The pictures of Genesis.

The vision and the background.

I

The Unbroken Shadow

The Old Testament does not begin with a theory of the nature of God and the origin of evil. It begins with a picture of creation, followed immediately by a picture of the entrance of evil into the world, and from this point it unrolls a graphic panorama of human life.

Some people interpret this panorama of Genesis as a series of scientific diagrams. Others interpret it as a series of poetic illustrations. It makes little difference in regard to their value for purposes of spiritual instruction. Upon the whole, the vital truths by which the souls of men live, have been conveyed in poetic illustrations rather more frequently and fully than in scientific diagrams. Dante's Divine Comedy has taught more than Euclid's Geometry.

One thing is clear in the book of Genesis. By whatever method we translate its records, their meaning is the same. They show a vision of human sin, conflict, and suffering, against a divine background of offended love, righteous indignation, and just retribution.

This view of human life corresponds very closely with what we know of it from other

sources.

Unruly appetite, lustful passion, envy and discord, violence and terror and guilt, are written as clearly in the story of the beginnings of all tribes and nations and families, as in the story of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham, and Jacob.

It is difficult to conceive how a pure and righteous God could look upon such a race, made in His own image, with dominion over the creatures, and with capacities of infinite development in wisdom and virtue and power, yet descending to lower depths of animalism than the very beasts of the field, developing passions more cruel and treacherous and base than those of the brute creation, upon such

a race it is impossible that God should look without repulsion and holy wrath. Not wrath as we know it, always tainted with selfishness, but wrath as only God can know it, absolutely unselfish and springing out of frustrated benevolence. The more He loves men and women, the more He must hate the evil which mars His image in their characters and defeats His design in their lives.

Now take away out of these pictures which

God hates ves

sin because He loves

man.

The ray of light obscured.

Sinai.

are given in Genesis, that one ray of light which flashes in the Messianic promise that the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head,1 that one thread of gold which runs from this promise through the lives of those who believe in God, keeping them in touch with Him, making them His faithful seed, because from them there is to come a star, a sceptre, a Shiloh unto whom the nations shall be gathered,2 -take away that ray of light, that thread of gold, and what remains? Sin and shame and struggle below; baffled love, frustrated benevolence, inevitable condemnation above. expulsion from Eden-the thorn-cursed soil

The

the brand on the brow of Cain-the shattered Babel- the whelming flood-the fiery tempest on Sodom and Gomorrah-wars and disasters, tumults and captivities-man a rebellious, wretched, wandering creature-God justly offended at the violation of His law—a sin-twisted, suffering, fearful world below- a stainless, silent heaven above, and no bridge across the gulf.

Now turn to the law given through Moses. His part in history was twofold. He was the leader of the Exodus; and that means 2 Gen. xlix. 10.

1 Gen. iii. 15.

emancipation from human tyranny. He was the explorer of Sinai; and that means subjugation to divine justice.

Alpine climbers reckon their glory by the conquest of virgin peaks of snow and ice. Moses made the first ascent of a virgin peak of fire and smoke. The landscape that he saw from that summit was ringed by the horizon of immutable law.

Moses talked with God face to face. But there was a frown upon the divine countenance, and the voice which spoke to him was as stern as fate. The people heard it only as the voice of a trumpet, mysterious and inarticulate, whereat they did exceedingly fear and quake, and entreated that it should not be spoken unto them any more. But Moses heard the words, and knew that they were inevitable and eternal.

One

not."

Ten commandments he brought down from "Thou shalt the mount, written out clearly so that all men should understand them, and on stone so that they should endure to all generations. of the commandments was positive. Nine of them were negative. Moses was the divine prohibitionist. Nine-tenths of his emphasis

lies on the "Thou shalt not."

But the point that pierces us, in this revela

"But I will."

The history of Israel.

tion through Moses, is that every "Thou shalt
not" is a disclosure of what men have done,
and are prone to do, and would like to do again.
if they dared. The commandments sound like
a shouting from the mountain-top of the secrets
of many hearts. After each divine word which
says,
"Thou shalt not," follows a human mur-
mur which says, "But I will."

A Bible was once published in which, by a typographical error, the not was omitted from the seventh commandment. It was called "the wicked Bible." The history of Israel, starting from Sinai, reads like a commentary on a wicked Bible with the printer's error multiplied by ten. Carry the commandments through the books of the Judges and the Kings, and you must acknowledge that they compel the conclusion that man is what he ought not to be, and ought not to be what he is.

The bright The one bright spot in the law given by spot hidden. Moses is the commandment to make a mercyseat in the Tabernacle, where the sins of the people may be confessed before Almighty God,1 and where the blood of sacrifice, sprinkled upon the Ark, may symbolize an atonement between man and God. The one good hope which cheered Moses in his ministry to a disobedient 1 Ex. xxv.; Lev. xvi.