you not hear the serpent's 
hiss? "And God said. What hast thou done? 
The voice of thy brother's blood cricth unto Me 
from the ground." The murder is out, the criminal 
is detected. Cain, quaking in every limb, cries 
out in anguish of soul, " My sin is greater than can 
be forgiven ! My punishment is greater than I 
can bear ! Behold, Thou hast driven me out from 

^ Macbelhy Act ii., scene 2. 



324 Primeval revelation 

the face of the earth, and from Thy face I shall 
be hid ; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond 
in the earth ; and it shall come to pass, that 
every one that findeth me shall slay me." " And 
Jehovah said unto Cain, Therefore whosoever 
slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him 
sevenfold. And Jehovah set a mark upon Cain, 
lest any finding him should kill him." What this 
mark was has much exercised the ingenuity of 
commentators. Some suppose it was a mark visible 
to Cain, but invisible to others. Were that the 
case, what was the good of it ? I feel, therefore, 
constrained to adopt the conclusion that it was a 
mark, as of the beast, on his forehead or countenance 
— a mark which loudly proclaimed to all who saw 
him that he was accursed of God ; but because he 
was in the hands of the Almighty, men dared not 
take vengeance into their own. 

Thereupon " he went out from the presence of 
the Lord " — not from the Lord, but from His 
Presence, that Flame of Fire which turned every 
way. Away he travelled from the Flame which 
had beheld his murder and discovered his evil deed. 
Away, away into the land of Nod, accompanied 
by his faithful wife and children, he wandered, 
with dishevelled hair and haggard looks, the crime 
of murder weighing heavily on his conscience. 
"Hark ! the voice ! the voice of thy brother's blood 
crying unto Me from the ground." To this deep^ 
never-dying truth vEschylus gives a terrible, appalling 
expression in one of his plays : the Furies relentlessly 
pursue the murderer, and are not satisfied till they 
quench their thirst in his blood. 



CAIN AND ABEL : EVIL AND GOOD 325 

There is a law that blood, once poured on earth 
By murderous hands, demands that other blood 
Be shed in retribution. From the slain 
Erinnys calls aloud for vengeance still, 
Till death in justice meet be paid for death. 

But from this terrific savageness, the relentless fury 
of Greek sentiment, Holy Writ is free. What is 
revenge among the Greeks is only vengeance among 
the Hebrews — a distinction which redounds greatly 
to the credit of the people of revelation. 

" The voice of thy brother's bloods [plural] cries 
unto Me from the ground." Cain had inflicted on 
his brother more wounds than one ; in his anger 
he had hacked away at the body ; and from each 
gash the trickling blood cried to heaven for 
vengeance. Oh, the eloquence of blood ! Mark 
Antony, in his oration over the dead Caesar, begins 
by saying that the " wounds of Caesar like dumb 
mouths did ope their ruby lips to beg the voice 
and utterance of his tongue " ; but finishes by asking 
the wounds to speak for him : " I show you sweet 
Caesar's wounds, poor, poor dumb mouths, and bid them 
speak for me." Then he showed the crowd Ca,'sar's 
vesture punctured by the traitors' daggers, and 
that moved them to pity. He afterwards showed 
them Caesar's body, all marred and gashed, and the 
sight of blood drove them to rise and mutiny. But 
why all this tumult and commotion? It is blood 
that is speaking. " The voice of thy brother's blood 
crieth unto Me from the ground. Cursed therefore 
art thou from the face of the earth." We, however, 
know of another blood— "the blood of sprinkling, 
which speaketh better things than that of Abel." 



326 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

Abel's blood cried that justice might prevail on the 
earth ; Christ's blood cries that mercy may triumph 
over judgment. The blood of Abel besought 
vengeance on the murderer ; the blood of Christ 
beseeches pardon, saying, " Father, forgive them ; 
for they know not what they do." 



CHAPTER XIII 

ANTEDILUVIANS: DEVELOPMENT OF EVIL 

FROM Adam down to the Deluge human life 
extended from eight hundred to one thousand 
years. The accuracy of these figures has often been 
.challenged. Many modifications, based principally 
on the supposed variable signification of the term 
"year," have been offered, but none have proved 
satisfactory. The Genesis account is moreover cor- 
roborated by the traditions of other nations, which 
recall a golden age when men enjoyed lives of 
extraordinary length. This longevity the Hebrew 
prophets in after-times converted into a metaphor, 
with which to paint the future felicity and prosperity 
of Messiah's reign. 

I therefore provisionally accept these brief memoirs 
as true in fact and figure. What were the causes at 
work to secure for the ancients such long immunity 
from death baffles inquiry. Sufficient reason cannot 
be found in the nature of man or his environments^ 
or in both together. The reason is not in Nature, but 
in Providence ; for longevity was favourable to the 
transmission of truth, when book-making was not 
a trade, Methuselah was a contemporary for two 

327 



328 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

hundred and fifty years with Adam ; and, dweUing 
in the same region, doubtless saw him, and heard 
probably from his lips the story of Eden and the 
Fall. Methuselah would hand it down carefully to 
his grandson Noah, who again would repeat it to the 
generations succeeding the Flood. The tradition 
could thus be preserved in comparative purity down 
to the days of Moses. Longevity was thus favour- 
able to the transmission of historic truth and highly 
advantageous to the advancement of learning and 
civilisation ; but when writing became prevalent 
no special reason existed for the prolongation of 
life. 

But if long life favoured the preservation of true 
religion, it also helped forward the propagation of 
vice. The ages of the descendants of Cain are not 
given, for, from a redemption point of view, they 
were of no consequence ; but doubtless they ran 
parallel with those of the pious line of Seth. Just 
imagine the notorious filibusters of the Norman 
Conquest living in the Vale of Glamorgan, where 
so many of them settled, down to the present day 
— eight hundred years ; how they would oppress 
men, corrupt society, and convert the land into a 
menagerie. That, however, was the case before the 
Flood. " God saw that the wickedness of man was 
great in the earth." In mercy to men themselves 
God gradually shortened their lives. Better for 
hardened criminals to die at eighty than live to eight 
hundred. When they lived long, what a bedlam 
men made of the world ! 

But all that is myth, remark the critics. Let 
us then examine it more narrowly. According to 



ANTEDILUVIANS: DEVELOPMENT OF EVIL 329 

Genesis, the number of generations from the Creation 
to the Flood is Ten, including that of Noah. " Now 
it is a significant fact," writes Mr. Urquhart, " that this 
very number ten reappears with most remarkable 
persistency in the ancient traditions of the various 
races. The Egyptians believed that ten deities 
reigned before man. The Sybelline books speak of 
ten ages which elapsed between the Creation and the 
Deluge. The Iranians looked back to their ten 
Peischaddiit, or monarchs, 'the men of the ancient 
law,' who drank of the pure homa, the drink of the 
immortals, and who watched over holiness. The 
Hindoos speak of the nine Brahinidikas, who with 
Brahma, their maker, are called the ten Pitris, or 
fathers. The Germans and the Scandinavians tell 
of the ten ancestors of Odin ; the Chinese of the 
ten Emperors, who shared the Divine nature, and 
reigned before the dawn of historic times ; the Arabs 
of the ten kings of the Adites, primitive inhabitants 
of the Peninsula embraced between the Red Sea 
and the Persian Gulf. The Phoenician historian, 
Sacchoniathon, also gives ten generations of Primitive 
Patriarchs." ^ 

" We find ourselves," says Lenormant, " confronted 
with an imposing array of concordant testimony, 
gathered in from the four quarters of the earth, which 
leaves no room for doubt in regard to the common 
ground of the ancient narratives, touching the prin- 
cipal days of man among all the great cilivised 
nations of the old world. The agreement as to the 
number of antediluvian patriarchs, with the Bible 

