other ages besides our own-that it had lessons to read, and truths to convey, to men and women of ages long past, and that the form in which these lessons and truths are conveyed had to be adapted to that in man which is permanent, and not to that which changes from time to time. A scientific age complains that the science of the Pentateuch is misleading, and that writers claiming to be inspired by a God of truth use language unquestionably at variance with the ascertained facts of astronomy or geology. It is terrible to reflect what time and ingenuity have been spent in trying to harmonize the two; what evil tempers have been displayed; what disingenuousness and bigotry evoked in the course of such controversy. But such results cannot be avoided, so long as we look in the Scriptures for that which we have absolutely no reason for believing they were meant to teach us. If the inspired writers of the Pentateuch had been enabled to make their language scientifically correct, that language would have been as much a stumbling-block to an unscientific period as its unscientific language is to a scientific age; and to both, I submit, equally unreasonably, if (that is to say) the object of a revelation be to

teach the moral nature of God and the responsibilities of His moral creatures to Him, and not to unveil those laws of the physical universe which God has allowed to man, as part of his moral and intellectual discipline, to discover by slow and painful toil.

I am not so sanguine, my brethren, as to suppose that this reasoning will satisfy those persons who have long ago made up their minds that as the science of the books of Moses is shown to be inexact, therefore there is no such thing as inspiration, and the Bible has no claims upon our hearing. Nor will the reasoning satisfy those who look upon the Scriptures as a lofty pile, of which Genesis forms the foundation, and of which if a single stone be removed, the whole edifice must fall in hopeless ruin. Both such classes are among us; and it is of little use to undertake in their interest an apology for the Book of Genesis. I would not wholly blame them, as if their views of inspiration were the fruit of their own ignorance or superstition. The authorized interpreters of the Book of God have in all times had much to answer for and though we repeat the story of Galileo before the Inquisition with something of complacency, the spirit of his opponents is not dead even in those

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who would fain build the prophet's sepulchre. My brethren, the truth, I do not hesitate to say, has suffered more from its defenders than its attackers; and if we have claimed for God's Word what God's Word has not claimed for itself, and set up our theories to be worshipped above God's facts, we have only ourselves to blame if those who cannot accept our theories suppose themselves to be irreconcilably at variance with all revelation. It may be, in part, our fault if the story of the Jewish captain bidding the sun to stand still upon Gibeon only raises questions of verbal inspiration, and diverts our attention from that which really concerns us, the ancient warfare of civilization against barbarism, of God against the devil. Nor have we advanced the knowledge of God in the world by refusing to allow people to be moved by the glorious poem of creation which we have listened to to-day (for it is a poem, if David's Psalms and the prophecies of Isaiah are poems), unless they will first accept without question the doctrine that Moses was in full possession of all the knowledge which the world has acquired since the knowledge of a Herschel or a Lyell. My brethren, I ask you whether the beauty and the truth of the Pentateuch is not withering up under treatment such

as this. Are we not forgetting the greatness and goodness of God, as shown forth by His writers, in our questions about science and inspiration? And if, as we are told, all Scripture was given to fill us with a strong and vital sense of God's nature and will, would it not be better for us, and a surer path to the attainment of all truth, if we let all other voices be hushed that our ears and hearts may drink only of that heavenly teaching which has for its first and all-important task to draw our thoughts from nature up to nature's God?

"The tree of knowledge of good and evil." Here, so early in the sacred books, standing forth as it were to guide our thoughts and speculations from the outset towards the true study of mankind, is revealed the fact of the two opposing forces of right and wrong. And in these words is the foundation on which all Scripture rests. Take away the reality and importance of this distinction, and the Bible and all religion falls for ever. Make its reality and importance felt in the soul of man, and you have at once whereon to build. The love of good, the hatred of evil: these are the true interpreters of Scripture. To evoke this conscience; to enlighten it, to guide it, to show it its true function as a

witness of the Father of our spirits: this is the work of the Holy Spirit of God moving upon the face of the written revelation. Righteousness

is the word of words throughout all Scripture. And it is not left undefined. The righteousness which the Scriptures reveal is the knowledge of and communion with God. "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness," is the wording of the Almighty fiat. In comparison with the depth and breadth of this revelation, into what utter insignificance sink questions about the age of the world, and the origin of species. And yet, for once that this passage has been cited by theologians to solace and encourage and fire to the noblest of ambitions the soul of humanity, how many times, think you, has it been cited as a text on which to establish, through the fact of the plural pronoun being used, the doctrine of the Trinity? "Made in God's image, after God's likeness." Are there any other words in the Bible which lift the shroud from the world, and open prospects so boundless, so glorious as these? That we were made to be like God; that as we came from Him, it is our blessed hope to be reunited to Him when the sins of the world are forgiven and its tears wiped away: is this so trite or so trivial a truth that we can afford to exer