tion of the earth, and not for that of both earth and heaven. If, therefore, the heavenly bodies were formed from any substratum, this could only have been the heaven to which ver. 1 refers, and which existed before the six creative days had commenced. Lastly, the narrative furnishes direct information as to the relation between the lights created on the fourth day-more especially the sun-and the light created on the first day. Light ("or") was created on the first day, the luminaries or light-bearers ("maoroth") on the fourth day. Light was not originally confined to the sun. This arrangement only took place when the cosmical formation of the earth had so far proceeded as to render an antagonism of solar and planetary polarity possible. The former alternation of light and darkness, of day and night, must have arisen from telluric action and re-action which ceased when this antagonism became established. Farther details the narrative does not furnish.

§ 9. THE WORK OF THE FIFTH AND SIXTH DAYS.

So soon as the cosmical conditions of organic life were provided and the chaotic confusion of elements and forces had given place to a regulated and harmonic relation, the germs of life hid in the womb of earth were set free, and at the command of Omnipotence the most diversified degrees and stages of life made their appearance. Already on the third day had vegetation been called forth; on the fifth and sixth days the scale of creation ascended from the fish in the sea to the eagle which soars to the sky, from the worm which creeps in the dust to man who lifts his head to the stars, and represents the climax and completion of terrestrial life. The narrative introduces man as the last work, and since there is manifestly a rise from the lower to the higher scale of being-as the highest in creation. This progress is physically represented in the fact that every higher stage of being includes all the lower, and at the same time exhibits some new development of life. Thus the purely cosmical elements form the basis of the peculiar life of the vegetable kingdom. In the animal kingdom we descry, besides the voluntary activity which is its peculiar characteristic, also numerous involuntary

functions which, properly speaking, form part of the sphere of vegetable life. Lastly, in man we discover besides the three lower stages of life-the cosmical, the vegetable, and the animal -a fourth and much higher, viz., the sphere of personality and of moral freedom-the image of God appearing in his creature. The narrative pourtrays the work of creation as it were a pyramid, of which heaven and earth are the broad basis, and man the one top-stone. He is the representative of all former stages of existence, the unit in which the multiplicity of earthly creatures terminates. Although both the turn of thought and the form of expression is foreign to the narrative, yet it quite accords with its idea when we designate man as the microcosm and the centre of this world.' In verse 26, he is expressly set apart as ruler of all creation, of its varied forces and creatures. His calling and his endowments for it are expressly mentioned. He is the last and the most perfect being formed from that earth to which himself belongs, and whose every stage of life he includes in himself. Hence he is also qualified to be its representative, both so far as he is personally concerned, and in relation to every higher sphere of existence. But as the image of God, he is also of Divine origin, and hence above nature, and the representative of God to it, its lord and master, its priest and mediator. Creation having been thus completed, the record adds, “And God saw everything he had made, and behold it was very good."

1 Most apt is the saying of Theodorus (in Theodoret, Quaest. xx. in Gen.) " that God had created last σύνδεσμον ἁπάντων τὸν ἄνθρωπον (man the bond and summary of all);" and not less beautiful and true that of Augustine, "Nullum est creaturæ genus, quod non in homine possit agnosci." Nay, the same idea is embodied and symbolised even in the apparently absurd Haggada of the Rabbins, to the effect that when Adam came from the hand of the Creator he was so big as to reach from earth to heaven, and from one end of the world to the other; but that when he sinned God had laid his hand on him, and he shrunk to his present size. The name of the first man also -Adam, from Adamah, earth-represents him, if we translate the idea into our own terminology, as the microcosm of this world. On this Umbreit well remarks, "The name given to man implied that he represented the whole earth, and as its lord and master comprehended it in his own form."

§ 10. THE PRIMEVAL HISTORY OF MAN.