^ Rev. John Urquhart, The Bible anil Modern Discoveries ^ 
p. 158, 



330 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

Statement, in the traditions of nations— most diverse 
one from another — is manifested in a striking way. 
They are ten in the story of Genesis, and with a 
strange persistence this number ten is reproduced in 
the legends of a very great number of nations, when 
dcahng with their primitive ancestors, yet shrouded 
in the midst of fable. To whatever epoch they trace 
back these ancestors, whether before or after the 
Deluge, whether the mythic or historic side pre- 
dominate in their physiognomy, they invariably offer 
this sacramental number ten." ^ 

How came all these nations to fix on Ten as the 
number of the Primitive Patriarchs? To say that 
the stories are myths leaves the problem unsolved. 
The question is, How came all the myths to fix on 
the same number, and that number correspondent 
to the number in Genesis ? Does not this singular 
agreement point to the one central historic fact, out 
of which all the myths sprang, that the Mosaic record 
is correct in its presentation of the Ten antediluvian 
Patriarchs ? The Genesis record explains the myths, 
whereas, on any other hypothesis, they remain utterly 
inexplicable. 

I. Let us direct our attention to the Cainite 
family. 

Departing from the Eden district, where God 
vouchsafed visible symbols of His presence, accom- 
panied by his family, Cain migrated eastward to 
unexplored and uninhabited regions, hoping to 
escape the bitter memories of his horrid deed, and 
to earn a scanty living from the doubly accursed 

^ The Beginnings of History^ pp. 218, 219. 



ANTEDILUVIANS: DEVELOPMENT OF EVIL 331 

soil. But wherever he roamed, conscience gave him 
no peace — 

With crimson clouds before his eyes, 
And flames about his brain, 

For blood had left upon his soul 
Its everlasting stain.' 

Gradually the burden grew lighter. The fear of 
imminent judgment having been allayed, the remem- 
brance of the murder grew fainter, the conscience 
waxed harder, and Cain devoted himself to the 
steady, obdurate pursuit of his worldly avocation. 
The years passed. He never once presented him- 
self in the ancestral sanctuary. His family, fast 
increasing, developed into a powerful clan ; and 
Cain settled down into stolid indifference to all 
spiritual interests. Of indomitable energy and end- 
less resources, battling valiantly against his doom, 
he subjugated the forces of nature, and established 
a thriving community. 

In reviewing briefly the progress made in ante- 
diluvian times, be it remembered that men lived on the 
earth nearly one thousand years, and that therefore 
they had powerful incentives to hard and continuous 
work ; and that, having made an invention, they 
lived long enough to supervise and direct all improve- 
ments, the experience of centuries of personal study 
and observation being at their command. Suppose 
Faraday, Newton, and Watt were allowed one 
thousand years to continue their experiments and 
calculations, what rapid progress, what long strides, 
science would make! This advantage the thinkers 

1 Thomas Hood, Eugene Aram, 



332 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

of the old world abundantly enjoyed. Be it further 
remembered that all spoke one language, so that the 
exchange of ideas was easy, and some clue will be, 
afforded to the rapid advance of the arts and sciences 
in their times. 

The Cainite family are credited in the fourth 
chapter of Genesis with the honour of being the 
initiators of civilisation, in its material aspect. By 
civilisation in its profoundest sense is understood 
a condition of existence opposed to savagery ; not 
necessarily acquaintance with and deftness in me- 
chanical crafts, but calm, quiet thoughtfulness, self- 
control, consciousness of obligation to a higher law, 
and an honest endeavour to discharge social duties. 
Were I transferred to the richest auriferous region 
in the world, I would feel myself utterly helpless. 
Having never been a miner, I know not the best way 
of blasting rocks. Having never been a gold-digger, 
I am ignorant of the best method of extracting gold 
from the quartz. Yet were I pronounced less 
civilised than the navvies of the Australian bush, I 
should have just cause for resentment. Consider 
civilisation on its moral side, and to the posterity 
of Seth, doubtless, belonged the superiority. But in 
efforts to subdue nature, to adorn temporal existence, 
the Bible, with strict impartiality, ascribes the pre- 
cedence to the godless descendants of Cain. Volun- 
tarily depriving themselves of cult, they devoted 
themselves to culture. Expecting no blessing from 
heaven, they extracted all they could from the earth. 

Assisted by his children, Cain " began to build a 
city, and called the name of the city after the name 
of his son, Enoch." Here we behold the birth of 



ANTEDILUVIANS: DEVELOPMENT OF EVIL 333 

architecture. Men, doubtless, dwelt in houses before ; 
but this is the first sustained effort to construct a 
town and institute municipal government. The 
attempt may not have resulted in the erection of 
palatial residences ; on the other hand, there is no 
reason for the description often given that it was 
only an aggregation of wigwams, like African villages, 
protected by wooden palisades or a hedge of prickly 
hawthorns. If primitive men were only emerging 
from barbarism, this representation of their first essay 
at architecture might be true. But the assumption 
of the Bible all along is, that men began in a state 
of civilisation, so far as the mental and moral 
faculties are concerned. Though a wicked man, 
Cain was richly dowered intellectually ; and the 
Edenic civilisation he had received from his parents, 
he imparted to his descendants, improved and 
adapted to their new requirements. 

There is every reason to believe that this Cainite 
city was more than an assemblage of ill-constructed 
hovels, that here we have an able, long-sustained 
effort to construct a regular town : not with the view, 
as some commentators allege, of converting it into a 
fortification, to enable Cain to resist successfully the 
onsets of his enemies, the fear of personal violence 
for the murder of his brother having long ago 
vanished ; but rather to improve the material con- 
ditions of life, to multiply its comforts by association, 
whilst not wholly oblivious of the subordinate object 
of warding off possible attacks by hostile tribes. 
That the structures were simple in their plan, and 
antique in their appearance, cannot be controverted; 
but as the builders lived long, experience soon came 



334 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

to their aid. Mechanical skill must have arrived at 
a comparatively advanced stage to enable Noah to 
build the ark of gopher wood. Take any chance 
company of ministers or scholars, brought up in an 
enlightened country, and not totally unobservant of 
the ways of men ; yet it may be doubted if all of 
them combined can unravel the specifications of the 
ark and construct a ship in accordance therewith. 
Cain " began " to build ; the work progressed through 
the centuries ; the town became recognised as the 
capital of the district, having probably for its 
governor its founder and the natural head of the 
tribe. Underneath the ancient city of Nipur, in 
Southern Babylonia, have been discovered the re- 
mains of a more ancient city still, covered with a 
huge deposit of mud and sand, which, it is averred, 
could have proceeded neither from the Euphrates 
nor the Tigris, and which it is suspected is ante- 
diluvian. Further excavations may give us clearer 
ideas of the architecture, and the civilisation gener- 
ally, of the world before the Flood. 

