Nature is a created and orderly work, an organic expression of the might and omnipresence of Deity. The visible world is not self-existent, but in relation and subjection to higher power. He who doubts may compare the simplicity and reality of Genesis with the myths, poems, rhapsodies, of all other religions. From that positive was a transition into the metaphysical: the prophets are witnesses. Then appeared Jesus who, with perfect truth, established the world's theological school. His piety rested on true wisdom, and that wisdom was based on positive fact. Our knowledge of it is like a view in a glass-yet not a view in a glass; it is in a state of continual expectation and surprise; it brightens and elevates the human mind into a likeness of the Divine Mind. Man's duty, high and lifted up above the mists of human error, has the body of heaven in its clearness. Faith ascends to God-Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier. Our will, if we are not unbelieving and rebellious, becomes conformed to His Will; our thoughts are fashioned by His Mind. Perfect in Christ, we shall be one with God, and He one with us (John xvii. 21-23). "Oh, my friend, That thy faith were as mine; that thou couldst see Southey. STUDY XVI. THE PRE-ADAMITE WORLD. Christian, try to solve the problems Why God made thee? Why he loves thee? Where thou art, and whither bound?" The Three Bibles (Unpublished). Hæredi æternitatis Adam vixit heri. THE account of creation, if true, is proved by that truthfulness to be Divinely inspired. Early unscientific thought could not, of itself, know or invent those deeply hidden facts of which accurate science has but lately obtained possession. The mind's eye of ancient genius could not, without Divine aid, see how the world was framed. A revelation of the fact that God created the world establishes God's kingdom in the universe of matter; as the moral history and salvation of man establish it in our spirit. The account is not a picture drawn by an ancient geologist, though in agreement with the discoveries of geological science; nor is it by man's imagination trying to account for Nature's origin and phenomena. Imagination was used, but only as the faculty through which God made revelation. There was knowledge, but not scientifically obtained as is our modern conception of the universe. "It is the production of a writer who seems to possess an acquaintance with natural history, and might almost be suspected of knowing some facts of geology;' yet this acquaintance he could not have. The simplicity of the words, apart from technical limitation, agreeing with latest attainments of science; the painting of things which men could not see, and description of works which man could have not known; are by one "Notes on the Earlier Hebrew Scriptures," p 14: Sir G. B. Airy, K.C.B. mysteriously acquainted with the deep things of God, by that inward witness which is the strongest proof. The heavens were undoubtedly in existence when our earth was formed. The heavens are not the firmament, which was created the second day; nor are they simply the sun, moon, stars, spoken of on the fourth day. Heavens may mean these and many more. The Apostolic word (Eph. iii. 10) declares that the manifold wisdom of God is made known by the earthly Church to angelic powers of heaven; as if to show that God's eternal world-plan did not begin with the earth, even as it will not end with the earth. Science shows that star-formation is yet in progress; that many worlds are older than our own; and Scripture states that the Lord is now preparing mansions (John xiv. 2). "Long before the earth was fashioned for man, there were heavens, morning stars, angels, regions more glorious than the earth, heavens more ancient than the firmament, heavenly inhabitants who excel in strength.' There have been wonderful and startling acts of which we possess but few incidents, whether as to physical creation, or the origin and fall of spirits (Job xxxviii. 12, 13; Isa. xiv. 12; Luke x. 18; John viii. 44; 2 Pet. ii. 4; Jude 6; 1 John iii. 8). The fall of angels, as connected with our own early history, may be thus briefly stated:-Man was placed in Paradise to dress and keep it. The secret meaning of this service becomes apparent in the fact that a tempter became the cause of ruin. There was evil for man to overcome: evil outside him, not human-but angelic or spiritual, straining after knowledge beyond itself into the false; not stepping nearer to the true; but as the thought of the blind-there is no sun. How far demoniacal malignity introduced or magnified suffering in the early animal world, Scripture does not reveal ; unless the "wasteness or emptiness," spoken of in the second verse of Gen. i., means, as some think, a wilfully caused desolation. In Jer. iv. 23, the words are used of destruction wrought as punishment for sin. In Isa. xxxiv. 