GENESIS AND MODERN THOUGHT 175 
gards natural phenomena as the work of malignant beings. Here, again, he lays 
down a principle which commends itself at once to common sense, and which all 
science tends to support. Nothing can be a more assured result of scientific 
study than the unity of plan and operation in all nature, and the folly of these 
superstitions which refer natural events either to chance or to the conflict of sub- 
ordinate deities or demons. Thus the first chapter of Genesis, wherever re- 
ceived and believed, gives the death-blow to idolatry, and superstition. 
Bae smother ereati use)! of) the) mecord of creation /j1s))the./ assertion 
of the truth that man is the child of God, created in his image and likeness. 
The first question in some of our catechisms for children, ‘‘ Who made you ?” 
points to this first and primitive doctrine of religion, on which the whole relation 
of man to God as a moral and responsible being is built. Here, again, Genesis 
is in accord with the best science and philosophy. It is true that there are theo- 
rists in our time who profess to believe that the human will and reason have in 
some way developed themselves from the instincts of lower animals. But these 
men can not but feel that they are maintaining a most improbable conclusion, 
for it is not in accordance with natural analogy that anything should rise above 
its own level, that any motive-power can put forth more or other than the energy 
that isinit. Thus an intelligence like man can not flow upward from lower 
sources, but must have relation to some higher creative intelligence. 
These thoughts carry us no farther than the first chapter of Genesis. The 
history of Eden and the Fall carry with them other truths. But I may now ask, 
are the truths above referred to of no practical value? They may appear too fa- 
miliar to us to need to be insisted on; but the practical, and even the open de- 
nial of them by so much of the infidelity of our time, shows that they still need 
to be enforced, and that they really lie at the foundations of our faith. The edi- 
fice of Christianity, as it now stands forth in all the grandeur of its New Testa- 
ment development, with Jesus Christ as its chief corner-stone, may well by its 
magnificent superstructure call our attention away from the rough stones laid 
down for its foundation in the old patriarchal days. But these were great and 
costly stones, and had they not been bedded on the rock in those primitive times, 
we could not now enjoy that which is built upon them. 
_ It is well that children should be taught the noble, though child-like theology 
of Genesis; and well also that it should be taught in its simplicity, and without 
the misconceptions which have been allowed to cling around it from those darker 
days when the Bible wasa sealed book, and when its place was taken by stories. 
_based on it, but mixed with much of superstition and misapprehension. I have 
found by experience that many of the objections to the truth of Genesis held as 
valid even by educated men, are not founded on the book itself, but on interpre- 
tations or distortions of it which have a nearer affinity with mere nursery tales 
_than with the letter or spirit of God’s word.-—Sunday School Times. 