In Genesis the murder of Abel and the building 
of the city named Enoch are closely connected, the 
former being the occasion of the latter. Lenormant, 
with vast erudition, has shown that, in the mytho- 
logies of the world, the institution of famous cities is 
always associated with murder. His views are well 
summarised by Mr. Urquhart in the following 
extract : " The walls of the city," of which Sargon 
was the builder, "were, so to say, laid in blood. 
These indications are explained and emphasised by 
the traditions of all nations. The legend meets us 
in the story of Romulus and Remus. The two 



ANTEDILUVIANS: DEVELOPMENT OF EVlL 335 

brothers quarrelled because of the oinens granted by 
the gods " — a reminder of the token by which God 
showed His acceptance of Abel but His rejection of 
Cain. " The birds appeared first to Remus, and he 
claimed that his site should be chosen for the city. 
But Romulus afterwards had an omen, which he 
contended showed that his site was approved. They 
had a subsequent meeting, as Romulus was building, 
and then the pent-up wrath flamed out. Remus 
was slain, and Romulus built his city with hands 
stained with his brother's blood. The story meets us 
everywhere. Each famous city, of the origin of which 
the legends speak, has human blood poured into its 
trenches. Murder and city-building are bound to- 
gether. The city-builder is stained with this blackest 
of crimes. The stones of his city walls are laid in the 
blood of one whose life ought to have been to him 
among the most sacred which the earth contained. 
There is no apparent connection between city- 
building and brother-slaying. What, then, has made 
the nations link these so closely together ? The 
Scripture supplies an explanation, which brings us 
out of myth into the sobriety and the light of history. 
Put that narrative aside, and there is nothing in the 
whole world's literature to make known to us what 
all those signs and tales are striving to say. Accept 
it as history, and the mystery is solved." 

A brief account follows of the origination of other 
arts. Special attention is directed to the family of 
Lamech, for to the genius characteristic of his family 
are attributed several inventions of importance. 
" And Adah bare Jabal : he was the father of such as 
dwell in tents and of such as have cattle." Jabal 



336 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

found it to his advantage to move his cattle from 
place to place, following the pasturage, and for 
convenience, abandoning towns, he dwelt in tents. 
He was the initiator of the nomadic life — a statement 
which goes to prove that at the first men lived in 
communities. The mention of tents suggests another 
branch of industry, upon which tents are dependent 
—the art of weaving. No doubt the skins of animals, 
properly tanned, made efficient coverings ; but it is 
incredible that mankind, displaying so much ingenuity 
in other directions, should remain ignorant of the 
simple art of weaving the wool of sheep and the hair 
of goats into much-needed cloth. Tradition ascribes 
the invention of the distaff and the weaving art to 
Naamah, the daughter of this family, whose name is 
here mentioned as well known. 

Then follows the art of music : " And his brother's 
name was Jubal : he was the father of all such as 
handle the harp and organ," or, according to Luther's 
translation, " the father of all fiddlers and pipers." 
This presupposes the previous discovery of the 
octave. Jubal made musical science an especial 
study ; he is credited with the invention of the harp 
and organ, thus occupying the same place in Hebrew 
theology as Apollo in Greek mythology. Not of 
course the harp and organ in their perfected state, 
but in their first rudiments, representing respectively 
stringed and wind instruments — the harp resembling 
the ancient lyre, and the organ the ancient Panda^an 
pipe. This would be about seven or eight hundred 
years after the Fall, so that James Montgomery's 
fancy that Cain heard the music and felt tranquillised 
and soothed is not entirely without foundation, 



ANTEDILUVIANS: DEVELOPMENT OF EVIL 337 

though the ground idea of the poem that he was a 
maniac, of haggard appearance and wild demeanour, 
is distinctly contradicted by the direct statements 
of this chapter. Living in communities, the ante- 
diluvians cultivated the fine arts ; the fair sex began 
to exert their refining influence, and special mention 
is made of Adah, the adorned, of Zillah, the 
musical player, and of Naamah, the beautiful. In- 
strumental music was in vogue ; and instrumental 
music always follows, never precedes, vocal music. 
Does not the sobriquet of Zillah suggest that she 
accompanied the harp with her voice? 

Another son of Lamech was Tubal-Cain, " an 
instructor of every artificer in brass and iron " : not 
the discoverer of metals and the first to apply them 
to practical purposes, but one who made memorable 
improvements in their manufacture. Metallurgy 
was neither unknown nor neglected. The metals 
were extracted from the stone, smelted in furnaces, 
forged into industrial machinery and weapons of 
war. Of all the primeval smiths, Tubal-Cain 
(Vulcan) was the most celebrated. Thus a large 
industry was established in copper, brass, and iron ; 
and the ancients, it is believed, had a method of 
hardening copper, the secret of which has not yet 
been discovered by our much-vaunted modern science. 
Notwithstanding the brevity of the notices, enough 
is said to show that the antediluvians were a mighty 
people, muscularly strong, intellectually powerful, 
and artistically trained. As with Pompeii and other 
ancient cities, I doubt not but that the high state 
of civilisation to which the antediluvians had 
attained would fill the modern mind with admiration, 

22 



338 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

even as their indescribable degradation in morality 
shocks the modern conscience. Only the sins of 
civilised nations could loudly clamour for the 
destruction of the world. 

Music, however, cannot be much developed without 
the aid of her twin-sister poetry. The historian 
could not give us plans of the architecture of the 
ancient world — the buildings had all been demolished 
by the Deluge. He could not give us specimens of 
their harps and organs — they were made of perish- 
able materials and had rotted before his time. But 
the preservation of poetry depends upon memory, 
and therefore he is able to give us an example of 
the ancient ars poetica. The poet is Lamech ; his 
effusion is known as the Song of the Sword. 

Lamech said unto his wives : 

Adah and Zillah, hear my voice ; 

Ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech : 

For I have slain a man to my wounding, 

And a young man to my hurt. 

If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, 

Truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold. 

It is the oldest piece of poetry extant, the only 
specimen of antediluvian literature that has come 
down to our day. How was it preserved ? Tradition 
answers that, in the intermarriages between the 
Sethites and the Cainites, " the sons of God and the 
daughters of men," Ham took Naamah, Lamech's 
daughter, to wife ; and that, through her, her father's 
composition passed over into the new world. But, 
apart from that, the Song doubtless became cele- 
brated. It is just the kind of song that strikes the 
- popular imagination, full of sound and fury, marked 



ANTEDILUVIANS: DEVELOPMENT OF EVIL 339 

by swagger and the military spirit. Such a song 
would inevitably reach the family of Noah, and, 
committed to memory, find its way into the new 
age. Indeed, there is no reason for disbelieving that 
writing was an antediluvian accomplishment; the 
difficulty is all on the other side. On any other 
hypothesis, how to account for the preservation of 
the antediluvian registers ? Men so richly dowered 
intellectually, advancing rapidly in knowledge, culti- 
vating the fine arts, fashioning timber and working 
in metals, were not likely to be unable to devise an 
alphabet or invent hieroglyphics, by means of which 
they could leave memorials behind them or exchange 
ideas with one another. 

Be that as it may, Lamech's Song has been pre- 
served, and in it we see the characteristic feature 
of Hebrew poetry — strophic parallelism. This, I 
know, creates a new difficulty — Did Lamech compose 
in Hebrew ? But the presence of the unknown 
should not blind our eyes to that which is clear. 

The chief significance of the Song consists in 
the lurid light it sheds on the moral condition of 
the Cainite family. Lamech had two wives. Mono- 
gamy was the sacred law of primeval life, and was 
probably scrupulously observed for centuries after 
the Fall. At last, the unbridled lusts of men broke 
through all restraints ; and in Lamech's Song 
polygamy is an accomplished fact, publicly avowed, 
and, as usual, carries in its train jealousies, heart- 
burnings, conspiracies, murders. It further shows 
that, contemporaneous with the development of the 
fine arts, society was lapsing into a state of 
disorganisation, lawlessness, and violence. Wars, 



340 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

private and public, were being waged : hence the 
manufacture of the dagger and the sword, and the 
roUicking glee with which their invention was hailed. 
So proud was Lamech of the possession of weapons 
of war that his fierce enthusiasm burst forth in a 
war-song. 

