IMAGE EVALUATION
TEST TAf^GET (MT-3)

^i,^ '%°

C^ #^<

IP-

1.0

I.I

1.25

'^IM ilM

■^ lU 1112.2

13 6

2.0

U lllll 1.6

c*.

<^1

'^'

>P^

Photographic

Sciences
Coiporation

23 WEST MAIN STREET

WEBSTER, NY 14580

(716) 873-4:03

«■

^. V '«^o\

'C* ^^

<*.<»'■

W.x.

CIHM/ICMH

Microfiche

Series.

CIHM/ICMH
Collection de
microfiches.

Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions Institut Canadian de microreproductions historiques

1980

Technical and Bibliographic Notes/Notes techniques et bibliographiques

The Institute has attempted to obtain the best
original copy available for filming. Features of this
copy which may be bibliographically unique,
which may alter any of the images in the
reproduction, or which may significantly change
the usual method of filming, are checked below.

Coloured covers/
Couverture de couleur

Covers damaged/
Couverture endommagde

Covers restored and/or laminated/
Couverture restaur6e et/ou pelliculde

Cover title missing/

Le titre de couverture manque

Coloured maps/

Cartes g^ographiques en couleur

Coluured ink (i.e. other than blue or black)/
Encre de couleur (i.e. autre que bleue ou noire)

Coloured plates and/or illustrations/
Planches et/ou illustrations en couleur

Bound with other material/
Relid avec d'autres documents

Tight binding may cause shadows or distortion
along interior margin/

La reliure serr^e peut causer de I'ombre ou de la
distortion le long de la marge int6rieure

Blank leaves added during restoration may
appear within the text. Whenever possible, these
have been omitted from filming/
II se peut que certaines pages blanches ajoutdes
lors d'une restauration apparaissent dans la texte,
mais, lorsque cela 6tait possible, ces pages n'ont
p.is 6t6 filmies.

L'Institut a microfilmd le meilleur exemplaire
qu'il lui a 6t6 possible de se procurer. Les details
de cet exemplaire qui sont peut-dtre uniques du
point de vue bibliographique, qui peuvent modifier
une image reproduite, ou qui peuvent exiger une
modification dans la mdthode normale de filmage
sont indiquds ci-dessous.

Coloured pages/
Pages de couleur

□ Pages damaged/
Pages endommagdes

□ Pages restored and/or laminated/
Pages restaur6es et/ou pellicul6es

r~7] Pages discoloured, stained or foxed/
I V I Pages d6color6es, tachetdes ou piqudes

I I Pages detached/

Pages ddtachdes

Showthrough/
Transparence

□ Quality of print varies/
Quality indgale de I'impression

I "y Includes supplementary material/

Iv I Comprend du material supplementaire

□ Only edition available/
Seule Edition disponible

Pages wholly or partially obscured by errata
slips, tissues, ^t*:., have been refilmed to
ensure the best oossible image/
Les pages totalement ou partiellement
obscurcies par un feuillet d'errata, une pelure,
etc., ont 6t(b film^es A nouveau de fapon d
obtenir la meilleure image possible.

Additional comments:/
Commentaires suppl6mentaires:

10X

This item is filmed at the reduction ratio checked below/

Ce document est fiim6 au taux de reduction indiqui ci-dessoui

14X 18X 22X

26X

30X

12X

16X

20X

24X

28X

32X

The copy filmed here has been reproduced thanks
to the generosity of:

National Library of Canada

L'exemplaire filmd fut reproduit grdce d la
g6n6rosit6 de:

Bibliothdque nationale du Canada

The images appearing here are the best quality
possible considering the condition and legibility
of the original copy and in keeping with the
filming contract specifications.

Les images suivantes ont 6t6 reproduites avec le
plus grand soin, compte tenu de la condition et
de la nettet^ de l'exemplaire film6, et en
conformity avec les conditions du contrat de
filmage.

Original copies in printed paper covers are filmed
beginning with the front cover and ending on
the last page with a printed or illustrated impres-
sion, or the back cover when appropriate. All
other original copies are filmed beginning on the
first page with a printed or illustrated impres
sion, and ending on the last page with a printed
or illustrated impression.

Les exemplaires originaux dont la couverture en
papier est imprim^e sont filmds en commengant
par le premier plat et en terminant soit par la
dernidre page qui comporte une empreinte
d'impression ou d'illustration, soit par le second
plat, seion le cas. Tous les autres exemplaires
originaux sont filmds en commenqant par la
premidre page qui comporte une empreinte
d'impression ou d'illustration et en terminant par
la dernidre page qui comporte une telle
empreinte.

The last recorded frame on each microfiche
shall contain the symbol -^ (meaning "CON-
TINUED "), or the symbol V (meaning "END ").
whichever applies.

Un des symboles suivants apparaitra sur la
dernidre image de cheque microfiche, selon le
cas: le symbole — ► signifie '"A SUIVRE"", le
symbole V signifie "FIN".

Maps, plates, charts, etc., may be filmed at
different reduction ratios. Those too large to be
entirely included in one exposure are filmed
beginning in the upper left hand corner, left to
right and top to bottofr., as many frames as
required. The following diagrams illustrate the
method:

Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent dtre
film6s d des taux de reduction diff^rents.
Lorsque le document est trop grand pour etre
reproduit en un seul clich6, il est i\\m6 d partir
de Tangle sup6rieur gauche, de gauche d droite,
et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre
d'images ndcessaire. Les diagrammes suivants
illustrent la mdthode.

r£'*!

WAS

Moses Wrong?

Pastor Joshua Denovan,

Toronto.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

TORONTO. CANADA:

S. R. BRIGGS,

Toronto Willard Tract Depository.

Cor. Vonife and Tpnii>iT(inci'! HU

■f>

,.;>

Entered according to the Act of the Parliament of Can-
ada, in the year one thousand eight hundred and eighty-
seven, by Samuel Robert Briggs, in the office ot the
Minister of Agriculture at Ottawa.

•**'

:>%

CONTENTS.

Introduction I.

Chapter I. Creation i

" 11. Cosmic Construction. ... 13
" Hi. Period of Earth Crust Form-
ation 23

" IV. Orgakization of Species. . . 31
." V. Cosmic Formation and Organi-
zation Miraculous. ... 41

" VI. Elohim 51

" VII. The Miraculous 59

" VIII. The Human Species— Whence.? 65
" IX. The Human Species — in what

State Originally. ... 73

" . X. Man and Beast 81

" XL Human Morality put to Proof. 87

• " XII. Wh.at Sin is. . . . . . , . 99

" XIII. The Tempter and the Tempt-
ation ... 107

" XIV. Death — Its History. . . .119
" XV. What is Death ? .... 133

" XVL Spiritual Death 147

" XVII. Devils and their Use. . . 163
" XVJII. Temptation — its place in the

Economy of Grace 179

'■'■ '^ ■•) r >'♦

PREFACE.

The sole object of this humble volume is the vindication
of the veracity of GodV, Word, against the attempts of some
great and good men to adapt Genesis to Geology, the essen-
tial atheism of Danvinism, Evolution, and those systems of
ethics which .gnore or contradict Holy Scripture regarding
the origin and penalty of human sin.

I do not hope to influence any beneficially, save those

who will read what I have written with candour and calm

consideration.

J. D.

• t/

INTRODUCTION.

BEFORE we can answer some of the questions suggested
by the title of this volume another enquiry meets us.
Have we any statements made by Moses to examine and
discuss ? Are those old Jewish documents claiming Mosaic
authorship genuine and authentic ? These enquiries can be
answered affirmatively only by accepting their true inspiration;
for Moses unquestionably pretends to give an historical
detail (even to exact verbal utterances) of events that tran-
spired long ages before his own birth.

Was Moses wrong, or right? No one can tell until he has
intelligently settled the question, — What is Inspiration? The
Jewish church and the Christian church have always claimed
to be in possession of truth inspired by God. Christianity
and Inspiration stand or fall together. Until this question,
What is inspiration? be satisfactorily answered, saving faith
(without which Christianity has no existence) is a moral
impossibility, for "Faith cometh by . . the word of
God." And it is self-evident that no intelligent person can
believe that to be the word of God which he has no
sound reason for regarding as really inspired by God.

It seems a priori that to moral beings situated as we are
the word of God in the shape of inspired truth is necessary ;

INTRODUCTION.

for if it be true that in a world beyond the present we shjtll
stand or fall forever according to the judgment of the God
who made us, a judgment that is to be pronounced upon our
moral condition as evolved in our earthly experience, it is
obvious that about the Deity, His nature and His laws,
about the true nature, character and destiny of the human
soul, about the eternal world and its conditions we must
now have information which can be trusted, and it is quite as
obvious that no information on such subjects can either be
trustworthy or useful except our informant be infallible. All
Christendom feels and has ever felt this deeply ; and to
meet this necessity there are only three ways: — firsts The
infallibility of the Pope and Cardinalate as being officially
controlled by the Holy Ghost; second, The infallibility of
inspired documents — the Bible ; or third, " he infalli-
bility of our own Moral Consciousness — human spiritual
intuition. All theories of right and wrong, of the true and
the false enunciated by the thinkers of the European and
American continents, ( however long they may soar, waver
and gyrate in the mid air of abstruse speculation), gravitate
finally to one of these three centres : — Truth found and fixed
in the decisions of an Infallible Official Head, of an Infalli-
ble Book, or of Infallible normal Self

What is Inspiration? The question is not : How are we
to authenticate the genuineness of any religious documents
we DOW possess — this is the business of historical literary
criticism ; let us therefore be careful lest we overlap one

INTRODUCTION.

111.

subject with another altogether distinct and so confuse our
apprehension of both.

What is Inspiration? Seeking an answer to this question
we need not go to dictionaries or commentaries or theological
treatises, for we know that learned and pious men differ
widely on the subject. The only answer of value and
weight we must find in the Bible itself, for, pre-supposing
that book in any sense entitled to be regarded as what
the Christian church of the first four centuries and the
Protestant reformers of the XVIth century held it to be,
the only Rule of doctrine and practice and the one Stan-
dard of ultimate appeal in all cases of dispute,
we are compelled to seek in it the definition of
"Ir-^oiration." Refusing this, we consent to drift away
out i .1 the dark troubled waters of indefinit^^ and endless
metaphysical speculation, of spiritual intuition, of the inner
consciousness of aggregate humanity. The Bible undoubt-
edly lays claim to divine inspiration. What then is the
nature and the extent of this claim ?

Among many pr.ssages of the Bible which pretend to give
us God's own idea of Inspiration, here is one, 2 Tim. 3: 16,
"Every Scripture is God-breathed; and is profitu'ijle for
teaching, for conviction, for correction, for discipline in
righteousness; that the man of God may be perfected,
thoroughly made ready to every good work." The word
6i6irvf.v(TTo<i (God-breathed) signified, before and during the
apostolic age, that men and women had been used and were

iv.

INTRODUCTION.

used as the organs of divinity to declare the divine will in
WORDS. Every reader of classical history knows about the
oracular responses of Delphi, etc., every syllable of which
was regarded as pregnant with infallible because divine
truth. No person with fair education will debate that this
is what the apostle meant when he penned ^eoTrvcvo-Tos in
the passage just quoted; our phrase, "Divine Inspiration"
is, 1 think, a fair and full equivalent of this word.

Apostolic Inspiration of God we understand to sig-
nify **/,.. breathing of God into'^ — into what? Certainly
the organ or instrument He has chosen to express
His mind. And the whole Bible proceeds upon
the assumption — perhaps I ought rather to say the re-iterated
aeclaration — that men were the organized instrumental
media selected by God to impress mankind with audible
sounds expressive of His will. Numerous passages can
easily be found, especially in the prophetic writings, to prove
that men inspired were passive — in intellect, will and physical
faculties passive while being thus used of God, so that the
vibrations of the atmosphere then produced by them were
God's own words, nothing less and nothing more. {e. g.,
2 Samuel 23 : i, 2). As a skilled musician uses a certain
instrument to convey to the mental and emotional nature of
others his conceptions, so God used particular chosen men;
and just as different musical instruments, according to the
material of which they are composed and their peculiar con-
struction, emit different kinds of sound, soft or sweet, shrill

INTRODUCTION.

or rough and coarse, plaintive, defiant or triumphant
(according to the character of the sentiment to be expressed
by the performer) even so those men used by God, expressed
His sentiments each according to the pecuHar quahties and
tone of his constitution. God's message br^^athed through
an educated medium was expressed in terms of good com-
position (God having selected the cultured medium for this
special end), the poet inspired uttered the divine will poeti-
cally, the man of stern rude nature uttered the divine mes-
sage in the very tones and phrases God chose him to emit,
while the man of refined and gentle nature poured it forth
" as one that hath a pleasant voice and can play svell on an
instrument." When God inspired a Hebrew He desired
His message to be delivered in that language, when a Greek
he desired it to be delivered in Greek, and when on Pente-
cost He desired it to be addressed to different nationalities in
their native tongues He manipulated His inspired instru-
ment accordingly. In other words. God selected out of all
mankind those individuals who were so constituted as to
emit the sounds He desired to be emitted, and sometimes
He even made them and trained them de novo, from birth for
the express purpose. {Fide Jeremiah 1:5; Luke i: 15,
16; Acts 9: 15; Galatians i- 15). So much for the living
inspired organ of God when he addressed his contem-
poraries. The man's sayings were m the strictest ety-
mological sense, "Thus saith Jehovah," "not the words

which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost
teacheth." . . •

np™

■api

mmmmm

Vl.

INTRODUCTION.

Adhering to this Biblical signification of divine Inspiration,
God-in-breathing^ let us take another step. The notes emit-
ted by any instrument can be caught and their full value
recorded in certain well-known written characters, characters

perfecily understood by the initiated in musical science, and
easily reproduced anywhere by other musical instruments
of ordinary compass. Such written notes embodying and
signifying God s thought I believe the words of the original
sacred Scriptures to have been — fixed forms holding, visible
symbols conveying God's mind to man's mind. The living
voice of the prophet, when he was inspired, resembled the
telephonic message: the man was an organ, first charged
with divine electricity making him spiritually sensitive and
perfectly compliant, then the Divine Operator's own breath
sent the message in audible form and that in the very tones
He preferred, as it is written, "What man knoweth the
things of a man save the spirit of the man which is in him,
even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit
of God." The written record made by the inspired man
resembled the modern telegraphic message, the Spirit of God
using the man's hand through his brain, instead of his
tongue. The characters thus written are God's own silent
words as truly as the audible words of apostle and prophet
were God's own voice. The passage quoted at length above
states this in terms unmistakable: " — All Scripture^^ — all
writings coming properly under the Biblical phrase " Scrip-
ture" — "every Scripture is God-breathed." What these God-

INTRODUCTION.

yii.

breathed writings are it is for ^scholars to find out; but, if

this apostolic statement be accepted, there can be no debate

at all as to what is the correct conception of Inspiration; it

is God's absolute truth in fixed form, in the c aracters

selected by God Himself. This conclusion is abundantly
corroborated and fortified by what Paul declares to be the
designed use of inspired writings, viz : That by their mstru-
mentality "the man of God may be perfected — thoroughly
made ready unto every good work." Such perfecting could
not possibly be accomplished by anything less than a God-
perfected, /. ^., infallible instrument. Inspired men were
God's telephonic and telegraphic instrumental media, and as
such they were passively controlled. But let me not be mis-
understood in my use of these illustrations. Inspired men
were neither telephones nor telegraphs, /. ^., mere mechanical
and unconscious instruments. They were used by God
as we use these instruments ; but they were men^ with will,
conscience, affections, intellect and physical faculties all alive
and in operation. When I call them " passive" I mean that
all their moral and intellectual qualities and attributes were
in addition to being exalted and intensified, absolutely con-
trolled by the divine Spirit. In some instances {e.g. Balaam
and Jonah) their will was overborne, in others their will was
not consulted but constrained — e.g. — Paul, i Cor. 9: 16-19.
No man of his own will and inclination ever undertook the
prophetic work of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel or Daniel, or the
apostles. If they were willing they were made ivilling^

^nnr

ill

VIU.

INTRODUCTION.

In answer to our inquiry, "What is Inspiration?" here is
another apostle's opinion, Peter's — " This first knowing that
no prophecy of Scripture comes of private interpretation ;
for prophecy was never sent after the will of man, but holy
men spoke from God, being borne along by the Holy
Ghost," (2 Pet. 1 : 20, 21). This sentence at the outset tells
us that the acceptance of this doctrine is of primary impor-
tance — " This know in the first place." At this point let us
digress a moment to ask in what connection the apostle
Peter penned this remarkable statement. In the paragraph
immediately preceding he tells us he had been " in the holy
mount" of transfiguration with Jesus Christ, Moses and
Elijah, and there had seen the divine glory and heard the
divine voice. Surely this experience was the infallible
communication of God's truth regarding His Messiah !
Yes, saith Peter, but — but " IFe have a more sure word oj
prophecy" — a firmer and more reliable expression of the
will of God — Where? In the Scriptures; for this
know first that Scriptiue is the first authority^ declares
Peter. Until this definition of Scripture authority has been
first received no progress in divine knowledge can be mar^e.
Having made this emphatic statement, the apostle proceeds,
"No prophecy of Scripture comes of private interpretation;
prophecy was never sent after the will of man." No, never.
(a) The inspired man himself had no voluntary part in its
suggestion, nor was he able to solve the meaning prii ately

of that which God had uttered by his mouth. The man's
own personal ideas, his private powers of interpretation were

INTRODUCTION.

)X.

p.ltogethei distinct from the formulation and deliverance of

God's message through him as an inspired medium. In
another place (i Peter i : lo, j i) we are distinctly informed
tliat the prophets themselves did not understand their own
prophetic utterances, but that, when the divine afflatus had
passed away, they themselves "searched diligently" to find
out what the Holy Ghost signified by His utterances m.ade
through them; and Peter confesses that in the writings of
Paul were "some things hard to bo understood'' which some
people perverted. Stronger proof than this we cannot have
that inspired men zvere passive agents in the hands of God.
" Prophecy never was sent after the will of man." (b) The
"private interpretation" of anyone in our day does not fix or
modify the meaning of Scripture. From too many quarters we
hear sentiments of this description, "Whatever a really good
man honestly thinks the Bible signifies, it Joes signify to himJ"
This is not true. The Scriptures have a correct meaning,
and all private interpretations which differ from that meaning
are wrong. The sincere convictions of an honest and pious
man never yet made wrong right.

This, one would think, is the assertion of verbal Inspiration
quite plain and stron.^; enough; but it is made in negative
form; in positive form the assertion is re-asserted thus :
"Holy men spoke from God, being borne along by the Holy
Ghost ■ Now mark I pray you very carefully. V/hile
thu'^. uttering God's mind the human instruments used
v;ere '^ borne./' as a sailing vessel is borne forward by

'n-

X, INTRODUCTION.

the wind ju?t as far as the wind impels it. Their infallible
utterance either by tongue or pen ceased the moment the
divine afflatus ceased its force. Peter's apostolic statement
signifies all this or nothing.

(c) This speaking is in the passage equivalent to writing,
for the subject of the passage is '■'•Scripture" I understand
that to ''^ speak'' is to convey in serisible signs (symbolic or
phonetic) impressions to the minds of others. Egyptian
hieroglyphics speak, i.e., tbay tell thought, they narrate his-
tory ; the Levitical dispensation spoke, in type and ceremony
it told saving truth; a photograph speaks about the linea-
ments and character of the original of which it is the correct
shadow; written music speaks about certain notes embodying
sentiment, feeling, passion. All these forms may be mis-
understood and misinterpreted. The best fixed form of
speech is the alphabetical, and this form God Almighty has
been pleased to use (to invent?) to perpetuate His words.
Words are thoughts fixed in visible characters. The two
tables of stone written on Mount Sinai were God's will and
thought fixed in symbolic forms; Deuteronomy, the farewell
address of Moses was a solemn testimony in written words;
the nineteenth and one hundred and nineteenth psalms
seem to exhaust available phraseology in the effort to 'Tipress
us with this one verity, that God's will and mind have been
correctly recorded in verbal forms. " Laws, statutes, precepts,
judgments, testi*"- ^nies, commandments," never existed in
trustworthy form for private study and daily application to

INTRODUCTION.

XI.

personal experienc .; except in fixed forms, and these fixed
forms, unless they were originally correct, unless they were
guaranteed faultless, could not possibly be ** clean and perfect,
pure, true and righteous altogethei'," as Moses and David
'• assert a hundred times over.

No man of ordinary reading will question that in con-
nection with the verbal inspiration of the book we
call the Bible there are difficulties. At the mere sound of
this word "Difficulties" a hundred learned heads pop up
eager to tell us about flaws and omissions in various MS.
readings in the shape of numbers and dots and strokes and
scratches they have discovered to be not exactly the same.
But, after we have heard their erudite critiques to their end,
it comes down to this, that we must simply charge these
two passages I have quoted as the basis oi these remarks with
falsehood, or accept the Infallible Verbal Inspiration of the
Scriptures. Concerning the Old Testament (the very same
books we now hold) this much must be remembered, Jesus
Christ and His apostles fully endorsed them and quoted
them as the infallible word ol Almighty God. To the
Christian this must ever be final proof of the true inspiration
of the words of the ancient J ewisii holy Books. What is
history in them is infallibly true narrative, what is prophecy
is infallibly true prediction, what is doctrinal and didactic
truth is God-breathed verity in God-given words. Jesus
Christ either did or did not know all that Oriental
scholars have recently discovered. If he did not knoiu His

Xll.

INTRODUCTION.

divinity must be denied ; if He did He is an impostor, for

chere can be no question He sanctioned the Jewish Scrip-
tures as divine and infalHble Truth — God-breathed words
through Moses, the psalmists and the prophets as God's
instruments.

Coming to the New Testament, there is no doubt what-
ever that the volume claims to be inspired. The early
church, intimately acquainted with its origin, accepted it as
inspired, and very carefully distinguished between histories
and letters originally bearing the imprimatur of apostoli<j
authority, and all other religious documents of the first three
centuries of the Christian era. As to the official authority
of the apostles, Jesus Christ declared, "He that heareth you
heareth me," "I will send you the Holy Spirit to lead you
into all the truth and bring all things to your remembrance
whatsoever I have said unto you." These apostles did claim
infallibility — e. g. writing to the Galatians Paul speaks thus,
*'Though we, or an angel from heaven preach any
other gospel unto you than that which we have preached
unto you, let him be accursed."

That apostolic testimony and doctrine were not merely
general ideas, but particular verbal statements is abun-
dantly obvious from passages like these, viz : — "Contend
earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints ;" such
"faith Cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God ; "
there is "one faitK^ (/. e.^ one defined creed); "hold fast the

IKTRODUCTION*

XUI.

f»

form of sound word^'—^noi the words merely^ but the very
arrangement of them — "that form or pattern of doctrine into
which" (as into a mould) the early Christians were delivered
Rom. vi. 17.

To give some notion of the idea the beloved John enter-
tained on this subject of inspired Scripture, i^e concludes
bis gospel with this remarkable sentence, "Many other
signs truly did Jesus in the presence of His disciples which
are not written in this book, but these are written that ye
might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and
that believing ye might have life through His name." John's
written words are the instruments of salvation. To give us
some idea of the carefully severe exegetical spirit and method
of criticism which ought to characterize our study of God's
"wordi^ Paul furnishes perhaps the most remarkable example
in his letter to the Galatians where his main argument is
founded on the difference between the plural and singular
of one word — "Seed." If we question the exact verbal in^
spiration of the written symbols in this case the apostolic
doctrine becon^es a mere verbal quibble, utterly valueless.

Turning from the servants to their Master, no teacher
ever laid more stress upon mere words — particular words as
distinguished from general ideas either of mo^lity or wor
ship. To emphasize this peculiarity of His teaching — to
give special weight and force to His utterances, the apostle
John calls Him "the Word" — not the divine Reason or the
general divine Idea vaguely and mystically shadowed forth,

XIV,

INTRODUCTION.

but "thfe Word," /. e. God's idea definitely expressed irt

concrete shape, character and sound so as to make a

definite impression on the mind and heart through thp

senses. Jesus Christ is God's thought manifested in hving

symbol, but (seeing He has left bur world) that symbol' of

Truth is of no value except in as far as we have a perfectly
true history of Him in person, character, works and words.
In short we are again thrown back on an infallible record in
fixed form. Some modern mystics talk learnedly of " the
Christ of history," to whom, as contrasted with any of the
divine incarnations of the Greek mythology and with the
avatars of Brahma, 'heir own higher inner moral conscious-
ness intuitively bears approving testimony, and this "Christ"
is their ideal of God (because He, they tell us, realizes their
true conception of God !) and whatever statements in the
Bible or elsewhere claim to be from God must be accepted
or rejected accordingly as they may correspond with this
"Christ ;" but the bare and candid truth is (seeing that "the
Christ of history" is also the Christ of the Roman Catholic
legend) we really possess no means of knowing anything
about God's Christ except what we have in the written
?«;^r<^i' ot ; he apostolic narrative ; tTiat alone is "the testi-
mony of God concerning His Son," and they who believe
not this testimony make God a liar, i John 5 : 9, 10. So
that if we abandon these apostolic "words" we refuse God's
(3\Vn statement and plunge into patristic and mediaeval legend,
depending entirely upon our own inner consciousness to

INTRODUCTIOK. XV.

select the true from the false — a plan that is simply accept-
ing ourselves as the canon of truth — a method the reverse
and opposite to God's.

Moreover, let us observe particularly that Jesus Christ
was the living embodiment of Old Testament words ; the
prophetic words were in His life, labor and death all fulfilled
with literal exactness, and indeed this is the main proof of
Bis true Messiahship. Thus, e. g. He was the literal fulfil-
ment of such verbal predictions as. The Seed of the woman,
The Son of David born, in Bethlehem-Ephratah, Jehovah
whom the Jews had for ages sought, coming to His temple,
making the lame leap and the tongue of the dumb sing, ful-
filling in His experience word for word the twenty-second
Psalm and the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. Jesus
Christ's name is "The Truth" — absolute truth, not
in act only, but in word. Assertions to this effect He was
always making, "The words which I speak are not mine, but
the Father's who sent me," "The words that I speak unto
you they are spirit and they are life," "The words I have spo*
ken unto you the same shall judge you in the last days, '
etc., etc. Now, permit me to ask, Whatdid His simple dis-
ciples, what could the common, people possibly understand
Him to mean in speaking thus ? Admitting Christ's divinity
there is but one answer possible : His words^ both in sound

and historical written form, were God's words.

. ■ »-■

From these few considerations I fed warranted in sayitq;

XVI.

INTRODUCTION.

'. .

Divine Inspiration, according to the claim put forth in
the book we call the Bible, is, —

1. Not partial. Whether regarded as revelation or sug-
gestion or superintendence, it is plenary and impulsive, the
Agent being God's Spirit, the instrumental medium man.

2. It is the divine thought expressed in the particular
words, and written in fixed form ; it is verbal, so that the
careful and simple exegesis of the words, tenses,prepositions,
etc., is the one road to «he knowing of God's mind. Saving
"Faith Cometh by" (not moral intuition nor religious feeling)
but "by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." "To
the law and to the testimony : if they speak not according to
this word, it is because there is no light in them" "Under-
standest thou what thou readest ?" "Then Philip opened
his mouth and began at the same Scripture, and preached
unto him Jesus."

3. The correct equivalent in any language of the original
utterance is God's Word, because it conveys God's thought.
The English word "Good-news" is as much God's word as
its Greek or Aramaic equivalent. The English word "dip"
and the German "Tauf ' is as really God's inspired word as
the Hebrew "Tabal" or the Greek "Baptizo,"

Such is the nature and extent of the inspiration claimed
in the Bible and unanimously claimed for it by the Reform-
Cis of Germany, England, Scotland, France and Switzerland
in the XVIth century, and by the Standards of all orthodox

INTRODUCTION.

