power, he finds himself a slave to appetite and passion and in bondage to earthly and sensual desires. James traces the pedigree of sin back to desire, which is the generic meaning of the word there translated lust. (James i. 14, 15.) This accords with the account of the origin of sin in Eden. Eve saw that the apple was to be desired. Desire entices to action but is not in itself necessarily sinful. If the will determines selfishly to gratify the desire reckless of God's law and of the rights which it guarantees to men, then the desire is fertilized, the seed which it bears is sin and when it has ripened is death.

Here also begins the revelation of God as the redeemer of man from sin. God's redemptive action began as soon as man had sinned. It began in gracious divine action and influence to reclaim the sinners to their normal allegiance to himself. After Adam and Eve had sinned, God is represented as immediately seeking them, while they ran away from him. And when they stood before him, he condemned them indeed and banished them from Eden. But he did not banish them from himself. On the contrary, as the subsequent narrative shows, he received them and those of their children and children's children, who willingly trusted and served him, as accepted worshipers. And here is recorded not only the beginning of God's gracious action towards these first of human sinners, but also the promise of its continuance and its prevailing power. This promise is the so-called Protevangelium, in which God says to the serpent: "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel." We learn from the Babylonian inscriptions that the serpent was recognized as representing the power of lawlessness and evil among all the Semitic peoples.* He would therefore be at once recognized as such by all readers and hearers of Genesis as soon as it was written. Therefore those for whom this story of the tempta

*"The goddess Nina ceased to retain her serpentine attributes and after the era of the monuments of Tel-loh passed almost entirely out of memory; while the serpent became, what indeed he always seems to have been in genuine Semitic belief, the incarnation of wickedness and guile. We read in the bilingual lists of the evil serpent, the serpent of darkness, and it is probable that the imagination of later time confounded this serpent of darkness with the dragon Tiamat, the leader of

tion was written must at once have understood it to declare that, under temptation by the power of lawlessness and evil, man had disobeyed God and fallen under the divine condemnation as a sinner. And it reveals, and must have been understood as revealing, the beginning of a conflict between the powers of good and of evil, which was to be continued through the history of man; and it reveals, and must have been understood to reveal God's promise of victory over the power of evil which God was to win for man in some way through the seed of the woman. Thus this narrative shows that God's action in redeeming man from sin began as soon as man had sinned and that it was to be continued to a victorious issue.

And thus in the opening of Genesis is struck the keynote of human history, in the declaration of the two great facts of sin and redemption. Here is recorded the beginning of the conflict of God's grace with the powers of darkness in the redemption of man from sin. Here also is the prediction that this conflict was to continue as the staple of human history; and here is the promise of victory through the seed of the woman. And history shows that the conflict was continued with increasing distinctness of significance until Christ came and the Spirit of God was poured out on all flesh.

Less than half a century before Christ came, Julius Cæsar crossed the Rubicon and laid the foundation of the imperial power of the Cæsars who followed in long succession. Christ was born in the life-time of the first Roman emperor. The coming of the Christ and the coming of the Cæsar so nearly at the same time signalize the great epoch in the progress of this conflict and the fulfilment of this promise. The Roman emperor is the fit representative in history of the power of selfsufficiency, self-will, self-seeking, and self-glorifying, of that supremely selfish spirit of grasping, conquest, and domination which is the essence of all sin. Paul describes sin, when in its culmination it reveals in bold relief its essential character: "The man of sin, the son of perdition; he that opposeth and the powers of night and chaos."-A. H. Sayce, The Religion of the Ancient Babylonians, Hibbert Lectures, 1887, p. 223.

