The Adam of Genesis 281 



does not spiritualize materiality, a task attempted 

 by many modern cults and philosophies, he lets fall 

 upon it the mist of spiritual allegory. The clouds 

 were the first notice to man that there was a world 

 higher than the earth upon which he trod. They 

 reflected the light of the sun, and analyzed its 

 beauty as rock and tree could not. Thus appro- 

 priately did Moses bring the spiritual world into 

 view, and so blended it with the earth that thinkers 

 are even now questioning whether nature is not the 

 supernatural, and the supernatural, nature. 



Let us examine one of these blending statements 

 — the most important of them: It is the author's 

 description of the creation of man. It was not a 

 fiat, but a proceeding in three stages. First: 

 "Jehovah Elohim made man of the dust of the 

 earth." He formed his material body of that to' 

 which it should return. Secondly: "He breathed 

 into him the breath of life." Had the creative 

 process been arrested there, man would have been 

 but one species of animals among many, in no wise 

 differing from them except in form. Thus far in 

 the process the work is represented as acts of cre- 

 ative activity — creative, however executed, by what- 

 ever expenditure of time and forces. But the final 

 statement is in contrast so marked with the two pre- 

 ceding it as to attract attention: "And he became 

 a living soul." We would not, like the systematic 

 theologian, erect an inverted pyramid of dogmatism 

 upon the apex of a Hebrew vowel-point; but this 