XVll.

Churches to this day — all modern theologies to the contrary
notwithstanding.

But how can we accept the New Testament *& verbally
inspired, as infallibly true in the exact words used by its
original writers when we find that the statements made by
the four evangelists are not exactly the same ? For instance,
one evangelist tells us there was one blind beggar healed
near Jericho, another evangelist, two ; one evangelist states
that the inscription on the cross ran, "The King of the
Jews," while another states it r in more fully thus : "This is
Jesus, the King of the Jews ;" one evangelist tells the story
of the Lord's Supper in one way, and another in a different way,
"These are contradictions which could not have existed
in four narratives of the same life dictated by the =ame in-
fallible Spirit," many say. To this allow me to answer, —

(i.) They are not contradictions. They are nothing more
than different ways of stating historical events. In no couii
of human justice would such a variety in the sworn state-
ment of witnessess be called contradictions. In describing
a sunset one person may say "the sun set i*i gold," another,
the sun set in crimson and gold," another, "when the sun
set the west was splendid in green, crimson and gold," and
each statement would be as true as the other — as true as
God is in heaven.

(2.) If the fuller narrative be true the shorter is also true.
If near Jericho two blind men received sight, one certainly
did (a contradiction in this case would be one of the evan

XVlll.

INTRODUCTION,

gelists Stating that no blind men at all ever received sight in
the precincts of Jericho) ; if " This is Jesus the King of the
Jews" was the superscription, "The King of the Jews" is
substantially the very same statement in fewer words.

This rule, as may be seen by any one who will take pains
to consult a good "Harmony," holds good t'n every instance
where superficial reading may detect ^^contradiction." There
are four evangelists, and it is perfectly plain to ordinary
mortals what the object of the Holy Ghost in giving this
four-fold history was, viz : (i) To give human variety to the
narrative, and (2) To give the world the solemn testimony
of four independent witnesses. But these objects would
have been totally defeated had the Holy Ghost made John's
narrative the stereotype repetition of Matthew's, and Luke's of
Mark's. I am utterly amazed at the puerility of such objec-
tions to verbal inspiration. To raise the objection against
Mark's history because it is not the exact verbal counterpart
of John's is substantially to object to Mark because he was
not identical with John — is to object to a flute because it is not
aharp. Of allthe oak and maple leaves in the forest, naturalists
assure us, two perfectly alike cannot be found. Are tliey
therefore, not true, honest leaves of oak and maple ? Be-
cause in rendering a certain tune one pianist gives the
simple essential notes and another gives it with natural
variations, is it not therefore the self-same tune ?

For these reasons I accept Genesis as UiercUly the word
of God. '

I
•1

INTRODUCTION.

XIX.

Accepting this view of the true inspiration of the Book of
Genesis, may I now ask the gentle reader to examine along
with me — quietly and soberly to examine some statements
in that ancient history which modern scientific physicists,
emment especially in the departments of Geology and
animal Evolution, have presumed to pronounce untrue.

Chitpter I

CREATION

Theme; — "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." — Genesis i: i.

[it

(

WAS MOSES WRONG?

CHAPTER I.

For many centuries it was held as an indisputable
dogma of soundest orthodoxy that our world and the
heavens surrounding it were created out of nothing in the
space of six days before Adam was formed, and Adam him-
self about 6,000 years ago, so that the solar system, to say
nothing about the regions beyond, is now somewhere nearly
6,000 years old. This dogma may be traced back to the
studious monks of the papal church, whose opinions bear
the imprimatur of the "infallible" vicar of Christ. Modern
astronomical and geological sciences, however, unite in con-
tradicting infallibility on this point very emphatically. Geolo-
gists of unquestionable reputation declare solemnly that from
the numerous records to be found in those deposits of sand
and gravel, rock and clay, coal and granite composing the
crust of our globe it is demonstrable that it has really been in

4 WAS MOSES WRONG?

existence so very much longer than 6,000 years that the geo-
logical theory sanctioned by the Papacy has to be frankly and
forever abandoned by every one who admits that both dogma
and theory must bow to stubborn fact. Geolog) — I mean
experimental geology — must be accepted as an honest and
unbiased witness ; those vast stratifications which wrap our
old word round and round as so many outer and inner gar-
ments cannot possibly be regarded as scientific specimens
prepared by ingenious geological specialists to illustrate and
authenticate any plausible pet theory. No historical verity,
no fact is more certain than this, that our earth was not
created out of nothing in the space of six days, some six or
seven thousand years ago.

Science having shaken from our grasp the doctrine held
by our pious forefathers (whose ancestors emerged from the
church of Rome 350 years ago), we are thrown back upon
this ancient Hebrew record to see if it really does say what
pre-Reformation monks and our sturdy forefathers believed
it to say. Does this old document tell us that the earth and
the solar system to which it belongs were created " out of
nothing in the space of six days, and all very good ?" No;
but " In the beginning God created the heaven and the
earth." When was "In the beginning?" I answer, when
material things began to be^ — that was their beginning. It
matters not how far back modefti geological scientists insist
on pushing us, it matters not what scientific theory of
creation they or we prefer — whether water or fire, air or

\ V

CREATION.

iiebulous atoms be regarded as the primordial substance,
this first sentence of Genesis fits that theory with perfect
exactness. , •' '

Modern scientific geologists look as if they would anni
hilate us poor simpletons who still think this most ancient
of literary records inspired, after they have proved that our
world has been rolling in space for millions of ages. "Why
don't you instantlv abandon that antiquated Oriental non-
sense ?" they demand with some petulance. Why should
we, when for 3,500 years this antiquated Oriental record has
been declaring exactly what you, gentlemen, have been
asserting for the last sixty or seventy? "We can prove,"
the scientist continues, "that yon river Mississippi has been
pljwing its course through the continent of America those
100,000 years at least, that the short river Niagara has occu-
pied the long space of 35,000 years cutting its way back from
lake Ontario to the present site of the Falls, that those
gigantic systems of drainage indicated by the Nile and the
Ganges, the Danube and the Rhine, are but arrangements of
yesterday when contrasted with preceding conditions of our
globe. We ean prove that long before those alluvial plains
and river courses existed, vast wild mountains three times the
height of those now standing must have been gradually
pulverized by the action of the atmospheric elements, and
that before it was possible for such mountains to exist, vol-
canic agencies of tremendous power must have been in
action — granite red hot v ith lime-stone, clay, sand and

I il

WAS MOSES WRONG?

gravel on the top of it heaved up from the bottom of a boil-
ing ocean in enormous ridges and peaks, gradually cooling
and hardening, while the waters slowly became tepid and a
rank vegetation of gigantic reeds and ferns was generated, the
grazing ground of amphibious monsters. We can prove .ill
this," say our scientists; "and more, — we can prove these geo-
logical processes occupied thousands of centuries."

Well, well ; let all this be granted. Whatever geological
records really assert is unquestionably true; though we can-
not bind ourselves to the acceptance of scientific inferences.
Let it be granted that our globe and atmosphere have passed
through a hundred different aeons of heat and cold, and that
a hundred successive worlds of creatures animal and veget-
able have lived and perished, each crushed out and buried
by a hundred successive universal catastrophes and cata-
clysms — let all this be granted, and does not this wonderful
sentence of my great-grandmother's Bible stand as true and
firm as ever, " In the beginning God created the heaven and
the earth?"

Nay, does not the next sentence, "And the earth was
without form and void (waste and empty) and darkness was
upon the face of the deep," plainly intimate that some time
before the human period, our globe had actually been deso-
lated by some tremendous cataclysmic catastrophe?

With this first utterance of my Bible in my hand I am
quite willing to wander away back into the dim and distant

CREATION. 7

past just as far as the mos*: advanced Geology demands,
confident that, after I have got there, this sentence will be
as sound a geological creed as ever : "In the beginning
God created the heaven and the earth." "/« the beginnings
however far away that may be; "In the beginning" — there
is nothing before that but God. And He mast have been
before "the beginning," or the beginning could never have
begun.

Creation as an act is the fixed point from which we date
and measure the beginning of things and thinking. "/« the
beginning God created." "You don't mean, absolutely out
of nothing, do you ?" Yes, I do indeed, for how could any
one in his wits speak mtelligently of crjation "in the begin-
ning," if there was something before that ? This unquestion-
ably was the concept attached by the Jews to the word
Moses uses here — "created." God's creation was abso-
lutely independent of any pre-existing matter or force.
"Why, sir, you surely have never heard the incontrovertible
philosophic axiom held even by the great majority of theistic
philosophers — held as indisputable by numerous ministers
of religion even: "^x nihilo nihil fit — out of nothing
nothing can come." Yes, I have heard this axiom, and I
believe it, too. Most profoundly true it is that out of noth-
ing nothing is possible. But God Almighty is not Nothing
— is He ? Ex nihilo — nothing, is surely no contradiction of
Ex Deo — something. To accept this old axiom does not
necessarily involve the denial of the existence of the One

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

Living God or His creative power. God certainly is some-
thing, and as certainly He did not come out of anything.
To deny this is to maintain the eternity, intelligence and
deity of mere matter, which is simply a stupendous contra-
diction in terms.

It matters not how far back we may presume to push our
investigations and reasoning, there is a final Cause, there is
a primordial Originator and Substance, and when we get to
it — That is God. "But hold! Is not this incipient Pan-
theism?" I answer, no more so than \i avrov in Romans
II : 36 — which being fully interpreted reads, "From out of
Him are all things."

The supreme simplicity, the profound philosophy of this

first verse of Genesis is startling: "In the beginning God
created." Men may deny this statement, sneer at it, rage
over it, and imagine they have shaken and subverted it ;
but the subverting and shaking are entirely confined
to their own imagination. Without presumption I think I
can defy any living man to get below this simple statement
of the Bible, or behind it, or above it logically. Of course
we may easily multiply scientific terms and spin out the finest
cobwebs of imagination into argument, we may laboriously
demonstrate that metals the most refractory can be evapor-
ated and dissipated into invisible etherial atmosphere, and that
ether condensed into star-dust, star-dust slowly consoli-
dated into worlds. But the first substance and original

CREATION.

motive power is God — that is all! Apart from God, out-
side of God, originally there was nothing.

In the true sense of making out. of nothing, "in the be-
ginning God created the heaven and the earth." Admit this
\ye must, unless we are profanely prepared to call God only
a manufacturer of pre-existing raw material, an inventor and
architect, mechanic and chemist. The Divine Worker
manipulated and arranged those materials He had previously
prepared as Creator. "But," interposes the objector, "is
not the word create applied to the mere formation of pre-
existing material in this very narrative, for instance in the
case of Adam and Eve verses 26 and 27 state, "Let us
make man in our own image. ... So God created man in
His own image." Does not this passage prove that to
"make" and to "create" are interchangeable terms?" I
don't think it does. It seems to me, on the contrary, that
the fair, simple, self-evident interpretation of this passage is,
So far as the human body was concerned it was "made" out
of dust, but so far as the human spirit was concerned it was
originated ex Deo^ i. e.^ "created," so that the unique organi-
zation Man, the novel combination of body, soul and spirit
— Man was actually both "made" and "created." This dis-
tinction is carefully marked in the fourth verse of the second
chapter.

Out of clay the skilful .potter moulds a vessel ; in doing this
^he potter is not a creator, but only an artificer. God Al-

ii'
'1

WAS MOSES WRONG?

I -

mighty was in the construction of the physical Adam and
Eve a skilful artificer, but the dust of which He made them
He had previously created, and the spirit He breathed into
them was also a new creation.

How long Almighty God has been making and marring,
forming and destroying, and again re-forming into different
shapes for different uses the clay of His universe, I don't
know, and who can even guess? For aught we know, those
stars may once have been squares moving in triangular
courses. To what strange uses he may even now be putting
some worlds in our own solar system we cannot even im-
agine. One very great world out there is, I know, composed
of matter as light as cork; one has a year 92 terrestial years
long — that is 1,104 months; to one of our sister wr>rlds our
sun appears as big as an ordinary shirt button, while to an-
other he appears some fifty times larger than to us; one has
an atmosphere of thf temperature of red-hot iron, while our
own moon is as cold as ice frozen to 100 degrees below zero.
I question if Neptune is not colder still. Thus Almighty
God has formed and is using the materials He Created, and
"none can stay His hand, or say unto Him, What doest
Thoui"'

As to the future, doubtless it is a future of mutation and
development. So far as our observations extend we see all
nature in rapid and ceaseless motion. Heat and cold effect-
ing perpetual expansion and contraction, evaporization and

CREATION.

condensation, gravitation, magnetic attraction and electric
force, — all these involve and necessitate change and develop-
ment and incessant progress towards new combinations; but
that cosmic mass out of which the heaven and earth were
constructed and in which these forces work, as well as these
forces themselves, are the creation of God. This is what
the first sentence of Clod's book, declares; and there has not
under the whole heaven been yet produced one sound
scientific fact that refutes the statement.

The only argument of any strength or respectability
against this doctrine of creation by God is that of Agnostic-
ism, "We do not know." And Agnosticism may add, "We
never can know, for in the very nature of the case we never
can go back and gather any reliable evidence." Of all bad
methods of getting rest from the trouble of honest enquiry
the worst is to seek refuge in ignorance.

>■■; sj

I 1

Chapter ii.

COSiMIC CONSTRUCTION.

■riiiiMK :■■-" And the earth was uithout form and void, and darkness was upn„ the
face of tl>c deep. And tlie Siiirit of ilod moved upon the face of the waters. "

'And God saw everything th.-u he had made, and hehold it was very good. -

GliNESIS i: 2, 31.

'if

r-r

I 5.

CHAPTER II.

Matter having been created^ how and by whom has it been
fabricated?

Geologists of the greatest research and the highest rep
utation (among them Sir Charles Lyell) intorm vis that the
stratification of the crust of our globe demonstrates these
two facts,— y?rjr//y, the nature of the soil, the arrangement of
the surface and the temperature of the elements have certain-
ly during long pre adamite ages been such that all animals
and vegetation then existing must have been totally different
from any adapted to the earth as it now is ; and, secondly,
the entire organic life on our earth has been utterly destroy
ed many times — twenty times, at least, perhaps thirty times,
by volcanic upheavals, by the partial and universal sub-
sidence of the land beneath the water, by long ages of ex-
cessive and intolerable cold, and by other great changes
many succesive races of flora and fauna have been crushed
down and swei)t out of existence. The sacred geologic re-
cord of Genesis introduces us to our earth at the period of its
being "framed," arranged for the accommodation of the /in man

WAS MOSES nVRONG ?

race and of those vegetable and animal races adaprtc < • cic-
to: and these remarkable words, "And the earth \\u-, -vith-
out form and void, and darkness wa>> upon the face of the
deep" describe its chaotic condition consequent upon the
last of those universal pre-adamite destructions which had
swept over it, abolishing its geographical features anc. its
organized races. How long our earth had existed in this
dismal state, we know not; what had been the reason for or
occasion of that terrible divine judgment which had abolished
every living and organized thing, we know not; but now, the
elements having been reduced to their first principles en
masse, "the earth was without form and void," — To/iu va
boluiy emptiness and confusion — by some tremendous power
it had been dashed and crushed into shapeless ruin, the
face of the earth had lost its features, all arrangement had
been bruised out, all natural laws (such as the laws of chem
istry) had been so suspended or overborne that the elements
of earth, air, fire and water were now confounded and mixed
into one conglomerate pulpy mass, not even an atmosphere
remained through which the light of the central sun could be
conveyed to its surface; but, like a dark dead cold lump of
wet clay, our world sluggishly floated in space upheld in its
planetary orbit by sheer force of grpvitation. When Reve-
lation raises the curtain this is the condition of the stage upon
which the great drama of humanity is to be performed: "The
earth was emptiness and confusion, and darkness was upon
the face of the deep," Like Sodom and Gomorrah lying be-

COSMIC CONSTRUCTION.

It?

neath the bitter heavy waters of the "dead sea" we behold a
dead and desolated world buried beneath a vast ocean upon
which light never shines, across which refreshing breezes
never whisper. ToJm va Bohii — Cosmos chaotic.

The living agent by whom this Chaos was constructed,
rather reconstructed, for human habitation, was the Spirit of
God. "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the
waters." * Without a mover the f e can be no motion. All history,
all observation, all experience unquestionably, demonstrate
that every effect has a cause and that no action of any sort can
be without a living agent. Mechanical motion, whether in
the human frame or in a chronometer or in the solar system
results from relations established and controlled by some
living and intelligent agent; not even electricity could ever
be manifested until by some living agent it were brought
into contact with those chemical affinities in such favorable
conditions as will evoke it; not even gravitation could havn
once acted unless matter had first been separated into parts

*The cxxxiv Psalm is regarded as the shortest chapter of the Bil)Ie.
I think it is not. What has been called in our "Authorized Version"
the first chapter of Genesis ought to stand thus: —

Chap. I. Creation.

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." (When?)

ChaI'. II. Chaos.

"And the earth was without form and void ; and darkness was upon
the face of the deep." (How Long ?)

Chap. III. Cosmic Formation.

"And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters," itc,
&c.

Here begins the chapter of the last cosmic construction by the Divine
Hand,

WAS MOSES WRONG/

in space by some living agent using power stronger than
gravitation. Matter left to itself must certainly sink and set-
tle down into the centre (wherever that may be) and lie
there forever motionless. Evolution pre-supposes the spon-
taneous action of such utterly lifeless and unorganized mat'
ter; but spontaneity can not possibly be attributed to such
matter, for spontaneity pre-supposes the subtil organization
of mind; therefore spofitaneous motion, spontaneous com-
bustion, spontaneous generation (every phrase that can make
evolution possible) are words devoid cf meaning, except they
mean that c<^rtain different qualities of matter brought into
combination by living agents and operatevd on by certain
laws (laws kept in active force by some living agency behmd
them — for laws are absolutely powerless without an executive)
produce such effects as motion, combustion, generation.

It would be well for both science and religion were men
to abandon forever the cowardly habit of seeking refuge be-
hind such miserable verbal subterfuges as Spontaneous
motion applied to mere matter. Let alone mere matter
never can move. Chaos moved in response to the moving
upon it of the Divine Spirit, for without such moving power
chaotic movement was an eternal impossibility.

In the cosmic construction of our world the first effect
produced by the action of the Spirit of God upon the slug-
gish and dismal waters was Light. — Verse 3rd.

K«l

COSMIC CONSTRUCTION.

Nothing seems to delight scientific men better, especially
those of a semi-poetic frame of mind, than to describe how,
both before and after the carboniferous period through im-
measurable stretches of time, the heavy waters of our globe
(agitated by the force of internal heat and attracted by the
heat of the sun) began to evaporate, and how through long
ages more this steam began to condense in rain and dew, and
how they gradually became cooler and still cooler as they fre-
quently revisited the cool regions of ether, and of course
how the thick vapours became gradually thinner un-
til ultimately the sun could force its rays here and
there through the dense atmosphere and slowly dry
up the cold wet soil. Being no professional scientist,
I have not, perhaps, detailed this process of atmos-
pheric evaporation correctly, but t*ie broad scientific theory
I have stated fairly well. Over against this plausible theory,
perhaps I may be allowed a few thoughts suggested by ex-
perimental observation — thoughts that have forced me to
the conclusion thai, even admitting naturiil law as now in
operation to be the only effective power at God's command
in creative work, it may not have taken so very \ery long for
the fiat, "Let there be light," to be performed by the operation
of the great condensers of Nature's laboratory. I have
often wondered how our skies can be shrouded with thick
and heavy clouds, and then how in a few moments those
clouds — hundreds of square miles of them — can be all as it
were, licked up like wp.ter off a table-top by the application

WAS MOSES WRONG?

of a large soft sponge. This is what we see God doing in the
ordinary course of every-day providence, every few days;
and, oh how quietly and softly '^ ^.oes it! How much
water God Almighty could drav a twenty-four hours, if

He would only work the ev" iig machinery of Nature

at high pressure, it were h. o over-estimate; an atmos-
phere like ours 45 miles deep, put into full absorbing activity
by the enormous forces of our sun, operating on a sheet of
water a few fathoms deep covering the area of our present
land — why the whole work, stupendous as it seems to us at
first sight, I feel persuaded might be accomplished even
scientifically in a summer'^ afternoon! Have any of our
modern scientists been soaked in the dense wet fogs of the
banks of Newfoundland and the Bay of Fundy? No doubt
they have all groped their way through the famous London
fogs. In watching those misty phenomena have they not
seriously observed with what amazing rapidity they come
and go — appear and disappear as if by the touch of magic?
This is what God does without any special effort and in the
most ordinary circumstances of our organized and inhabited
globe every week. Now let us suppose Scotch mists and
Fundy fogs aggravated a hundred thousand fold, and this
state of circumambient moisture still further aggravated by
a universal London fog intensified an hundred thousand
times — (surely this would shroud the deep in dark-
ness!) — how long can we reasonably suppose it would
occupy the Almighty Spirit of God, working at full

COSMIC CONSTRUCTION.

power, the mighty apparatus of sun and atmosphere,
to absorb and dissipate the entire watery envelope? Not
longer, I feel persuaded, than the time indicated to the
simplest mind reading these words : "And the Spirit of
God moved upon the face of the waters; and God said:
'Light be;' and light was." "And God saw the light that it
was good. And God divided the light from the darkness;
and God called the light Day, and the darkness called He
Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the
first day."

If scientists can writ^^ out a more rational account of that
atmospheric operation by which Light was let down upon
the surface of our dark cold planet, let them try.

- 1'

■h'

Qlhaptcr iii.

PERIOD OF

EARTH CRUST FORMATION.

Theme : — " And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together
into one place, and let the dry land appear ; and it was so.

And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters called
He Seas." — Genesis i: 9, 10.

CHAPTER III

In the fourth article of the Decalogue we are reminded
that "in six days Jehovah made heaven and earth, the sea,
and all that in them is," — words which refer to our j resent
atmosphere, land and sea. As to these "days" during which
our world wvls, framed, (Heb. xi. 3) during which moun-
tains rose and valleys sank, and all organized species
now extant were "made," like many other disciples of the great
Hugh Miller I have for years past been inclined to think that
in " prophetic" language they signified indefinitely long
periods of time, and in expounding this first chapter of
Genesis I have been in the habit of laymg considerable
stress upon the apostolic expression, "one day is with the
Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one
day ; " but I have been forced to abandon this position as 1
feel it is not a thoroughly honest way of interpreting the
Mosaic record. Reading this record with simplicity and
candour it cannot be questioned that each "day" mentioned
was just one diurnal period of time between night and
night. Any other interpretation of the inspired words
forces and strains them unfairly. Let it however be carefully
noticed that this acceptance of the Mosaic terms in their
literal scope does not necessarily involve the assertion that
the length of each creative "day" was twenty-four hours
according to our present reckoning, as it seems quite pos-

■J '*'''¥

WAS MOSES WRONG?

I| t

sible — to me even probable — that then our earth turned upon
its axis much more slowly than it has done within the his-
toric human period. Whether this sluggishness of terrestrial
motion during the formative period of the earth's crust be
admitted or not, let it not be forgotten that my present theme
presup])oses the forth-putting of God's personal power, not
through the operation of fixed natural law, but directly. "By
faith" — not by scientific exphnations based upon what we now
see in operation around us, but '"''by faith we understand the
world was framed by the Word of God." All the formative
work detailed in the first chapter of Genesis we are evidently
expected to believe was directly executed by special extraor-
dinary and arbitrary exercise of divine power. Moses does
not pretend to say in tones of apology becoming agnostic
modesty, that our earth and its living races were probably
(under general divine supervision) organized out of chaos by
the slow and inexplicable operation of natural law, /. ^., by
the happy fortuitous combination of atoms and the action
of chemical forces and affinities ; on the contrary he tells
us distinctly that the successive periods of cosmic formation
were periods of direct divine interposition, of supernatural
fabrication, — that God "spake and it was done ; He com-
manded and it stood fast." This is the point of antagonism
between revelation and science.

Any one who can thoughtfully study the evolution theory
elaborated by the geological department of the Darwinian
school, cannot but notice that the principal fault those

PERIOD OF EARTH CRUST FORMATION.

scientific gentlemen have to find with that method of crust

formation indicated in the Biblical narrative sui)stantially

amounts to this, — The work was done wuiVi too/as^. Yet

surely no reasonable man can se?ously maintain that the

very slo7V and gradual execution of the work of mundane

construction can fairly account for that work's being accom-
plished, or de-miracleize the actual accomplishment of it. A
magnificently ornate mediceval cathedral, whether built in
ten years or in five hundred, demanded for its erection the
same amount of human skill and toil, :ir\(l even so that pon-
derous work by which the geological features of our earth's
present surface were impressed upon it, must have demanded'
the forth-putting of the same amount of constructive power
and skill, whether the process were long or short. The first
chapter of Genesis frankly demands us to believe in a suc-
cession of/ast miracles. Evolution, when patiently watched
through all its gradual processes, turns out to be a very slow
miracle, but a genuine miracle nevertheless — a miracle
laboring under special difficulties, and manipulated by very
incompetent agencies. For example, — Gentlemen advanced
in science cannot bring themselves to believe that continents
could rise and rivers begin to flow in one day. "Only grant
millions of years for the accomplishment of such great
changes, th^n we can easily believe they took |)lace," say
they. No doubt continents, mountains, islands and rivers
are in your estimation and mine (seeing we, along with our
friends the grocer and butcher, generally deal in ounces and

J Vs

^ >4

IIF

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

! n

pounds) very ponderous and unwieldly things, and it is not
quite easy for us to understand how such (to us) prodigious
masses could be moved, heaved up, hollowed out and
j)ro])erly adapted to one another in a few hours or days. But
permit me to ask, Have we not forgotten inour estimate of sizes

and weights that the mightiest mountains of our globe, the
llymalayas, Alps and Andes, do not really affect the surface
of our earth, in i)roportion to its diameter and circumference,
more than the roughness of its coarse skin does an orange ?
And in our ideas of the work of creative construction have
we not forgotten x\\:\.i/ar )>io>-e actual u<o}k than the upheaval
of all the continents, mountain ranges, and islands of our
globe is performed by divine power (scientitically called the
active forces of nature) every day in the year ? Is it not
perfectly true that this great globe is spun round on its axis
at the rate of a thousand miles an hour, and swung through
space in its orbit at a sj)eed immensely greater? This is
fact. Surely it needs no mathematical demonstration to
show that the raising of all the islands, continents and moun-
tain chains out of ocean, and the draining of all our i)resent
seas into their beds would not require one-thousandth part
of the power now necessary to ui)hold and impel our globe
•■very twenty-four hours. This is a fact that cannot be dis-
])uted, as a very simple illustnnion will show : — Suppose
7,500 sheets of letter jjaper laid above one another in one
heap. 'I'he thickness oionc of these sheets, in comparison
v.r.h the 7,-199 beneath it, is abou! the; averaL,^e depth of *hosc

PERIOD OF EARTH CP.UF . FORMATION.

mighty oceans which wrapped the chaotic earth round as
with a garment, when comjmred with the diameter of the
earth itself, while our highest mountain ranges rise above
its surface like long wrinkles of the upper sheet of paper,
wrinkles the thirtieth part of an inch above the smooth
level. This extremely simple illustration makes it sufficiently
apparent that it does not seem to be a task of insuperable
difficulty for the God v*'ho now carries and moves the entire
world to do in one day even of twenty-four hours all thaf
Moses informs us He did in verses 9th and loth of his first
chapter.