11, they mean an after-destruction of that which once had been beautiful. In Rom. viii. 20-22, we are told that the creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but in hope. Nevertheless, we need not take the wasteness as meaning more "Mosaic Record of Creation:" A. M'Caul, D.D. 66 The Fall of Angels. 271 than that the earth was "without form and void," because it had not yet been shaped, nor fitted for living creatures. nn, wasteness," is sometimes used as synonymous with N, "non-existence,” and for "nothingness." The Divine plan works by a conditioning influence, renders even wasteness and desolateness receptive of Divine energy. The disorder, though made a means of discipline, is attributed to the agency, direct or indirect, of the devil and his angels; who, having fallen from their allegiance to God, sought to mar His work. Hence come the scowling eye of murder, the filching hand of avarice, the baleful fire of lust, the idiot countenance, the simpering face of folly, deeds of cruelty, orgies of the drunken. The The fall of angels, and their evil influence on men, must not be put away as poetical and figurative; there is meaning, and that of most awful character. What it is, as to the earth, we are painfully conscious of in the continual conflict of flesh and spirit, and the dread of judgment to come. record is a true history of real acts, not a mythological account of natural disturbances, but the work of a firm evil will infusing its energy into our own. There is certainly a magnetism of attraction and repulsion pervading all things. Subtle universal influences vibrate through all classes of organic and inorganic substance. It is not a shallow but deep philosophy that finds, in the bad passions and moral diseases of intelligent creatures, something that corrupts, or may corrupt, the whole course of Nature (Rom. viii. 20-22), even as a whole history of sorrow may be read in the accents of some peculiarly plaintive voice. Specially remarkable, miraculous it really seems to be, is that character of reserve which leaves open to reason all that reason may be able to attain. The meaning seems always to be ahead of science, not because it anticipates the results of science, but because it is independent of them, and runs, as it were, round the outer margin of all possible discovery." Scripture affirms human responsibility. The existence and agency of extra-human and superhuman orders, are connected with a vast scheme. Accurate study gives consistency to this evidence, dissipates difficulties, and expands our knowledge of mysterious beings with whom our destinies "Primeval Man," p. 367: Duke of Argyll. " 1 are involved. Our own moral force or the evil of it is to others as magnetism or electricity. The pre-Adamite world, occupying innumerable ages, answers the request of geologists for vast duration; and allows, if need be, for pre-Adamite men. If such precursors existed of the Adam-man, as the Adam-man preceded the Christ-man, they were brute men. It is possible, that as plant and animal had their order; the more primitive being the more simple; there may have been rudimentary men. These possibly lived on for many generations until regenerated or recreated as the Adam, our forefather. There are thoughtful men who accept this as not unscriptural, and as explanatory of a scientific difficulty. They admit that the psychic man may have come from some lower form of life; but they see in the pneumatic man something that the theory of evolution cannot account for. We will not say, as Delitzsch-"The man who, in the ape, greets his brother only a little left behind, must needs have first substantially brutalised himself, or he would rather shudder at this counterpart of his own degradation.' Those who think that our structural resemblances to the nearest allied quadrumana indicate that both man and ape are derived from some earlier common stock, say—“ The body being formed by a perfectly natural process, 'The soul did but mean the breath, then came the Divine gift of immortality by means of endowing the (rápέ) flesh with (πveúμa) the spirit; thus the (σúμa) body, dwelt in by the (yʊx) life, became, through (Tveúua) the spirit, a Divine man." Hence, though descended from the brute, man is immortal by the birth of a spirit in him which bridged the gulf between meanness and majesty. Since which time it has ever been "More upward, working out the beast; We are in no hurry to solve every difficulty. Intelligence is always to be used, because there will always be something to learn. Heaven and earth are not an infinity of The sciences, even those professing most accuracy, are surrounded by mysteries. Theology is one of "Biblical Psychology," part. ii. sect. 1. sameness. |