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connect the natural with the supernatural, man with God, state that the universe was originated and is maintained by the Deity, and that by Divine inspiration they give an account of the creative process. The whole matter is capable of disproof, or it can be verified. An unscientific age could not possess the knowledge of our own scientific time, nor men styled "semi-barbarous " be adorned with the accuracy and genius of modern professors. The words written by one of these men have been studied in part, and will be further investigated. As yet, nothing has been found contrary to science; where science can effect research, there has been verification, and the recesses of nature contain counterparts of many spiritual truths. These truths are scattered over the surface of Scripture, or lie within the depths, much as the plants and gems of nature are arranged on and in the earth. No formal order, no system, can be found anywhere; but as grasses of many forms, flowers of every hue, trees of graceful foliage, contain wonderful unity in richest, wildest variety-so Bible truths and facts, whether scattered, or knit together in every part, plant deep roots in mysteries of love and wisdom.

In further applying accurate modern tests to the Inspired Record, which most of us love and regard as true without and beyond confirmation, bear in mind that authoritative statements about facts or phenomena can only be found perfectly to agree with science in its final results, and this agreement must in no wise be hastened. We say authoritative, because due exception has to be made for accounts which are popular, or figurative, or poetical, and not meant to assert physical law. Nor is this any weakness: the waters of the sea in one place look blue, in another green, the difference being due to depth or shallowness; so there are recesses in Holy Scripture which none but saints can enter, and there is power moving on the very surface able to mould the minds of Dante and Milton, Michael Angelo and Raphael, that they may enrich and adorn our race. Not only so, there is another beauty; the Word was spoken-not to anticipate discovery, not to render experimental and inductive processes of the human mind unnecessary to the attainment of knowledge, but to set

Scripture the Word of God.

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up an authoritative teaching where experiment and induction are inadequate to explain and establish the relations between God and man, and between man and his neighbour; to erect true foundations of the body politic on an immutable, because Divine, morality; to train the individual for his probation in time and for his future life in eternity.

If, after most careful analysis, the record of physical facts be found sometimes scientifically inaccurate, not the less will Holy Scripture contain the Word of God. A diamond is not the less a diamond because of the rudeness of its setting, and the truths of Holy Scripture are not less Divine, because the framework partakes of human imperfection. If every effort fail, even then, human fallibility cannot affirm, as infallible dogma, essential contrariety: the angle of parallax, by which to measure the lights of God, may have its base in an existence which is wider than human life.

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STUDY VII.

INTERPRETATION OF THE DAYS.

'Cogitavi dies antiquos, et annos æternos in mente habui."-Ps. lxxvii. 5. "Les jours de la création marquent la hiérarchie des êtres et des époques successives de leur apparition sur la face du monde; mais l'action de Dieu ne se décompose pas en époques. Elle est une puisque elle est parfaite."-Emile SAISSET.

WE have considered the days of creation, well knowing that simple truths are often deep.

What mean these days? Are they an enumeration and a separation of actual days and nights before the earth and sun were so conditioned, each to each, that day was possible? Or do they mean that there were births, growths, seeming pauses, in the progress of Divine work? The latter opinion prevails with many thoughtful men. They take the outward appearance as a garment for the spiritual reality. The letter is the body, the spirit is the soul. The letter and the spirit are held together by the real meaning. Endeavour to attain that meaning, as to days, by considering—

THE FACTS ON WHICH MOST MEN ARE AGREED.

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

2. There is no more matter now than was originally created, nature not possessing the power, in itself, of originating matter; but cosmic processes throughout the universe, and the "fact that God is daily and hourly creating those

Accepted Facts.

141 myriads of human souls which He infuses into the bodies prepared by His providence," 1 convince many that creation was not an instantaneous, but a continuous and progressive series of marvellous operations. It is true that of a creatio continua, in the special sense of creation, Scripture knows nothing; nevertheless, of creation as a continuous agency of God, and specially of the Divine maintenance of the world as a creatio continua, Scripture does know (Isai. xl. 28, xlii. 5); and if we regard the human spiritual nature as so planned that, associated with matter, it is able to propagate itself out of itself, this procreative process can only be explained by the co-operation of God's creative power, and the continuous process is not less divine than the growth of a world in an

hour.

3. Man has existed on the earth more than six thousand years. His remains and implements are found in places, and side by side with such relics of plants and animals, as leave little or no doubt of a high antiquity. The cave gravel and peat deposits, shell mounds and lake-dwellings, though not as yet giving any reliable data for estimating the precise age, may be fairly taken as proof that man contended with the mammoth. The genealogies of Christ, commonly and erroneously taken to show the age of man, indicate the line and families of Messianic descent; not always by actual procreation, but occasionally by adoption, or other succession. Hilary says"There are four genealogies of Christ in the four Gospels: 1st, in St. Matthew, from Abraham; 2nd, in St. Mark, from God the Holy Ghost; 3rd, in St. Luke, from Adam; 4th, in St. John, from Eternity." These show, not the age of the world, but that Jesus is the seed of the woman, the second Adam, the father of a new and spiritual race.

4. The world has been and is continually though slowly changing; new animals and plants arising with varied modifications, or becoming extinct, by the slow successive determinate action of local causes, of which the chief is the gradual lowering or raising of temperature. Our own country has sunk many times beneath the sea, and again been raised.

1" Daniel the Prophet," Intr., p. xxii. : Dr. Pusey.
"Biblical Psychology," pp. 133-142: Prof. Delitzsch.

Iceland, a thousand years ago, according to Icelandic histories, was covered with forests of birch and fir; and at that time Greenland was fertile in the south.

Men generally agreeing as to the four classes of facts which we have enumerated; 1st, the antiquity of the earth; 2nd, its progressive formation; 3rd, earlier occupation by mankind than is given by the common date; 4th, the orderly continuous and progressive operation of nature; are met by assertions of this kind—“It is not likely that God should have inspired Moses to write a history of creation to be believed by all people, in language the meaning of which it were hard to find, and yet harder to believe."1 Timid souls, rendered more timid by the reckless unbelief of godless men, cling almost superstitiously to the old ways of explanation, and say"There is indeed a measure of difficulty, and a kind of unnaturalness, in giving a different sense to the words than that which has been generally accepted; and which, unless required by science, no one would think of giving." Students of science, provoked by this obstructiveness of ignorance and of fear, reply with some scorn-"We know, even as a matter of common sense, that God did not make the world in six days, and no man of science believes that He did. Cannot you divines, while contenting our emotions, satisfy also our intelligence?"

They have been answered by an explanation of the manner in which it is conceived the world was created in six daysThat heaven and earth were created in the beginning, and that the six days' work was the restoration rather than the creation of the earth. In that beginning, angels were made, and in some way or other connected with the earth; animals and plants, in great variety and beauty, lived, passed away, and were succeeded by others. It was a golden age: no sin, no sorrow, everything good and very beautiful. In process of time, some of the angels sinned, and their evil courses cast the earth into chaotic confusion. Then, Divine power reformed the world, as we now see it, with man as chief; who, after due probation, is to occupy those places in heaven from which the evil angels fell. In commemoration of the work, and as a 1 Suarez: "Tractatus De Opere Sex Dierum," lib. I. cap. xi. 42.

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