Studious they appear 
Of arts that polish life, — inventors rare — 
Unmindful of their Maker, though His Spirit 
Taught them ; but they His gifts acknowledge none. * 

What then is the meaning of the Song? The 
traditional interpretation is, that Lamech in it 
celebrates his own prowess in slaying two men, an 
adult and a youth. If this be true, it exhibits the 
growth of insolent sin in society. Cain, the first 
on the register, slew a man, and was horrified — so 
horrified that he and his family fled into a land of 
isolation. Lamech, the last in the series, slays two 
men. But, instead of being dismayed, he glories 
in his valour, and makes his murderous hate a 
subject of encomium ; and when murder is eulogised 
in poetry, it proves that society is sunk into un- 
fathomable depths in moral callousness and vice. 

This exposition, however, is questioned, and that 
on good grounds. " The Song of the Sword, which 
gives expression to the excitement attending the 
first invention of deadly weapons, contains the 
following couplet : 

I have slain a man to my wounding, 
And a young man to my hurt. 

Does this passage imply the slaying of one person 
• Milton, Paradise Lost. 



ANTEDILUVIANS : DEVELOPMENT OF EVIL 34! 

or two persons ? This question cannot be called a 
mere matter of technicalities. Commentators of 
the period, when the secret of parallelism was lost, 
understood the words to mean that two men were 
slain ; and connecting the passage with the succeed- 
ing couplet. 

If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, 
Truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold, 

they found an interpretation for the whole by sup- 
posing that, when Lamech became advanced in 
years, he carried with him a youth to show him 
where to point his arrows ; that this youth directing 
him to shoot into a certain bush, Lamech thereby slew 
Cain, and made himself liable to the curse invoked 
on the slayer of that outcast. In his rage Lamech 
shot a second arrow at his youthful attendant ; and 
thus two slayings are accounted for. But to an ear 
accustomed to parallelism it is clear enough that 
no such violence of interpretation is required. The 
second line of a couplet need not be a separate 
statement from that of the first line, but may be, in 
the spirit of parallelism, a saying over again of what 
has been said. Thus the couplet needs only imply 
the death of a single person, or, better, slaying as 
a general idea. Thus the whole meaning of the 
passage has been changed by attention to a detail 
of versification." ^ 

In accordance with the idea of general slaying, the 
majority of modern commentators view the Song as 
hypothetical, in which Lamech in fierce self-reliance 
boasts beforehand what he would do should certain 

1 Moulton, Literary Study of the Bible, pp. 68, 69. 



342 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

contingencies arise. But whichever interpretation we 
adopt, the venom of the serpent is seen inflaming 
the passions of men. 

II. In the Genesis narrative no discovery in the 
physical world is attributed to the godly line of Seth, 
no invention is put down to their credit. This 
feature is in harmony with post-diluvian history : to 
the Gentiles belonged the arts and sciences, only 
ethics and revelation to the people of God. 

Josephus, however, records the tradition that Seth 
attained celebrity as an astronomer ; and the 
" columns of Seth," on which he was reported to have 
inscribed his observations of the celestial bodies, 
have found a permanent place in literature. Enoch 
also is affirmed to have devoted much attention to 
astronomy. His fame, under the name of Idris, was 
carried to the West by the Celtic nations ; and in his 
honour one of the noblest Welsh mountains is named 
Cader Idris, the Chair of Idris, because on the top 
of it, Enoch, the star-gazer as well as the saint, was 
supposed to have sat to carry on his observations. 
These traditions show that the ethnic nations 
gradually gave a physical turn to the spiritual fact 
of their fellowship with God. Their communion 
with heaven was construed to mean the study of the 
heavenly bodies. 

These floating traditions are mentioned to show 
to better advantage the holy reserve, the balanced 
sobriety, which always and everywhere pervade Holy 
Writ. According to Genesis, the Sethites became 
remarkable for the simple reason that through them 
the Divine promise of redemption was flowing on 
towards its fulfilment in the future Seed, and that 



ANTEDILUVIANS: DEVELOPMENT OF EVIL 343 

by them true worship was perpetuated. Intellectual 
greatness belonged to the family of Cain ; to the 
family of Seth belonged, not mental, but moral 
greatness. Given intellectual greatness and moral 
greatness, which do you think superior? Young 
people, I fear, would give the preference to greatness 
of intellect, and I am not sure but that there was a time 
when I would have made the same selection. Since 
then, however, I see things in a different light— the 
man or the nation who has a genius for goodness 
stands higher in my estimation now than the man 
or the nation who has a genius for learning. The 
devil is a genius in intellect, but God is a genius in 
goodness. " Show me Thy glory" prayed Moses. " I 
will make My goodness pass before thee," answered 
God. God's glory consists in His goodness, His 
greatness lies in His character. Judged by this 
standard, who are the worthier of respect and ad- 
miration—the Cainites or the Sethites, the men of 
intellect or the men of character? 
. In the days of Enos, Seth's son, " began men to 
call upon the name of the Lord "—a statement which 
has occasioned considerable differences of opinion. 
The difficulty, however, is chiefly linguistic. Some 
translate: "Then men began to profane the name 
of the Lord." That is, in the days of Enos idolatry 
commenced, then men began to carve graven images 
of the Unseen. This rendering does not seem to 
harmonise well with the drift and import of the 
passage. Preference should therefore be given to 
the double rendering in the x^uthoriscd Version, for 
the marginal reading and that in the body of the 
verse involve each other : " Then men began to call 



344 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

upon the name of the Lord " ; " then men began to 
call themselves by the name of the Lord." Delitzsch 
translates the word " declare " or " proclaim." The 
import seems to be that now public prayers and oral 
addresses were introduced into the public worship 
of Jehovah. Whereas previously the service was 
confined to the offering of sacrifices and the con- 
fession of sin, in the days of Enos prayer, instruction, 
and exhortation were added — the germs of prophecy, 
the first beginnings of preaching. The population 
was now fast increasing, and to keep the new genera- 
tions from lapsing into crass ignorance in regard to 
spiritual religion, some settled method of instruction 
was absolutely required. Out of this sprang the 
other fact, that men began to call themselves by 
the name of Jehovah. In the promiscuous condition 
of society the religious men in the line of Seth 
separated themselves, not locally but spiritually, from 
the impious and profane. As the disciples of Christ 
became soon known as Christians, so true worshippers 
now became known as " sons of God " in contra- 
distinction from the " children of men." But be the 
precise meaning what it may, one thing stands out 
conspicuously — that in the days of Enos there broke 
out a great revival of true religion, worshippers of 
Jehovah became more pronounced and courageous, 
the service of God received a sensible lift and 
arrested public attention. 

Thereafter the true religion flowed placidly on for 
centuries, till, about the year 900, the middle epoch 
between the Fall and the Flood, it culminated in 
the life, character, and ministry of Enoch. Of this 
remarkable man the affirmation is twice made that 



ANTEDILUVIANS : DEVELOPMENT OF EVIL 345 

he "walked with God"— a pecuHarity of phraseo- 
logy repeated but once again in the whole Bible, 
in connection with Noah. Abraham is commanded 
to "walk before God," the Israelites to "walk after 
God " ; of Enoch and Noah only is the assertion 
made that they " walked with God." Is this variation 
of phrase accidental, or does it convey a peculiarly 
specific meaning? From it the conclusion has been 
drawn that the Divine theophanies were continued 
to the antediluvian saints, so that their lack of a 
fuller revelation might to some extent be com- 
pensated by the occasional visible presence of God 
in their midst. For three hundred years Enoch 
walked not only before God, but with Him, in inti- 
mate personal fellowship. These long years of close 
communion with God were not spent in solitary 
meditation, for the New Testament gives us to 
understand that, like his grandson Noah, he also was 
a " preacher of righteousness." Indeed, is it not the 
correct view that all these Sethite patriarchs, whose 
names are here given, were preachers, prophets, 
public functionaries, so that Enoch was the "seventh" 
preacher or prophet from Adam? 