"Oh, but our earth now moves in her orbit and on her
axis, not by divine interposition, but by the laws of nature !"
Indeed ! Paul thought differently when he spoke of one
who "upholdeth all things by the word of His power." lie-
sides, when and where did we ever hear of £a7i>s without a
law-maker ? And who ever knew of laws operating them-
selves save in the realm of Science ? "Law" is powerless
without executive force — as powerless as mathematical prin-
ciples are to work the Calculus or to form the pentagonal
crystals of the Giant's Causeway.

While I believe that in the strata com])osing our earth-crust
there is evidence unciuestionable that vast periods of pre-
.\damitetime wen used in laying down the various geologic
deposits, there is no evidence sufficient that it required long
periods to give to those deposits their pre.'.ent surface form;
and it is, let us observe carefully, it is f/ii' present configuration

''iv'l

. ;

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

0/ f/ie surface of our earth-crust the 9th and loth verses of the

first chapter of the Mosaic cosmogony refer to. In the name

of honest criticism, don't let us make Moses say more than

he does. He has said quite enough to keep us busy, viz :

that between day the second and day the third the dry land

rose above the waters and the waters sank quietly into their

sea-basins.

No scientific authority will, I precume, dispute that the

mere moulding of the earth's surface by upheavals and de-
pressions would modify, would disturb the relajtions of pre-
Adamite geological stratification. To every thinker it must
be instantly obvious that, while the depositation of the strata
demands long ages, the raising or lowering of it above or
below the water levels does not. To me it seems as if the
principle obstacle in the way of the harmonious adaptation of
Geology to the Mosaic narrative lies just here.

Chapter id.

ORGANIZATION OF SPECIES.

Theme :" God said, Let the earth l)ring forth grass, the herb yielding seed after
his kind, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself,
upon the earth : and it was so. "

"And God created great whales and every living creature that moveth, which
the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl
after his kind. "

" And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind,
and every thing that, creepeth upon the earth after his kind."

"God created man in His ov»n image." Gen. t : ii, 21, 25, 27.

CHAPTER IV.

Perhaps the most marvellous mental ])henomenon of our
age is an educated, sane and serious man who states that he
believes these words of his Bible and the Darwinian
theory of evolution too. There can be no doubt
at all Moses declares in the plainest possible terms
tliat all organized structures on the face of our earth,
whether vegetable or animal, were directly "made''
by God, that every different species of herb and
tree, fish and fowl, animal and reptile was by Almighty skill
and power produced in perfected form "rt/Zf; its kind." While
variety of species can no doubt be produced by climatic con-
ditions and ingenious breeding, species Moses tells us repeat-
edly is of direct divine origin; grass was made grass and
trees, trees, each with its specific seed in itself ; fish were
made fish, and fowl, fowl; animals, reptiles and man were
made by God de novo each "after his kind." This is the
statement of Revelation; and all human experiment and ob-
servation have demonstrated that no one of these s[)ecies
can possibly be transformed radically, for all hybrids are
sterile. Yet scientific evolution deliberately brands these
Mosaic statements as the legendary fabrication of humanity's
infantile ignorance and superstition, and labors to convince
us that all the higher organized forms, including man him-

I III

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

self, are mere slow developments of the lowest and simplest
living things which mysteriously and unconsciously emanated
from dead niineral matter millions of ages ago.

Mcses declares God was the Creator; Evolution declares
Time was.* "Time enough is all we ask," say our scientific
friend:, — "In the production of the most complex botanical
forms ^rant us only plenty of time and we can explain the
whole interesting process rationally and perspicuously, — '-
for instance; grass in rich moist places gradually developed
into reeds and stout rushes, and some of these rushes and
reeds ot account of their peculiar environments and acquired
habits (!) diflerentiated slowly into bushes. This stage be-
ing readied, it is obvious that it would require but very little
favorabU impulse (in the form of more genial climate, for
example) to develop such bushes into oaks and elms and
cedars o " Lebanon. It is most reasonable to suppose — it
can aZ/z/^?.;^ be proved that in certain favorable conditions
rose busies gradually differentiated into apple-trees and
coarse ha\ thorns into very good plums and peaches." Some
enthusiast c evolutionists go further than this informing us
"Certain g aibs and birds would doubtless fo.ter and stim-
ulate this 1 rogessive evolutionary tendency on the part of
bushes to produce the food they preferred by paying special
attention to such well-disposed shrubs — the more genial and

Listen to t\ is : — *"Tlie cell consists of matter called protoplasm, composed chiefly
of carbon with an admixture of hydrogen, iiiirogeu and sulphur. These component
p.irts, properly united produce the soul and body of the animated world, and suitably
nursed, beconi' man. With this single argument the my.-,tery ol the universe is ex-
plained, the Di Ity annulled, and a new era of infinite knowledge ushered in." — Pr<i/,
McBckel.

This impu lent irntional blasphemy is scientific "argument," you observe.

ORGANIZATION OF SPECIES.

generous shrubs by subtil vegetable instinct politely respond-
ing to the blandishments of their slimy and winged visitors.
In this way and by this extremely simple and beautiful system
of mutual accommodation and tendency to oblige, ve can
at once understand and explore the arcana of the vegetable
world. In the long course of numberless ages long ex-
perience seems to have given both bushes and birds a strange
sort of aspiring instinct towards improved habits and a
nobler state."

All this is very ingenious theoretically, but just read again
my theme extracted from the book called Genesis, emphas-
izmg the phrase — "After its kind."

"As to the more complex zoological organisms," continue
our scientific instructors, "only allow us abundance of time
for the thorough unrestrained operation of natural selection
and the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence
and all mystery of the supernatural instantly vanishes." For
instance. Prof. Ha^ckel speaking with authority, saith that a
very small bit of albumen, lying on the floor of the ocean,
out of the rays of the sun or any other chance of ferment-
ation, began spontaneously to live and move — a parentless
monero7i\ then somehow quite spontaneously this primal
albuminous moneron split in two, and these two monera
lived in the comforts of unconscious fellowship until they
each split again, and lo, there w ^ four monera! — then — well,
then, in process of time (a very long time of course) one of
the bigger and more energetic monera perceived the number-

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

less advantages of gathering around him a good hard coat cf
lime and became a shell fish, while another, having been sud-
denly raised by some sub-marine convulsion above the sea
level altogether, found himself one day m a warm shallow pool
of rain water, and became a tadpole — what else could he do in
the circumstances? — then, this tadpole having irresistible in-
herent tendencies to differentiate into a frog, (amphibious
faculties in such environments being an obvious advantage)
at this point one can see at a glance the possibility, nay, the
certainty of progressive evolution towards the highest species
of the vetebrate mammal, and the intellectual is — why is —
only a matter of time. This is in substance about the last
word of Darwin's talented and logical disciple.

All this is very interest' ^.g — at least ingenious, but just
read my theme again, and then say, Is there any possible way
of harmonizing Revelation and Evolution? "After their
KIND."' Is this theory of the nineteenth century indeed a more
rational solution of the mystery of animal form and life than
that given in this old-world document. Genesis ? "But the
miraculous must be eliminated from the realms of true
science, say the whole tribe of evolutionists; the super-
natural is unscientific and cannot be tolerated."

Do as we will, we must have — if we would not drift
away into the hopeless regions of impalpai^le atoms, we must
have, even Mr. Darwin himself admits, one supernatural act
at least to commence with ; and after that the question

ORGANIZATION OF SPECIES.

before us now is, whether does the cosmogony of Moses or
the theory of Evolution really give us the more rational solu-
tion of the problem? Whence living animal organisms ?
Did lifeless and unconscious albumen, without one nerve or
one faculty, through the course of countless millenniums
miraculously work itself into a moneron — a moneron
endowed with all the potencies of Phidias and Caesar, of
Shakespeare and Milton, of Newton and Faraday ? or did
an omniscient and omnipotent God actually and simply do
what my present theme declarer He did ?

Such exceedingly slow viiracles as those advocated by
Darwin and his disciple Haeckel, incomprehensibly perform-
ed by matter itself upon itself appear to me objects of faith
much more difficult than the instantaneous miracles
enumerated by Moses, for in these cases the cause is
evidently sufficient for the effect, whereas in those the effect
is impossibly greater and better than its cause. Or are we
prepared to accept as axiomatic truth, "a part includes the
whole ?"

The insuperable difficulty scientific materialists profess to
find in the way of their acceptance of Christianity is that it
absolutely demands simple faith in the snpernatural nativity
and resurrection from the dead of Jesus Christ — two
stupendous divine miracles. But what are even these two
fundamental miracles of Christianity compared with that
propounded by advanced Science in the revelations of her
high-priest Haeckel about Albumen ? — demanding our faith

• .:■'

iv ■

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

in the self-organization and self-vitalization of a simple
mineral, after having lain at the bottom of the dark ocean
during the measureless lapse of untold ages in absolute min-
eral unconsciousness ? The Babe of Bethlehem had a
human mother at least. The body of the dead Jesus was at
l:ast organized and had actually lived; but Albumen was
part of chaotic matter which from all eternity past had never
been either alive or organized — had never been in the most
distant degree connected with organization or life in any
conceivable sense; but — miracle of miracles! its organization
(although it was absolutely without circulation or nervous
system or faculties of any kind) and its animation were self-
wrought ! Whether does old Revelation or new Science tax
our credulity most severely ? Surely the man who believes
in Mr. Darwin's marvellous theories of Evolution, or in Prof.
HaeckeFs albuminous origin of life and species fairly has
merited the plaudit, 'T have not found so great faith, no,
not in Israel." With the greatest seriousness I assert that
nowhere in all the Bible does the God of Moses and Abraham
either ask or expect the exercise of such implicit unreasoning
faith as evolutionary atheistic Science demands when she
points her disciples back through the dim vista of millions of
aeons to the self-vitalization of albumen, to the omnipotence
of protoplasm or chloroi)hyl, to the incomprehensible and
indescribable self-evokitionary differentiation of one primal-
germ into ten thousand times ten thousand species, vegetable
and animal. The acceptance of this dogma demands faith
aided by insanity.

ORGAT^lZATlON Ok SPECIES.

By way of contrast with those hymns to Deity in which

pious behevers in the Mosaic Cosmogony indulge, and to

illustrate how instructive and profitable are the tendencies of

advanced scientific thought, perhaps I may be allowed to

close this paper with two verses expressing evolutionary

devotion : —

Down deep in ocean old and dark
Albumen felt the vital spark !
That spark had been nowhere before,
For all was dead from shore to shore.
And so had been from evermcire.

O Protoplasm ! whence combined ?
Or how ? or why ? Who, who can find ?

green, quiet matchless Chlorophyl,
Great ancestor of mind and will —

1 muse — and muse upon thee still ;
And love to think, /'/// Chhrophyll

^^mmmm

Chapter b.

COSMIC

FORMATION AND ORGANIZATION

MIRACULOUS.

Theme: -"God created." "The Spirit of God moved upon." "God i,aid.
"God made." — Genesis i: 1-7.

IJi

CHAPTER V.

With reference to the riiiraculous formation of the earth-
crust and the miraculous organization of its inhabitants
immediately preceding and during the human period, per-
haps I may presume to give this definition : A miracle is a
natural effect caused by supernatural wisdom and power.
Depressions, upheavals, crystalizations now ai)parcnt in the
crust of our earth, which in the ordinary operations of nature's
present courses might exhaust thousands of years, could be
made to assume the same conditions and forms under the
operation of divine, power instantly. An Alpine avalanche
will in one moment do the disintegrating work of five
hundred years of sunshine, shower and frost. For the
sake of illustrating what I mean, — Granting the miracles
recorded in the New Testament to have actually
occurred, do we suppose that the material results of those
miracles would, on close examination, appear somewhat un-
natural ? If the man horn blind to whom our Lord gave
eyes had submitted his newly found orl)s to the microscopic
ins[)ection of a scientific oculist (totally ignorant of the super-
natUMl origin of them) w(juld not that oculist be prepared to
aver that the organs submitted to his i)rofessional scrutiny
must certainly have come, and could not possibly have been
[inKluccd otherwise than by ordinary generation and natural
development? ^^'hen in the darkness I'eter hewed oif the

;{i

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

ear of Malchus' nephew, I presume that in the rude »icnee\h.Q
ear was trampled in the dust, and a new ear put in its place
by the miraculous touch of our Lord. Now, suppose this
miracle-made organ had next day been carefully inspected
by a professional anatomist, would not he have felt free to
take oath that said ear certainly bore no marks of instar.-
taneous manufacture, but must have been born with it!>
wearer, and must have grown with his growth ? Yet the fact
was those eyes and that ear were tissues of instantaneous
miraculous formation.

Whenever we admit that divine interference is possible
it becomes obvious that the entire theory of Evolution stands
on false premises. Every one who believes the apostolic
history of Jesus Christ to be inspired and infallible truth
must hold that Man actually was God manifest in the flesh, the
Word which was in the beginning with God, and was God,
and the almighty Maker of all things, — less th;in this no one
can hold without the renunciation of Christianity. This
granted, the first chapter of Genesis can b at once explained
and accepted as literal verity. Natural effects were directly
produced by supernatural wisdom and power. The most
simple and at the same time the most rational account of cos-
mic organization is that the Lord Christ who instantaneously
made (out of pre-existing material, I have no doui)t) the
loaves and fishes in the wilderness, had, thousands of years
previous, made, composed and constructed the vegetables
and fruits, the fish, birds, animals and insects of our world in

COSMIC FORMATION AND ORGANIZATION MIRACULOUS. 45

the beninning of the present mundane [^;on, and that in the
space of six days — each day measuring from night to night.
"All intelligent religious men have accepted the principle of
Evolution," — to this effect wrote a journal of authority a few
weeks ago. If it be so, than I for one di:liberately step out
of the respectable and influential order. And yet I claim,
and that intelligently, that the first chapter of Genesis inter-
preted literally gives us a more rational and credible ac-
count of the organization of the flora and fauna around u-}
than the science which gravely asserts that the flora
and fauna gradually developed themselves by the exer-
cise of atomic instincts through an incalculably pro-
tracted succession of ever-improvirg generations — and
all this out of a very small pellet of inanimate and
unconcious albumen — i.e., a fine chalk, something res-
embling the white of an egg! ! ! If this be true, then let the
grand anthems of ancient Israel to an intelligent Deity sink
into silence! Psalm the twenty-fourth is superstitious ignor-
ance. Let reptiles, birds and all quadrupeds sing, his:-,
snort and bellow, — yea, let monkeys and men chatter and
shout, "Glory be to Albumen the almighty, as it was in the
beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end!"

Returning to those loaves and fishes instantly made by
Jesus Christ, w^re they like the genuine, natural articles —
the five flat hartl biscuits and the two small fishes furnished
by the lad in the crowd? Suppose some of our modtrn
geological evolutionists and anatomical scientists, shortly

k''i\

I 1 • •• %

1 i\

I! 4

II
^li i'l

t».'r*m

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

after the five thousand men besides women nnd cliildren,
had dispersed, happening to take an evening stroll across
"the desert place," had lighted upon some fragments of
the bread and bones of the fishes, would not they, one and
all, !)e prepared to assert most learnedly and most positively,
tiiat the grain of which the bread had been composed wusf
have taken a million years at the very least to develo}) out of
simp':^ graii?,, and that before such grain could possiblv com-
pose such bread it //iust have been ground between mill-
stones? And would not each savant assert that the fish
bones discovered nnisi—hy all the immutable laws of nature
and natural selection, must have taken at the very least ten
millions of years to have been evolutionized into vertebrata
out of patriarchal tadpoles and moncra? Yet we know the
stubborn fact that that flour had never grown as grain, and
had never passed through mill or oven, and that those fish-
bones had never been developed from o\a, or swum in water.
Or let us sui)pose our wise men had visited Cana the day
after the marriage feast, and had I)een treated to a glass of
the "good wine" made by Christ, would not each one of
them be pre|)ared to swear in the name of advanced Science
that such wine fiuist have been very skillfully made from
the very best grapes that had ever drunk Syrian sunshine,
grapes develojjcd hy the industry of ten thousand long years
from some creeping ()lant of the ]»re-.\.damite world? \'et,
after such scientists have delivered their evidence, if we be-
lieve our New Testament record at all we know that neither

'v;

COSMIC FORMATION ^"WD ORGANIZATION MIRACULOUS 47

bread nor fish-bones nor wine had ever been developed or
manufactured at all; but made miraculously in a moment by
the Creator. "Just give us time enough and we can show you
how the whole first chajDter of Genesis could be rationally
and scientifically accomplished-how, without the irrational in-
terposition of anything like the superstitious idea of divine
miracle, the entire mundane cosmos was organized." To
this we answer. Gentlemen of Science, we wont give you

time, because we can't. To give you the time you require
is to deny the inspiration of Genesis and the divinity ot
Jesus Christ; and we are not prepared to pay such a price
even for your precious science.

Beat about the bush as long as we may, this entire con-
troversy is forced to this crucial point: Is there a God of in-
finite wisdom and power, or is there not.!* If there is not,
then every sensible man will close the Bible and dismiss the
subject forever, leaving specialists to write and sell their
books, leaving scientific lecturers to advertise and discuss
their own imaginations in the hearing of people weak enough
to pay them for the worthless stuff. Worthless, I say, for
what can scientific truth be worth to the lineal descendant of
an ape? But if there be an Almighty God, why could not
He jjerform all the work specified in the first chapter of
Genesis in the space of six revolutions of our earth? And
why should He not organize the various species of vegetables
and animals in full maturity? What possible object can be

WAS MOSIS WRONG?

I'li

gained by the incomprehensible and useless procrastination
called materialistic evolution?

Besides, it is not science, but mere speculation to
say that natural selriction wi'l resultin the survival of
the fittest. Naturil selection is toward selfishness,
vice and consequent degeneracy. The fittest do not
survive in the struggle for existence," unless the fittest
are the coarsest brutes with thethickest hides and the strong-
est fangs. It is not science, but sheer nonsense which
neither history nor experience justifies, to say that dead in-
sensate matter, such as clay or sand, could generate grass or
trees in a hundred thousand years easier than in twenty-four
hours. No such growths have ever been traced to any soil
without germs: md germs are living organisms. ^Vithout
being egotisti' d., I know that /can do far more than sand or
clay ever could. I know I could make a full-grown tree or
a fish or a horse, or a man in five minutes quite as easily as
— in fifty thousand years. To get the first spoonful of sand,
clay and oxygen boiled or fermented into animal tissue
would take me at least one minute and a quarter or — ten
million years, — perhaps a few weeks more or less; the thing
is quite simple, when you once get a fair start in the success-
ful evolution of the first two or three living germs! As to
the nervous system, including the brain and the spinal cord,
I would perhaps have to relegate that operation to — Al-
bumen possibly! ! Time in immeasurable quantity, nay
eternity is two short to condense such insane intellectual

COSMIC FORMATION AND ORGANIZATION MIRACULOUS. 49

vapor into common-sense. Time — millions of aL;es of time
cannot make mindless matter arise to seif-organization, can-
not endow dust and water with power and skill to dcvelope
themselves into organized thinking animals. If, in the
solution of this problem, experience and observation give
any light, they tell us that Time 7uears out things — wears
them done — reduces them to their original dead elements —
the survival of the weakest smallest atoms! Time does not
stimulate living development; but Life is in continual con-
flict with Time. This is the united testimony of history and
experience, and the man who makes theoretical assertions to
the contrary either lies or raves. Take an example "La dem
ocratic," writes an ex[)onent of materialistic social advance-
ment, "demolit Dieu, demolit tout le vieux moade, et une
chose scule reste, I'Evolution scientifique. "What ncxt.^ Is
scientific evolution a thing'i

Let us have an end to all this profane evolutionary in-
sanity, whose "discoveries" seem to be nothing more than
the manufacture of new nomenclature — Greek, Latin, Ger-
man words anglicized. The opening chapter of Genesis is
true, if all nature be not a stupendous and incomprehensible
lie. All nature asserts that organization depends on mind
and that no living forms exist which cannot be traced to
living germs — germs never yet extracted by man from dead
matter. God Almighty made vegetation and animals in all
their different species. He also made man. And all this
making was miraculous. This is true, or they made them-

!».

-'» 1

■

"i :

! 1

'iP

I -i

£ I

lii

WAS MOSES WRONG?

selves, and this is /nore tlian miraculous^ nay, utterly and
hopelessly incredible.

When we speak thus, advanced thinkers will no doubt
smile or sneer at what they deem our innocent mediaeval
credulity, — perhaps benevolently pity our ignorance. We
are not ignorant of Darwin's, Huxley's and Hceckel's assert-
ions; and we intelligently regard their evolutionary theories
as the fanciful and unfounded speculations of presumption
and impiety. We do not think, after we have heard these
gentlemen, and after we have thought our best on their
scientific assertions and theories, that to believe the first
chapter of Genesis just as it stands written is indicative of
either mental weakness or superstition: — God said "Light
be, and Light was-',' God commanded the earth to rise
from beneath the waters, and it ?ose\ the atmosphere to
float, and it floated; the grass and trees to grow, and they
grew. By God's fiat, fish, birds and animals were inade^ in-
stantly made — why not.^ And as for man and woman, God
made tbem perfect, — why not? Surely the omnipotent God
could do in five minutes what a quadrur'"i.nnous anthro-
pomorphous ape might do in fifty thousand years, and that
without any special effort. ''I believe in God, Almighty
maker of Heaven and Earth." Is it not quite as rational
and respectable and philosophicwil to subscribe to this creed
as to deify Evolution, Anthropomorphoids, Darwin (^ Co. ?

QThitptcr t)i.

ELOHIM.

v w

m m

ffi

Theme:-!,, the beginning God created." "And God said.'- Genesis ,:

I. 3.

CHAPTER VT.

Who summoned substance from nothing ? Who pro-
duced the marvellous effect we call "Creation" in all its in-
scrutable combinations and laws, in all its countless depart-
ments and species? — God. A hundred times the reply is re-
peated — God. What is God? Explain the mystery as w"
may theologically, it cannot be disputed that the original
Semetic word wc translate by this singular Saxon monosyllable
is plural — the plural form of a word we find elsewhere in
its singular form — a plural word we find also very frequently
in combination with the essentially singular noun Jehovah.
Is it not at once startling and most suggestive that these old-
est of all religious documents, the Pentateuch, which so sol-
emnly assert and re-assert the indivisible and immutable
unity of the "One only living and true God" should open their
statements by attributing to Deity constitutional plurality!

Much that metaphysical theologies advance about God
being a simple uncompounded Entity, an Essence without
parts or passions, the Absolute witliout form or limit or ideal
progression, must be rejected as presumptions attempts to
find out God by searching, to finally exhaust what is and
must remain incomprehensible. Inspiration reveals but does
not explain. Let us never forget that revelation is one thing,
explanation another. To our consciousness there is nothing

I- :

I! m.

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

more manifest or real than sunlii^ht — one and seven, seven
in one — and nothing more mysterious or inexpHcai)le, except
the God who made and sustains it. This name Elohim is
the germ term of Trinitarianism. "God is Light."

To my mind it adds not a Httle to the trustworthiness of
this old Book that it begins with the frank utterrnce of an
incomprehensible and inexplicable mystery, and goes on
courageously repeating that same mystery to the end. In
our present theme we are informed that the divine Creator
is a Composite, and in the twenty-sixth verse the pronouns
*'us" and "our" confirm the doctrine beyond all sound de-
bate. Subsequent revelation teaches us that God the Son
and God the Spirit were the deity by whose personal agency
the creation was both evolved and constructed; but here
the divine Trinity is revealed in the mysterious unity of the
plural term "Elohim," indicating that creation became a sub-
stantial fact and assumed certain forms, qualities and re-
lations according to united purpose and plan, and as the
direct effect of combi.ied divine power. In the beginning,
the combined Elohim created ex nihilo; in the construction
of that created matter the divine Spirit was the efficient
power executmg the will of Another, that Other the New
Testament affirms being the d'vine Son The Voice we
hear in these opening paragraphs of histoncal revelation
commanding is THf-: Word ( John .' : i), the skill we see
working is thf. WisnoNr, and the effects produced emanate
from THE Power, (i Cor. i: 24) — this I understand to mean

#^ •

ELOHIM.

that the divine Spirit was directed and operated by the Son,
the Son executing the plan, purpose and will of the triune
Rlohini. My explanation may not be very perspicuous, for,
after we have uttered our last and wisest word on this sub-
ject, still "great is the mystery of godliness" neverthele's
these passages I quote are plain enough as a confirmation
of this first utterance of Inspiration, viz.: Elohim created all
things by Jesus Christ. "For in Him were all things created,
the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth,
the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions
or principalities or powers, all things have been created by
Him and for Him ; and he is before all thiugs, and in Him
alt things subsist."

One thing connected with this mysterious doctrine of the
tri-unity of Deity is what may be called the successful man-
ner in which the writers of " holy Scripture have handled " it.
Just think: nearly forty different authors, covering a chron-
ological period of i,6oo years, resident in different countries
and speaking different languages, write about the nature
and character, plans and purposes, doings and sayings of a
divine IJciu'^ who is in essential substance one and indivisi-
ble, yet three in hypostatic constitution and distinct mani-
festation, — they write historically, prophetically and phil-
^ .ophically, they write in plainest prose and in loftiest poetic
metaphor, yet there is not one statement thev make con-
cerning this most mysterious Being which im[)Ugns, con-
tradicts or even obscures this doctrine of His constitutional

I \h

■m

V. |)

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

1 !

I 'I

.:1,

])lurality. The sacred writers never once involve themselves
in the inextricable mazes in which their definitions of the
InfinUe and Absolute involve modern metaphysicians. In
one place they enunciate His absolute Unity as contrasted
with the number and \ariety of false Gods, in another they
extol Him as a Si)irit, invisible unapproachaljic and incom-
jjrehensible, while in another they speak of a Man among
men as ''the express image of His person" — the Father
''declared"' in the Son ; but through all this sui)er-rational
dogmata there runs the harmony of perfectly adjusted truth.
In the grand doxology of all this multiform revelation to the
'ihree-One there is really neither contradiction nor even dis-
cordancy. We do not understand the principle in pneumatics
by which three different notes blend into one harmonious
chord; but the actual harmony is none the less i)roof of the
pneumatic principle. Is not the harmony of all the sacred
writers on this doctrine of the divine Plurality weighty proof
of the doctrine it ielf .^ I think so.

Amongst the various names of the Most High why should
Elohim alone be us^.-d throughout this Mosaic narrative o{
the creation? Many of the learned have been not a little
puzzled to answer, and have felt themselves driven to invent
l)lausil)le reasons, notably that of two authors (called
technically the Elohist and the Jehovist) of these few early
paragraphs of Genesis. Perhaps one who dares not pretend
to Semetic scholarship may humbly suggest a very sim])le
way of escape from the jxrplexitiesof such hyi)er-rritical theor-

ELOHIM.

izing, viz: Is not the radical meaning of this name "Elohim'
omnipotence ? If so, what other title of the great Creator
could have been so appropriate as this one in this connect-
ion? Surely this is reason sufficient for the use of this
divine name without our resorting to the speculations of a cool
and daring philology which presumes to reduce the first book

of the Pentateuch to a collection of ancient fragments and
degrades Moses from the status of an inspired author to that
of an industrious collector of old and curious manuscripts.

I cannot lay down my pen on this theme without saying a
little more about what this word Elohim directly suggests : — If
the doctrine of the divine Trinity be true, what a wonderful
Personage is the Man Jesus Christ ! If the Creator of heaven
and earth be identical with the Saviour we are commissioned
to proclaim to ruined sinners, oh, with what confidence and
earnestness should our proclamation be characterized! His
law-keeping righteousness — is not that more than amply
sufficient both in quality and quantity to clothe such worms,
such insects as we are in perfect moral beauty ! His vic-
arious death under the doom of human guilt — was not that
powerful enough sacrificially to exhaust our legal penalty and
cleanse away our moral turpitude forever! His resurrection
life — His divine vitality — O who can for a moment question
whether this can endow our small souls with life everlasting!
"Who can debate whether that living Light which at first kin-
dled and until now hath sustained all those suns which blaze

Vim ■* I

1 1!

