we are told respecting the creation of man. First of all, 'God made man in His own image; male and female created He them;' afterwards it is said He made a man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.' If we follow the letter of these passages and do not endeavour to put any notions of our own into them, we shall be led, I think, naturally to the conclusion, that the former words have to do with the Species, as we should say, if we must have logical phrases (which I would rather avoid if it were possible); and that the other has to do with an individual, with the first man of the race. This, I think, is the inference that we should all draw, if the mere words were set before us without any context: it gains strength the more we study the context. The two accounts are distinct, as all readers have perceived; the obvious difference between them has suggested a number of schemes to account for their introduction into the same narrative. One, it seems to me, is quite necessary to the other. If we had the first without the second, we should have the description of an ideal man, without being told that there was an actual man. If we had merely the second, we should have the history of the appearance of a solitary creature in the universe, without knowing what he was, or why he was put there, or what relation he bore to all the things about him. But what I wish you particularly to notice is, that the part of the record which speaks of man ideally, according to his place with reference to the rest of the universe, according

to his position with reference to God, is the part which expressly belongs to the history of CREATION; that the bringing forth of man in this sense is the work of the sixth day.

You will perceive the necessity of this interpretation the more steadily you look at the words, God created man in His own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.' The difficulty in this sentence consists in the change from the singular to the plural. Now if you try to express for yourself the formation of an Order, of a Race, and at the same time seek to convey the impression that the order or race were to be composed of real beings, you must drop into some language of this sort; you must involve yourself in this seeming contradiction. You may fancy that you escape from it by resorting to the phrases of the Realists, and affirming the species to have an existence apart from the individual. You may

escape from it by adopting the phrases of the Nominalists, and saying, that the man is nothing but the single, separate atom, which you denote by a particular name; but if you wish to talk in the language of fact, and not in mere dialectical terms; if you wish to satisfy the conscience of mankind, and to express that which we know to be—whether we can define it or not-you must speak as Moses speaks; you must have the him' and the them;" that word which declares that the male and female are both comprehended in humanity; that word which declares that humanity equally implies their distinct individual existence. I do not like meddling

with abstractions, so much as I have felt myself obliged to do, in order to shew you how Moses has avoided abstractions; how he has risen above them. He has risen above them, I conceive, because he has contemplated the creation of man not from our point of view, but from God's. He has told us what man was in His mind; and how He brought forth the purpose and intent of His mind into act. If it is said that an invisible being created 'man in His own likeness,' that cannot mean that He invested him with something visible. He may have done so: we are told afterwards that He did; but this cannot have been the special, essential, act of Creation. Again, if we are told that a real Living Being the source of all being and all life-created 'man in His own image;' that cannot mean that He created a mere phantom, without substance, without life. The Creation, in this highest sense, must mean the bestowing, under whatever limitations, a portion of His own life, that which corresponded to His own being. It must denote, therefore, in this its highest acceptation, not what we understand by putting together a material thing, but the communication of that inward power and substance, without which matter is but a dream, apart from which we only conceive it as possible, because we have learnt, by terrible experience, the possibility of death.

Now extend this thought, which seems to arise inevitably out of the story of the creation of Man as Moses delivers it, to the rest of that universe of which he regards man as the climax, and we are

forced to the conclusion, that in the one case, as in the other, it is not the visible material thing of which the historian is speaking, but of that which lies below the visible material thing, and constitutes the substance which it shews forth.

We are told in the second chapter of a mist going up from the earth, and watering the face of the ground.' It is clearly intimated that then and not till then, did the plants and the herbs of the field appear. It is said at the same time, that the Lord God had created every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew.' We are compelled then to consider the creation of herbs and flowers as well as the creation of beasts, and birds, and fishes, which is recorded in the previous chapter, as the bringing forth of kinds and orders such as they are according to the mind of God, not of actual separate phenomenal existences, such as they present themselves to the senses of man. The language of the historian is most strictly in accordance with this interpretation, 'Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth.' Again, ‘And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind. Again, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind.'

6

Perhaps the thought may occur to you, 'Yes!

it is very true that we are told of a word going forth from God, saying, Let this be so; that may merely indicate the process in the divine mind. But have we not the additional sentence, It was so; and are we not reminded that the earth brought forth grass, &c.? Must not we take these sentences into account as much as the other? and if we do, shall we not arrive, after all, at the merely material notion of creation?' I am far indeed from wishing to overlook these passages, or from fancying that we can understand the others without them. But if you once admit that the going forth of God's Word--the expression of his Will and Mind is Creation, these sentences which announce that His word was not an idle ineffective word, that what He purposed came to pass, will carry a very different force indeed from that which we attribute to them when we start from a consideration of the things themselves. For the passages which say that the earth brought forth grass and fruits, are passages which, if you take them literally, must point not to a single moment, but to the whole life of the world down to the present hour. When a chair or table leaves the hands of the carpenter, it passes into the hands of the person for whom it is made; the workman has no more concern with it. But when you hear of the earth bringing forth grass, the herb yielding seed, the fishes or beasts being fruitful and multiplying, you are told of living powers which were imparted once, but which are in continual exercise and manifestation; the Creative Word has been