With regard to Enoch the testimony of the 
Apostle Jude is emphatic : " Enoch also, the seventh 
from Adam, prophesied of these, saying. Behold, the 
Lord Cometh with ten thousand of His saints, to 
execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that 
are ungodly among them of their ungodly deeds 
which they have ungodly committed, and of all their 
hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken 
against Him" (vers. 14, 15). According to most 
moderns, Jude derived this information from the 



346 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

Book of Enoch, to which reference is often made by 
the Christian Fathers, but which became lost, and was 
only recovered this century in an Ethiopic trans- 
lation. Its authorship was ascribed to the ante- 
diluvian prophet, and it breathes throughout a high 
spirituality. Scholars are generally agreed that it is 
the composition of a devout Jew, living between the 
time of Malachi and the First Advent. The book 
was known to Jude, who makes from it the above 
quotation. Or it is quite possible that Jude incor- 
porated it from Jewish tradition. Either way it 
makes no practical difference, for it is just as con- 
sonant with the inspiration of the Apostle to cite from 
an uninspired book as from an uninspired tradition. 
St. Paul quotes from uninspired Greek wTiters ; why 
not St. Jude from an uninspired Hebrew writer? Its 
insertion by St. Jude as a veritable prophecy of 
Enoch guarantees to Christian believers, though not 
to Christian critics, its historic veracity. Not content 
with enjoying personal fellowship with God, Enoch 
bore public testimony to Him, and proclaimed to an 
ungodly race the sure coming of judgment. The 
doctrine of the Day of Judgment was, therefore, a 
doctrine of the Church before the Flood. 

The prophecy is Enoch's ministry condensed, the 
pith and burden of his preaching. Like Whitefield in 
modern days, he itinerated the country, threatening 
the judgment of the Almighty on all workers of 
iniquity. Like John Wesley, he frequented the 
markets and fairs, and, his heart all aflame with holy 
zeal, denounced dishonesty, violence, and illicit 
pleasures. He had no written revelation, and but few 
like-minded to encourage him in his efforts to stem 



ANTEDILUVIANS : DEVELOPMENT OF EVIL 347 

the swelling tide of iniquity. But he had probably 
heard Adam once and again, when the saints met 
for worship to the east of Eden, tell the story of the 
Fall ; he had heard Eve repeat, word for word, the 
promise of the Seed which was to crush the serpent's 
head ; he had learnt the tale of the murder of Abel 
and the subsequent exile of Cain. He had known 
of other revelations, and doubtless had received fresh 
revelations himself, if the testimony of Jude is to be 
taken as historic truth. 

All this is not written in the Genesis narrative. 
But assuming human nature to have been then what 
it is now, is it at all improbable ? Men were social 
then as now, full of inquisitiveness, ever desirous to 
hear or to tell some new thing. As Enoch was a 
contemporary of Adam dwelling in the same land, 
attracted by religious affinities, is it not likely, nay, 
certain, that he would seek from him knowledge of 
the Fall and of the promise of Redemption ? A 
bold, brave, honest man, he witnessed to God and 
righteousness in a wicked and adulterous generation. 
As usual, his faithful, austere ministry excited the 
laughter of some, roused the ire of others. Even 
nominal professors of religion voted him a fanatic, 
considered him half-cracked. That is not down in 
the Book, you say. Down in the Book ! No ; for 
it is down in human nature, which in its essential 
elements is the same after as before the Deluge. 
Was not Daniel Rowlands, the great evangelist of 
Wales, called by religious people the " cracked " 
clergyman of Llangeitho ? Yet through the " cracks " 
these holy men, intoxicated with seraphic enthusiasm, 
saw farther into the spiritual world than their more 



348 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

demure critics. Enoch's sermon, preserved by Jude, 
is the only specimen of the ministry of the ante- 
diluvian Church which has come down to our day. 
As we have one specimen of the ungodly literature 
of the period in Lamech's song, so have we one 
example of the preaching of that age in Enoch's 
prophecy. Either in writing or memory it was 
treasured by his grandson, Noah ; it floated across 
the waters of the Deluge ; it came down past the 
destruction of Jerusalem ; and is an object of 
curiosity, and a subject of controversy, to the critics 
of the nineteenth century of the Christian era. Its 
chief value to us, however, consists in the dismal 
light it flings on the moral condition of the world at 
the time, midway between the Fall and the Flood. 
Four times in the space of a few lines it repeats the 
word "ungodly," twanging the same string in the 
ear of men till it sounds like the knell of judgment, 
thus showing that flagrant impurities were rife in 
the land. Immorality as usual led to infidelity — 
ungodly men spoke " hard speeches " against Him ! 

Another fact of moment in Enoch's history is his 
translation without seeing death. " He was not, for 
God took him," is the archaic, enigmatic information 
given. " He was translated without seeing death," 
is the apostolic commentary. His disappearance 
must have occasioned great sensation among his 
compatriots. Sudden fear must have fallen on the 
ungodly, strange searchings of heart must have 
broken the slumbers of the Church. Believers and 
unbelievers could not but speculate concerning his 
fate. Thinking he might have been dropped from 
the clouds, they organised exploring parties, who, 



ANTEDILUVIANS : DEVELOPMENT OF EVIL 349 

climbing the mountains, scoured the hollows and 
ravines. But " he was not found, 7tot found, for God 
had translated him." 

This translation of Enoch served a double pur- 
pose. First, it intimated to the men then living 
that death is not the end of existence. " To be or 
not to be ? " That was the all-important question 
then as always. The invisible world becomes by 
degrees an incredible world, especially to men who 
walk by sight, and not by faith. Consequently, in 
each dispensation God has given men one palpable 
demonstration of the existence of a future state. 
Enoch's ascension in the antediluvian dispensation, 
Elijah's in the Jewish, and Christ's in the Christian, all 
proclaim loudly that another world exists. Second, 
it taught the immortality of man in the entirety of 
his nature ; not the survival of the soul only, but 
of the body also. If the antediluvians did not know 
of the resurrection of the dead by a direct revelation 
from heaven, they could not, after the ascension of 
Enoch, but theorise respecting the ultimate fate of 
the body. Contemporary believers — and all the 
patriarchs here enumerated, except Adam and Noah, 
were then alive — deeply revolved it in their minds. 
Gradually the spiritual instinct within appropriated 
it, if not as an article of doctrine, at all events as 
a truth of faith. 

The ancient saints are habitually represented in 
modern books as more ignorant of God and the 
spiritual world than they really were. Adam and 
Enoch, Noah and Abraham, were able, thoughtful 
men, aided in their deep thinking, as occasion re- 
quired, by inspiration from above, The Book of 



350 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

Genesis, so opulent in spiritual truth, is only a 
fragmentary summary of the profound thinking of 
these venerable men. Be the Book of Job the 
production of the Mosaic or a later age, it indicates 
the quality of religious thought from the beginning : 
" I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He 
shall stand at the latter day on the earth ; and 
though after my skin worms destroy this body, 
yet in my flesh I will see God ; whom I shall see 
for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not 
another" (Job xix. 25-27). This wonderful passage 
may be but the efflorescence of true religion in the 
after-time ; but the flower would not show on the 
branch did the sap not circulate in the root. 