WAS MOSr" WRONG ?

in the darkness of empty space can enlighten and bless us
forever !

When we proclaim the Gospel, of Whom do we
speak? to Whose love and grace, righteousness and
power do we point? "To us a Child is born, to
us a Son ''s given, and the government shall be
upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called
Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting
Father (the Father of the endless ages,) the Prince of Peace.'
When you and I believe the gospel of grace, to Whom do
we trust? To Him whose titles are the Truth, the Word,
The AV'isdom, the Power of God. And Who can this be but
the Almighty Creator mentioned in these opening utterances
of revelation — He who is an essential element in that in-
effable Unity which constitutes that ineffable Plurality
Elohim?

In the history of modern theoiogy is there not one fact
suggested by this theme, and worthy of serious consideration,
viz.: Socinianism has offered the most genial soil, the most
fertile field for the evolution theory of Creation : those who
deny the divine Trinity (the Ciodhead of jesus Christ) also
deny the veracity of the Mosaic Cosmogony. Noxious
weeds mutually foster one another. Error stimulates the de-
velopment of more error. Heresy breeds heresy.

Chitptcr ijii.

Ii:i

THE MIRACULOUS.

Theme :-"And it wns so. "-Genesis i: 7, „, ,5, 24.

llll

I ji' :

i 'i I

■ { : ■ -

i '

I'.

r >.

1 !

4^'

1 1

CHAPTER VII.

What all our rationalistic interpreters of the Bible aim at is
the getting quit of the miraculous, the supernatural. God, say
they, if he does work at all, must in subordination to natural
law, for this law is eternal and immutable, because constitu-
tional and fundamental, etc. Without debating the logic of
this argument, what does getting quit of the miraculous in-
volve ? — Jehovah Hunself must be the product of Law, and
Law must have originated without any origin. Jehovah is
not absolute in authority and infinite in power, but limited
in his purpose, will and power by pre-existing supreme natural
Law ! Natural Law cannot be superceded — ergo : The birth
of Isaac and the gracious covenant based upon it, the super-
natural events in the history of Israel's deliverance from
Egypt, their pilgrimage through the sea and the wilderness
and their settlement in Canaan cannot be true ; the nativity
of God's own wSon, all those miraculous works to which He
appealed in authentication of His doctrines, the atoning
value of His sacrifice in substitution for sinners. His resur-
rection, His ascension to heaven and His predicted return to
earth, the regeneration of the spiritual nature of mankind
and the actual resurrection of their bodies from the grave,
as well as all that characterizes the revelation of the ever-
lasting future — all these are simply impossible. In other

i' i\

' HI

KPi -1'

wmmmm

I: I'!

Hi ■J'f

V H

3i 5'

• r.

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

words, If we accept no more of revelation than what can be
accounted for on the principles of materialistic science and
can be traced to the operation of nature's laws we must for-
ever abandon all .the essentials of our Christianity ; our faith
is superstition, nothing more, our hope nothing better
than beautiful delusion, "the baseless fabric" of a diseased
imagination.

Are we prepared for this awful sacrifice? If not, 7C'e must
continue to itisist upon and tenaciously adhere to the Miracu-
lous.

Many learned and excellent men appear to think that
some modification of the orthodox views on the miraculous
may be practicable, that in some happy way divine Revela-
tion may be accommodated to and harmonized with advanced
scientific Rationalism. But this, I am sure, is utterly hope-
less. Revelation is in substance miraculous ; the warp and
woof of the entire Bible are the supernatural. Not to enter
on the criticism of such biographies as those of Moses and
Elijah, Jonah and Daniel, it is enough to point to these
broader and deeper facts, viz : The formation and nature
of Adam the first and of Adam the second, and all those
doctrines of Ruin and Restoration founded thereon ; the
resurrection of spiritual human nature from the death-state
of sin, and of physical human nature from the corruption of
the grave, and all the promises and hopes based thereon —
these all are not admissible within the limits of the possible
if the miraculous, the supernatural be denied.

THE MIRACULOUS

The more carefully and profoundly I study this subject in
all its bearings the more fully am I convinctd that between
implicit faith in the Miraculous of the Bible and Atheism
there is no choice for any one. I am aware that not a few
learned and earnest souls hopefully imagine that from the
Bible the supernatural may be eliminated, still retaining all
its moral essentials ; but this involves a most destructive
contradiction, for how can we accept as our unerring guide
through darkness a record for which we have to make apologies
to human science, and whose statements we have first to
rectify according to our own judgment ? how can we receive
that book as infallibly true which we first declare to be
mainly composed of impossible fiction ?

The case, I think, stands thus : —

1. Jesus Christ was the Personification of the Miracul-
ous, or He was not the Son of God ;

2. Jesus Christ was the Truth, or an impostor ;

3. Jesus Christ declared the Jewish Scriptures, Moses
and the Psalms and the Prophets divine truth.

4. If, on the authority of Jesus Christ the Scriptures be
God's truth, christian science must accept the anomalous
phenomena of the Miraculous, and christian philosophy
must bow to faith. " We walk by faith ; not by sight."

! =li

'■ il

(tluiptcr bill.

THE HUMAN SPECIES— WHENCE ?

Theme : — "And God said. Let us make man in our own image after our own
likeness: and let them ha\e dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl
of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping
thing that creepeth upon the earth."

" And God blessed them, and (iod said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and
replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea,
and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the
earth."— Genesis i; 26.28.

"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life ; and man became a living soul." — Gk.nksis 2: 7.

IMAGE EVALUATION
TEST TARGET (MT-3)

1.0

I.I

1.25

1132

1.8

1-4 111.6

c^.

e-.

y^.

Photographic

Sciences
Corr oration

23 WEST MAIN STREET

WEBSTER, N.y MSBO

(7*6) 872-4603

Kf'.

fr' mp<

CHAPTER VIII.

No language imaginable could more flatly and emohati-
cally contradict the evolution theory of the "Descent of
Man" than does the history of Man's creation given m Gen-
esis. Evolution was not (as scientific Biblical expositors
think) the mode of Man's creation. Man is not the gradual
and improved development of lower forms of animal life>
but "God said, Let us make man in our image, after our
likeness. . . So God created the man in his own image;
in the image of God created he him ; male and female
created he them. And the Lord God formed the man of
the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the
breath of lives, and the man became a living being." This
re-iterated statement of Revelation modern Science pre-
sumes to pronounce actually untrue — the erroneous deliver-
ance of the most primitive and ignorant age. And why ? Be-
cause by comparing the anatomical structure of a man with
that of a gorilla scientists perceive a close resemblance, and
by comparing the skeleton and brains of a dog with those of
an ape there appears remarkable similarity, therefore argue
they — Therefore the apes and gorillas must have descended
from, or rather ascended by upward evolution from the
dogs, and mankind from the apes and gorillas. Want of
space forbids my illustrating how this theory applied to
Other subjects rapidly developes into unmistakable argumen-

SSSB

68 WAS MOSES WRONG?

turn ad absurdam. Science signifif^s knoiukdge. Scientists
by the very assumption of this name bind themselves to
confine themselves severely and scrupulously to ichat they
positively kno7u, diwd. io ^ \>\!X\n 2inr)i true statement thereof;
but the moment they leave the solid ground of actual dis-
covery and venture forth on inferences and suppositions,
probable causation, connections and issues, they become
speculators, inventors, poets, atid have forfeited their right
to the name of Scientist. Speculative philosophy is Science
on the 7C'i»^ in the aerial regions of imagination.

On the theme now under consideration, the Origin of Man,
I assert that no Scientist kno7vs or ever has known from
observation or history that dog ever became monkey, or
monkey man. Not a solitary case of any such evolutionary
transition has been authenticated although there are now
colonies of monkeys that have been developing undisturbed
since the days of Noah. If such monkeys did, by natural
selection and the survival of the fittest, spontaneously
evolutionise into men a million years ago, how is it that we
cannot now discover in all the tropics one specimen so
evolutionized ? or even one far advanced in the process of
evolutionization? Surely a few thousand years more must
have improved the species in the direction of humanity.
Just astiiere is (for a very obvious reason, apart altogether
from any idea of connection between the things) a remark-
able resemblance between the wheel of an ancient Assyrian
or Roman chariot and the wheel of a Pullman car,
just as there is a smgular similarity between an
orange and its rind and the world and its crust,

THE HUMAN SPECIES — WHENCE ?

SO there is between the physical construction of a frog and a
dog, an ape and a man ; but such structural resemblance
proves no more than this that the same almighty Designer
and Artist constructed the four species on a similar model
as best adapted for animal life in the same world. Amongst
all kinds of sailing vessels, great or small, there are certain
necessary points of common resemblance, because whether
mere row-boats or stately ships they are all designed to float
and move in water, — even so in this world all vertebrate
mammals have been provided with heart, lungs and brain,
because a heart is the machine best fitted to pump blood
through such physical structures, the lungs a machine best
adapted to utilize atmospheric air, and the brain a machine
best fitted to operate tiie system of nerves.

Here in the book written by Tyloses, which Jesus of
Nazareth received and endorsed as the veritable Word of
God, we are repeatedly a^.surcd that God Himself directly
created and /raide man. If evolutionary science be right this
book must be wrong. Who amongst those pretending to be
Christians dare incur the responsibility involved in assuming
this attitude of modern science ? But is no reconciliation
between Evolution and Revelation possible? j\Iay not Rev-
elation intend only to give us a short, graphic outline,
couched in language adapted to the early and ignorant in-
fancy of humanity, of the great and slow progressions of
Evolution? May not "God said" really mean nothing more
than tlie gradual condensation oi attenuated ether into

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

primordial atoms and the unconscious conglomeration of
those atoms by spontaneous gravitation into conscious
self-acting organisms? May not "God created and made"
really signify the survival of the fittest amongst some
highly differentiated apes, differentiated into humanity
by some happy accidental combination of environments ?
If so, surely it would have been quite as easy for the sacred
writer, instead of using such misleading terms as "God said,"
"God created and made," to have honestly stated, "And it
came to pass at the end of many days certain dogs became
apes, and after many generations some of the wiser apes
became men," or " In process of time out of the wiser
apes man and woman slowly grew." If this really was the
historical process then the statements regarding the creation
of man and woman made and re-iterated in the first and
second chapters of Genesis, far from being correct, are mis-
leading and untruthful, and Jesus Christ in accepting and
quoting the book of Genesis as inspired revelation endorsed
what He must have known to be false. Who is prepared to
take this monstrous position out of deference to the in-
genious inference of scientific philosophizing .?=Darwin and
Haeckel are right, ergo, Moses and Christ are wrong ! ! Up
till to-day not a solitary specimem of anthropomorphic
transition has been produced in the open court of science.

If we are asked, Hov.' was man made? our answer is, "The
Lord God formed the man of the dust of the ground, and
breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives ; and the man

...,*r.sj 3:

» » J »

THE HUMAN SPECIES — WHEN'CE ?

became a living being." His body was formed or "made"
out of the dust as directly as Jie yjotter forms pitcher or
platter of clay; his soul was "created" by God's breathing
into that body He had just made out of dust ''Hhe breath of

lives" — animal life, mental or intellectual life and spiritual
life, so that man became that living trmity, that trichotomy
described by the apostle, "Body, Soul and Spirit," — thus
man became, like Elohim his Maker, constitutionally a trini-
ty in unity, as is plainly predicated in the words: "Let us
make man in our image, alter our likeness." What we
know^ on inspired authority is this: the human species
originated thus, (i) Man's body was skilfully con-
structed by God out of dust; (2) Into this body God
breathed lives; (3) During a deep sleep from the side of
man God took a rib, and of that rib He made woman. Here
is the only act approaching to evolution; but it is the de-
velopment of a rib by the miraculous power of God. These
three statements I am aware are utterly unscientific and im-
probable — by the operation of any natural law impossible, —
very amusing and childish, — oriental and biblical, etc., etc.
I know it sounds ridiculously simple in the cultured ear of
this generation for any one to say that almighty God in manu-
facturing the first human body acted like a potter ; but is
not this the express statement made by the prophet, "Now,
O Lord, Thou art our Father; we are the clay, and Thou
our Potter, and we all arc the work of Thine hand ?" and
does not the apostolic thought run in the same direction.

WAS MOSES WRONG?

<'\Vho art thou, O man, that repliest against God? Shall the
thing formed say to him that formed it, \Vhy didst thou make
me thus? Or, hath not the Potter power over the clay?"
So thus it stands, deny it who may, (iod almighty wade man
directly out of dust and directly breathed into him life. God
himself, without any interposition from lower animals, was
the direct Manufacturer of thi. human body and Ancestor of
the human soul.

If the narrative of creation in Genesis be not a men-
dacious fiction Man was originally Man in perfection, made
after the matured divine ideal of humanity. Adam's coun-
tenance was NOT the highest improvement of an ape's, his
brain was not the refined and enlarged development of a sing-
ularly intelligent gorilla's ; but his prototype was Divinity in
image and likeness. Once and again, and yet again Scrip-
ture makes this positive statement; and it is in the face of this
statement modern Scientists presumptuously and blasphe-
mously assert, "Evolution made man in the image of a
monkey; in the likeness of a gorilla Evolution created him;
male and female diflerentiated it them." Darwinism con-
tradicts Mosaism directly and emphatically. There is no
possibility of harmonizing Science and Revelation without
unscrupulously misrepresenting both. God's Spirit declares
one thing. Science declares the opposite, and what shall we
say? In this contest we have no choice — "Let God be true,
and every man a liar."

Chapter ix.

THE HUMAN SPECIES—

IN WHAT STATE ORIGINALLY ?

'"" H^r;;;:.fa.stSc;ls&;fcr^s^i::.i^;nr^^^°^ ^^^^---^ •-

CHAPTER IX.

Evolution asserts that humanity is the highest develop-
ment of the brute; and that the man of to-day is the
highest development of humanity which originally was
of course only one remove above the brute. Revela-
tion asserts that the first man as he came direct from the
hand of his divine Maker, was the most perfect specimen ol
all humanity. In true and complete manhood, Revelation
also tells us, the human race has vastly deteriorated from its
original. Here the antagonism between Mosaism and Dar.
winism is irreconcilable beyond the possibility of mutual
accommodation. Adam was the best man of mankind. Eve
the best woman of womankind, for they were made in the
likeness of God by God Himself. But let us remember
what "best" means here. It does not mean that Adam was
the best chemist or carpenter, tailor or sailor, nor Eve the
best cook, modiste or musician ; they were not the most
skilled in occupations occasioned by the fall, they were not
the most enlightened in that knowledge which inquisitive
science drags out of nature by the aid of microscope and
crucible, nor in those things which frivolous fashion and
philosophy still more frivolous regard as important advances
in the march of civilization; they did not stand foremost of

WAS MOSES WRONG?

their race in those arts inaugurated by.the inventive ingenuity
of Tubal-cain and Jabal and Jubal, in petty pohteness and
genteel deceit, in bric-a-brac and milHnery and lying com-
pliments; but in true and real manhood and womanhood, in
all that is pure, simple and noble never since they fell into
sin has one of their children approached their standard of
glorious physical and moral perfection. When they were
created they stood in the image of God. Within the boards
of the Bible there cannot be found any assertion less equivo-
cal or more emphatic than this: Since his creation man has
deteriorated physically and morally. It is frankly ad-
mitted that he "hath found out many inventions" in
intellectual subtilties, in mechanical apparatus, in art,
language and dress, in methods of locomotion and in gas-
tronomic combinations, in the classification of natural
materials and facts and in the utilization of natural laws it
cannot be denied he has made marvelous progress. If these
constitute the true development of humanity, humanity has
developed very creditably indeed.

But — query, Are such inventions of civilization really in
the best sense any advancement on man's original and
normal condition ? On the contrary, are not by far the
greater number of his boasted inventions the mere outcome
of man's selfish struggle to make himself comfortable in a
body blighted and diseased b) sin and in a world whose
atmosphere has been poisoned and whose soil has been
soured by the Divine curse ? Are not the majority of our

THE HUMAN SPECIES — IN WHAT STATE ORIGINALLY? 77

mechanical inventions the mere instriimentahtics of selfish-
ness in its desperate effort to outrun and overreach others ?

Leaving the mechanical and commercial spheres of human
enterjjrise, and coming to the professional, what does
thoughtful observation teach us ? That humanity is strug-
gling with disease and death, with moral derangement and
ruin. The medical profession by whose incessant study and
effort diseases are checked and death staved off, — the legal
profession \\ ose existence is a standing demonstration that
mankind are stupid and greedy, quarrelsome and insane, —
the military profession whose very training and implements
humanity should be ashamed to tolerate, much less admire
and applaud, — the clerical profession whose entire work and
aim proclaim all mankind disgracefully alienated from the
Most High and lost in moral blindness and perversity —
these professions have been for ages and are now the glory
of civilization. Are they not rather proof, — glaring and
humiliating evidence that man is out of harmony with
himself and his kind, with his Maker and the laws of the
universe around him ? 0\ir gloryl Are they not rather our
shame ?

In final proof that true and perfect Manhood has not been
evolutionized upward by long experience th ^h long ages,
has not been bettered, dignified and enobled by what is
called advancement in higher civilization, by what men gen-
erally believe to be vast improvements on the simi)licity of
quiet pure primitive life, Jesus Christ "the brightness of God's

WAS MOSES RIGHT ?

glory and the express image of His person" is called
"the second man" or Adam, /. e., the second Beginner of
humanity. Now, what description of life was His ? — I
speak not now of His official life after His public baptism,
but of His private / nan life for the previous thirty years.
Jesus Christ lived not in a world of Edenic simplicity and
innocent ignorance. From babehood to manhood He
dwelt in our v orld when the Roman empire had reached
the zenith o" its greatness ; it was the Augustan era of learn-
ing; Law was never better defined nor more effective in its
administration ; Military organization had been perfected
into a mighty machine of irresistible power ; Architecture
and Art had attained their highest perfection and splendor ;
but Jesus Christ never once attempted by taking advantage
of any of these things to "make the most of Himself,"' as
the much cherished saying goes — to " make a man of Him-
self." No. His idea of manhood differed from ours, oh
how far ! Mighty and magnificent as were those native
talents of His which had He so chosen, could have been so
easily developed into brilliant pre-eminence in any one or in
all of these directions, artistic or literary, legal or military, —
glorious as was that earthly fame He could easily have gained
had He only thrown His transcendant mental abilities into the
sphere of (Irecian fine arts or philosophy, or into the splen-
did open arena of Roman enterprise and aggression, yet He
neve- once attempted the pursuit of wealth and power, learn-
ing or high art. So lived and acted "the Second Adam, the
Lord from heaven '' From this fact in Christ's life the infer-

THE HUMAN SPECIES — IN WHAT STATE ORIGINALLV ? 79

enceis direct, inevitable and irresistible, t'/s:; — Perfect manhood
is NOT t/ie result of artificial human development^ of natural
selection and successful conpetition. Both in the case of
Adam the first and of Adam the second, perfect Manhood
was likeness to God, created directly by God. The first
man at his very origin was the very best and most perfect
specimen of simple humanity^ because he was "made" by
divine skill and power "in the image" and "after the likeness
of Deity."

At this point, some solution of this problem is desirable,
— Seeing that " God is a Spirit," from what image and like-
ness of Him could Adam have been copied ? To this enquiry
the reply of Scripture is unmistakeablc — namely this : Jesus
Christ was the Image of the Invisible, the express likeness
of the divine Person. The Only-Begotten Son manifested God
in the fashion of a man. Phil.2.6-8. This is»^rue if Christianity
be what we know it is, a historical fact. But, it may be object-
ed, Jesus Christ had not assumed human form when the fiat
issued from Deity, " Let us make man in our own image"
— how, then, could Adam have been made in the likeness
of Him who had not yet physical form ? Here v/e touch the
profound mystery of the Divine experience, but holy Scrip-
ture leaves us in no doubt or difficulty as to the correct
doctrinal answer to our enquiry. In the immutable decree
and design of the divine mind both the constitution and the
form of the Christ were already fixed long before man's
creation ; the Christ of the future has ever been a present real-

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

ity, nay, the primal and central reality in Jehovah's a}iprehen-
sion and i)urposo. Willi (lod therein no variableness or
shadow of turning, no past or future ; but before His
eye and from all eternity the great Messiah ever stood
revealed in all the perfection of His humanity, and
in all the success of His redeeming work, "the Lamb
slain from the foundation of the world," the Man
wearing divine glory and wielding divine power.
Speaking of Him the apostle declares that Adam was made
" the image of JTim which was for to come." If I may
presume to illustrate the doctrine, to me it appears thus :
God is the Artist, man the Statue, and the process of
creation is this : — ist, There is the divine Ideal — the spirit-
ual Christ extant in God's purpose and plan ; 2nd, There
is then the clay model of this divine Ideal — Adam ; 3rd,
Then the perfect Statue, not in marble or metal, but in the
flesh — Jesus Christ. In this case, as in every other of
artistic work, the original Ideal is the reality of which the
visible and tangible is only a copy. Thus, I conceive,
Adam was made in the likeness and image of God Hii.
Creator, the second Person of the divine Trinity being his
actual Maker. — John i: 1, 2.

! !

(!rhaptcr x.

MAN AND BEAST.

Theme:— "Ami Clod blessed them, and (lod saiil unlo ihem. . . have domininii
over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every livin):r
thing that moveth upon the earth.'' — (Ienksis i: 28.

" For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with
glory and honor."

' Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands: thou hast put all
things under his feet :"

" .Ml sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field ;''

"The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the
paths of the seas. "— Fsalm 8: 5-8.

11 '

CHAPTER X.

Speaking of man's original relation to all the animal races,
insect and reptile, fish, fowl and mammalian quadruped,
this old Hebrew record deals another heavy and deadly
blow at the very foundations of modern Evolution. Thus
that record runs : "And God said, Let us make man in our
image, after our likeness ; and let them have dominion over
the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over
the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping
thing that creepeth ui)on the earth." Man was originally
absolute lord over all nature, mineral, vegetable and animal.
Anthropomorphous apehood never existed. Man never was
" the survival of the fittest " in " the struggle for existence."
He never Lad any such initiatory upward struggle. All his
struggle has resulted from the loss of his original .moral
caste, and the authority pertaining thereto. That day man
was made he was absolute master of his situation and his
surroundings ; and was competent for the mastery.

The root doctrine of Evolution is that man is the highest
result of bruL self-assertion, that he has gradually attained
to his present mundane supremacy by having happily turned
to the very best account all his past chances as a vertebrate
and a mammal — as a reptile, a dog, and a baboon. Over
against this ingenious but excessively coarse theory of
man's development out of lower species stands the

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

most ancient historical document infonning us that
/;/ /lis original condition man ijossesscd absolute domin-
ion over reptile, fish, fowl, and quadruped ; and that as the
result of sin against his Maker he lost it, so that he now
holds his own • ith difficulty. In other words, the modern
science of Evolution and the Bible so flatly contradict one
another there is no possibility of patching up any explanatory
harmony between them at all. The Genesis of Revelation
is the deadly adversary of the Genesis of Evolution, and one
of them must perish. It cannot for a mordent be questioned
that if this old history (which Jesus of Nazareth sanctioned as
divinely inspired truth) he not a wild fable, that man,
instead of working his way ujjward in the scale of being, fell
from his i)rimitive state of lordship into a condition of deadly
struggle with the once subordinate brute creation. Every
brute seems now instinctively conscious of his fall, and of his
unworthiness to rule ; his hand is against every animal and
every animal's faculties of defence are against him. Origin-
ally, unfallen man's dominion over the inferior creation con-
sisted of their spontaneous submission to him as their
rightful lord and best friend, whereas now his dominion is only
the domination of a tyrant c. . slave-owner whose super-
ior intelligence and skill restrain and control the inferior
creatures by fear and force, whose personal safety depends
largely on killing them out — a very horrible way of settling
the difficulties of the situation.

Nothing, methinks, can be more interesting than an

[

MAN AND BEAST.

authoritative answer to the enquiry : Is this sad state of
ruin and distrust, tyranny, slavery and misery to be per-
petual ? Is the further scientific survival of the fittest in the
universal struggle for existence our only hope for the future ?
Thank God ! No. As this old Mosaic record tells us how
man fell from his original majesty, and as all history since
tells us how unsuccessful his efforts to regain the majesty of
manhood have been, even so the records of ancient Jewish
prophecy and the New Testament tell us how he is to be
regenerated and re-installed in dignity and dominion. How
is this to be accomplished ? Thus : — As in the beginning
God made Adam the first in His own likeness with domin-
ion over all things terrestrial, so He has made Adam the
second the First of a new race of mankind who shall all
bear His likeness both spiritually and physically — the like-
ness of their perfect divine Prototype, the Son of God — "the
express Image of His Person." Humanity once being thus
restored to the likeness of God, morally, mentally, and cor-
poreally, everything connected with humanity and properly
subordinate to it will naturally fall into its right relative posi-
tion ; man being then in perfect harmony with God, all
God's laws and works will be in perfect harmony with him,
and all the wretched experience of struggle for existence
and survival of the fittest (the old fiendish doctrine of
"Might is Right" rehabilitated in scientific phraseology)
will become the fading memory of the present troubled
dream of sin. Perhaps the philosophical reader, if one such
has patiently read my papers thus far, will condescend to

WAS MOSES WRONG?

examine thoughtfully Isaiah's prophecy, chapter nth, verses
I, 2, 4-9. In my simplicity I regard this passage as an
inspired prediction that the beautiful paradise and noble
manhood which have been so long lost shall both be actually
restored — estored, not by any gradual process of self-evolu-
tion either physical or mental, but by the exercise of direct

supernatural pov that same power by which man was
made perfect in the beginning.

The future millennium in which Man shall be re-instated

in his original supremacy shall be at once the triumphant

vindication of divine Revelation and the tremendous final

refutation of those atheistic scientific theories to which

many good but weak men are now vainly labouring to

accommodate their religious creed.

■ ii

(Chapter .xi.

HUMAN MORALITY PUT TO PROOF.

Theme:— "And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the
garden tliou niayest freely eat. "

"But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shah not eat of it : for in the
day that thou eatest thereof thou shah surely die.'— Genesis 2: 16, 17.

;

CHAPTER XI.

Against the Test described in the Mosaic narrative
of our first parents' loyalty to their Creator captious
complaitits have for generations been common. " Why
should God have deliberately put such a temptation
in the way of Adam and Eve ?" demand many in
the tones of righteous remonstrance defending injured inno-
cence. *' Why should their natural curiosity and cupidity
have been provoked by such an object kept continually
before their eyes ? Was this fair? Was it kind and gen-
erous ?" To a person having no natural and instinctive
bias toward wTong, I answer, that solitary Tree, among so
many trees, could neither be a provocation nor a temptation.
It was nothing more than the smallest possible assertion of
Divine right, the simplest imaginable means of testing the
intelligent loyalty of man to his Maker and the mstrumen-
tality by which his moral nature could be kept in living
exercise through a course of quiet spiritual education, with-
out which I cannot easily see how it was possible to prevent
his moral deterioration, his inevitable subsidence to the low
level of mere animal existence. To me it is not even imagin-
able how Ciod Almighty could have manifested His
sovereignty on earth and how the human family could have
enjoyed the priceless advantages of moral training except by
some such visible sign of His supremacy and test of their

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

loyalty as "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil"
afforded. That one tree was the royal standard (and what a
very modest one indeed ! ) of the great King displayed over
His earthly dominions — the solitary stgnal of the Divine
empire over the whole world.

