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 