Among the Aryan peoples of Persia and India the serpent was in like manner the symbol of the power of evil.-Pressensé, Christianity and the Ancient World, pp. 132, 133.

exalteth himself against all that is called God or that is worshiped; so that he sitteth in the temple of God, setting himself forth as God." (II. Thess. ii. 3, 4.) It was the Roman emperor, claiming worship as a god, whom Paul had in mind when he drew this terrible picture of sin. It was the Cæsar, who not very long after Christ's crucifixion began to wield all the power of the Roman empire to crush the Christian church. Any Christian might have escaped martyrdom by sprinkling a few grains of incense in acknowledgment of the Cæsar as a god. Christ was a subject of the Cæsar. To human view how weak, how utterly insignificant he was in comparison with the emperor of the civilized world. But the Cæsar represented selfish power maintaining, extending, and aggrandizing itself by force. Christ represented the power of love acting in harmony with the eternal truth and law of God and realizing the ends of God's eternal wisdom and love. He revealed and maintained the supreme, universal, and inviolable authority and the immutable obligation of the divine law of love. In the strength of that love and that law he confronted the worldruling power of selfish and forceful conquest, subjugation, and domination in self-aggrandizement. The empire of the

Cæsars crumbled and vanished from the earth. The kingdom of Christ, under the reign of love, prevailed, and is transforming the world. And the Scriptures foretell that it will go on transforming human society into the kingdom of God till the end and consummation of the earthly history of man. Here in the beginning of this first book of the Bible, significantly named Genesis, is disclosed the beginning of the great conflict between the good and the evil, between love and selfishness, between the divine and the satanic, which has marked the whole history of man. There can be no true philosophy of human history which fails to recognize both man's sin and God's continuous action among men redeeming them from sin and establishing and advancing his kingdom of righteousness and good-will among men on the earth. The establishment and triumph of this kingdom is the goal of all God's action on earth and the highest end which can be realized in the history of man.

Accordingly the biblical history, which begins with Paradise lost by the sin of man, ends in the glorious vision of Paradise regained by man through Christ, in which the categoric imperative of the law is transcended and perfectly obeyed in Christian character fully developed and acting in the spontaneity of perfect love. Thus the promise, Ye shall be as God, by seeking the fulfillment of which in selfishness man brought on himself ruin in sin and alienation from God, is renewed in Christ and fulfilled through the renewing of sinners by the Holy Spirit into the life of love. "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are. Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. But we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is."

Thus in the first three chapters of Genesis we find the beginnings of God's revelation of himself in his relation to the universe and to man in all the aspects in which he afterwards revealed himself more fully down to the coming of the God in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. And the revelation of these great truths or realities respecting nature, God and man remains indisputable in this ancient document, whatever theory may be adopted as to the form of it, whether from the point of view of literary criticism or of physical science.

SAMUEL HARRIS.

CURRENT

LITERATURE.

A JAPANESE BOY. BY HIMSELF.*-The author of this charming and really instructive little book, which has just been published, is a native of Japan, and a student at Yale-Mr. Shiukichi Shigemi. It will be noticed by the title, which we have given in full, that the book is by "HIMSELF;" and we are confident that all who read his entertaining pages will be impressed by the fact that "Himself" has a very marked individuality, a thoroughly joyous nature, and a personal magnetism that will enable him to carry through with success whatever he may undertake.

For some years, a large number of young men from Japan have been studying in our American Universities, and institutions of education all over the land; and everywhere they have impressed their instructors, and all with whom they have come in contact, with their high character and earnest purpose. Nothing, perhaps, has tended to interest the American people in the regenerated empire of Japan so much as the presence of these young men among us. They exhibit a quickness of mental perception, a readiness of adaptation, a self respect, and a dignity of manner, which speak well for the people of whom they may be considered to be the representatives. They are also characterized by a certain savoir faire which is quite noticeable. Mr. Rikizo Nakashima-a native of Japan-in an Article on the "Japanese Character," written for the February number, 1889, of this Review, has called attention to the fact that one leading characteristic of his countrymen is that, as a people, they are imbued with a "profound sense of honor to one's self, and to one's family, and to one's country." He says that "this chivalrous spirit has always been maintained, and is still maintained by all with zealous care." He adds: "the chief object of education has always been to intensify and develop this sense of honor, and every action is tested, and judged by it. Therefore the first question that presents itself to every true Japanese, in deciding * A Japanese Boy. By Himself. New Haven, Conn. E. B. Sheldon & Co., 1889. 12mo, pp. 128.