GENESIS AND MODERN THOUGHT. 171 
dawn of literature, teaching to each successive generation nearly all that it knows 
of the early history of the world and man. It has lasted through ages of primi- 
tive simplicity, of early civilization, of medizval barbarism, of modern revival; 
and each as it passed away has glanced reverently at the old book which tells of 
the generations of the heavens and the earth What have the thought and the 
science of our age done with the old record? One thing is certain: that the 
present is a singular and special period, in its manner of treating ancient things. 
We have a way of keeping out side of us everything which went to the hearts of 
our fathers, of cutting everything to pieces to find what is within it, of coldly 
criticising objects of faith and veneration; and Genesis has received so much of 
this treatment that it is questionable if all even of those who have the firmest 
faith in-revelation regard it exactly as they once did, or as their predecessors did. 
Perhaps it may be well to refresh our souls a little, in this matter, by a more 
kindly and loving glance at the Book of Genesis and its relations to our modern 
science and our modern lives. 
Modern historical research has given us new impressions as to the great an- 
tiquity of Genesis. A book which was translated into Greek three hundred 
years before Christ, which was accepted alike by Samaritans and Jews as a vener- 
able and sacred record at the time of their separation, about a thousand years be- 
fore Christ, the acceptance of which can be proved from the history of Israel to 
-have extended almost as far back as the time of the reputed author, say 1400 or 
1500 years before Christ, is a very old book, if not the oldest of books. Nor has 
any success attended the efforts of modern criticism to show that this venerable 
record has been tampered with or re-edited at any later date. But the date of 
Moses, say 3300 years ago, does not really measure the actual antiquity of the 
contents of Genesis. If we were to pick out of the book all the passages that 
are either explicitly or by implication stated to have been revealed to or spoken 
by Adam, Noah, Abraham, and the other patriarchs, we should find that accord- 
ing to the showing of Moses himself, very much of the matter, and this of the 
most important, must have existed long before his time, and was merely collected 
and edited by him. This is the common sense aspect of that ‘‘ document hy- 
pothesis”? on which so much learning has been expended, and which has per- 
plexed so many. Butthere are other passages, not thus indicated, which must 
have existed long before the time of Moses. Take, for example, the first chap- 
ter of Genesis. The contents of this chapter, relating as they do to matters which 
precede the advent of man, must have been just as much the result of direct in- 
spiration as if they had contained a prophecy of the distant future. But to whom 
were th-y revealed? It may have been to Moses; but there were inspired men 
before Moses, and it would seem strange that this initial part of revelation should 
have been withheld from the generations between Adam and Moses, and more es- 
pecially as the keeping of the Sabbath, which is directly based on it, was a lead- 
ing institute of pre-Mosaic religion. 
Recent researches in the monuments of Assyria now assure us that the an- 
