view; to look at the world as he looked at it. If I could, the first day would tell me of God calling forth the light; the second, of His giving a fixed order to sky and earth, land and water; the third, of His evoking the productive powers of earth; the fourth, of His bidding the sun and stars appear; the fifth, of His awakening to life all the creatures of the deep; the sixth, of His bidding the animals live, and of His making man in His own image; the seventh, of the divine rest, and His delight in what is very good, in the unity of His works. Following that course, it would never occur to this shepherd boy to think of the world as consisting of huge continents, islands, and peninsulas. The little spot on which his home stood would receive the light each morning, would be spanned by a firmament, would contain its garden ground with grass and herbs, would be shined upon by sun and stars, would not be far from some river full of fishes, would nourish its own cattle, would have its family of human beings. He would never be obliged to journey back over centuries and millenniums, or to task his fancy with the question what might have been when these things were not. They were there, and God, at the beginning, had said that

they should be there. Thus every day creation would seem to him very old and very young.

His belief, God spake, and it was done; He commanded, and all things stood fast,—would not interfere with the feeling "Each day He maketh all things new." Every day he would think that he glorified the God of Abraham by discovering, so far as his means permitted, fresh treasures, which He had hidden that His creatures might search them out. That it was in this way the noblest Hebrews looked at the creation, I gather from the Psalmists and the Prophets. That their minds were open to receive fresh light from fresh circumstances, I learn from those wonderful visions of God which were granted to Ezekiel, as he lay beside the river of Chebar, when the forms of Babylonian sculpture were presented to his outward eye. But the recollection that their God, the God of their fathers, created the heavens and the earth, kept them from the worship of things in heaven and earth; kept them from the dread which makes the investigation of these things impossible. Whenever we Christians have lost this Hebrew culture, we have sunk into an idolatry that has denounced science as wicked and dangerous. May not the

mixture of that idolatry in our minds now have far more to do with our fear of physical inquiries and speculations than our reverence for the first chapter of Genesis ?

Affectionately yours,

F. D. MAURice.

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LETTER V.

BIBLICAL APOLOGIES.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

You say, in reference to some who suppose that the first chapter of Genesis anticipates the discoveries of physical inquirers, "The writers "who so handle the truth, whether of God's Word

or of His world, are trying an experiment on "the faith of the laity, tending to produce more 'serious results than all the doubts and difficulties which they seek to remove.'

Such a warning from an earnest layman ought indeed to make a clergyman pause and ask himself what mischief he is or may be working, whilst he thinks he is doing God service. Looking at the subject from my own side, considering how these experiments have injured the Book which they profess to defend, I cannot doubt that you are right. The first chapter of Genesis,

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read as it is written, is full of wonder and simple beauty. The message which it has brought to generations of men, and may bring to generations more, is not merely obliterated, but contradicted, by those who would use it either to support or to control the conclusions of the physical student.

I do, nevertheless, most fully and firmly believe that so far as it has been left to tell its own. tale,--so far as it has made itself heard above our noisy interpretations,-so far its influence has been immeasurably more quickening and beneficial to physical studies than those who engage in them know. Sir Charles Lyell, if I do not mistake, speaks of the valuable hints which the geologist finds scattered about the Hindu cosmogonies. Of such hints so laborious and honest a student as he is would of course avail himself. He might, for a time, be fascinated by finding through what cycles of ages, so unlike the poor seven days, the imagination of those world-framers had travelled. But after paying all the respect which is due to such dreams,and men who find that there is a waking reality corresponding to them cannot withhold such respect, what has been the actual result to those who have grown up under this vast heap of