Think out the subject as carefully, reason it out as closely
as you can, then answer. How could Adam and Eve, being
endowed with intelligence and freedom of the will and dig-
nified by conscious moral responsibility, have had their
nature developed, strengthened and matured had they not
daily in some way felt their sense of right and wrong exer-
cised ? had they not been compelled in some way and at
some point to use their will in controlling and restraining
their desires ? For in his Edenic state man really did possess
a free will so perfectly poised as to be capable of acting ac-
cording to choice and not as now a will under the strong bias
of depraved appetite and the pressure of adverse, at least
defective moral surroundings. If our first parents had had
every possible wish instantly indulged, if there had been
nothingatall within theirreachtoexercise theirdaily conscious-
ness of right as contrasted with wrong, if their propensities,
appetites and passions, whether sensuous or intellectual, had
been permitted to roam everywhere and appropriate every-
thing within reach without restraint or limit, what could
have prevented the human race from slowly degenerating
into more animals ? almost into mere vegetables — animals
vegetating ? According to our constitution as moral living

HUMAN MORALITY PUT TO PROOF.

intelligences our moral nature must either expand and
strengthen, or contract and dwarf down. Living beings with
changeful environments by which they are necessarily influ-
enced, must change for better or worse — must grow upwar<l
or downward. And the only conditions of moral growth
upward are education and discipline. No such thing as
spiritual development is possible to human nature without
spiritual athletic drill of some sort. And we can form no
idea whatever of such athletics apart from moral effort ond
resistance, restraint of self and struggle against wrong. What
may have been the pre-Adamic ethical discipline to which
angelic natures were subjected, what may be the moral law
now peculiar to heaven we know not (albeit Milton and we
may indulge plausible conjectures on the subject), but this
we do know is the fixed mode of moral development appli-
cable to human nature, — Test in the form of opportunity to
do what is wrong, Trial of our loyalty to God against temp-
tation to self-indulgence. Back of this doctrine so plainly
formulated in this old story of Eden, who of all our pro-
foundest logicians have discovered any principal still more
fundamental in the realms of moral nature and mental
science ?

Now, what was the actual Test to which Almighty God
subjected Adam and Eve ? " Of every tree of the garden
thou mayest freely eat ; but of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it ; for in the day that
thou eatest thereof thou shall surely die."

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

'I'o (juote these very old words as if they really embodied
the veritable original standard of human morality will, I have
no doubt, i)rovoke a smile of pity on the face of advanced
thought, but, before dismissing them with a learned sneer,
perhai)s a few moments occu[)ied in the cool examination of
them may not be time totally lost.

To my mind it appears plain ( i)'rhat the thing in Eden used
as Test was most ap})ropriate to what must have Ijeen man's
primitive and innocent state, viz : the fruit of a Tree, and not
anything to which commerce or flishion has since given a ficti-
tious value. I make this remark because I think many suj)er-
ficial readers entertain a vague idea that if the divine prohibi-
tion had been laid on a heap of gold or a priceless diamond
the old tale would have seemed at least more plausible. (2)
That the Tree was one of the re/y snui/u'st and h'ust obtrusive
signs of Mis sovereignty (iod could have set w\\. In thus
giving visible and definite form to His moial law it "^eems as
if Jehovah had said, "With my (iiild .\dam I shall deal just
as tenderly as I possil)ly can ; I shall make as little of my
authority as will barely suffice to indicate my royalty and
develope his higher nature ;" and so, amongst thousands of
other trees and shrubs, (Iod selected one and said, "This is
mv tree, Adam— let it alone." Onlv a tree ! onlv one tree
among so many ! while un[)rohibited flowers are blushing at
every step, fragrance breathing from e\ery leaf and petal,
luscious fruit hanging within touch on every bough, — thus
every want and wish freely gratified, — O, is there not, on

HUMAN MORALITY PUT TO PROOF.

the very face of it, something divinely generous in the Crea-
tor's '.hus giving His creature so much, while He is content
to reserve so little ? It is hard to believe that man could
have invented this old story setting forth as it does Deity
satisfied with so poor a sign, so very small an indication ">!
His divine rights — 07ily one tree /

"Only a tree !" cry many in tones of indignant irony,
"Why should God make such ado, attach so much import-
ance to the sacredness of a single tree ? ^Vhy could He ever
stake such serious, such tremendous spiritual and physical
issues on the eating or not eating of the fruit of one particu-
lar tree ?" Some lugger test would evidently have satisfied
the requirements of such objectors much better. Suppose
we ask them to explain themselves, I presume they might
reply somewhat after this fashio*"., — "Well, for instance, had
God said. If thou dost cut down or burn down all the fair
orchard I have i)lanted, — or had God drawn around four-
fifths of the entire garden of Eden a line of daisies and vio-
lets, leaving Adam tjnly a small patch for present necessi-
ties and telling him, This entire garden is mv private do-
main, and you can enlarge your patch into one like it by culti-
vating the bare ground oiTtside ; but if you appropriate one of
my luscious fruits or fragrant flowers I shall punish you se«
verely for criminal trespass. If, after such a prohibition as
this, Adam and his wife had rushed over the flower borders
and made general havoc of the beautiful place, then for such
gross disobedience and deliberate ruthless wanton wicked-

I! Kli

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

ness God might reasonably have exacted a very severe pen-
alty ; but all the moral sentiments of humanity rebel against
such a terrible penalty as death being exacted for such a
trivial offence as our first parents committed," etc., etc. In
answer to this line of staple objections I can but answer,
My friend, you seem to forget, in the first place, that "all
the moral sentiments of humanity" are fallen and depraved,
so much so that it is. a grave question whether in the discus-
sion of this theme you and I can trust them at all. After
inspecting any extremely minute organism through a scratched
and dirty microscope we should be hardly justified in dogmat-
ising very strongly on its misproportions and defects ; after
having weighed some gold in scales that had been seriously
damaged by a fall we should hardly be justified in pronounc-
ing very positively on the exact quantity to a scruple.

In the second place, Your remarks, friend objector, indi-
cate that you misapprehend the rights of God and the char-
acter of Law altogether. Just think the subject out, and
you will see. ^lost generously and graciously the Almighty
Maker planted the garden of Eden Himself and placed man
in it and said, All this beauty, abundance and luxury is yours
to enjoy and use, with the solitary exception of one tree
which I reserve as belonging to myself. Now, because He
was so wondrously kind as to reserve so little to Himself,
was Adam's sin therefore little ? I think just the reverse.
I think it would not be hard to prove that while sin commit-
ted for a large stake is great, the same sin committed

HUMAN MORALITY PUT TO PROOF.

for a small stake is all the greater, — e. r., "Thou shalt

cbM

not steal" is God's positive command. Now, suppose I can

by breaking this Divine command once gain 10,000 dollars,

my conduct is bad (because I deliberately dishonor and

offend God for that amount); but suppose I break this same
Divine commandment for the sake of ten cents,my conduct,
far from being less bad, obviously is just one hundred thous-
and times worse ; for in this case I presume to dishonor and
offend almighty God by trampling on His holy law for the
paltry trifle of ten cents ! ! Again, God's command runs
thus, "Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy — thou shalt
not do any work therein." By doing some work for one
hour on Sabbath a man can make ten dollars — a bad tran-
saction ; but is my conduct worse or better, my sin against
the fourth commandment greater or less if I desecrate the
holy day to gain half a cent by selling a penny newspaper ?
Worse and greater dtcidedly my sin isascompared with his —
indeed just inasmuch as is the profit on the sale of my news-
paj^er compared with his ten dollars. And so also if I waste
and desecrate the day in selfish indolence or vain secular ,
talk ; for surely it is an aggravation of my offence if I dare
trample on this positive command of the only wise God from
such a very low motive as indefinite idleness. This line of
thought, if closely pursued in quietness,, will aid us in under-
standing the real character and the propriety of that test
imposed by God on our first ])arents, as well as the aggra- ^
vated guilt of trampling on a command so easily kej)!, and

«;

J|l

96 WAS MOSES WRONG?

all for ihe gratification of a desire so mean a, . selfish as the
enjoyment of a mouthful of fruit. On the one hand, In
testing their obedience by this very trivial trial God mani-
fests marvellous kindness, on the other hand the very
fact that ""^d asks so little of them aggravates their sin,
deepens ah irkens their guilt beyond calculation.

About this moral Test imposed by God on our first parents
there is another important characteristic : The command
was only prohibitive^ and the duty of obedience only negative.
^^Thou shall not eat of it. Is it possible to imagine how the
Creator could have maintained toward His creature the
relation of King more tenderly and graciously ? Had God
demanded from the original pair legal obedience in the form
of so much positive performance every twenty-four hours —
so much distinctively religious work, so many prayers, so
many canticles of thanksgiving, so much ritualistic self-denial
every week, we perhaps might make out a fair apology for
their transgression of law on the plea of possible tiredness
with the monotony of ceremonial re-iteration or thoughtless
forgetfulness of their task. But God imposed no such
positive and acti^'e duty, but the sole condition of the creat-
ure's perfect life under the Creator's perpetual smile was,
"Zf/ alone that one tree ; out of respect for Me, out of rever-
ential filial obedience to Me, let almie that solitary tree.''
Surely, if it be admitted right that the God of heaven should
have any sign at all of His regal supremacy on earth, this

HUMAN MORALITY PUT TO PROOF. 97

negative requirement, this //vV/Z/'/Vi^^^ command wn?; as little
as He could imjDOse. To me it seems that this was law re-
duced to the finest visible point— passive negation.

One or two imaginative people I have met who have in-
dulged the supposition that the prohibited tree of Eden was
doubtless in form the handsomest and in folia2;e, fruit and
fragrance the most attractive on earth ; but for an}- such sup-
position there is no warrant whatever. The God who was
content with such a very small recognition of His sover-
eignty in His great and beautiful world never made severe
exactions, I feel morally sure. Indeed, from the entire
character and color of the Mosaic narrative I feel justified
in stating it as my conviction that "the tree of the know-
ledge of good and evil"' was a specially modest and unosten-
tatious tree, a tree very similar to those around it. The
probability is that it was neither so large nor so handsoine
as many others around it, and that its fruit and fragrance
were in no degree specially alluring. It was not until Satan
by his lying temptation had invested the tree with fictitious
and mysterious value and attractions that Eve first "saw
(/'. t'., noticed) — "saw that it was good for food and a tree to
be desired to make one wise." As neither Eve nor her
husband had ever tasted the fruit or experienced its effect.s
on the mind, it must have been only through the colored
medium of falsehood she thus '■'saio"' how very desirable
it was.

i!l'

WAS INIOSES WRONG ?

When we have taken into consideration all the circum-
stances of the case I doubt if a more suitable moral test
can be imagined, a test at once so simple and decisive, so
tenderly small on the part of God and so easily respected
on the part of man.

Chapter xii.

WHAT SIN IS.

TME.Mii :- " Sill is Lawlessness."— John the Apostle.

^11

CIIAl'TKR XII.

Volumes have been written by proibund thinkers on the
subject of human moral depravity, its mysterious origin, its
consequences and its cure. lUit after they have taxed their
metaphysical ingenuity to the utmost and exhausted their
skill in philosophic argument what have theydemonstrated be-
yond that taught in what manyof themconsider anantiquated
oriental legend, the third chapter of Genesis, that sin con-
sists of the disobedience of divine law by the indulgence of
natural desire, of human reason presuming to exercise its will
against the express will of God — /. <?., Lawlessness? After
we have patiently trodden the entire circle of ethical science
and induction we discover this and no more; and is it not
passing strange that all this is wrapt up in the (what some
have learnedly thought) exploded childish story of the tree
which grew in the midst of that paradise which bloomed on
the banks of the Euphrates in the legendary primal golden
age?

Of nothing do we hear more frequently in the meetings
and in the writings of the learned — may I not rather say, of
nothing else so much as "Law," the reign of Law, the terri-
ble and inevitable penalty following on the intentional or
ignorant breach of Law, the wisdom and necessity of return-
ing in everything physical and mental to rigid subordination
to Lav,\ Well, and what is all this but the re-iteration and

11 <

102

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

expansion of the doctrine of Eden's forbidden tree and the
bitter consequences of transgressing the Divine i)rohibition
which guarded its fruit? "Sin is lawlessness,'' saith the first
writer in the Bible in the historical details of his old
narrative, and John the last writer repeats in three words,
"Sin is lawlessness." Why are not modern logicians candid
enough to admit frankly that this definition anticii)ates and
condenses all their disquisitions of human morals ?

This is the exhaustive descrijnion of sin.

If it be now enquired, UViat is tJic nature of sin? we find
the best answer ever given in the very peculiar title of the
forbidden tree, "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."

Not a few think, I suppose, that this particular tree in
Eden possessed some mysteriousqualitiesin its vegetable com-
position calculated to produce in the mental and mofal con-
sciousness of those eating its fruit "the knowledge of good
and evil"~in other words that this knowledge was the effect
of chemical change wrought on blood and nerve tissues by
the subtil and powerful juice of this tree. I don't think
the words used by Moses teach any such thing.. They may.
Vine juice and grain juice fermented, can, we know, pro-
duce mighty effects on human nature now; Ijut this idea of
the direct power of the vegetable upon the man is certainly
not necessary to the fair and full interpretation of the re-
markable name of this tree. "Good and Evil" stand
e(]uivalent to Right and Wrong; and this is invariably the
peculiar experience of a state of sin or moral rebellion, — we
Kxow the rifrht as^ ixtntmsted with theivrong. W^ere we per-

iwc.,.

■^agsmammmaam

SIN IS LAWLESSNESS.

103

fcctly sinless we could knoio only the right, the good by it-
self alone, while wrong or evil we could know about only as
the subject of abstract observation, much in the same way
as we may suppose sinless angels do. But to know any-
thing we must experience it in our own consciousness. It
is only by the personal experience of sickness we really know
the value and joy of health; it is only by being subjected to
the painful privation thirst we kno70 the preciousness of pure
cold water: it is only after the weary experience of dense
darkness we can form any correct estimate, even vague idea
of the beauty, splendour and worth of glorious living sun
light and blue skies; and even so we can know good to be
really good by contrasting it with the sad and bitter ex-
perience of evil. Abstract objective knowledge is not
veritable knoivhdge^ it is only knowing about a thing. You
and I having been born depraved and having acquired all
our experience in a world where right and wrong are every-
where in conflict, have always had this "knowledge of good
and evil;" but it was not so with Adam and Eve before their
sin; then they were at perfect peace with God, their moral
nature co-operating smoothly with God's good will; and
being thus in perfect uni on with God, all nature — God's
works and laws were in perfect unison with them, — every-
thing inside and outside of them was right and good, because
perfectly adjusted to the Divine will; but that moment they
disobeyed God they knew from sad consciousness both sides
of morals, Evil as well as Good, Wrong and Guilt as contrast-
ed with right and holy peace.

]

104

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

J::

And is not this always the dismal and bitter experience
of all wh(j touch and taste things forbidden by Divine Law?
It is Knowledge, but it is n(jt always desiraljle. No words
can give us the knowledge of Ijeing drowned or slowly burnt,
of being hanged or jKjisoned, s'.oh knowledge depending on
personal experience ; but such experience were indeed a
high price to pay for such knowledge. Guilt alone can give
us the knowledge of the (}uality of crime ; but were it not
better to be forever without such knowledge at such a price?
The Church of Rome teaches, "Ignorance is the mother of
devotion" — this is decidedly erroneous, unless we can believe
the only wise God glorified and pleased with the worshi]) of
ignorance. This story of Eden's first sin warrants us I think
in formulating another axiom, true as Rome's is false, —
Ignorance of evil guards goodness,

AVherc ignorance is riqht
'Tis unlv wrontr to know.

Satan's knowledge derived from crime, guilt and jxain is
profounder far than Gabriel's will ever l)e. But Gabriel's
ignorance is both better and nobler than Satan's knowledge,
for Gabriel knows good onlv, and onlv k)io:i>s about evil.

]\Iay we now philosophize a little ? Let us try.

Unless we admit sin as an element of our philosophic
system, /. <'., a deliberate and voluntary act of transgression
like this attributed to Adam, how can we account for the
present evident derangement of our world both physically
and morally ? Granting for argument's sake that the human

SIN IS LAWLESSNESS.

105

species has been slowly evolutionized from albumen rhloro-
phyl and i)rotoi)lasm by the ojjeration of natural law, grant-
ing that Wij are nothing more or less than what 'rresistible
laws have constituted us and that we are still only law-organ-
ized matter operated by law, how then is it possible that we
can have (by any exercise of faculties so evolved and
operated) transgressed law ? Can eternal law in its own
direct effects and necessary products transgress itself?

Sound Rationalism cannot state such a case ; even imagin-
ation cannot find combinations of fancy ojt of which to
create it. Atoms, passively congregated and arranged, dif-
ferentiated, organized and operated directly and solely by
fixed laws, such atoms somehow getting out of constitutional
harmony into a state of persistent active friction and deadly
conflict ! ! — why, such a theory is self-contradictory, for any
such effect issuing from the absolute reign of law over passive
ma:ter is simply impossible. A positive act of voluntary sin
])erpetrated by a being endowed with the law-breaking
powerof free moral agency is not merely necessary to this old
narrative of Eden ; but is as necessary to the explanation of all
the historical phenomena and experimental facts of humanity.
Sin stands written across all human history as plainly as
across the third chapter of Genesis. And sin is not the
evolution but " the transgression of the Law."

The unquestionable fact of Sin and everything belonging
to a "struggle for existence" among the products of Evolu"
tion — these make the entire theory of Evolution not only

io6

WAS MOSES WRONG.

impracticable but even unthinkable. Reason with ban-
daged eyes, and mounted on the Pegasus of unbridled
imagination may Darwinize for a few years, but the
quiet and logical study of the fact Sin, will very soon force
any thoughtful mind to seek solid footing on the old fash-
ioned rock, Divine Revelation.

i i'

Qlhaptcr xiii.

THE temptp:r and the tempta-
tion.

Theme :— " Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the
Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman. Vea, hath God said, Vc
shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

' And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of rfie fruit of the trees of
the garden : "

"Hut of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath saul, Ve
shall not -eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die."

" And the serpent said unto the woman, ye shall not surely die."

" For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened
anil ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

" And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleas-
ant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she tixik of the fruit
thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat."

Ganesis 3: i-6.

H^mp

CHAPTER XIII.

" Unreasonable ! absurd ! incredible ! ! Read such a
story to the credulous simpletons of the nursery or the
imbeciles of the work-house ; tell that yarn to the marines I*
methinks I can overhear many modern "thinkers" exclaim.
Thinkers are they? I fear they do not think quite as
closely and seriously as they ought, to earn the noble
title. Those who deny the authenticity and veracity of
the old document I "have quoted on this subject have
to deny also a good deal more. For instance, have
they thought out the fact that among heathen nations
over the entire globe, serpent worship has long held the pro-
minent place ? I think it can without much difficulty be
demonstrated that no other species of worship has been so
universal as Ophiolatry, /. <?., the Serpent deified and wor-
shipped as an evil demon whose terrible and malignant
power had to be averted by honors, gifts and sacrifices.
Amongst the ancient Babylonians and Egyptians, amongst
the philosophical Hindoos, stalwart Celts and refined
Creeks, amongst the degraded tribes of the African interior,
amongst the ancient Aztecs and Druids, (people so totally
unlike and ignorant of one another) not to mention othe'S
serpent-worship has left its record in characters dee[) and
I'lain as the most primitive religious cult. "Advanced think-
ers" had better explain this very remarkable intellectual
evolution of "the religious animal" before sneering at the

WAS MOSES WRONG?

Ifi

If I

quotation from Genesis with which I introduce this chapter.
The stubborn historical fact has to be accounted for that
while every nation had its own local deities, serpent- worship
has been 2iniversal.

As to the quotation itself, let us consider (as oui minister
says at the outf^ct of his sermon) — let us consider, firstly,
The Tempter, and secondly. The Temptation.

I. The Tempter was a compound, consisting of an agent
inside an instrument, and acting through it.

{a) The Instrument was the Serpent, one of the most
wonderful products of creative skill. What were his form
and faculties as he came fresh from his Maker's hand
we cannot now tell ; but from the penal judgment inflicted
upon him, *' Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust
shalt thou eat all the days of thy life," it appears that, in
place of crawling as he now does upon the earth, his
original attitude was erect. Some of the most ancient reli-
gious sculptures represent him standing upright. On this
point old Revelation and new Science seem disposed to sup-
port each other, for while this ancient Hebrew record in-
forms us the serpent's present shape and attitude, nature and
habits are the effects of God's curse, modern scientific
naturalists assure us that under the skin of certain of the
snake species there are the remains of aborted limbs.

(jb) The serpent as an animal was originally "more
subtil," /. e., intellectually superior to, shrewder and wiser

THE TEMPTER AND THE TEMPTATION.

Ill

than any other animal. For superior animal sagacity and
subtilty we now look to the fox, the dog and the beaver,
but before the fall the creature next to man intellectually
stood the serpent. From the entire tenor of the Mosaic
narrative it appears that some time previous to his demoniac
possession Eve had become so familiar with him and attach-
ed to him as a pet when he spoke to her she was neither as-
tonished nor alarmed. Are we not warranted in believing
that, under her training, he had learned the habit of talking
or that at least she hoped he might soon .learn language ?
All this considered, what instrument better fitted for his
malignant work could Satan have found than just the serpent?

(c) The real Agent of temptation, inspiring and using the
animal, was Satan. About this chief apostate spirit of spirit-
land we learn a good deal more from subsequent pages of
Scripture (such as the cruel mischief he indulged at the ex-
pense of Job, the lies with which he inspired the obsequious
courtier-prophets of King Ahab, the temptation of Jesus
Christ at the commencement of His public life, the use he
made of Peter and Judas), but on to the end of the inspired
volume the bad reputation of his first earthly villainy clings to
him in these titles "the dragon, the old serpent which is the
devil and Satan." For the reasons already given Satan wisely
selecud the serpent in Eden as the instrumental medium
best adapted for his work ; and since his great success with
our first parents he has adhered to the same method — never
(except in the case of Christ, when no subterfuge was pos-
sible) never showing himself, but ever operating under dis-

112

WAS MOSES WRONG?

guise and through others ; in the mysterious utterances of
heathen oracles and priestly auruspices, in the popular
ignorance, social degradation and dread of death necessarily
pertaining to idol worship in all lands, in the terrible violence
of the wild man of Gadara and other demoniacs, in the
wretched avarice of the infatuated Judas Iscark)t and in the
dishonest profession of Simon Magus — both types of much
modern discipleship, by the popular jjrofanity and plausible
sophistries of such blasphemers as Paine, Holyoak and
IngersoU, through the instrumentality of such mighty minds
as Mahomet and the first Napoleon, and even through the
laborious industry and scientific brilliancy of such men as
Herbert Spencer, Darwin, Huxley and Hceckel — under such
disguises and behind such instrumentalities, this same
mighty genius of evil works on, misrepresenting the Divine
nature and purposes, questioning the Divine rights and laws,
insinuating improvements on the Divine constitution of
nature, transposing vice and virtue, sneering at the pusillani-
mity of faith, and extolling the heroism of selfishness, of
doubt and blasphemy.

n. The Temptation deserves our careful consideration,
chiefly on account of its typical character. His plausible
insinuations through the mouth of the serpent in Eden are
typical of every doubt and difficulty he has, through human
instrumentality, insinuated since.

(a) Sin the first, like every other sin since, was brought
about under cover and indirectly. Sin itself, simple and

I '

THE TEMPTER AND THE TEMPTATION.

unadorned, is a repulsive deformity which can never be pre-
sented in puris naturalibus. Not at Eve but at Adam Satan
aimed his shaft of death, for Adam being the natural root
and federal head of the future race the success of the dia-
bolical game lay in ruining him ; not, however, to Adam but
to Eve he introduced his temptation. She was in mental
constitution more delicate and impressible and less self-reliant
and logical than he ; he was not so liberally endowed with
that fine, sensitive, mental quality we call curiosity, but with
more susptcion and caution. She, Satan saw at a glance,
if once won over to venture on forbidden ground, must
naturally wield over the entire region of his affections an
influence well-nigh irresistible. What would all the fair and
wonderful world be to Adam severed from sympathy with
Eve ? What would he not dare rather than part with her
forever ? " Eve is the shortest, surest road into the fortress
of Adam's loyalty to God," said Satan, and he chuckled with
the joy of self-gratulation at the discovery and the prospect.

, n

Satan by the instrumentality of the pet serpent determined
to reach Adam through the instrumentality of the beautiful,
pliant, unsuspicious, inquisitive Eve. A plan this the most
successful in every generation and clime.

ib) As to the Temptation itself it was planned with con-
summate foresight and skill, fortified by caution. In discus-
sing with Eve the law of the tree, Satan does not venture to
shock her by contradicting God positively and abruptly ;
but first only expresses a polite doubt of the correctness of

•^T

114

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

the impression made on her memory, " Yt.., .lath God said,
Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden ?" then, pro-
ceeds still very politely to insinuate the improbability of any
such prohibition, " Ye shall not surely die !" then ventures
to express his indignant disapproval of the bare idea that
God would ever stoop to such a thing as, by keeping them
in ignorance, prevent them from entering on a far higher
sphere of existence, " God doth know that in the day ye
eat thereof then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be
as gods knowing good and evil" — an argument that seems
to run thus, " Surely you must have mistaken God's mean-
ing. Are you quite certain you retain the correct impression
of His words? A mighty beneficent Deity could never
condescend to use such means to keep you in miserable
ignorance, to retard your intellectual progress and social
advancement, could never so selfishly and jealously guard
His personal prerogatives at your expense. And as to the
penalty threatened upon yonr indulging such laudable
ambition, why, God surely never can have said you shall
die ! Die/ what for ? — for eating a little fruit that has really
no real value hanging where it is ; die, for yielding to an
innocent natural desire for getting information, and making
an effort to become a litde wiser and nobler ! Nonsense —
die ' You must have misunderstood God altogether — of
course, you must ; or He must have been indulging in strong
verbal imagery, if not oriental hyperbole. Why, if there

must be some little penalty suffered for the transgression
of such an arbitrary prohibition, half an hour's headache
would be more than punishment enough!"

THE TEMl'TER AND THE TEMPTATION.

115

Yet God had said, "In the day ye eat thereof ye shall
surely die," and no one knew better than the malignant
tempter, and that from bitter personal experience, that God
meant just what He had said.

Yes, God had said, " In the day ye eat thereof ye surely
shall die," and, althougli Satan scoffed at the preposterous
idea, and although Eve felt almost quite convinced that her
pet serpent must be right after all and God wrong, God's
terrible threatening was terribly true. Yes, and although
men still rationally think and very learnedly prove that such
a penalty as death (eternal soul-death) was out of all propor-
tion to this offence, all human history as well as sad experi-
ence assure us that death everywhere and always is the
penalty of sin.