The account of the six creative days closes with the rest of God on the seventh day, and with its being set apart, that in it man also should rest. Passing from this, we come upon a new portion of Divine revelation, of different tendency indeed, but no less grand, and in some respects even more important than the former. For centuries men have criticised and cavilled at what it relates; faith has been strengthened by it, true wisdom nourished, while unbelief has scoffed or been offended. On this foundation the whole building of revelation, fitly joined together, has grown into an holy temple of the Spirit. Here we behold the root whence salvation in Christ, with its blossoms in the Old, and its fruits in the New Testament, has sprung. If the first section forms the basis of history in general, the second (chaps. ii. and iii.) forms that of the history of redemption. The former indicates the position of God as ABOVE the world, as the Creator of heaven and earth, and assigns to each creature, but especially to man, his proper position and sphere in the general plan of the world. It also points out their proper development, even to its ultimate goal, but it does not detail the history of that development, as such a narrative would have destroyed the unity of its plan and execution. The second section presupposes the first, but has a totally different tendency. It brings before us God IN His world, as the Father and Instructor, who in love condescends to His pupil, and adapts Himself to his growing knowledge-who introduces and announces salvation. If the first section exhibits the work and purpose of God in creation, and the Divine destiny of man, the second describes man's free choice and development, and God's care, provision, and training, both before, during, and after that choice had been made. The central point of this section is chap. iii., which gives an account of the Fall as the root of all misery, the occasion of redemption, and the commencement of the history of mankind. It describes the trial of man's self-determination, which through his guilt led to such sad consequences, arrested his original destiny, and on the interposition of Divine grace, made a new development ne

cessary, for which new means and powers had to be furnished. However complete in itself, the history of the six creative days is not sufficient to explain the fall, the guilt of man, or the grace of God. The history of this all-important event required a basis such as that furnished in chap. ii. There we are informed that man was formed of dust and ashes. While this shows the guilt and folly of his pride when without God he would attempt to become as God, it also explains how, in consequence of the curse attaching to sin, he was to return to the earth from whence he had been taken. The breath of God made him the personal, self-conscious, and free being, capable of, and requiring development, who for himself was to choose between good and evil, and was responsible for his choice. The garden of Eden, full of joy and delight, was the place where the trial and the fall occurred. From this place of bliss he was driven after the fall, to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow. The command to keep the garden pointed to the existence of a hostile principle, against which man was warned. The tree of life, of which the fruits were not interdicted to man in his state of innocence, is interdicted after his fall. The tree of knowledge became the first and most direct medium of his development. The presence of other trees, with fair and delicious fruits, increased his guilt in eating from the only tree that had been forbidden him, since it appeared how easily he might have kept from it. The naming of the animals forms the introduction to the creation of woman, and the latter is again the condition of the first and of every subsequent development.

§ 11. POSITION AND TASK OF THE FIRST MAN.

The narrative now records in detail that creation of man which was only generally indicated in the first section. The dualism within him, in virtue of which he combines both a divine and an earthly nature, is now prominently brought forward. The Spirit of God who at first moved over the thohu vabohu had put into the earth the germs of all the diverse forms of life. Hence the production of the animal and vegetable kingdoms is not represented as, strictly speaking, an act of creation, but only as a

creative unfolding of germs already existent. We read, "Let the earth bring forth!" and as plants and animals thus appear as the individualised products of the life of the earth, so man also who is its highest and hence its unique product. Those creative powers which hitherto had manifested their productive agency on many different points were now concentrated in one point, to call the noblest of its formations into being, and this is most pictorially described when we are told that God himself formed man from the dust of the earth. But man is not merely the highest stage of animal life. The breath of Divine life is also breathed into him, so that while in part he is of the earth earthy, in part he is also the offspring of God (Acts xvii. 28) and His image (Gen, i. 27).' Man is placed in the garden to dress and to keep it. Although it had formerly been said that every creature as it came from the hand of God was very good, this could only have referred to a relative, not to an absolute perfection. We hold that both man and nature did not by creation immediately attain that stage of which they were ultimately capable, but only that which was suitable to the circumstances and to the object in view. The Divine Spirit residing in man constituted him not only a personal and free being, but capable of moral and religious activity. Man could not, like a plant, have absolute perfection put upon him from without; by free determination and activity, he was to rise to that stage for which God had destined and endowed him. Accordingly, man was immediately put into circumstances in which he was freely to decide either for or against the will of God, and thus to choose his own direction.

But nature was not merely to be the abode of man; there he was also to exercise his powers, to make his moral decision, and to develope himself. Hence nature also must at first have only been relatively perfect, and capable of development, not for its own sake, but for that of man who, as its priest and mediator, its lord and master, was to conduct it to its ultimate stage of

1 It must not be thought that an interval of time intervened between the formation of man from the dust and the breathing into him the breath of life, so that man had even for one moment been merely an animal differing only in degree, not in kind, from other animals. But there was a difference in regard to the origin of his twofold nature. Two elements-differing toto coelo-met at the moment when he was created; the form prepared from the dust and the Divine breath from above-the product of their meeting was

man.