THE FIRST CHAPTER OP GENESIS. 



129^ 



this: — From the time that man came, there has been no- 

 discontinuity in the natural order ; no new energy has been 

 introduced ; no new order founded. Here we find the 

 theological basis of that which is the primary assumption of 

 science ; the unbroken continuity of nature. Let it not be 

 forgotten that this assumption of continuity, " which may be 

 called the law of causality, cannot be proved but must be 

 believed ; in the same way as we believe the fundamental 

 assumptions of religion with which it is closely and intimately 

 connected." * But we must also remember that for science it is 

 a necessary assumption ; it is only within the limits of this 

 assumption that scientific reasoning can take place. 



Lastly, God sanctified the seventh day. The full significance 

 of this expression is not brought out in Scripture until we meet it 

 again as a quotation in the fourth of the " Ten Words " of 

 Sinai ; but from its context there, it is clear that the sanctifica- 

 tion of the seventh day meant that man was differentiated from 

 tlie lower animals. Six days only was he to labour for his food ; 

 the seventh day was not his, but God's ; a day on which he should 

 worship God and enter into communion with Him. 



These seven great truths present us with the true relations of 

 man to God, his Creator, and to nature, his fellow-creature. 

 Above man is God, the infinite and eternal Creator ; below man 

 is the great and glorious universe which God has called into 

 being ; between the two stands man ; in himself, small, feeble 

 and insignificant, but by virtue of God's patent, conferred upon 

 him, endowed with power to have communion with God, 

 and dominion over nature, — to follow Eeligion, and develop 

 Science. 



To bring out these seven truths from the chapter before us is 

 no triumph of forced and ingenious exegesis : they lie upon its 

 surface, plain to every man. If the chapter be read to a child 

 or to an unlearned peasant of ordinary intelligence, both would 

 draw from it the same conclusions that 1 have done ; indeed in 

 almost every case I have used the very words of the chapter 

 itself. And these seven truths are fundamental : the teachings 

 of this chapter are necessary, necessary for all men. They 

 furnish the great safeguard against idolatry and polytheism and 

 all the unspeakable degradations of body, mind and spirit 

 to which these lead. This chapter declares to man from the 



T. N. Thiele, Director of the Copenhagen Observatory, Theory of 

 Observations, p. 1, published by Charles and Edwin Layton, 56, Farringdon 

 Street, London, 1903. 



K 