After having so clearly exposed the fallacy of Eve's
memory or the unreasonable severity of the Divine judgment
threatened, Satan proceeds to hold out a very strong induce-
ment as the certain reward of transgression. This reward
was, to say the least, highly respectable in character — " Ye
shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." " Surely it must
ever be most honorable and creditable," thought the beau-
tiful lady, " to make the most of one's self and one's circum-
stances ! The chance of making my husband a god and
myself a goddess is neither to be despised nor neglected."
So, after having listened to the serpent's friendly and sound
argument, she looked again at the tree and "saw it was good
for food, pleasant to the eyes, and to be desired to make
one wise." All this perception of the very nourishing and

ii6

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

enlightening qualities of the fruit was a tremendous leap of
the imagination ; "the wish was father to the thought," and
she " sazi'" all these virtues in the tree entirely through the
colored and distorted medium of Satan's speech. Especially
that last remark " a tree to be desired /<? wake one u'ise"
was your grand mistake mother Eve — a very grave mistake
indeed, into which multitudes of your poor children have
fallen, the tree being "Mc? ^ree of knoiuledge'' only, not of
wisdom. Knowledge is one thing, \Visdom another. A
savant is not a sage, science is not sagacity. To kno7u what
drunkenness, gambling and stealing are is knowledge, not
wisdom ; to know experimentally what small-pox or cholera
or the penitentiary or the peculiar sensa ion of penal stran-
gulation is, to know what a guilty conscience and the frown
of God are, is knowledge, not wisdom. Wise men believe
that it is far better not to knoiv a great many things, and that
to remain in innocefit ignorance is the only safe course of
sound wisdom.

The temptation did not merely conceal beneath its surface

this serious error, this fatal delusion of confounding Wisdom

with Knowledge — this we might perhaps excuse in a fair

lady of experience as limited as Eve — but on its very face it

bore two very foul blots, blots plain enough and black

enough to shock and repel even her. It held out a bribe to

selfish vanity, to gross self-glorification in the daring words

"Ye shall be as gods ;" and it imputed base motives to the
great, wise, good Creator. Just think of this. Such state-
ments are manifestly, transparently wicked and bad even

THE TEMPTER AND THE TEMPTATION.

from the tongue of a pet ser[jent, and when Eve (vain fair
fool) can hsten ^Yithout shrinking to an insinuation against
God so utterly vile, and even at such a cost can venture to
gratify the aspirations of her vanity we dare not apologise
for her. No, indeed, not one syllable of apology ! A child
— a daughter willingly standing to listen eagerly to' the
detraction of her father's character and the impugnment of
his veracity and motives, when all the experience she ever
had of her father proves him to be good, honorable, gener-
ous and truthful — of such a daughter we are simply ashamed,
for she is neither good nor brave ; and of Eve our mother,
beautiful though she be, we are now ashamed ; for that
moral attitude in which she stands before us listening to the
tempter demonstrates that she is already spiritually fallen.

A century hence, if "the long-suffering of the Lord" per-
mits the present age to last till then, moral philosophers
will no doubt be busy inventing and discussing theories of
the origin of evil, etc. Then as now, this ancient simple Mosaic
story of mother Eve and the Serpent will, I am certam, be
the very best solution of the perplexing problem.

dHhaptcr xib.

DEATH— ITS HISTORY.

Theme: — "And the Lcrd Ciod commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the-
garden thou mayst freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
thou shalt not eat of it : for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shall surely
die. ' CJenesis 2 ; 16, 17.

"By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin." Romans 5 : 12.

CHAPTER XIV.

That geologists have demonstrated the prevalence of
Death on our earth long prior to the human period cannot
be disputed. Before Adam breathed or sinned, countless
generations oi flora had bloomed and decayed, numerous
species oi faima had lived and perished, over countless
denizens of the deep and the swamp, the forest and the air had
"Death reigned" for long centuries; by the carnivorous natur-
al constitution and antagonistic disposition of many of those
animals that inhabited the pre-Adamic earth, by the subsid-
dence of great areas of land beneath tl e water, by the des-
tructive action of volcanic forces, by the upheaval of the long
submerged ocean-bed with its numberless marine population
into the atmosjjhere, by the change of our planet's relation to
the sun and the consequent vast extension from the polar reg-
ions of ice ov or the then temperate and torrid zones — by such
catastrophes to which every part of our earth has been success-
ively subjected, all terrestrial organic life has been destroyed
more than once. "Death reigned" is the incontrovertible
"testimony of the rocks ;" and the reason of this we cannot
now presume to conjecture. Thoughtful men, at all events,
will not be too ready to "render a r^^son."

But this record in stone neither weakens noi invalidates
the inspired record on paper — the record called Genesis.

122

WAS MOSES WRONG?

Genesis is not Geology. Geology opens a museum of ancient
specimens discovered in periods of earth history which the
records of revelation do not touch. Genesis only informs us
that at a particular time the Almighty began putting this plan-
et in order for the accommodation of His creature Man, and
that then it was "without form and void," in a state of confus-
ion and emptiness — earth, water, air and fire commingled, and
necessarily wrapped in darkness and devoid of all organic
form and life. Thus far, at least, the testimony of Geology
corresponds with and corroborates the opening testimony of
Genesis, both positively declaring that the Adamic world,
*'the world that now is" was constructed out of material
previously existing — material bearing all the general charac-
teristics of being the debris of an old world.

Geology confidently affirms that on our planet Death had
reigned before Adam sinned, and these words of inspiration,
"The earth was confusion and emptiness, and darkness was
upon the face of the deep" verify the geological affirmation,
Cver the dark, shapeless, chaotic mass "Death reigned."

It is not, however, about the primary igneous rocks, about
the secondary and tertiary geological deposits, about the re-
lative stratifications of rocks, clays and gravels, sands, coals,
metals and fossils, Genesis speaks, but about a new arrange-
ment of the surface of the mundane crust, an arrangement
of the land, water and atmosphere adapting the planet for
the habitation of the human race, and about the vegetables

DEATH, ITS HISTORY. 1 23

and animals provided for their use by the foresight of divine

fatherly love. All this preparatory terrestrial reconstruction

for man is an entirely new departure in terrestrial history, and

we who hold the inspiration of the Book must maintain that

from the period of Adam's creation to the moment of his
fall Death was not in the newly constructed earth. Deny
that Death was introduced into our world as the penalty of
Adam's original sin, and you do not merely contradict one
historical statement of revelation or attach a new and highly
metaphorical signification to a few sentences, but you radi-
cally alter the meaning, drift and doctrine of the entire Bible.
Death caused by sin is the theme of inspired history and
moral law ; and so to atone for sin as to remove Death
is the one redemptive and restorative scheme under all
dispensations of Divine grace. Deny that death was the
penalty of Adam's first transgression, and you eliminate the
entire moral substance from Genesis, Jesus Christ's substitu-
tionary death seems nothing more than a gracious superfluity,
and Paul's argument ,.i his letter to the Romans nothing
better than theosoplvVal logomachy — subtle theoretical
religious talk.

;|i

With nothing more than the geological record before him
no wisely cautious man will presume to dogmatize upon
what condition of things must have obtained on the surface
of our earth during the very short period of Adam's inno-
cence ; but will, I think, be apt to accept the statement of
Genesis, fortified as it is by many legendary confirmations
10

iil
■li;

I' '■*!

f ■

I fl

I I

124 WAS MOSES WRONG?

from other ancient sources, as all that can be known upon
the interesting subject of man's original sti-vte. The sudden
appearance of man on the theatre of geological history is
confessedly unique. Was not his original moral and phy-
sical condition also unique ? Is even deathlessness a more
startling novelty than the moral and intellectual natures of
humanity ?

"But," interposes the physiologist," even granting that
geological records are not so exact and definite as to warrant
us in pronouncing on what may possibly have been the ex-
ceptional conditions of the very short sinless Adamic period
claimed by the two first chapters of Genesis, what about the
form of animals as they now appear with their necessarily
destructive carnivorous propensities and lethal apparatus,
horns and claws, fangs and poison, digestive organization
demanding animal food, &c ? Are these not -oroof demon-
strative and indisputable that the reign of death is the nor-
mal state of the human period?" "And, then, what about
the vegetable world which evidently has been always consti-
tutionally liable to decay and death ?" asks the botanist.

The answer to our scientific physiological and botanica|
specialists must be short, simply because we have no data
by the manipulation of which we can make it long or elabor-
ate. Because rue do not knoiv ivhat has becn^ except in dis-
jointed frai^ments, reason imposes on us modest caution and
respectful silence. We do not know what physical changes

DEATH, ITS HISTORY. I?5

must have instantly followed the moral change of man's
nature. Jfe do not know, although we can easily imagine,
what mighty physical changes might result from the slightest
change, for example, in the relative proportions of the
chemical constituents of our atmosphere when, as Revelation,
tells us, Satan became "the prince of the power of the air."
They who accept the proper inspiration of Genesis must
necessarily also accept the doctrine of divine miracle ; and
miracle is a change instantaneous and independent of im-
mediate natural antecedents. ■ This ignorance confessed
is answer sufficient to all the difficulties advanced by the
champions of scientific botany and anatomy.

But to this negative answer we are not shut up. Whether
i\\Q flora o-wd fauna of the period of Adamic innocence were
subject to gentle decay and painless dissolution may be left
an open question, but it demands no difficult scriptural
argument to prove that everything resembling violent and
painful destruction, /. e., penal death was then unknown.
May I modestly venture my own opinion on this profound
subject in the hope that it will be taken for what it is worth?
It is this simply, The omniscient Creator constituted the
animals with facult'es and propensities (latent during the
short "golden age" of Adamic innocence and uprightness)
adapted to those exigencies of their foreseen history on the
earth under the divine curse consequent on sin. Indeed,
no other plan of creation can be conceived as likely to be
adopted by "the only wise God," who seeth "the end from

■■■■B

126

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

i I;

the beginning." Meeting at this point even the modern

evokitionist on his own plane I venture to assert, if s/o7cr

unintentional development can produce not only all the
varieties, but all the species of the present animal
world, it must be admitted that under special conditions
(such as the serious derangement of the human relation to
the brutes) such transformation toward such savage
modes of aliment and defense might be rapid. No
intelligent person who favors the Spencer-Darwinian
doctrine can regard it as at all impossible for such changes as
I have indicated to take place in the disposition and structure
of the animal races. If natural selection and unconscious
adajjtation to environment can be supposed capable of pro-
ducing all the upward series of differentiation between a
minnow and an eagle, between a mouse and a man, surely
much slighter and easier doicmcard modifications might be
possible as the result of God's curse upon the planet,
its atmosi)here and its lord. The t/iifig accomplished
is the same, viz.^ differentiation, although the time
occupied in the process may be shorter or longer. In
the days of Shakespere to put a girdle round the globe
*Mn forty minutes'' was considered the impossible feat
of boastful witchcraft, but now I understand it is possible
to girdle the globe about six times in forty minutes ;
fifty years ago it required seven or eight years in the
tan-pit to transform a raw hide into good leather, when modern
chemistry, I have been informed, can now effect the useful
transformation in less than as many months. Why not in

DEATH, ITS HISTORY. 1 27

as many days, twenty years hence ? Let the Evolutionist

answer. People who live in these days of chemical and

electrical marvel and who can compare their daily common
experience with the experience and ideas of their forefath-
ers need not limit the God of nature's laws and forces to the
slow process of evolution in the modification of the animal
races, — if they can undergo anything like scientific differen-
tiation at all. Evolutionary differentiation appears to me to
be only a long scientific name for a very slow miracle, and
substantially amounts to nothing at all except getting quit
of divine interference by breaking up the miracle into a
long succession of atomic mutations, imperceptibly small.

If it was indeed the curse of God upon our soil which
first caused the growth of thorns and thistles, I cannot easily
perceive how the same curse should not produce wonderful
changes in the organs and propensities of animals, — e. g., in
the donkey and the camel the taste for thistles. Are vege-
table thorns more easily made than animal fangs — bone
thorns ? I don't know.

There are very many difficulties yet tp be cleared
away and many problems to be solved ere we can presume
to assert that Death reigned during the human period (it
may have been three days or three months) before Adam
sinned. On this subject it seems to me that one grain of
confessed modest ignorance is worth more than ten tons of
scientific dogmatism.

:i •

all.

'■'■

I ' ^mrmr^m

r 1

128

WAS MOSES WRONG?

Our scientific friends are not quite done yet ; but, chang-
ing their point of attack, they now assert, "It is evident the
human organism is nothing more than a material machine,
necessarily subject to tear and wear, and ultimate utter disin-
tegration like any other material machine, and consequently
never, in the very nature of things, could be immortal."
Without discussing as severely as it deserves this convenient
scientific phrase, "in the very nature of things" and de-
molishing it as nothing better than a wretched subterfuge,
this scientific assertion about the material machine of hu-
manity is only begging the entire question under discussion.
All this, I hold, is not at all evident^ because

Firstly^ "The very nature of things" must now be quite dif-
ferent from "the very nature of things" before the curse con-
sequent on the first human transgression, just as for ex-
ample, the hydrogen and oxygen, &c., constituting water are
different in nature from the self-same chemical constituents
compounded into fire. Fire and water are indentical in
their constituent properties, only they differ (at least so think
our enterprising Fire Brigade) "in the nature of things;" and

Secondly^ The human body happens not to be like any
ordinary material machine liable to decay. The human
body is mysteriously endowed with recuperative, self-restora-
tive powers by the unconscious operation of which its tissues
are continually renewed ; and these powers in perfectly fav-
orable circumstances might, for aught we know, retain their
active force forever. In the nature of the thing ( — for the
re-iteration of experience is no reason — ) there is no

DEATH, ITS HISTORY.

I3(>

reason for the decay of such a vital organism as

the human body at its fiftieth or seventieth year any
more than at its fifth or seventh. Even after the

deterioration of "the fall," before human habits, per-
sonal and social, had become so abnormal as they be-
came by and bye, and before the accumulated weaknesses
and disease-germs of a hundred generations of law-breakers
had debased and poisoned the aggregate constitution of hu-
manity, the human organism possessed vitality enough to
brave a thousand winters and summers. And why not ?
No sound natural philosopher will take pains to dispute that
a self-renewing machine which can run for a decade may not
as easily run for a millennium, and if for a millennium, why
not forever ? Decay, disintegration, dissolution are certain-
ly not in the nature of the thing necessary. On the con-
trary, to me it seems incontrovertible that the living process
of perpetual renewal of the constituent humours and tissues
of the human frame and system which we know now goes
on steadily for so many septennial periods, ought, (if not un-
happily interrupted by some unfavorable circumstances.) to go
forward indefinitely. According "o my very limited scienti-
fic knowledge it appears very plain that no cause for the ulti-
mate decay and dissolution of the corporeal organism can
even be conceived except unnatural friction arising from the
maladjustment of some of its parts, or the introduction into
its system of some noxious foreign substance tending to in-
duce and perpetuate such friction. The human body now
does suffer from such destructive friction ; and the occasion

SESSS

130

WAS MOSES WRONG?

I
'I

of this friction in the corporeal machine, the Bible tells us,
is Sin, /. e., non-harmony with perfect constitutional law. It
needs no argument to prove that a machine like the human
body, constructed by perfect Divine wisdom and perfectly
adjusted io perfect law cannot possibly suffer from such fric-
tion, and must, if endowed with I'fe-force be capable of
"perpetual motion" in the fullest scientific sense of that
phrase.

These remarks I make, not sc inuch for the purpose of
proving anything, as of showing that on this subject "Death"
both infidels and philosophers still require to produce proof
of the attitude they have rashly assumed against the state-
ments of old Revelation.

14 f
I:

So far as our present world is concerned, Revelation plain-
ly tells us these three things, viz : —

1. Death ivas not first introduced into the luiiverse in
Eden, but had prevailed over a preceding creation. Why,
we cannot tell ; although we may fairly infer that it was the
penal effect of law transgressed somehow.

2. Death in the human period of our world's history is
the penalty of the first transgression. The transgression
having introduced the curse, the soul of man in relation to
the spiritual laws of his being became deranged, the atmos-
phere was poisoned, the soil and its products were blighted.

3. Death, in the very nature of things can have no power
upon a perfectly sinless organism, whether physical or spirit-

DEATH, ITS HISTORY.

131

ual. At this moment Jesus Christ is a man having flesh
and bones, and He, because all in perfect harmony with the
divine nature and the perfect laws of a sinless world, is not
subject to decay and dissolution. The incormptible body
bestowed on the redeemed at the resurrection shall be at
once material and immortal,— ^r^^.- A material organism
can be deathless.

n %

*ii

■—rr-r:^. — " ■'■'• -- n *^

^ssmi

i '.

(Thaptcr xb.

WHAT IS DEATH,

!(.■

' Si

! ^>;

Thicme :— "In the day thou eatest thertof. dying thou shalt dit." (Heb.) Genesis

2:17.
"These shall go away into everlasting piinishnient." Matt. 25 : 46.
"Who shall be punished with everlasting ilestruction." 2 Thessalonians i : 9.

'gS . i MJ]WM.U ' lJ «» Ml« wi^

HI;

It'*' fll,
■i 1 1 1

r *

CHAPTEF X:V.

In reply to the interesting question, What is Death ?

materialists give us definitions which substantially amount

to this, Death is the cessation of conscious animal existence.

To this plausible and apjarenlly exhaustive definition I take

exception, for Death is the opposite and antithesis of Life,

but life and conscious existence are not interchangeable

words, are words that do not express the same idea. Allow

me to explain what I mean, thus: — (i) A person may be

alive physically without being at all conscious. (2) While

life includes existence, the reverse is not true, — existence
does not necessarily comprehend life. (3) Life is the con-
scious existence of an organized being ni the state of perfect
harmony with its own entire constitution, with the laws of
its nature and its surroundings. (4) In the case of the
human being, true life, life perfect and normal consists in
the entire faculties of body, soul and spirit being in perfectly
adjusted interdependent balance and healthful activity,
the affections, the intellect and the physical propensities
and members answering their true end — /'. tf., being occu-
pie 1 in i>erfect unanimity with their appropriate objects and in
absolute subordination to all the laws of the universe of
which the human being is a part and a factor. Such was
the nature and state of innocent Adamic Hfe.

I' *«

;<l

li' i

136

WAS MOSES WRONG?

Mere conscious existence is not such Life ; in proof
of this consider these illustrations : — In a dungeon of
the Bastile sunk below the level of the river which
lapped its thick damp walls, La Tude passed many
years in dismal gloom, degrading dirt and utter lone-
liness except for the compviny of some large rats
coaxed into friendly sympathy with part of the prison-
er's coarse rations ; but surely this experience, vigorous as
was La Tude's conscious animal existence during the greater

part of the dreary time — this was not life. Call it existence^
if you please. Under the Doge's doom and "under the
leads" of the grim prison, over "t.,e bridge of sighs," sadly
remembering beautiful Venice within a few feet of them,
men have existed; but who of all the victims of Venetian
tyranny would call such miserable endurance Life ? Within
the precincts of the terrible Spanish Inquisition a "suspect-
ed person" might dwell for years, "examined" every second
c third month by slow torture, ana then with bruised flesh
and aching bones be remanded to the dreary cell again,
there to brood over friends and home forever lost and to
regain physical strength enough to undergo further "ex-
amination" before the "Holy Office ;" but surely such exis-
tence with all its keen consciousness of diabolic sacerdotal-
ism could never be identified with the blessed name Life. To
rave in the cage or mope in the r ndor of an asylum for
the insane or to pick oakum or quarry stones in some peni-
tentiary under the rigid discipline of the "silent system" is not

WHAT IS DEATH ?

137

Life, yet it undoubtedly is "conscious animal existence;"
but who would not welcome as sweet release from such ex-
periences the unconscious retirement of the grave ? Essen
tially necessary components of true human Life are, at least,
these : — Love and friendship reciprocated, sunlight and na-
ture enjoyed with good health, mental purpose and honest
work — work accomplishing something worthv and interest-
ing, conscious freedom, usefulness and hope — these at the
very least. One of these taken away, we have Life only
partial and mutilated ; all of these taken away we have not
Life^ but Existence — nothing more. This admitted, it fol-
lows that all that worthily constitutes Life may be destroyed
while "conscious animal existence" remains in unimpared
vigor, the possessor of it a wreck of wretchedness desiring
above every other boon the extinction of consciousness.
This destruction of Life is Death.

What complicates this subject and greatly increases the
misapprehension of it is the gross and vulgar but almost
universal notion that a dead human body is substantially
Death., Death as it were in propria persona. Pointing to the
calm white face of a corpse lying in a coffin it is not uncom-
mon for the sentimential moralist to say solemnly, ''That is
death," yet the language is far from being correct, and it can
be tolerated only as a strong figure of speech prompted by
emotion, for the corpse is not Death embodied or visible,
nor has death any connection with the corpse. Death has
been there, but has left some time ago — left when the last
breath left the lungs, and that quiet motionless body is the

138

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

I ; ^j

result of Death's work. Speaking with strict veracity ar d
propriety Death was the disease in progress — was the succes-
sion of pains and fever, (resulting from some infringement
of the laws of nature— some obstruction to the full and free
operation of nature's laws,) before which the bodily strength
finally gave way, and the mental and physical efforts put
forth by the patient and his physician to prevent succumbing
before the disease — these efforts were resisting Death and suf-
fering Death. Adam began to pass through the suffering of
Death when the first pain shot through his frame, his first
hour's headache or toothache was so much Death endured.
Death, then, is obviously not merely the last struggle and gasp,
nor is it the condition of the body in which an'Mial life is ex-
tinct, but "conscious existence"' out of harmony with the laws
of our nature, while these laws are still asserting themselves.
Death is, in short, the act and experience 0/ dying under some
kind of legal sentence, but the moment a person has died
Death is past ; while that decay and decomposition which
follow are not Death but merely the chemical forces of na-
ture asserting themselves in accordance with fixed natural
law.

The historical process of Death seems to me to be as fol-
lows : — Sin is rebellion against God and the attitude of an-
tagonism against His established laws, laws which are enforced
by His personal power. Derangement of the true relations
and processes of our own nature and of everything around
us is the inevitable result. r>ut God's fixed laws go on
asserting themselves, and to them we must ultimately sue-

WHAT IS DEATH?

139

cUTib, however long we may maintain the struggle. As
spiritual disease is the result of sin (lawlessness), deranging
our spiritual relations, so bodily disease is that destructive
derangement of the tissues of our physical frame resulting
from our being out of perfect and harmonious adjustment
with tie divine laws. This derangement of the tissues and
processes of our corporeal constitution (involving very
seriously the mental also) produces friction — friction is noth-
ing m )re than want of perfect fitness. We oil machinery to
make it go smoothly because its parts are not perfectly fitted
to each other, for were every part of an engine or a watch
perfectly fitted so that there would be no mal-adjustment 01
rDughness at all, oil would be unnecessary. Our physical
frame deranged by sin in its absolute fitness to itself and its
surroundings, we also, when we are conscious of any pain-
ful friction and that consequent over-heating we call fever,
"oil"' with cordials and emulsions, and polish into temporary
smoothness by electric applications and stimulants. But all
this friction we feel and try to modify is really slow de-
struction — the disintegration of the material tissues; and
this process of wear and tear with its accompanying fevei
and pain and decay is Death. After standing a certain
amount of this Teath-grinding, some vital part of the body
wears out; this w .'aring out is Death's weary work done, and
bodily Death ends that very moment the last resisting frag-
ment or film yields. The following action of the chemical
forces — corruption, disintegration, evaporation, "earth to

earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust," — this action is not
u

140

WAS MOSES WRONG?

Death, but natural chemistry busy reducing a compound of
earth, liiue, ammonia and gases back to its elements. *

To this conclusion I think we are led by observation, ex-
perience and reason, not to say Scripture, in answering the
question, what is death ?

) I

The materialistic school of modern theology feel much
fortified in their theory on this subject by the phrase ' ever-
lasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and the
glory of His power," one party of them interpreting these
words so as to make them teach the instant burning up of
the wicked in the final conflagration of our world, and
another party of them interpreting them as teaching physical
suffering prolonged far into the coming eternity — suffering
more or less severe, longer or shorter according to the
quantity or quality of the sinner's sins, but both parties
agreeing that the punishment, whether instantaneous or pro-
tracted, shall terminate in the total extinction of their per-
sonal conscious identity, i.e. in absolute annihilation. On
these opinions, permit these few remarks : —

* Recently I lighted upon some remarks which I think well worth
rej)eating here ; they were to this eflect: The word Death derived from
the Latin, signifies to fall from or fall out of., that is separation. The
expressions the "fall of man" and "the death of man" are therefore
really synonyn.s. Death and life are simply different conditions of
being ; they do iiot mean being and non-being, as many ignorantly
assert. "Die" und "dye" come both from the same root ; to dye a
garment is to charge its condition (perhaps its use) by staining it ; and
so it was with man when he sinned — his condition was changer! by
dying. When, by the blood of Jesus Christ cleansing away our sm, we
are restored to God's favor the separation (death) no longer exists —
we are restored to God. " In His favor is life."

WHAT IS DEATH r

(a) This word "Z^^struction' signities tt\e rorced reabc-
tion to its original constituents of a thing that has Occn
<rt?«structed. Destruction is a process, and it is seil-eviaeni
that the instant this process of reduction ceases ^^'Scruction
ends ; ond in no proper sense can such a process wnen ter-
•minated be called ^^everlasting,'' for "everlasting destruction'*
must be an ^oX. forever in progress — destruction never-ending,
just as everlasting construction necessarily involves never-
ending activity.

(b) Those who tell us that such Destruction and Annihi-
lation are equivalent terms, are words mutually convertible
and explanatory are utterly wrong, for, as every thoughtful
mind must perceive at a glance they are really opposites —
the instant Annihilation is reached Destruction has vanished
forever. Ergo,

(c) If this "Destruction from the presence of the Lord"
be indeed '■'■everlasting" Annihilation never can by any pos-
sibility be reached.

(d) Annihilation is a term that eludes the grasp and in-
spection of the mind ; it means nothing, formless vacuity,
undefinable emptiness, "nothing" so utterly non-existent that
even religious imagination cannot come within the most in-
distinct initiative conception of it. Like Evolution which
emerges from nothing by the inherent force of absolute
nothingness (!) Annihilation vanishes into nothing by the
sheer weight of absolute nothingness wearied with itself!
Annihilation is the true correlative of Evolution. In the

lis

Id?

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

r I

E !

presence of th^se *wo meaningless words may not modern
Reason blush? Whv should rational beings who have not
the fraction of one tdea that has not been received through
their phvsical senses, much more why should sober relig-
ious people talk and write about and believe in a big word
which represents nothing either in the realms of natural
science or logic or supernatural revelation, which indicates
neither entity nor jrocess nor condition, which describes
nothing in heav ... above, in the earth beneath or in the
waters under the earth ! Most amazing of all modern ad-
vances into the loftiest region of pure intellectualism this
wondrous word. Annihilation ! We common people of
humble mental habits know what Destruction means, — we
know, for instance, that everything on earth is in a perpetual
state of change and flux, that every day so much rock is
being reduced to so much -sand and dust, that water is being
continually evaporated into vapour and that vapour again
condensed into water, that the substance of the human body
is continually being thrown off by perspiration, etc., and
continually being renewed by the nourishment its life appro-
priates from earth and atmosphere, that vegetables are con-
stantly being destroyed (de-struded) by transmutation into
animal tissues, and animal substances by absorption
into vegetable fibres, that combustion transiorms coal and
wood into gases and water, soot and ashes ; but none of all
these numerous, endless changes are Annihilation.

