350 ORGANIC EVOLUTION CONSIDERED 



Israel by Malachi." These are the unqualified ex- 

 pressions by which the great teachers in Israel begin 

 their teachings. 



No shadow of suspicion that there is no God, or 

 that there is a multitude of gods, is ever expressed. 

 Their minds, one and all, from the beginning to the 

 end of their writings, are clear and most emphatic as 

 to the One God, and his relation to them and to 

 humanity. As witnesses of their divine knowledge 

 they were ready to surrender their lives. They rightly 

 have their places in history among the heroes who 

 have forsaken all else for the truth. 



If, therefore, the idea of Monotheism originated 

 and survived by revelation through the long, dark 

 periods of the world's history, the oldest record that 

 contains this greatest of all facts, the revelation of the 

 One God, may be regarded as true in other respects. 



If the cosmogony in Genesis needed confirmation, 

 which, so far as we can probably ever know it does 

 not, the Monotheism of the record would be sufficient. 

 He who in the first sentence could write " In the 

 beginning God created the heaven and the earth," 

 could from the same source of knowledge write that 

 on the third day, or period of creation, "the earth 

 brought forth grass, herb yielding seed after its kind, 

 and tree bearing fruit;" and that on the fifth day the 

 waters were made to " bring forth abundantly the 

 moving creature that hath life," and that the earth 

 brought forth " the living creature after its kind, 

 cattle and creeping thing, and beast of the earth 

 after its kind," and that, finally, "God created man 

 in his own image." 



As in Geology, so in Genesis, life begins with plants 

 and moves upward to higher forms till it culminates 

 in man. A multitude of details which would have 

 been burdensome to the minds of the people is omit- 



