we not learn from the experience of others, from those who have gone before? This question I cannot answer. I only know that the nature of man is innate depravity; that it must be regenerated by knowledge, sanctified by knowledge, redeemed by a knowledge of the great Redeemer. The Word of God reveals to us, "The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea."

The Word of God is our only infallible rubric; Church of England, is your government at this moment founded upon it? You have no authority but God's; no judgment but the judgment of His Spirit; no power but spiritual power; whatever other government you institute and exercise, it will be overthrown, for these, and these only, are the laws and institutions of the kingdom of God. You must not only doctrinally but practically walk by the rule of God's most Holy Word; "the Apostle and High Priest of our profession" did this, and you, when you swerve, you fall, Making the Word of God of none effect through your tradition." "But the Word of the Lord endureth for ever."

sum.

"Now of the things which we have spoken this is the We have such an high priest who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens; a minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man.”

CHAPTER VI.

ON THE BOOK OF GENESIS.

HIGH and Holy God! in beginning a commentary upon thy Most Holy Word I feel that my calling is a most awful one, the ground is so sacred, so important, and so holy. If responsibility be in proportion to grace, grant, Abba, Father, that grace may be in proportion to responsibility.

I do not believe, as some do, that the first five chapters of the Book of Genesis were originally written by Moses, but that they were a sacred record in the Antediluvian Church, preserved by the family of Noah, and arranged in the sacred canon of Holy Scripture by Moses, as many books were afterwards arranged by Ezra. The document bears upon it this more ancient date. We find too, Job and his friends quoting from it (Job xxxi. 33; xxxvii. 15—16), which they could not possibly have done if written by Moses, as really the original matter of the Book of Job is older than Moses, although arranged in the sacred canon by him. Therefore it is most scriptural to suppose that this most ancient of all documents was preserved by the family of Adam, by Noah in the Ark, added to by the Patriarchal Church, and finally

arranged by Moses as he came to understand the divine method by which God would reveal Himself to man. This was the ordinary manner by which God gave inspiration, and we have no reason to believe that He ever deviated from it, save in giving the Revelation to John, which was a divine revelation of the future, and not history. The history of the Creation is divine, and God may have given it to Moses as well as to Adam, but the chronological element leads me to suppose that inspiration began at an earlier period than Moses, and I believe God answered Job from Scripture, from the account of the Creation (chap. xxxviii.), and from the history of the Deluge (xxxviii. 8); if this were so, it is clear they must have been written before Moses.

By this mode of inspiration man is left to tell his own tale: Adam that he fell, that in Cain he received the fruit of his sin; Noah of his drunkenness, and the eternal Spirit of redemption, and of redemptive grace. And thus from this divinely wise medium of giving inspiration through individual media, there has not been, nor can there ever be, a human case or necessity in the whole world that does not find the direction it requires, "as in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man." And so to the end of time the divine mirror will continue: "It shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it." Let us look at the divine record.

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." (Gen. i. 1.) I might here draw a line, and leave a past

eternity in its awful grandeur, as a period too remote for us to penetrate, a past eternity too distant for us to scan, if God in other parts of Revelation had not opened to us a door through which we may look and behold Him there. But first I would remark here that the creation of our earth, as here mentioned, could not have been the earth as it is now under our feet; what God created was perfect, pure, and doubtless pregnant with life; whereas death, Old Mortality, is the seated, reigning sovereign of the element beneath our feet. Therefore it is of no use to say that God in the beginning created our earth as it is, and then in six natural days called into being all things as they now exist. We know that He created the original matter pure, therefore some evil agent must have occupied our globe, and rendered it that which we know its history to have been. Let us look first at creation, at Christ the Creator and Redeemer, and at the occupation of our earth by Satan. "Through faith we understand the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." (Heb. xi. 3.) What does it mean, "through faith"?-God is eternal repose, because He is enthroned in eternal right. I believe Satan was then a personal enemy, and God in the repose of infinite holiness and truth undertook to destroy him through the medium of material creation. "God is a Spirit," and by an exercise of faith and spiritual energy He created all material nature: "He spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast." (Ps. xxxiii. 9.) We do not know the nature of spirit, and thereхххііі.

fore we do not know the component attributes that could in a moment put forth substance (Is. vi. 13), but we do know that Essential Spirit is the First Great Cause.

Vital force seems a link, an agent between God and the soul of man; the same Spirit in nature, although not in degree. (Ps. civ. 30.)

The Redeemer God stands upon the scene of a past eternity, the Creator. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." "In the beginning was the Word." Here are two distinct personalities, and yet One God, One Creator. "His dear Son: who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: for by him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him and he is before all things, and by him all things consist." (Col. i. 16.) "I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths I was brought forth. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills, was I brought forth." (Prov. viii.)

Christ in His distinct personality was spiritually begotten in that past eternity, just as He was physically begotten in time. God of God, Light of Light, but begotten to accomplish a great work. "Christ the power of God. His Son, by whom he made the worlds." (Heb. i. 2.) We read of "The only begotten of the Father." "The only begotten Son."

"His only begotten Son."

(John i. 14-18;