All the elements of all these dissolved organisms remain
in their new forms, both in weight and power the same as

WHAT IS DEATH? 143

ever. The most exquisitely delicate and potent chemical
analysis has failed to detect one case of annihilation. Nay,
science declares unanimously and most positively that even
all natural forces though transmutable are absolutely and
eternally permanent in their own properties, and that such
a state or even such a tendency as this portentous Anni-
hilation has never been reached and is utterly impossible
and inconceiveable. Then, why should religious men
pretending to superior intelligence take refuge in this
meaningless word? And if this word cannot be applied
to our material corporeal structure which is confessedly
in a condition of perpetual transition, how can it be
to our essential selves we call Life? Has advanced
theology been reduced to the plane of the occult sciences
and witchcraft in the dark ages when it was devoutlv be-
lieved that magic potency, especially for protection against
evil, resided in a long sonorous compound vocable of this con-
struction — Arbadacadabra, more especially when the letters
were skillfully arranged in the mystic form of an inverted
triangle! I confess my ignorance that there is in the entire
Bible one word or phrase fairly interpreted by its immediate
and necessary context that can be even imagined to suggest
the mystic sound " Annihilation," unless it be this short sen-
tence in the Psalms (divorced from the words introducing it),
"There is no God." Annihilation! the word does not mean
anything at all either actual or imaginable, it does not mean
any condition or state. If I may presume to borrow the
phraseology of a certain school of mental science, Annihil-

1' I

III
ii ,

144 WAS MOSES WRONG ?

ation I understand to be the Unconditioned absolute without
parts or passions, intelh'gence or will, without any extension
111 space or relation to any substance, the deity of the super-
abstract philosophy of modern Germany. It is the atheistic
nirvanc of Hindoo mythology metaphysically refined into
the infinite, it is the formless fancy of diseased religious
reverie perched on the extreme confines of inanity, it is an
empty abstraction in vacuo absolutely meaningless and
worthless, and unworthy of any sane man with a Bible in
his possession. Yet it is astonishing that not a few pious
souls think they have said something strong and clear when
they have pronounced this sound, Annihilation.

Had our Lord Christ or His inspired apostles meant to
teach Annihilation as the penal consequence of sin, it surely
would have been an easy thing for them to have borrowed
from the vocabulary of the Sadducees or Epicureans some
well known word or phrase fitted to convey the idea; but
this they did not do ; but on the contrary deliberately select-
ed words suited and intended to convey the idea of consci-
ous penal suffering, adding to them the distinct qualification
of endless perpetuity. Death, so far at least as the body is
concerned, is really nothing but penal decay, /. ^., disease
in progress. The grave is the realm of Death only bv^cause
it is the depository of the results of Death's work — the hfe-
less ashes of the fire that has burnt out. But neither dead-
ly disease nor the grave are Annihilation.

Orthodox theologians generally take it for granted that,
as the Miltonic muse states, all forms of decay and dissolu-

WHAT IS DEATH ?

145

fion in the realms of vegetable and animal nature are
Death. This, however, ought not M be granted. I am
not p.vvare that by any Scriptural statement we are authorised
to hold such a doctrine. Wnetner tne periodical decay of
vegetable organisms and whether the painless gradual and
non-penal decay and de-construction ot anmial organisms
(apart from conscious guilt and future fear; could ever oe
called Death in the proper sense of the word I, for one,
cannot tell. This may be left a harmless curious problem
not affecting the great question before us now. For my
part, I have not yet been able to see how any mere animal
quietly falling into utter unconsciousness through painless
gradual decay has necessarily in it a curse any more than
the same animal sinking softly into deep sleep at the end
of a long day's healthy but exhaustive exercise.

Disease in operation, or the fatal derangement of the
physical organization by sudden accident, these experiences
being the penal effect of Divine Law infringed — this is
corporeal Death.

,:i

Chapter xbi.

SPIRITUAL DEATH,

I Iff

¥.

Theme :- -"Dying thou shalt die."- Genesis 2 : 17.

"Death by sin." — Romans 5 : 12.

"Dead in trespasses and sins. "— Ephesians 2:1.

"He that hath the Son hath life ; he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.
I John 5:12.

.v'-j^ta'-tL

I'i

! |i

CHAPTER XVI.

If on this deeply interesting subject, The Cause of and
Reason for Death, divine Revelation grants us any information
it certainly informs us that physical Death is the result of
Death moral and spiritual. *'Sin entered into the world,
and death by sin." That derangement of corporeal consti-
tution and functions we call Disease ( — and disease, as i
have already shown, is simply Death in progress — Death at
work — ) is caused by the prior derangement of the inner
and more important part of the human constitution, the
moral and spiritual. The philosophy of this awful catas-
trophe we call Death clearly appears to be this, viz: God is
Life ; and separation from Him naturally and necessarily in-
volves Death. As a brook separated from its source of
supply must dry up, as a tree severed from its roots or a
br.^.ich frcm its parent trunk must die, as an electric lamp
cut off from communication with the dynamic machine must
go out, so the separation of our spiritual nature from living
communication with God the Spirit necessarily involves
spiritual Death. There is nothing vindictive or arbitrary
about this result, but it is a ;/^7///r<7/ consequence of the opera-
tion of the fixed laws of our being. Like a flaw in a sub-
marine tclef'.r,; iC cable by which the current of electricity
is instantly arrested, sin in the human soul cuts the sympathet-
ic connection between us and the living God, and the flov,r
of spiritual life cea,scs instantly and ceases forever, until the

1 iii!

^50

WAS MOSES WRONG?

breach made by sin has been so repaired that perfect sym-
pathetic connection is re-established. Referring to the fruit of
the forbidden tree God said to Adam, "In the day thou eatest
thereof thou shalt surely die" {He^. ''Dying thou shalt die,")

and that very day he transgressed die he did ; his spiritual
nature in the very act of sin lost communion with "the only
living and true God" and the current of spiritual life ceased to
flow. Although he retained his natural conscious existence
and spiritual personality, coupled with the miserable sense
of guilt and bitterness of fear belonging to. his fallen state,
his life of soul, his spiritual joy and hope, love and light,
indeed all those moral elements which make existence Life
were gone — between him and God his chief end all fellow-
ship was ended and there was now "a great gulf fixed."
Before his transgression and rebellion Adam's entire tri-
partite constitution was in a condition of perfect adjustment
and balance with itself, because in perfect harmony with the
divine will, /. «?., in conformity to divine law. By the criminal
act of which he had been guilty this perfect harmony and
balance of his entire constitution were destroyed — the deli-
cate and intricate organism was thereby thrown out of
"gear" (as mechanics speak) and Death there and then be-
gan his work. Adam's conscious experience was no longer
Z//^, but the sad consciousness of a deranged constitution,
slowly wearing and tearing itself to pieces — his ani>..al
nature in the attitude of revolutionary rebellion asserting
the mastery, his spiritual nature resenting the coarse mater-
ial tyranny and ever struggling to regain the supremacy it

SPIRITUAL DEATH

I5»

had abdicated and from which it had fallen, his intelkctual
nature in perpetual perplexity trying to restore the true nor-
mal relations and consequent peace and prosperity between
the animal and spiritual parts, but, alas, ever leaning
towards the lower propensities in every decision between
the claimants — (because it is so much easier to yield to a
downward tendency than to support an upward effort — )
giving the animal nature "the full benefit of the doubt,'*
and thus only aggravating the mischief.

There can be no question at all that this sad state of
moral derangement and consequent destructive conflict now
obtains in the human constitution, and this is the true philoso-
phy of moral Death — divine Law working on steadily
against the perversity and rebellion of human nature, while
that nature maintains the hopeless struggle against divine
Law.

While endeavouring to simplify this momentous verity
may I crave the reader's close attention to what I say? Music
is the harmony of different sounds in accordance with strict
and immutable law, Light the harmony of different
prismatic colours, Beauty the harmony of different
Shanes and shades. Love the harmony of two per-
sons in affection, wish, will and act, and Human Life
the harmony of all the constitutional parts and facul-
ties of a man's personality with each other and with his
environments whjrcver these environments touch his con-
sciousness. This Harmony constitutes the Life of Music,
Light, Beauty, Love and Human Existence. Now, what is

i;t

, .ill

:fe^

T_^2

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

their Death ? Annihilation ? No ! Not silence, but discord-
ancy is the death of Music. Silence is the absence of all
sound whatever. Total darkness is not the death of Light,
but only its absence. Deformity, not mere vacancy, is the
death of Beauty ; for vacancy is the absence of all form what-
ever. Hatred is the death of Love — positive hatred spring-
ing from diversity in taste and antagonism in affection,
wish, will and act. In each of these cases we see Death is
not mere negation, not mere annihilation or utter absence
of being, but active opposition to harmony in the elements
of the thing itself and antagonistic friction with its necessary
surroundings. Such is the Death of man's Life. It is not
the cessation of conscious existence, it is not the total ex-
tinction of personal consciousness, — that would be simply
blank non-existence, the unthinkable absence we call non-
entity, presenting nothing whatever for Death to act upon.
Death is the derangement of the different parts of a man's
nature and their disagreement with their surroui. ungs, pro-
ducing constant ^/Vharmony and friction, and the misery
resultant therefrom. The spirit of man consciously at war
with God and out of harmony with his normal self — this is
Death.

From these considerations it is obvious that Spiritual
Death (which constitutionally involves physical death) con-
sists of

I. Death Under Law.

Law reigns, no sane man will disiiute. Law, if perfectly
right, o.'ght to assert and maintain its authority. God's

SPIRITUAL DEATH.

153

■d-

all
l^t,
the

nat-

mg-

:ion,

:h is
ence
aents
;ssary
.s not
al ex-
iimply
1 non-

upon.

man's

s, pro-
misery

at war

-this is

Spiritual
Lth) con-

perfectly
God's

Law is perfect and God's power is amply sufficient to main-
tain His administration ; and the well-being of the universe
demands such rigid administration of perfect Law. If God
can maintain it but does not, He endorses and sanctions
evil, and Himself must be numbered among transgressors.
This can never be.

Death was the legal penalty of Adam's first transgression
— Genesis 2: 17. This state of spiritual death after his fall
became his vioral nature constitutionally ; and we his natural
descendants necessarily inherit his moral nature in its spirit-
ually dead state, our dead moral nature having propensities,
preferences and desires precisely in accord with Adam's in
his depraved condition. Therefore we are naturally under
death in Law — dead forensically. As, in common current
parlance, we say of a man incarcerated under sentence of
death, "He i^ .". dead man," /. ^., the man is dead in law-dead
to all the relations of life, to all its responsibilities social and
commercial, to all the rights pertaining to human liberty and
free citizenship — dead to human life in all its interests, hopes
and aspirations, — evenso are we arelegallydcad; our sentence
having been already pronounced upon us by Supreme Law
we now are shut up to the day of public execution. Our
natural life, as we like still to call it, is really nothing b3tter
than prison existence ; this world is our "condemned cell"
out of which we can be delivered only by passing under
death onward to the public judgment-seat, not really to have
our case tried, but only to have sentence formally and pub-

i;5

W- 1 i

7' '

1 '^

I ■

'! 1 1

1 1 ,, ■

lij
1

'h, '

^1 r

154

WAS MOSES WRONG.

licly pronounced and executed with all the terrible dignity
becoming the execution of Divine Law.

"The Law is spiritual," but our spirits are naturally in a
state of chronic antagonism to its requirements. "Thou .
shalt love the Lord thy God v.-ith all thy heart and mind and
strength ; and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" —
this is the law of Life, but we unquestionably love ourselves
much better than either, and so we lie under Death's doom
— dead forensically.

Death consists of

2. Death in Practice.

Materialists and Annihilationists call this a contradiction
in terms. "Dead people don't and can't practise anything,"
say they. But what saith holy Scripture on this interesting
subject ? To that man who, on the amiable pjea of re-
spectfully attending his own father's funeral, proposed
the postponement of active discipleship, Jesus Christ said,
"Let the dead bury their dead, but go thou and preach."
These words have no meaning at all to those who dispute
that the mourners at that funeral were in a spiritual sense as
truly dead as was the corpse of the old gentleman in a phy-
sical sense. Again, Paul in his epistle to the Ephesians
uses these strange words, "You hath He quickened which
were dead in tresspasses and sins." If it be enquired, when
had those Ephesian christians been "dead ? " I point you
to the narrative in the nineteenth chapter of the Acts, for I
venture to aver that never were they so dead as when, their

SPIRITUAL DEATH.

155

said,

lispute
^nse as
phy-
lesians

superstitious fanaticism roused to frenzy, they threw the
whole city into an uproar, bawling for the space of two
whole hours, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians ! " This
their mental and physical active rage against the gos-
pel of God 7C'as spiritual death in its 7i>orst and deadliest
form. Again, in his directions to the evangelist Timothy,
Paul alludes to certain lively young widows, thus, "She that
liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth."' This passage
is itself enough to drive any honest materialist from his
theological moorings, for where could we find a more strik-
ing specimen of mental and physical life than just such a
young widow presents ? A sprightly, keen-witted, sharp
coquette like her may be regarded as the veritable standard
of vitality — the personification of physical vigour and in-
tellectual vivacity. Yet, saith Paul, of such an one, "She
is dead." Dead! If ^//^ be dead indeed materialism may
set about reconstructing its theological definitions. Once
more in the twentieth chapter of the book of Revelation we
read, "And I saw the dead small and great stand before
God." These "dead" are obviously contrasted with the
living referred to in the preceding verses who had been rais-
ed in the glorious first resurrection of life. Well, these "dead"
stand before the great white throne, and while they stand
there they are described as '■^dead.'' Although they
had for years consciously existed in this world previous to
their bodily demise and burial, and although now by resur-
rection from the grave they consciously exist again, they
have never yet been living. In their case it is very mani-

't !•

i f

I i'ii

!ii!i

156 WAS MOSES WRONG ?

fest that "life" and 'conscious animal existence" are two
things totally different and even opposite. Cut off from fel-
lowship with the one living and true God, both l)y original
depravity and wilful persistency in moral rebellion, they

never possessed genuine human life (according to the
primitive quality of life and according to the radical signifi-
cation of the word,) neither have they yet ; standing before
God with all their mental and physical faculties keenly sen-
sitive and active they are still spiritually "dead," dead in
affections toward God, in mind alienated from God, in
attitude and purpose in antagonism against Him, dfad tn
law; thus "dead" they stand before their supreme Judge, to
have their legal death-doom formally pronounced and pub-
licly executed. Further illustration from Scripture might
easily be added, but let these four illustrations suffice to
prove that sinners in the full and vigorous enjoyment of
conscious animal and mental existence are in a state of
practical death. Merely to show how correct this moral
principle is, allow me to remind you thatto-day no language is
commoner among ourselves or better understood than lan-
guage such as this : — concerning a married man or woman
that neglects domestic duties, we say, " He, she is dead to all
sense of parental responsibility; '^ concerning those that have
no taste for poetry, painting, sculpture and scenery, we say,
"They are dead to beauty and to aesthetic sentiment;" con-
cerning a young scape -grace sowing wild oats and rushing
headlong to ruin, we remark, "To his parents' reputation
and authority and to his own highest interests he is totally

mif "

SPIRITUAL DEATH.

157

two

fel-

,inal

they
the

gnvfi-

lefore

,' sen-

:ad in

od, in

lead tn

idge, to

id pub-

i might

ifhce to
ent of
state of
moral
guage is
than lan-
^vomall
ead to all
that have
y, Nve say,
2nt;"con-
d rushing
reputation
> is totally

dead." But such people are thus " dead " simply because
they are all alive to other pursuits. Mark this particularly,
intense application to what is wrong involves deadness to
what is right. The reason why a man is dead to parental
responsibility is because he is absorbed body and soul per-
haps in money-making or politics or dissipation; the dead-
ness of some women to domestic and maternal duties is
caused by their intense pursuit of other things, — company,
dress, amusements for instance; the reason why so many
are dead to poetic sentiment and beautiful form is because
they are so earnestly grovelling and grubbing after something
else ; the reason why the prodigal is dead to the claims of
all that is right is simply because his entiie being and ener-
gies are bent upon indulgence in what is wrong. Even so
the reason why any sinful soul is spiritually dead to God and
godliness, to heaven and holiness, is because the world, the
flesh and the devil absorb all his thoughts wishes and ener-
gies, displacing and excluding the Divine Trinity. There-
fore SPIRITUAL DEATH IN PRACTICE IS THE AIMS OF THE
HUMAN SOUL MISDIRECTED AND ITS ACTIVITIES MISEM-
PLOYED. ^^ Dead in tresspasses and sins."

This Spiritual Death utiarrested runs oji itito

3. Death Perpetual.

Unless ne*v spiritual life be imparted by the "one liv-
ing and true God" to the "dead" human soul, it must neces-
sarily remain helplessly in this state of spiritual Death for-
ever. Death can never produce self-revival. Life alone

158

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

can cause and perpetuate life. Th£ philosophy of eternal
Death is neither profound nor obscure. Grant that man is
naturally a spiritual indestructible entity, that in origin he is
fallen morally, and that out in eternity his character remains
fixed beyond the touch of miraculous grace, and we must
accept the tremendous and appalling doctrine that Death
is eternal. Out there he that is unrighteous must be un-
righteous still and he that is filthy must be filthy still.

If there be beyond this world no system of purgatorial
cleansing and restoration, if in the regions of the lost there
be no message of divine mercy and no gracious regenerating
power exercised, then it is plain, awfully plain, that the soul
spiritually dead 7nust remain in that condition forever, out of
harmony with Jehovah, the Life-Essence, and in antagonism
with fixed law. ".Sin is lawlessness,'' declares the inspired
John, and sin and death are inseparable. Sin is m&ral
disease, and moral disease in active prpgress is spiritual Death.
I need not here repeat what I have already demonstrated
beyond all rational debate that Death involves conscious
existence and that everlasting destruction is, not a state, but
a process never-ending. It is futile for any one to waste strength
and ingenuity to contest this doctrine. In the plainest
language He ever used the Lord Jesus tells us that the doom
of sin is everlasting p>unishment, /. e., conscious penal suffer-
ing ; nay, that even in the intermediate and disembodied
state, mankind reprobated as really as mankind regenerated
have conscious existence. In His plain statement of the
dismal experience of the rich man immediately after the

SPIRITUAL DEATH.

159

death of his body, He certainly informs us that he was
conscious of misery — of misery as real as was the happiness
of his poor neighbour Lazarus in Abraham's bosom. And
hjw could it be otherwise, if man has been endowed with
continuity of conscious and sentient existence?

I know what has been said and written both eloquently
and earnestly by such men as Canon Farrar and Mr.
Beecher against everlasting torment, but after we have
calmly and critically analysed all this eloquence and argu-
ment (?) we find the residuum nothing more than the fervid
vituperation and protest of the human feelings against per-
petual misery, totally unsustained by Revelation. Is not
all this pretentious rhetoric of sentimental hum.an tender-
ness a farce ? Surely Jesus Christ was quite as tender in His
sentiments and as refined in His language as either of these
distinguished preachers ; but He was " the Truth." And He
told the truth terrible as it was.

But why all this indignation and disgust at the doctrine of
everlasting punishment? In a world where, even during
this dispensation of Heaven's richest grace, neuralgia,
rheumatism, sciatica, cancer, delirium tremens and maternal
agonieswhere warfare and fevers are so common as the result
of sin, need we wonder when we are told that troubles as
-severe and even worse are the result of sin in the world to
come? Here we have the numberless agonies of the
hospital and the unspeakable torments of the insane asylum,
and yet over both asylum and hospital brood and watch
ihe long-suffering mercy and providental compassion of God.

IMAGE EVALUATION
TEST TARGET (MT-3)

1.0

I.I

1.25

IP 12.5
llli

U 11112.2

1.4

2.0

1.8

1.6

^;.

e}.

'^2

Photographic

Sciences
Corporation

■%

-^■v

^I^

73 WEST MAIN STRICT

WEBSTER, NY. )4S80

(716) 872-4503

^1>

4f>

£?x

&?-

i6o

WAS MOSES WRONG?

What may we reasonably expect to be the condition of those
who have forever sinned away all the mercy of God, who
have rebelled against His love and trampled their way down

to darkness over the heart's blood of His only begotten Son ?
Is it likely or is it not likely that they sufler there more severe-
ly than we do here? Jesus Christ positively and repeatedly

assures us that the unsaved and unbelieving go away into
endless damnation where there is weeping and wailing and
gnashing of teeth — where their worm dieth not and the
fire is not quenched.

Death eternal in its full sense is nothing m^e than de-
praved people remaining forever depraved and developing
naturally toward deeper depravity. Eternal death is simply
the >" sires of the unregenerate granted. They desire to sin
on and on forever. This God grants. They like to hate
God's holy law and nature. This God grants. They de-
sire to be separated from God's holy presence and authority
and to conduct their own affairs. They are granted such
separation and self-government. They dislike the Bible ;
and it is taken away, every page of it. They resist and reject
the Holy Ghost ; and He just leaves them altogether and
permanently. They desire deliverance from the fellowship,
the example, the rebuke of christians ; so christians and they
are finally separated. They wish to associate with sinners
V4:f ♦hemselves. This also is granted ; and they are all put
in circumstances in which their favorite vices shall have full,
unbridled swing. Now, this is Death — perpetual alienation

SPIRITUAL DEATH.

i6i

from God, successful rebellion against God, and sinners
forever inning with sinners without any restraint. • .

Much more might be said on this awful theme, but let
, this suffice. Of all I have spoken this is the sum : —

' I. Death is not the cessation of conscious animal exis-
tence but the continuation of it.

II. Life is not the same as Existence. While Life in-
cludes Existence, Existence may exclude Life and still be con-
scious. Life is conscious existence happily in harmony with
Divine nature and laws.

III. Death is not Annihilation. Annihilation is not con-
ceivable, and there is no phrase in Scripture to correspond
with it.

IV. Death essentially is the human being out of his nor-
mal condition with reference to God Almighty and His im-
mutable Law.

V. Death, if unarrested by Life, must reign and work in
a man forever. Life consists of the re-harmonization of man
with Law and God.

These conclusions may not suit our natural tastes or secure
the approbation and acceptanceof our moral instincts — -for our
moral instincts are fallen, but whether shall we rely on these
tastes and instincts as t* e ground of our convictions, or on
the plain word of God ? To this question there is but One
reply, — "Let God be true, and every man a liar.'

x62

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

^11

Does the sin of the creature against the Law of the Al-
mighty Creator — does unbelieving rejection of divine
blood-bought Grace deserve anything less than everlasting
Death, terrible as it is ? Is sin such a small and light thing
that the orthodox hell is a punishment too severe for it ? Is
,not advanced rationalistic modern theology really an exten-
uation of and apology for sin ? You and I are not qualified
to say what sin is and what it deserves until we can teii all
that God is and a// that the preservation of the integrity of
the moral universe requires.

mmmmam

/ >

Chapter xbit.

DEVILS AND THEIR USE.

'^"^r!Hr^!l^'°^'^^'rP^"'-'^''''"°''^ '"''''' *'^=^"^"y "^^^^ beast which the Lord
Uod haa made. — Genesis 3:1. •-■"•"

"That old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan."— Revelation 20 : 2.

CHAPTER XVII.

In loyalty to the simple veracity of the entire Bible we
are bound to maintain the reality and personality of Devils.
Satan is such an important factor in the Old Testament that
his removal from its pages would radically change them both
historically and doctrinally. The soil of the New Testament
(if I may use a geological metaphor) is just as rich in the
dark deposit of demonology as in the priceless treasures of
soteriology.

Among the numerous Biblical refinements wrought by the
busy intellectualism of to-day, this doctrine of the real per-
sonality of Satanic beings, as something too gross and barba-
rous for modern theology has been banished to that dismal
region of monstrous shapes and wild religious fancies, the
mediaeval ages. Sadducee-ism revived stands before us
arrayed in the modern costume of western Europe and more
western America. The devils of Scripture, we are told, are
the personification in the figurative language of the ancient
east of evil human dispositions and passions. If this inter-
pretation of the demonology of the Bible be accepted, with-
out venturing into anything allied to metaphysical specula-
tion, it is evident that Adam and Eve fresh from the fingers
of their Creator must have been liberally endowed with evil
dispositions and passions, /. e., they were morally fallen before
they fell ! To admit this would be serious enough, but

1 66

WAS MOSES WRONG?

something much more serious must follow. When coming
to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke we are informed
that Jesus Christ was for forty days tempted by the devil m the
wilderness, we must understandthe statement to mean that He
was tempted, not by a personal devil outside of Himself, but
by His own inherent evil dispositions and passions ! When,
moreover, the Holy Ghost by the instrumentality of three
evangelists gives us as a sober historical fact such a statement
as is contained in Mark 5 : 1-20, on this principle of inter-
pretation it is our duty as intelligent people to receive as
truth its moral and mental teaching, while we relegate the
story itself (so far as its demonology is concerned) to the
limbo of baseless legend and fable.

To such demands of "advanced thought" we cannot con- ,
sent. The New Testament is neither fable nor mysticism.
The men who wrote it were plain men giving a plain narra-
tive of what they saw and heard and handled (i John t : 1-3;
Luke i: 1-4.) When they say "boat" they mean a real ves-
sel called a Ifoaf, when they say "ass" they mean a veritable
animal of that species, and when they say "devil" it is a per-
sonal devil they mean — not a moral disposition nor a pecu-
liar depraved idiosyncracy, nor a strong mental bias toward
ethical obliquity. Perhaps I may be pardoned for saying I
think a thorough-going simple devil, bad as he may be,
would be much more easily handled by any one trying hon-
estly to do well than such slippery and impalpable shades of'
mischief as "Mental-bias-toward-obliquity" or "Depraved-
idiosyncracy."

DEVILS AND THEIR USE.

167

There is no doubt v,hatever the Bible means to tell us
that devils are real and actual persons. Just look at the
New Testament story to which I have made reference j no
sane and simple man reading it can doubt that Gadara with
its mountains and tombs was a real place geographically,
that the lake Jesus and His disciples crossed and the boat
in which they crossed it were real water and real boat, that
the deranged man and the grazing herds of swme and the
excited multitudes of the Gadarenes gazing at their property
floating on the lake were all real and substantial people and
animals ; but the devils — Well, what are they ? They speak,
they manifest fear, they shrink from penal suffering, they im-
plore permission to stay in this world and to go into the swine,
they evacuate the maniac and he becomes instantly sane
and docile, they invade the swine and they presently become
furious, ungovernable and suicidal. Are those devils real
persons, or Mental-bias-toward-moral-obliquity — instantly —
inspiring — two thousand — honest graminivorous swine !

We dare not thus trifle with and pervert God's word. If
we admit that six-sevenths of a narrative be actual fact, by
what rule of fair interpretation can we arbitrarily transmute
the remaining seventh into mere metaphor ?

Upon this terrible doctrine of the reality and personality of
devils in these days our testimony cannot be too explicit
and emphatic. Object to it as men may, shrink from the
"very thought of such a thing" as "cultured" minds may, -if
the Bible be true, devils are real and true persons — powerful,

]

i68

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

sleepless spirits ever bent on evil. Whether or not we are
able to harmonize the fact of their existence and behaviour
with our ideas of the government of a God wise, good and
omnipotent, it is nevertheless a fact that our world is inhabit-
ed by devils, and mankind are possessed by devils.
How can we rationally account for many cases in
our lunatic asylums, for the reckless speculations of
Wall Street, for the insane vanity of many women, for the
appalling statistics of alcoholic drinking, for the diabolical
efforts at political reform by dynamite, for the deplorable
ecclesiastical travesties of pure primitive Christianity in doc-
trine, in forms of worship and in methods of work, except by
accepting the doctrine that people (contrary to their better
nature and sober judgment) are^ being coaxed and wheedled
led and driven down to perdition by malignant, subtle, pow-
erful spirits of evil, possessing all the experience of the past
ages of human history ?

The sooner we fully realize our danger the better, Satan's
last move is to persuade men that all the Bible states about
him and his emissaries is nothing more than unfounded
legend traceable to the i-eligious Jewish imagination, the
creations of morbid fancy, mere gloomy superstitions which
are now rapidly vanishing before the superior light of mod-
ern intelligence.

Nothing is more congenial with modern scientific thought
than to turn into ridicule what Scripture states about devils,
"The days of witches, ghosts and demons are past," we are

DEVILS AND THEIR USE.

