284 THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 



to guard in our absence lest our enemy encroach upon 

 our domain. Now we call upon him to bind our 

 hearts together so that neither time nor circumstance 

 can bring division between us. The menace of a 

 herdsman's wrath has become one of the tenderest 

 messages of Christian love. 



In the light of the principles stated above, what 

 is the essential truth that lies back of the earliest chap- 

 ters of Genesis ? First, that there is one God. Slowly 

 it had been borne in upon the Hebrew mind as upon 

 no other tribe in the world that the Lord God is one 

 God. Nearly all the world besides believed in many 

 gods. Each nation had a God peculiarly its own, 

 each city had a minor god caring for it particularly. 

 There were gods of the woods, gods of the oceans, 

 gods of the streams. Gods and goddesses were every- 

 where. To this people wandering through the terri- 

 ble monotony of the sandy desert, the "Garden of Al- 

 lah," there came the inspired comprehension of the 

 eternal oneness of Almighty God. First, he was to 

 most of them the God of the Hebrew, stronger than 

 the gods of the nations. After a while under the 

 teaching of prophet after prophet there finally came 

 to the entire nation the exalted conception that God 

 is one and there is no other God. This is one of the 

 imperishable revelations of all time. Beside this, all 

 suggestions of fifth or sixth day, of hours or of ages 



