Barachel and friend of Job, speaking when humanity was yet young: "In dreams, in visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on man, in slumbers on his bed; then doth God open the ear of men and seal up their instruction " (Job xxxiii. 15, 16). Thus did He instruct Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Samuel, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah, Joseph of Nazareth, the Wise Men from the East, Peter, Paul, and, in a very eminent degree, John of Patmos. What is the Book of the Revelation but a series of majestic visions? And as that Book is a panoramic Apocalypse of the future, so I firmly believe is the Creation Record a panoramic Apocalypse of the past. Accordingly, its language is not scientific, but phenomenal or pictorial. Even scientists themselves, who very properly demand strict accuracy of expression when discoursing on scientific matters, nevertheless often allow themselves, and very properly, to use phenomenal language, as when they speak, e. g., of sunrise and sunset. Why should not the writer of this venerable Archive, living in that far-off, childlike antiquity, be allowed the same liberty? And, indeed, we may bless God that the language of Scripture on such matters is optical. For, had the Bible been written in the scientific style, it would have been a sealed book except to the initiated. Moreover, it would have been misunderstood and assailed by these very initiates, even far more than it actually has been; for Science, like every other thing of life, is a process, constantly outgrowing and sloughing off its own opinions and putting forth new. An interesting book has been written, entitled "Variations of Popery." Possibly another book, equally interesting, might be written, entitled "Variations of Science." But phenomenal language never becomes obsolete. To the end of time, savant, not less than savage, will speak of sunrise and sunset. No, the Bible does not pro

fess to be a scientific book. It professes to describe such matters as we have in hand optically-i. e., as they look. Nevertheless, it does profess even here to tell the truth. As a matter of fact, the sun did not rise this morning; it is the rotation of the globe on its axis that gave us what seemed to be a sunrise. Do you then charge your almanac-maker with ignorance or falsehood because he has told you that the sun would rise this morning at twentytwo minutes past seven o'clock, or that he will set to-night at fifty-two minutes past four? Nevertheless, although theoretically false, these phenomenal statements touching the heavenly bodies are practically true, and so true that on the basis of them your navigator, in mid-ocean, will accurately calculate his longitude and latitude, and your astronomical clock at Washington will give the exact time. of day to a continent. Precisely so with the Mosaic narrative of the Creation. Scientifically false it may be; optically, and in the moral sense, profoundly true I firmly believe it is. Most unfair, then, and even absurd it would be to discuss it scientifically. And yet I feel perfectly sure that it is just as true as the statements of your almanac-maker. So much for the purpose of the Creation Record and the mode of its revelation to the original Narrator. And now to return to the main

Living Issue.

3. Our Subject a point at present in hand: the assaults on the Mosaic Story; for it is assaulted, And I am here to it to be true in the And, in defending

let it be confessed, very formidably. defend it; and this because I believe sense in which the author meant it. it, I shall, of course, speak from the platform of a Christian believer. At the same time I shall speak from the platform of one who has a profound homage for the scientific method, freely taking, whenever the occasion de

mands, my weapons from the arsenal of science itself. And in thus repelling from the platform of the scientist the assaults of unbelievers, I am sure I am sanctioned by Apostolic authority. True, you hear from the Apostles no such words as gravitation, electricity, spectrum analysis. And no wonder; the physical sciences were not then born. Nevertheless there were then, as there are now, assaults against Christianity. These assaults, however, came not from scientists, but from Jewish ritualists and legalists; from Gentile polytheists and idolators. And the Apostles, wherever they went, met the foe, not at some ancient, abandoned point, but at the point of contemporaneous assault. Since then wonderful advances have been made. Since then the telescope and the microscope have been invented. Since then Christianity has been summoned to grapple with new foes-foes more formidable than any that were wont to broaden their phylacteries in Herod's temple, or kiss toward the shade of Plato in the olive-grove of Athens's academy. And now suppose that Paul, rallied from Cæsar's axe, and living again to-day, were set here in Philadelphia for the defense of the Gospel, even as he had been in those Roman days of yore. How think you would he speak? Would he not take up the modern gauntlet, going forth to meet the new foes, as he was wont to go forth to meet the old foes, grappling with them on their own ground? Would he not close in with the modern false interpreter of God's first Bible, as he was wont to close in with the ancient legalist of Rome, the ancient skeptic of Corinth, the ancient ritualist of Galatia, the ancient mystic of Colosse? Old foes they are; but they wear new masks. Be it ours, then, to strip off the new masks, and so disclose the old foes.

4.-Spirit of these Studies.

And yet here at this very point let me say, once for all, that, throughout these studies, I shall never intentionally indulge in philippic. Of course, I shall exercise man's common prerogative-the right of personal opinion. But I shall never, if God shall be so good as to help me, stoop to denunciation. For there is no eloquence so easy, so transient, so sterile, and, if you will allow me, so vulgar, as the eloquence of invective. Of course, we ought to fight every lie. But the best way of fighting it is not with the insect buzz and sting of diatribe: the all-conquering way is to let in on it the calm, noiseless sunbeam of Truth.

This, then, is our third reason for studying the Story of the Creative Week: it is the chief point of modern scientific assault.

IV. Moral Meaning of the Story.

1. Nature and

dent.

But there is a fourth and still stronger reason for engaging in this study: it is the Moral Meaning of the Story itself.

For I firmly believe that a profound, Scripture correspon- Divinely - ordained correspondence exists between things spiritual and things natural. Observe the order of my words: Between things spiritual and things natural, putting things spiritual first. And this is a vital point. For we are wont to think that it is by a species of happy accident that certain resemblances exist between the kingdom of matter and the kingdom of spirit. Thus we are wont to cite certain metaphors of Holy Scripture as instances of God's condescension, representing Him as adjusting Himself to our weakness by setting forth spiritual truth in metaphorsthat is, in language "borrowed," as we say, from human

relations and material phenomena. It is well worth pondering, however, whether God, instead of thus borrowing from Nature, and so employing an after-thought, did not create Nature for this very purpose, among others-namely, of illustrating His spiritual kingdom, Nature being in a profound sense its counterpart, answering to it as though in way of shadow and impress. E. g., we are told that the Church is Christ's Body (1 Cor. xii. 12-27). Of course, it is easy to trace many analogies between the natural organism of the head and its body, and the spiritual organism of Christ and His Church. But whence came these analogies? Are they accidental? Did Jesus Christ adjust Himself and His Church to a scheme of Nature already existing? Or did He, foreknowing all things from the beginning, and foreseeing the peculiarly vital relation He would sustain to His own chosen people, so construct the scheme of Nature as that the human organism of head and body should set forth the mystical union of Saviour and Saved? Again: Jesus Christ is said to be the Bridegroom, and the Church His Bride (Eph. v. 25-33). Is this language borrowed from the marriage institution? No. The marriage institution was founded for this very purpose-among others, namely, to set forth the unutterably tender relation between Jesus Christ and those who are His. For, as Eve proceeded from out of Adam, so does the Church proceed from out of the Second Adam (Gen. ii. 21-24), members of His body, being of His flesh and of His bones (Eph. v. 30). Again: Jesus Christ is called the Last Adam (1 Cor. xv. 45). Why is this name given to Him? As an after-thought, suggested by the First Adam? No. But because the First Adam, in the very beginning, was instituted to be to the race natural what the Second Adam is to the race spiritual, or the family of the redeemed; and,