From Enoch's time on, a period of another nine 
hundred years, immorality rapidly spread, spiritual 
religion as rapidly declined. In the direct lineage 
of Enoch true worship still survived, and with it 
pure morality ; but the range of their influence was 
annually contracting. Lamech's exclamation — the 
Sethite Lamech — gives us a momentary glimpse into 
the religious condition of the Church : " He called 
his name Noah, saying. This same shall comfort us 
concerning our work and toil of our hands, because 
of the ground which the Lord hath cursed." These 
words suggest that life had become almost intoler- 
able, that the burden of existence was well-nigh 
too heavy to bear, and that as a result the Church 
had fallen into a state of profound dejection. On 
the other hand, they teach that, notwithstanding 
the spread of godlessness, the hope of a Deliverer 
was yet alive, the expectation of the woman's Seed 
to cancel the curse of sin and to usher in an era 



ANTEDILUVIANS: DEVELOPMENT OF EVIL 351 

of plenty and peace. But whilst a faithful few still 
remained, the great majority even of the Sethites 
were overtaken by the flood of ungodliness. The 
unbelief and worldliness of the Cainites, their vices 
and immoralities, overflowed into the Church. Evil 
seemed to be triumphing over Good ; the seed of 
the serpent was fast overcoming the seed of the 
woman. The crisis of the battle was near. The 
Deluge of Sin preceded the Deluge of Water, and 
the former was the cause and justification of the 
latter. 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE DELUGE : THE APPARENT TRIUMPH OF EVIL 

IN his brilliant, self-confident manner Mr. Huxley 
scouts the idea of a deluge such as is described 
in Genesis, " It is difficult," he says, " to persuade 
serious scientific inquirers to occupy themselves in 
any way with the Noachian deluge."^ However, 
scientific men of no mean repute believe that they 
discover traces of land subsidence in Armenia, which 
justifies them in accepting the Mosaic statement. 

But though science has so far but little to say regard- 
ing this question, and that little it says in a hesitant, 
stammering fashion, the traditions of the nations, 
by their more than usual copiousness, compensate 
for this deficiency. There is not a nation, it 
is said, on the five continents, with the exception 
of the negroes, who are not rich in reminiscences 
concerning a great Flood. 

The Chaldaean legend has been preserved by 
Berosus, a heathen priest, who lived three centuries 
before Christ. He gives an elaborate account of 
a mighty Flood, and the escape of Xisuthros in a 
ship — his sending out birds, which the last time 
returned with mud on their feet. Another version, 
substantially the same, is given us by Mr. George 

' Contem;porary Review ^ July, 1890. 
352 



THE DELUGE: APPARENT TRIUMPH OF EVIL 353 

Smith in his translation of the Chaldaean tablets. 
Samus Napisti or Xisuthros — the Biblical Noah — 
relates the story of the Deluge, how he was enjoined 
by the gods to build a ship, and how he gathered 
all seed and animal life into it. When he and his 
family had entered, and the door was shut, the 
tempest began. So terrible was the scene that 
even the gods shook with alarm. " The gods, like 
dogs in their kennel, crouched down in a heap." 
At length the rain abated, and the winds hushed. 
Thereupon Samus Napisti, looking out through the 
window of the ark, beheld "corpses floating on the 
waters like reeds." At last the ship grounded on 
a high mountain. The adventurous voyager sent 
forth a dove, which presently returned, because " a 
resting-place it did not find." He next lets go a 
swallow, which, skimming the sky, flew away ; but 
at length returned because it found " no resting- 
place." A raven was next despatched — " he ate, he 
swam, he wandered away, he returned not." The 
saved man and his family came out, offered a 
sacrifice, around which the gods, smelling the sweet 
savour, " gathered like flies." 

The Greek legend is told by Hesiod and Ovid, 
with slight variations, but practically the same. 
Mankind, because of their high-handed impiety, 
were doomed by Zeus (Jupiter) to destruction. But 
Deucalion, in virtue of his great piety, was warned 
of the coming judgment. Hence he constructed 
a boat in accordance with Divine instructions. 
Presently the Flood came, the world was over- 
whelmed, all mankind perished except Deucalion 
and Pyrrha his wife, their three sons and their three 

23 



354 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

daughters. The boat floated till it landed on 
Parnassus. Deucalion sent forth a dove, which 
before long returned. She was let loose the second 
time, but did not return ; or, according to another 
version, she alighted on the roof of the ark, with her 
claws stained with mud — an indication that the 
assuaging of the waters had commenced. 

Not to occupy space in the narration of the 
Egyptian, Indian, and other legends, call to mind 
the tradition preserved in the folklore of Wales. 
A Welsh Triad informs us that the first master-work 
of the Isle of Britain was the building of a ship 
which carried in it a man and woman when Lake 
Llion (floods) burst its banks ; and the second the 
drawing to land of the Avangc, which brought 
about the disaster. Neivion, with his three sons, Hu, 
Tydain, and Dylan, built a ship, in which all creatures 
were preserved in pairs, and in which Dwywan and 
Dwywrach escaped the destruction which befell all 
mankind besides.^ 

Go where we will, these traditions meet us. How 
to account for them ? By the supposition that a 
Flood never took place ? Then mankind are idiots, 
and in the fact that these legends, identical in 
substance, prevail everywhere, we have a miracle of 
lunacy. Is it not more respectful to the race, and 
more consonant with all that is noble and generous, 
to believe that they are vague recollections of an 
actual tragedy in the history of the world ? All 
nations in the north and south, in the east and west, 
could not have entered into collusion to dream the 
same dream, to tell the same tale, were there not a 
' Owen Morgan, Light of Britannia, p. ii6. 



THE DELUGE: APPARENT TRIUMPH OF EVIL 355 

central fact such as is vouched for in the Genesis 
story. 

I. Of subordinate interest is the inquiry touching 
the extent of the Deluge. 

The language employed by the historian is strong : 
" The waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth ; 
and all the high hills that were under the whole 
heaven were covered" (vii. 19). But assertions of 
similar vehemence and absoluteness in other parts of 
Scripture are known to have a limited signification. 
The phraseology receives its universal character from 
the intensity of feeling in the writer or first reporter 
of the event. The catastrophe was so solemn, 
appalling, and overwhelming that every faculty and 
emotion in Noah were strained to their highest 
tension. Such impressions and emotions always 
manifest themselves in strong rhetorical language, 
the speaker feeling that only superlatives can give 
adequate expression to the truth. Weaker language 
would be subjectively untrue. The description bears 
the stamp of subjective truthfulness ; how far it 
presents objective truth is for the readers to decide. 

Personally I see no cause to maintain the univer- 
sality of the Deluge. In its interpretation the Bible 
always demands sobermindedness. The moral pur- 
pose of the Deluge largely determines its extent- 
The object was the perdition of the human race. 
The Flood need not, therefore, have extended beyond 
the area of population, which probably covered 
Armenia and the adjoining countries. All that the 
story requires us to believe is, that all mankind 
perished except the eight souls saved in the ark. 

Whilst accepting the theory of a deluge adequate 



356 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

to its purpose, a deluge of limited extent, I disclaim 
sympathy with the objections, and especially the 
spirit of the objections, often urged against the con- 
trary view. " If the Flood extended to Australia," 
writes Dr. Dods, " and destroyed all animal life there, 
what are we compelled to suppose as the order of 
events ? We must suppose that the creatures, visited 
by some presentiment of what was to happen many 
months after, selected specimens of their number, and 
that these specimens by some unknown and quite 
inconceivable means crossed thousands of miles of 
sea, found their way through all kinds of perils from 
unaccustomed climate, food, and beasts of prey, 
singled out Noah by some inscrutable instinct, and 
surrendered themselves into his keeping." ^ That 
doubtless is the way Dr. Dods would set about it 
— " get the animals to select specimens of their 
number," though the learned divine does not con- 
descend to tell us whether it would be by ballot or 
by show of hands. However, the Supreme Being 
is not necessarily confined to Dr. Dods' method. 
Even if the Deluge were universal, the difficulties 
enumerated would not prove insuperable to the 
Almighty, who, when the ship was in the midst of 
the sea, caused it immediately to reach the shore ; 
who caught up Philip and transported him instantly 
from Gaza to Samaria in a manner we know not. 
Such writing ignores the supernatural character of 
the episode, endeavours to explain it on naturalistic 
principles, and thereby comes very near holding up 
to ridicule Him who is God blessed for evermore. 
To examine the Deluge as a mere physical fact 
^ Genesis, p. 56. 



