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FIRST SUNDAY

Morning

THE STORY OF THE CREATION

Passages to be read: Gen. i. 1-28; ii. 1-3.

HEN we compare this story of creation with the text-books that are now read in schools and colleges, we feel as if we had passed from some beautiful scene in nature, into some factory with all the engines going. At first, in making such a change as that, it is the mighty differences that impress us. Between the factory, with all its noise of wheels, and the silence and wonder of hillside and of loch, there seems to lie a gulf that is impassable; but gradually we come to apprehend that the energy which keeps every loom a-going is the very power that makes the hillsides green, and gives the light and shadow to the loch. So is it with this story of creation, and all the secrets which science has unlocked. At first we are startled by the tremendous differences, then we perceive an underlying kinship. Great truths are hidden in this simple story which all the learning of ages has not antiquated; and though they are put here in a pictorial way (for even God must speak as a child to children), they are none the less true to the discerning heart. Do you think, now, if the writer had written of evolution, and of the silent passing of unnumbered millions of years-do you think that his audience would ever have listened to him? They would have laughed him away as a ridiculous dreamer, and refused to believe his messages from God. So God withheld that knowledge

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from His servant-it would all be given when the time was ripe for it. He bade him take the conceptions men could grasp then. He bade him speak in words they could understand. And He inspired His writer so to use these stories, and so to purify them and fill them full of light, that they became the avenues of priceless teaching. What, then, were some of the lessons God was teaching when He illuminated the heart of this historian? They were many; but we shall notice only three.

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'HE first is that God is the Creator-in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. At the back of all existence is the Almighty, and by His word everything was made. If you had asked a Greek what he thought about the universe, he might have told you that matter was eternal. If you had asked a Roman, he might have tried to explain things by the chance clashings of unnumbered atoms. But here, when Greek philosophy was yet unborn, we have the magnificent chant,' In the beginning, God'; and that is sublime, because it is so simple, and it is simple because it is inspired. Of course to us to-day that truth is almost commonplace. We have been familiar with it since our childhood. And therefore, perhaps, it does not cheer and aid us as God unquestionably meant that it should do. But if readers of the Bible will keep an open eye for the word (or thought) 'Creator,' they will find how men were ennobled, once, by this first trumpet-note, 'In the beginning-God.' Why was Jacob so blessed above other peoples? Because the portion of Jacob is the former of all things (Jer. x. 16). Unto whom are we to commit the keeping of our souls in well-doing? Unto God as unto a faithful Creator (1 Pet. iv. 19). Whom are we to remember in the morning of life? Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth (Eccles. xii. 1). And how may we know that God will not overlook us? Because He is the Creator of the ends of the earth, who fainteth not, neither is weary (Isa. xl. 28). When we

get a present from somebody who loves us, it is doubly precious if the giver made it. It is invested with a heightened value when we know that the giver wrought it all himself. So God has given us this wonderful universe, with its sun and moon, and hills and lochs and flowers, and the joy of it is increased a thousandfold, when we learn that He who gave it made it all.

THE second is that God wrought in gradual ways. When we study the methods of our Lord Jesus Christ, we see how gradually He communicated truth. He loved to work in a slow and steady way, leading His disciples forward step by step. I have yet many things to teach you, He said to them once, but ye cannot bear them now. Where, think you, did the divine Son acquire that method? Were not His activities moulded upon His Father's ways? In the slow and gradual method of Redemption is the parallel and crown to the Creation. I wonder if the writer of Genesis was never tempted to make all creation the work of a single instant. Would it not have been a thought of infinite grandeur to have pictured the whole as accomplished in a flash? If he had done that, he would have shut his heart to the voice divine that was inspiring him, and men to-day would have been smiling at the crude fancies of an oriental dreamer. But here, there is nothing sudden and appalling; there is sure and steady progress onward and upward; and all the discoveries of all the sciences are helping to explain and to confirm that truth. We need not try to make the 'days' symbolical. When the writer says a day he means a day. God did not break the cup His child held up to Him; He cleansed it and filled it with the living water. The wonder is that in this artless narrative, and under these figures of the early world, there should be found that truth of God's procedure which to-day is dominating the thought of

men.

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