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E. WALTER MAUNDER, F.R.A.S., ON 



seven successive dreams given to some prophet of old. This is 

 the suggestion once put forth by Hugh Miller, and adopted by 

 the late Eev. Prof. Charles Pritchard, in his work, Nature 

 and Revelation ; and it deserves careful attention. 



If Genesis I is a revelation from God, it must have been made 

 originally to some man ; it is through some man that we have 

 received it. We have instances in Scripture of many types and 

 kinds of revelation. Sometimes the prophet has heard an 

 audible voice ; sometimes the Divine message has been impressed 

 inwardly in his spirit ; sometimes his own organs of speech 

 have been moved by the Divine power ; sometimes he has fallen 

 into a trance and seen a vision ; sometimes the revelation has 

 come to him in the dreams of sleep. 



Now the language of this first chapter of Genesis deserves 

 special attention ; it is unlike all other Scripture. Ko man 

 was present ; God was the Actor and the only Historian ; yet 

 we have nowhere the prophetic formula: " Tlius saith the Lord." 

 God is always spoken of in the third person ; yet, though no 

 man could have been present, the record reads as if it were that 

 of an eye-witness, who saw the whole succession of events 

 passing before his sight, though he took no part in them and no 

 word was addressed to him. If we think of the chapter as the 

 record of some seer to whom the whole was revealed in a week 

 of nights, the dream of one creative day each niglit, the 

 expression, "and there was evening and there was morning, 

 day one" comes with the simplicity and grapliicness of a 

 personal narrative by the prophet. The sun went down and 

 darkness fell upon the landscape : then, as with Eliphaz the 

 Temanite, " a thing was secretly brought to him, and his ear 

 received a little thereof. In thought from the visions of the 

 night, when deep sleep falleth upon men " (Job iv, 12-13). 

 Between the evening and the morning the vision came to him, 

 the vision of the first day of Creation — " ther as evening and 

 there was mornings day one." 



VIII.—" God saw." 



But this was a vision, a dream. Visions have their place 

 and purpose, but as scientific men we crave for the actual, as 

 religious men for the real. If the vision was true, there must 

 have been a reality which it represented and expressed. 



Five times over in the chapter we read God saw.' How 

 often have these words been read as if they ran, man 

 saw " ? It is not the same thing, for " the Lord seeth not as 