THE DELUGE: APPARENT TRIUMPH OF EVIL 357 

is to unduly narrow the question and improperly 
disengage it from its connections. The Deluge, 
however, is not a prodigy or an accident, but a 
miracle, a supernatural event, by which God executes 
judgment on presumptuous sin. The attempt, there- 
fore, to explain it on natural grounds, such as a local 
and periodical inundation of the Tigris or Euphrates, 
is branded with futility. On the other hand, to essay 
to deny it on natural grounds is still more vain. 
Such inquiries as, Where could water enough be had 
to cover the tops of the highest mountains ? overlook 
the fundamental character of the event. Were it a 
natural overflow, brought about by the action of 
physical forces, such queries might be in place, for 
Nature can only work with the stock she already 
possesses — she can neither add nor diminish. 

But to ask where God could get so much water, 
and what He could have done with it when the storm 
was overpast, savours of atheism. God, who created 
the waters at the beginning, could not be at a loss 
how to get a few million gallons more if required, 
nor embarrassed where to put it when the subsidence 
took place, following the blowing of the wind. Be 
it firmly gasped that the Deluge was a supernatural 
event, having its cause, not in the physical, but in 
the moral world. That God employed secondary 
means, physical laws, to accomplish His end is not 
denied ; but these laws, left to pursue their ac- 
customed course, would not produce the Deluge — at 
the time, in the manner, and to the extent indicated. 
God let them loose ; hence the tragic calamity. " It 
might apparently be argued," writes Dr. Dods, " that 
it [the Deluge] could not have spread to the sea- 



358 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

coast, or that at any rate no ships had as yet been 
built large enough to weather a severe storm ; for 
a thoroughly nautical population could have had 
little difficulty in surviving such a catastrophe as is 
here described." Little difficulty? Did the Deluge 
come on now, picture Dr. Dods and a crew of brave 
Scots manning a Clyde boat to dodge the Almighty 
to drown them ! Such writing is out of harmony 
with the solemn tone of the sacred narrative, and 
mistakes both the moral purpose and the super- 
natural character of the event. 

II. Properly to apprehend the Biblical account of 
the Deluge, it should be contemplated from a moral, 
not a physical standpoint. 

From the beginning of Genesis to the end of the 
Revelation ethics govern physics. So long as man 
rendered obedience to his Maker, the earth smiled 
in abundance upon its cultivators. When man 
sinned, the curse of barrenness fell upon the soil. In 
prophecy also we find that ethics always govern 
physics. Lax morality is always followed by 
agricultural sterility, by famine, by pestilence ; on 
the contrary, godliness in a nation guarantees fulness 
of bread. Devotedness to the worship of Jehovah, 
conscientious observance of His laws, secures as their 
result rich harvests and commercial prosperity. 
" Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righ- 
teousness, and all these things will be added unto 
you," is the principle lying at the basis of all 
history. It is not, perhaps, too much to aver that the 
Bible is the only book in which physics all along 
are subordinated to ethics, and in which history is 
written in the lii^ht of the moral idea. 



THE DELUGE: APPARENT TRIUMPH OF EVIL ^59 

Looked upon thus the Dekige takes its place, I am 
tempted to say, naturally, in the orderly sequence 
of events. Given the awful wickedness described in 
the sixth chapter, and the overthrow of the world 
in one way or another is morally inevitable. " God 
saw that every imagination of a man's heart was only 
evil continually." Men's thoughts, from their first 
embryonic inception deep down in the mind to their 
outward consummation in act, were evil, and only 
evil continually. Conscience seems to have died out 
of the race. A continuance of this state of utter and 
universal godlessness, with only one pious family 
in the whole earth, was a moral impossibility. 
Further longsufifering would be but a premium on 
vice, violence, and unchastity. The destruction of 
the world was an absolute governmental necessity, 
arising not from physics, but from ethics ; not from 
the operation of natural forces, but from the in- 
exorable working of moral laws. Were there no 
distinct record of some such disaster as the Flood, 
the trained conscience would be more staggered by 
its absence than the enlightened intellect is by its 
presence. Granted a state of utter godlessness, of 
out-and-out corruption and cruelty and injustice — 
without restraints from within or checks from with- 
out, without fear of God or regard of man — and the 
destruction of the world becomes a moral certainty. 

III. In the sixth chapter is drawn a moral portrai- 
ture of the world immediately before the Flood. 

The line of Cain and the line of Seth are seen 
to coalesce and intermingle, and thereby the last 
rampart against ungodliness is swept away : " And it 
came to pass, that when men began to multiply on 



360 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto 
them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men 
that they were fair, and they took them wives of all 
which they chose." Most extraordinary and fantastic 
explanations have been propounded by commentators. 
Only two need here be mentioned. 

First, that by " sons of God " are intended angels, 
who fell in love with feminine beauty, and that 
therefore unholy intercourse between angels and 
women is taught. Among the ancients, Justin 
Martyr, Clemens Alexandrinus, Tertullian, Cyprian, 
and Ambrose advocated this interpretation. Having 
been brought up in Paganism, their minds familiar 
from infancy with impure conceptions of illicit 
relations between the gods and women-kind, they 
were naturally captivated by this wild theory. 
Among modern theologians of repute, Stier, Nitzsch, 
Kurtz, and Delitzsch strenuously maintain it. This 
alone explains, they say, the statement made in 
vcr. 4 — " There were giants in the earth in those 
days ; and also after that, when the sons of God 
came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare 
children to them, the same became mighty men 
\iiepJiiliin'\ which were of old, men of renown." The 
natural order was subverted ; demonic men, with the 
devil's fire in their blood, walked the earth ; mankind 
were dehumanised. Hence the imperative necessity 
of bringing to a sudden end this diabolical breed, 
a cross between fallen angels and fallen women. 
What an awful depth of depravity is here opened to 
our view ! The Deluge becomes a moral necessity. 

The later Fathers, Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, 
Theodoret, Augustine, and Jerome, condemn that 



THE DELUGE: ArPARENT TRIUMPH OF EVIL 36 1 

view as monstrous and profane. It contradicts all 
our settled convictions in regard of the distinctions 
between spirit and matter, and shocks us by its 
antagonism to all natural correspondences. More 
valuable than scholarship is what St. Paul calls 
sobermindedness for the understanding of Holy Writ. 
The view, therefore, which commends itself to my 
judgment is the simple one, for which the preceding 
chapters have prepared us, that the sons of God 
were the descendants of Seth, and the daughters of 
men women in general, including every branch of 
the Adamite family, the posterity of all the "sons 
and daughters " of the first pair, with especial 
reference to the Cainite women. It was a period 
of the free intermingling of families. Professors 
of religion formed mesalliances with voluptuous 
women, lust overtopped all barriers, polygamy 
desecrated the Church, and with polygamy rushed 
in all unnameable impurities. 

