hundredfold (Matt. xiii.). See to it then that your faith is rooted in the Grace of God; and then give all diligence, and add to your faith the other graces, sending up from the root of faith the trunk of wisdom and the sap of knowledge, putting forth the boughs of temperance, and the twigs of patience, and the leaves of godliness, and the blossoms of brotherly kindness, and the fruit of love (2 Peter i. 5-7). So shall you indeed pour forth at Immanuel's feet the cornucopia of a Christian character, even those fruits of the Spirit, which are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, temperance (Gal. v. 22, 23). Abundantly bringing forth these various fruits every month in the year (Rev. xxii. 2), ye shall indeed. glorify your Father, and prove that ye are in very truth the disciples of His Son (John xv. 8).

This then is the lesson of the hour: The Birth of Powers to issue in Heavenly Fruitage. Be not content. then with the mere sense of individuality and of duty, mechanically taking your allotted place with the grouping lands and seas (Gen. i. 9, 10); actually put forth in living exercise your latent powers. Yes, happy the day when the Lord of seeds and of souls says to thee: "Let the earth put forth shoots, and the fruit-tree yield its fruits!" Thrice happy the day when thou obeyest, thy life becoming arborescent, the leaves of thy tree spirally arranged so as to take in the most thou canst of God's air and sunshine, yielding the fruits of a Christian character. May it be for each one of us to flourish like the palm-tree and grow like the cedar, being planted in the house of the Lord, flourishing in the courts of our God, even in old age still bearing fruit (Psalm xcii. 12-14). Then, when death transplants us to the more genial clime of the Heavenly Eden, it will be seen that our branches are evermore interlacing with

the boughs of the Tree of Life. Meantime, as we wait amid the wintry blasts of earth for the great translation, let us catch inspiration from the Vision of the Flowers:

"In all places, then, and in all seasons,

Flowers expand their light and soul-like wings;
Teaching us, by most persuasive reasons,
How akin they are to human things.

"And with childlike, credulous affection,
We behold their tender buds expand;
Emblems of our own great resurrection,
Emblems of the bright and better land."

-(LONGFELLOW.)

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.

Amen.

LECTURE VIII.

GENESIS OF THE LUMINARIES.

"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven, to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: He made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day."GENESIS i. 14-19.

I. Explanation of the Passage.

1.-Twin Triads of the Creative Week.

FIRST of all, let us attend to the Explanation of the Passage.

And yet, before proceeding with the explanation, let me direct your attention to what may be called the twin Triads. This venerable Creation Archive

of the Creative Week. evidently divides into two great eras, each era consisting of three days; each day of the first era having a corresponding day in the second era. Thus, to the chemical Light of the First Day correspond the sidereal Lights of the Fourth Day. To the terrestrial Individualization of the Second Day corresponds the vital Individualization of the Fifth Day. To the Genesis of the Lands and of the

Plants on the Third Day corresponds the Genesis of the Mammals and of Man on the Sixth Day. Thus, the first era of the Triad was an era of Prophecy; the second era of the Triad, an era of Fulfillment. It is a majestic instance of that wonderful, Divinely-arranged Parallelism which we see on every side of us-e. g., Day and Night, Seed-time and Harvest, Man and Woman, Nature and Scripture, Matter and Spirit-and which finds verbal, stately utterance in the rhythmic sentiments so characteristic of Hebrew Poetry. And now to our Passage.

2.-The Twofold Difficulty.

6

"And God said: Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens, to give light on the earth.' And it was so; and God made the two great lights and the stars, and set them in the expanse of the heavens, to give light on the earth." But you interrupt me with some objections. First you ask: "Was not light already existing? Have we not been expressly told in previous verses that light already existed as the issue of the First Day? Is not then Moses inconsistent with himself in asserting that light existed on the First Day, and subsequently asserting that the heavenly bodies were not created till the Fourth?" The answer is easy. Light may exist independently of the sun. There is, e. g., the light of phosphorescence, the light of electricity, the light of incandescence, the light of chemism, atom clashing with atom, and discharging light at every collision. Recall the famous Nebular Hypothesis to which I have so often adverted. According to this magnificent conjecture, there has been a time, untold ages ago, when our globe was surrounded by a fiery, luminous vapor, like the dazzling photosphere of our present sun. Is there anything in the Mosaic Archive of Creation to conflict with this splendid Hypothesis? Why blame

Moses for asserting that light existed before the sun was visible, and yet praise Kant and Herschel and Laplace and Humboldt for asserting the same thing? But I hear another objection. "The earth," you remind me, "is a constituent part of the solar system; as such, it necessitates from the beginning the contemporaneous existence of the sun, to hold the solar system in balance, and to keep earth itself in its orbit; but if the sun was not created till the Fourth Day, what becomes of the astronomic teaching that earth has been from the beginning an integrant part of the solar system?" Again the answer is easy. Observe, first, that our passage does not assert that God created that is to say, caused to come into existence for the first time-sun, moon, and stars, on the Fourth Day. All that our passage asserts in this matter is this: God on the Fourth Day for the first time caused sun, moon, and stars to become visible. Remember that light is not an essential, constituent part of the sun. For aught we know, the sun itself may be a dark body, as indeed the "solar spots" have led some astronomers to think. Moreover: surveying the sun as the centre of gravitation for the planetary system, the sun can fulfill its gravitating office equally well whether luminous or not. Let me then again ask you to observe carefully just what the Sacred Chronicler says. He does not say: "God created the sun, moon, and stars on the Fourth Day." The creation of the heavenly bodies he has already implied in the very first statement of his Chronicle: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. i. 1). What the Chronicler asserts is this: "God said: 'Let there be lights, luminaries, light-bearers, light-radiators, in the expanse of the heavens' and God made the two great lights and the stars;" that is to say: God constituted them, appointed