" The earth was corrupt before God," signifying 
that true worship had degenerated into profanity. 
" The earth was filled with violence," denoting the 
subversion of social order by anarchy and rapine. 
" God saw that the wickedness of man was great 
on the earth." No wonder, therefore, that " it 
repented the Lord that He had made man on 
the earth, and that it grieved Him at His heart." 
But it is objected that God is immutable. Yes ; 
and the immutability of His character is the reason 
for the vicissitudes in the method of His procedure 
towards men. Because He is unchangeable in His 
love and holiness. He varies His dispensations in 
accordance with the changed moral conditions of His 



362 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

creatures. God created man In His image, after 
His likeness; but now "all flesh has corrupted his 
way on the earth." The corruption is deep and 
universal. Amongst all the families of men, only 
one remained loyal to God, and in that family 
possibly only one man!— "Thee [Noah] have I seen 
righteous before Me in this generation" (vii. i). 
What a terrible indictment of the world ! " Write 
on the low brow — ' the image and likeness of God ' ; 
write on the idiot's leering face — ' the image and 
likeness of God ' ; write on the sensualist's porcine 
face — * the image and likeness of God ' ; write on the 
puppet's powdered and painted countenance — ' the 
image and likeness of God ' — do this, and then say 
how infinite is the mockery, how infinite the lie." ^ 

The Image of God ! Oh, the irony of the situation ! 
No wonder that " it repented the Lord that He had 
made man, and that it grieved Him at His heart, 
and that He said, I will destroy man." The wonder 
is that He suffered him so long. And, truth to tell, 
when I see these riotous, outrageous, lascivious men, 
it repents me too that God ever made them, and 
it grieves me at my heart. God made men in 
His image, after His likeness. God indeed ! Say 
rather the devil made them. " Of your father, the 
devil, ye are ; and the works of your father will ye 
do." " And God said. The end of all flesh is come 
before Me." The measure of their iniquity is full ; 
sin in all its ramifications has worked itself out to 
its farthest limits ; its cry, like the roar of the sea, 
" foaming out its own shame," has ascended to 
heaven ; and God says, " I will destroy man from 
' Dr. Parker, T/ie People's Bible ^ vol. i., p. 112. 



THE DELUGE : APPARENT TRIUMPH OF EVH. 363 

the face of the earth, even as a man wipeth a 
dish." 

Before destruction came, God gave timely warning : 
" The Lord said, My Spirit shall not always strive 
with man, for that he also is flesh ; yet his days shall 
be an hundred and twenty years." When God says, 
" My Spirit," many exegetes, carried away by the 
idea that it is too early yet to speak of the Holy 
Ghost, dilute it into man's spirit, thus converting the 
Spirit of God into the spirit that is in man. How- 
ever, we must not be hoodwinked by preconceived 
theories. If God says, ''My Spirit," He does not 
mean our spirit. But when the ancients spoke of the 
Spirit of God, they did not conceive of Him as a 
personal hypostasis, any more than when they spoke 
of the spirit of man they conceived of it as an 
identity distinguishable from man. 

Thus far God has not abandoned the human race, 
leaving it to rot in uncleanness. His Spirit was 
striving with man, invigorating the reason, quicken- 
ing the conscience, contending with the corruption 
of his nature. But man's turpitude continued to 
increase, the Divine in him was growing feebler, the 
carnal waxing stronger. Only the smallest spark of 
the Divine Fire remained unextinguished amid the 
foul ashes of fleshly lusts. On that spark the Divine 
Spirit was blowing to fan it into a flame ; but, 
instead of brightening, it was dying, till the last 
vestige of divinity was on the verge of extinction, 
and man was becoming flesh, all flesh, and nothing 
but flesh. But before withdrawing the restraining 
influences of His Spirit, God made one great final 
efi"ort. He commissioned Noah to preach the im- 



364 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

pending judgment, and doubtless his ministry was 
accompanied by the influences of the Holy Ghost. 
The venerable patriarch did his work faithfully and 
well. He rebuked the dread apostasy of the Church 
in his own genealogical line, denounced the dire 
ungodliness and defiant presumption in the line of 
Cain. He prophesied to them of the coming Flood, 
besought them to return to God, if haply they 
might find Him. What response did he get? "He 
seemed to them as one that mocked," they laughed 
outright at the amiable fanatic, ridiculed his warnings, 
disregarded his exhortations. They went on " eating 
and drinking, building and planting, marrying and 
giving in marriage." Then he began the building of 
the ark. For one hundred and twenty years he 
laboured at that huge ship in shape like a chest, with 
a carrying capacity of eighty-one thousand tons, 
second in size only to the Great Eastern. His 
patrimony was doubtless expended in the purchase of 
materials and the payment of shipwrights. Backed 
only by the faith of that one man, the axes and 
hammers went all those weary years. He was put 
down as a maniac ; his unwieldy wooden structure 
was deemed an immense joke ; men came from afar 
to see the old preacher and his tub ! The laughter 
of the antediluvian world at Noah and his ark was 
long, loud, and boisterous. " The longsuffering of 
God waited in the time of Noah while the ark was 
a-preparing." The Divine admonitions served no 
purpose, men dehumanised themselves, became wild 
beasts, making even their reason subserve their 
passions. 

Lo, the Flood came ; '' The foundations of the 



THE DELUGE: APPARENT TRIUMPH OF EVIL 365 

great deep were broken up, and the windows of 
heaven were opened." Vain are all attempts to 
explain this on naturalistic principles. But what 
about the laws of Nature, the staple of modern 
science ? Rather ask, What about the laws of God ? 
Here it is the laws of God which are in operation, 
and the laws of God can always make the laws of 
Nature bend to answer their own purposes. The 
Deluge, as previously stated, must be viewed, not in 
the light of the laws of Nature, but in the light 
of the laws of God. Primarily it is a supernatural 
event in the moral government of the world, taking 
its place among miracles, inexplicable save in the 
light of the Divine Power and Purpose. 

God's purpose of having a godly seed, a large 
multitude which no man can number, shall not be 
frustrated by human defection. The Deluge was a 
necessity, not only to satisfy the demands of Justice, 
but also to enable Mercy to attain its high and noble 
aims. God drowned the race only when it had 
arrived at a stage of incorrigibleness in evil, past all 
the ameliorating influences at His disposal. Noahi 
however, — " among the faithless, faithful only he," — 
found favour with God; and through him God 
resolved to continue the race till its salvation should 
be perfectly wrought out. The Deluge thus became 
a necessary step in the salvation of the world, a link 
in the history of redemption : " The ark, wherein a 
few, that is, eight souls were saved by water" (i Pet. 
iii. 20). From water? No; by water. They were 
saved in the ark, but by water. The world perished 
by water ; the Church was saved by the very means 
which overthrew the world. Had God allowed the 



366 PRIMEVAL REVELATION 

ungodliness of the antediluvians to continue another 
century, the last remnant of true religion would have 
been obliterated, the Church annihilated, the purpose 
of God respecting a godly seed frustrated. How to 
preserve the race, and yet realise the purposes of 
Divine Grace? Only by drowning the ungodly to 
make a fresh start with Noah. This lamentable 
calamity has, therefore, a salvation side as well as a 
destruction side. At the critical moment, "in due 
time," when Evil was submerging Good, when the 
seed of the serpent was overcoming the seed of the 
woman — had overcome all except one family, and pos- 
sibly all except one in that family — God supernaturally 
interposed. Having drowned the unbelievers, the 
arena is once more clear for Him to proceed, in a 
new and a clean world, with the work of Redemption. 
At the last moment, Evil was discomfited, Goodness 
triumphed. 



Printed by Hazell, Watson, <§» Vimy, Ld., London and Aylesbuiy. 



Date Due 


?3 •■ -^ 






i 










^,,,,.,,^ 
































































































































^ 









BS1235 .J77 

Primeval revelation : studies in Genesis 



Princeton Theological Semmary-Speer Library 




1 1012 00042 2396 