169

are
our
and
ibit-
ivils.
5 in
5 of
r the
olical
arable
I doc-
eptby
better
^edled
^. pow-
le past

Satan's
about
ounded
ion, the
s which
of mod-

thought
t devils,
we are

told cheerfully by our girls and boys. "If there ever was
such a thing, there is no real diabolic possession now any-
way. The most eminent physiologists and physicians are
prepared to account for all mental hallucinations and violent
derangement on natural grounds, while all advanced theolo-
gians assure us that devil-possession was permitted only dur-
ing the public ministry of Jesus Christ to afford Him an
opportunity of proving the divine authority of His mission."
So say the young people ; and what say the Scriptures on
the same subject? Christ tells us that in these latter days
Satan shall exercise such special power amongst our race, work-
ing such "signs and wonders" that if it were possible he will
deceive even the elect ; Paul assures us God will send (by
whose agency ?) such "strong delusions" among people who
have pleasure in unrighteousness that they may believe a lie;
and in the Book of Revelation we are assured that, as the
effect of Christ's ascension through the air to heaven, the
devil has come down amongst mankind, having great wrath,
because his time is short. No passage of Scripture even
leans toward the notion now so popualar that demoniacal
possession has ceased or even been modified, but many pas-
sages plainly state the contrary.

That the power and number of satanic spirits are immense

the narrative of Gadara shows. No mere abstract doctrinal
statement could convey so vivid an impression. The
wretched man they so long had possessed was utterly savage,
superhuman in strength, and such a terror to the entire
neighborhood that no one would pass near his haunts.
Christ Jesus deals with his case in such a way as to lift the

170

WAS MOSES WRONG i*

veil of the unseen world and give us a glimpse of how things
really stand — of our terrible surroundings, terrible danger
and utter helplessness. Look at that great herd of swine,
two thousand in number, quietly feeding on the lower slopes
of the mountain. Instantly while we gaze, they are ill
simultaneously inspired with ungovernable wildness ; down
the slope they all rush impetuously past us, and impelled
over the rocks they plunge violently into the lake and perish.
What can be the cause of this catastrophe ? The
vast herd ^r swine was possessed by ^evils and
that whole legion of malign spirits issued from one man!
Oh, can it be true that you and I live in a world where such
powerful spirits of cruelty and in such numbers roam and
plot and work, where such combinations of mischief and
malice could toil for years to hold even one man in bondage,
and yet can it be possible that we are totally indifferent to our
perilous circumstances, that we can tamper with satanic
temptations, eat heartily laugh gaily and sleep soundly all
the while exposed unprotected to their power?

Those who desire to prosecute the investigation of this
part of our subject further have only to study the first and
second chapters of the book of Job where they will find that
the atmospheric forces of wind and fire, the marauding hordes
of the desert and even physical disorder manipulated by
diabolic agency. Such are God's words of w^arning, yet it is
both fashionable and religious to mock at the Biblical doc-
trine of devils! It smacks of superior scientific intelligence and
quiet philosophy to do so, and Satan quietly smiles in his sleeve.

DEVILS AND THEIR USE.

171

all

this
t and
dthat
lordes
ed by
et it is
al doc-
ce and
sleeve.

OiiC noteworthy characteristic of both those Mesopo-
tamian and Gadarene devils was their harmony of purpose
and faithful co-operation. Long and world-wide experience
has taught them that union is strength, whether in plan or
practice. It is therefore obviously their policy to keep good
men in ail their efforts at social and political reform and in all
religious enterprise divided. Division insures weakness, and
weakness defeat. Parties in the political world are bad,
denominational sects in the church universal are worse, but
worst of all is independent individualism, because it is
weakest of all. Oh when shall we ever see in the church of
Christ so many minds combined in aim and purpose and so
many individual energies honestly co-operating toward the
salvation of the lost as we see here bound in unholy com-
pact for the ruin of one soul 1 So long as this contrast be-
tween the modus operandi of devils and Christians obtains,
the former must succeed and the latter fail. Must? Yes,
for the mathematical laws of dynamics in the realm of both
physics and morals say. Must. God's fixed law is that close
combination insures weight and force. #

The Gadarene narrative shows us very vividly what the
awful state of Chrisdess men now is. In the plainest pos-
sible language the New Testament tells us that in the
chi. .n dispensation in which we are living Satan "goeth
about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour, that
as the prince of the power of the air he now worketh in the
children of disobedience, that the unregenerate are taken

captive by him at his will, that he is the god of this world by
i3

t^a

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

whom the eyes of them who believe not are Winded, lest the
light of the glorious gospel should shine into them," and so
forth. Thus Satan through his subordinates is fiow prose-
cuting his work of ruin on individuals, and they think it not.
His ways of working are characterized by variety perfectly suit-
ed to the hereditary bias, the climatic and social circumstances
of his victims. His skill consists in the wise adaptation of his
methods of working and his instrumentalities to the civili-
zation, the education, the natural or acquired tastes and the
religious ideas of individuals. Thus skillfully accommo-
dated and indulged Christless souls are blinded, deceived,
controlled and manipulated. Oh, how terribly sad is the
spectacle! (i) As the wretched Gadarene dwelt out of
choice among the tombs, so do the unregenerate ; for is not
this world literally a place of graver, and morally what is
it but a vast necropolis ? Yet here the unsaved dwell in
their affections, aims and hopes — their only home "among
the tombs" — their only treasures laid by " among the tombs!"
Here they are happy; here they wish to stay. The land
of the living beyond the shadow and the odour of these
graves has no beauty, no charm for them ! (2) As the
poor demoniac was a self-destroyer, so are all unregenerate
souls. Study the long dismal records of savage and civilized
heathenism where satanic suggestion constructed the religious
and moral codes. Look at the history of nation •] wars, at
modern records and statistics of alcohol, at the records of
social and secret immoralities, at the history of our insane
institutions and our fast livers. True, men and women in

DEVILS AND THEIR USE.

173

the
I so
•ose-

not.

suit-

inces

of his

civili-

id the

mmo-

eived,

is the

out of
is not

vhat is

well in

'among
ombsl"

le land

Df these
As the

generate
civilized
religious
wars, at
cords of
ur insane
vomcn in

British and American society are not destroying themselves
in the demoniac's savage way, "Crying out and cutting them-
selves with stones;" but they are suicides notwithstanding.
Morally (many of them physically) are slowly killing them-
selves. Spiritually fatally diseased, they push away from them
and seal their lips against the only Remedy for sin and death.
" What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the Mo'^''
High God ? We adjure thee by God that thou torment us
not !" is their cry. Civilization they all welcome, religious
ritualism they can enjoy, but the Saviour from sin they
fear and shun. Against that life which dwells in light,
against that peace and joy which spring from purity they
manifest the antipathy of an indwelling devil.

Like the friends of the Gadarene demoniac who en-
deavored to bind him back from the haunts of darkness and
corruption with chains and fetters, our political and moral
reformers try to control and restrain sin; but sin, driven
from its grosser and more revolting courses, will certainly
take to courses more polished, refined, aesthetic, and all the
more deadly. The devil can become a gentleman and
])hilosopher and preacher when occasion requires. Whether
in the first century or the nineteenth, whether on the
southern shores of the sea of Galilee or the northern of
Lake Ontario, Jesus Christ Himself is the solitary anti-
dote for Satan.

Not only with the vulgar piety but with the intelligent or-
thodoxy of our day, if I mistake not, the notion is nearly
universal that the relation of the divine to the satanic very

174

WAS MOSES WRONG?

closely resembles that of Ormuzd to Ahriman in the ancient
religion of Persia, /. <?., that God Almighty resists, opposes,
and destroys devils to the full extent of His ability, that in
short he is doing the best He can with the resources at His
disposal to counterwork and conquer His wily and implac-
able enemies. The Bible does not teach thus. It teaches
that God is the supreme and absolute Master of devil as well
as angel, {vide Gen. 3: 14, 15; Num. 22 and 33 chapters,
where Satan's agent is compelled to bless whom he desires
and intends to curse: Job i: 612; 2: 1-8; i Kings 22: 19-23.)
The New Testament tells us that even in the experience of
God's Messiah the Holy Ghost used Satan as really as John
the Baptist — Matt. 3: 13-17; 4: i — this temptation of forty
days' duration He endured while He had power to dismiss
^ Satan at any moment. Rev. 20: 1-3 shows that at the
pleasure of God even an angel is able to bind and loose
"the prince of the power of the air," while the Gadarene
narrative shows distinctly that even in the weakness of His
humiliation Christ was absolute master of evil spirits in any
number. "For this purpose the Son of God was manifested
that He might destroy the works of the devil," but how?
Certainly not by crushing devils out by sheer physical and
spiritual force and thus getting quit of them as soon as
possible. Whatever may be obscure about the demonolo^y
of the Bible these three points are plain enough, viz:

1. God uses devils for good ends. By their instrumentality
Adam and his race have been brought into that state from
which they can be raised to the nature and the glory of Deity;

sntaVity

e from

If Deity,

DEVILS AND THEIR USE.

175

by all we know from Revelation and experience of diabolical
subtilty and power, every unsaved person amongst us is
warned of how utterly helpless he is unless he finds refuge
in Christ, the Almighty Saviour, resigns himself entrrely to
His control, guidance, and guardianship. By their in-
strumentality (as in the cas'^ of Job and Peter and the Son of
God Himself)the genuineness of divine grace is tested as in a
furnace and the true manhood of Christianity is developed,
as the muscles of youth by gymnastic exercise. Whenever
God's elect have no more use for Satan God will bruise him
under their feet. Whenever the glorified Christ, to whom
hath been committed all power in heaven and in earth, re-
quires Satan's services no longer, He will bind and imprison
him. Meantime devils are useful in the work of grace to
try and train believers, and in the work of judgment to de-
tect by temptation, and then to clear the country side of
filthy swine, — bipeds often.

2. In the present dispensation God treats devils mercifully
and generously. The narrative of Gadara is perhaps the best
illustration on record of the literal truthfulness of the state-
ment made in Ps. 145 th, "The Lord is slow to anger and of
great mercy. The Lord is good unto all: and His tender
mercies are over all His works." God's mercy and goodness
to devils ! 1 Yes. This legion of devils might never have
been allowed any liberty at all, but have been kept close con-
fined like those others who are "reserved in everlasting chains
under darkness unto the judgment of the great day." They
preferred to dwell in Galilee, and God mercifully permitted

176

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

them to do so for a season. Christ Jesus, when he com-
manded them to leave the man, could have consigned them
to the abyss of woe and it was the proper place for them; in-
stant banishmen'- to the prison house of fire and darkness
they richly deserved, but Christ was merciful to them. (Ps.
145 : 9.) The wretched beings shrank from instant torment
( — is this not proof of a hell in which spirits can be subject-
ed to penal suffering — a hell now xeiidy}) — they implored
Jesus not to deal with them in the severity of justice, but to
postpone punishment till "the time" beyond which in the
purpose of heaven it cannot be delayed ; and Jesus had
mercy on them, permitting them even to indulge their own
choice.

Is there not a thought of immense value for the uncon-
verted in this fact ? Because Jehovah in providence is so
merciful to you, O souls, you therefore infer you are safe —
safe within the pale of mercy. This inference is unwarrant-
ed. Out of Christ you are lost — lost as devils are. God,
you say, is kind to you. Yes, and He is also kind to devils,
God, you believe, has answered your prayer when you cried
for deliverance from imminent danger. Yes, and He has
often answered the supplication of devils. C ^d's mercy is
obviously not graie ; His tender mercy and slowness to anger
are not solvation. The historical fact that an unbeliever
lives and prospers on earth, has experienced many remark-
able deliverances from danger and now earnestly desires sal-
vation from the abyss are no evidences whatever that God
is his Father, or that heaven will ever be his home.

DEVILS AND THEIR USE.

177

3. Have not nr.ny professed Christians just as much
religion as devils, and no more ? The story of Gadara in-
forms us (a) that devils believe in and confess Christ's divi-
nity ; (if) that they v/orship Him ; (c) that they pray unani-
mously, thousands of them all with one accord for one thing,
and pray successfully ; and (d) that they obey Him. How
much more religion than this have we ? What did those
devils lack? T/ieir /ai'/A -was not faith in Christ as their
sacrificial substitute — not faith in His blood and righteous-
ness as having taken away their sin ; f/ieir worship was the
mere slavish homage of dread, not the love of the heart ;
their prayer was only the desire of selfishness for deliverance
from danger and pain, not the cry of the regenerated heart
for holiness ; t/nir obedldnce was slavish submission to
power, not sweet compliance with divine will. Union to
Christ, Likeness to Christ, Love for God in Christ — these
are Christianity and nothing less is. Our religious service is
Christianity only insofar as it is the practical expression of
the workmg of God's Spirit within us. "As many as are led
by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. If any
man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His."

So far as I am able to reduce this important subject to its
last analysis it seems to stand thus : — The Religion of devils
and unbelievers has as its motive fear of punishment (hell),
and its aim the gratification of selfishness (heaven). The
• Religion of God's believing children has for its motives
grateful love responsive to God's great love in Christ to
them, and a desire for attainment to ])crsonal holiness

178

WAS MOSES WRONG?

(moral likeness to Jesus Christ), and for its one aim the
glory of God. Here lies all the essential difference between
Satanic wrong and divine right — between the purest bliss of
heaven and the foulest liorrors of hell.

What is thy religious motive — thy religious aim, my
brother ? "Search and look." Thy faith, thy motive, thy
aim may be most religious, yet in character and quality
nothing really better than devilish.

Dost thou seek Heaven, fot its holiness ? Dost thou flee
Hell, because of its sin ? Dost thou aim at pleasing and at
glorifying God — not thyself?

"Search and Look."

tjKiwpi.,

Chapter xbiii

TEMPTATION— ITS PLACE IN THE
ECONOMY OF GRACE.

Theme:— "And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat."— G

3:13-
"Blessed is the man that endureth temptation."— James 1:12.

enesis

[

CHAPTER XVIII.

The patient and thorough investigation of this subject in
the Bible by t'le aid of a Concordance will prove instructive
and practically profitable beyond many other religious exer-
cises of the mind. To aid in this study allow me to state
three primary facts, —

1. We live in a world full of temptation to evil in every
variety of form ;

2. We are constitutionally susceptible of temptation and
predisposed to it ; and

3. God designs that we should be tempted.

Instead of timidly shrinking from and ignoring these facts
let us boldly accept them as plainly declared by all sacred
Scripture and all human experience. Therefore when,
according to the teaching of our Lord, we pray, "Lead us
not into temptation but deliver us from the evil," we mean no
more than that we should be so led by God into temptation
as to be led safely through it, without being overcome or
polluted by the evil of it. To get out of temptation to evil
there is but one possible way, viz. to get out of this "present
evil world" altogether ; retirement to monastery or nunnery,
to hermit's hut or cave will not do.

Not a few excellent people, (among whom the late Dr.
Ralph Wardlaw was eminent), so shrink from and disapprove

■w O ^

Io2

WAS MOSES WRONG?

the idea of God's using means for the temptation of the hu-
man race ; that wherever any Scripture seems to indi-
cate this sentiment they changethe word tempt into'7;7,"and
the word temptation into ^^trial" and thus seem to have their
minds much relieved. But afier this verbal change in the
English text has been made, the Greek original signifies
*'Tempt" and "Temptation" still. The ostrich hides her
head in the sand and — accomplishes nothing, except the
blinding of herself. To me such friends appear far too anx-
ious to make a flimsy apology for the divine procedure, to
screen, (as they imagine) Jehovah's character from aspersions
likely to be cast upon it by the carnally minded : they forget
that by no possible textual changes can they adapt God's
truth to unregenerate reason, seeing that "the natural man
cannot receive the things of the Spirit of God, neither can
he know them, for they are spiritually discerned," seeing
that even spiritually minded people have still clinging to
them many carnal dislikes to much of God's truth : especial-
ly to this claim of His sovereignty to use evil in the ad-
vancement of His own glory, • •

V ■•■*■■■■■ , ,. ' ■ ./

True it is that the apostle James assures us that "God
cannot be tempted of evil, neither tempteth He any man."
But what does this statement of James amount to ? No
more than this, that the High and Holy One of Israel does
not Himself do the work of temptation ; it is not He who
whispers temptation into the ear of man or holds out to his
touch the seducing bribes of iniquity, — this, and nothing
more, is the sum of James' statement so far as it refers to

TEMPTATION, ITS PLACE IN THE ECONOMY OF GRACE. 183

God, while in the immediate context he proceeds to say
that the sin of temptation lies not in the object presented
but in the human disposition^ i. e, when we are "drawn away
of our own lust and enticed."

Suppose we admit that God "tries" but does not "tempt,"
there still remains this important question, Was there ever a
trial of man's mor'al nature without an accompanying tempt-
ation! — in the nature of things just as we have them,
is the one thing possible without the other? Is it not by
temptation to the possibilities of easy and rapid success
through dishonesty, the short cut to wealth — that a young
man's integrity is //"/V^/ Is it not by fascinating, powerful,
promising temptation to immoderate and vicious indulgences
his temperance is tried? Is it not by temptation to sloth
that his self-denying perseverance and faithful diligence in
the discharge of duty are tested ? When the three Hebrew
youths, immortalized by Daniel, stood before the angry aut-
ocrat at Babylon listening to his unreasonable and outrage-
ous ul.imatum, "When y2 hear the sound of all kinds of
music, if ye will not fall down and worship the golden image
that I have set up, ye shall be cast that same hour into the
burning fiery furnace," and when, in answer to the prompt
refusal with which they manfully met his command, the in-
furiated tyrant commanded the furnace to be heated Gcven
times hotter, what, in these terrible circumstances, was the
severest part of their "trial," think you ? The burning
furnace was an awful prospect, but those three young men
knew that the hotter it was made, their trial by fire would be

184

WAS MOSES WRONG?

all the shorter. It was not, I am sure, that ordeal by

fire terrible as it was which fried them most severely, as

they stood waiting their fate, but t/ie temptation to prostrate

themselves before the golden image, and by this simple and

easy act of courtly acquiescence in the tyrant's will at once

redeem their lives and purchase the imperial favor. In this

case, as in numberless others which may occur to our minds,

the very essence of the trial lay in the temptation to

easy escape inseparably associated with it. I dare not

say that God tempts any man, for as we have seen,

the apostle James declares He does not ; but there

is no verity more clearly manifest on the pages of

inspiration than this, that God not only permits but

causes men in general, and His own people in particular to

be tempted by having them brought into circumstancesNand

beset with objects of temptation. Those who need furtBf

information on this point I would again advise to resort/ 4^

the Bible and Concordance. • • ^

Confining our attention to the case of believers, allow me
to state that Temptation is a necessary element of

THEIR MORAL DEVELOPMENT, AN IMPORTANT FACTOR IN
THEIR HIGHER EDUCATION. ' .

Temptation is one of the most precious blessings in dis-
guise. To aid our understanding of this proposition a few
simple* illustrations will be serviceable. No person of ordinary
knowledge will dispute that both the mental and physical
faculties ot the human constitution demand for their proper

i I

TEMPTATION, ITS PLACE IN THE ECONOMV OF GRACE. 1 85

development a course of severe unpalatable and in many
cases even dangerous training. It is the young man whose
muscles have for many months been strained by the daily
exercise of lcap:t\g running and wrestling who can ulti-
mately stand forth in the prize ring with sinews like whip-
cord and ribs like hoops of steel — who, in any athletic con-
test by land or water, can hope to conquer; it is the Highland
herdboy who has spent years of hardship and hazard amid
storms and torrents in a wild land of rocks and precipices
who, when a man, can face hardship and privation and
spring through exhausting toils and over obstacles (e.g., the
rifled ramparts of a fortification) with elasticity as if his
sinews were of living whalebone ; it is the recruit, after
having been thoroughly drilled, who can at the sound of the
bugle meet with calm fortitude the stern realities of iron
war ; it is he who for years ha? risen early and sat up late
and eaten the bread of carefulness over the dry and weary
pages of ponderous authorship, who by superior intelligence
can ultimately sway the minds and regulate the affairs of
his fellow men — men who generally give him credit for
being a genius so happily constituted and so wonderfully en-
dowed iy nature! Such "genius" is slowly created by honest
hard work and self-denial persistently pursued — nothing else.

While contributing our meed of praise to that industrious
perseverance, that conscientioas painstaking which have
largely effected such suits, let us never forget — (and this
is the main point now before us) — that results such as these
r.annot be wholly and only attributed to industry however per-

1 86

WAS MOSES WRONG?

ir:

severing, or fo application however unremitting, but must be
very largely attributed to the acquired habit of the moral
RESISTANCE OF EVIL. In the acquirement of those qualities
which distinguish one man above his fellows many tempta-
tions — incessant temptations have had to be resisted and

overcome. The natural indolent recoil of the body from
the monotony and the irksomeness of definite task-work, the
strong tendency which besets every one of us to procrastinate
the punctual performance of duty, our natural inclination to
snatch at the pleasures and pastimes of the present rather
than sacrifice the preseni to the future, the infectious and
contagious influence of the example and solicitations of
self-indulgent companions, possessed perhaps of many ami-
able qualities — all these inclinations within and influences
without are a continual temptation, (acting like gravitation,
day and night) luring and coaxing away from the unpalatable
methodical higher education of the faculties whether physical
or psychical. Now, it is the stern and confirmed habit of
resisting and combatting and conquering such temptations as
thus hold out a continual and persistent invitation to neglect
of duty and to passing indulgence — this habit forms, I ven-
ture to assert, the main element in the process of our moral
development, aye, and of all that suptTior mental and bodily
development too which grow out of our moral condition.
AV'hat is resisted rather than what is performed constitutes the
elevating, strengthening, true-man-making power. Temptation
is a necessary factor in the making of virtue i. e., genuine
moral Z7>ility manliness. Man, even in his state of primal

TEMPTATION, ITS PLACE IN THE ECONOMY OF GRACE. 1 87

perfection, was so constituted (so fearfully and wonderfully
made) that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil with
the tempting fruit upon its boughs and the divine prohibition
and threatening suspended over it, had to be planted in the

garden as the main ingredient, the prmciple factor in his
moral culture. That tempting tree untouched was Adam's
ladder to the skies. Nay, more — it was absolutely necessary
in order that this temptation should be sufficiently effective
that the most malign and subtil spirit in the universe
should lure man on with fair and false promises to partake of
the inviting but forbidden fruit. In the face of all that Holy
Scripture hath said on this subject it is simply preposteroi";;
if not profane to suppose the temptation of our first parents
was superfluous or unfortunate or accidental or contrary to
the holy will of God. He himself designed they should be so
tempted. His hand and no other planted the beautiful tree
for the purpose ; His hand and no other could untie the
fetters which bound Satan down in the regions of darkness,
and remove the bolts and bars by which his prison was
secured, in order that he might visit the garden of Eden on
his r."iission of mischief. To credit Satan with the honor of
being his own master and independent is to endow him with
the divinity of Ahriman, insult God's sovereignty and give the
lie direct to the Word of inspiration ; to imagine (as Milton's
splendid epic seems to teach) that Satan crept into Eden
unobserved and unpermitted is to say that Jehovah fell asleep
one day and was out-witted and overreached by the superior
vi^lance qC the devil. The bare and honest truth is,

>-■

M il

;' ' ti

3'1 !;

i88

WAS MOSES WRONG?

God sent Satan to Eden to cest Adam's fidelity. The

truth is, had not Adam passed through the ordeal of such

a temptation, had it been lawful for him to have freely and

fearlessly indulged in everything around him, had no divine
prohibition been placed upon some very desirable object
within his reach and had no tempter tested his loyalty, so
far as we can see man would have been an anomaly, a grand
blunder in the Creator's work, for his circumstances would
have borne no suitable relation to his constitution, human
virtue could never have been born or bred, man's moral
nature would have sickened, shrunk into utter decrepitude,
and soon died out for want of air and exercise. A mere
mental and moral fungus, man . would have vegetated — a
stationery unprogressive fruitless growth, slowly and surely
degenerating to the reproach of his Maker. Aye, and to
this hour, were there no forbidden green fields and balmy
meadows smiling right and left of the straight uphill path
of truth and right, were there no flowers of bewitching col-
our and odour blooming fair on the other side of God's fence,
were there no forbidden fruits of enticing relish persuading
us to loiter and invitmg us to stray, there certainly would
be no moral benefit, no enlargement of soul, no invigorating
development of virtue, no growth in godliness derivable
from treading in the narrow way. (Query : Would there
be any "narrow way " at all ?) And were there not in that
way here and there rough places and hard spots of danger
and steep ascents of difficulty, tempting the pilgrim to seek
some softer path of easier grade, and were there not to be

TEMPTATION, ITS PLACE IN THE ECONOMY OF GRACE. 1 89

met within it now and again some worthless hypocrites,
some spiritual vagrants and impostors who render even the
way of truth both disagreeable and dangerous — were there
none of these things and many others ever attracting and
repelling, then it must follow that, constituted as we are, for
want of exercise for want of moral drill our virtues and
our graces would (to take the very best view of the case) be
just as weak and diminutive on our arrival at the pearly gates
of the King's palace as they were when we first emerged
from the strait gate of regeneration — certainly not very like
those scholars and witnesses spoken of by Jesus Christ, or
those soldiers and athletes, / e., wrestlers, pugilists and run-
ners, spoken of by Paul.

Teniptation is the crucible in which the almighty Alchem-
ist tests the quality of our religion, whether it be standard
gold or not. This is the test-method of training God adopt
ed with his ancient people, as is plainly stated by Moses in
his farewell address — Deuteronomy, "And thou shalt re-
member all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these
forty years in the wilderness, to^humble thee and to prove
thee and to know what was in thine heart" Again, "if there
anse among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and
giveth thee a sign or a wonder; and the sign or the wonder
come to pass whereof he spake unto thee saying, let us go
after other gods which thou hast not ' 'n, and let us serve
them ; thou shalt not hearken unto the d of that prophet,
or that dreamer of dreams : for the Lord your God proveth
you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God

WAS MOSES WRONG ?

with all your heart and with all your soul." This same
probationary method God adopted to test Abraham's
faith when He "tempted" his natural paternal feel-
ings to rebel against the stern command to offer up
Isaac in sacrifice. Thus Job was tempted by his wife under
the immediate influence of Satan, who we all know was
commissioned by God to test most severely the patriarch's
fidelity. Thus was Peter given into the hands of the devil by
Jesus Christ, in answer to the devil's special request, to sift
him as wheat. Thus even our Lord Jesus Christ Himself
was driven of the Holy Spirit into the wilderness for the ex-
press purpose of being "tempted of the devil." In this re-
markable instance God's Holy Spirit Himself used Satan as
His instrument for severely trying the Redeemer's virtue —
self denial — capacity of moral endurance — power of spiritual
resistance. "He was tempted in all points like as we are''
the natural desires of His true humanity were subjected to a
strain, it is no exaggeration to assert when all the conditions
of the case are carefully considered, a thousand times greater
than that before which the first and perfect Adam fell.

Ifthe divine Man needed this severe moral training for the
thorough develojiment of His proper humanity, do not we ?
Hath not God predestinated believers to be conformed to
the image of His Son'?

Let not the child of God think Temptation a misfortune
or calamity. On the contrary, "Blessed" — yes, ^'Messed is
the man that endureth temptation, for when he hath been
proved he shall receive the crown of life which God hath

TEMPTATION, ITS PLACE IN THE ECONOMY OF GRACE. I9I

promised to them that love Him ;" and "all things work
together for good to them who love God: to them who
are the called according to His purpose" — the Devil himself
among the number. That old adversary and arch-
tempter is, I am sure, kept out of his prison (in which his

written destiny is again to be "shut up") for the express pur-
pose of doing God's dear children good. Were it not for
the plausible lies he is ever insinuating, they would not be
so frequently forced to manifest their preference for the
truth of God, all rationalistic arguments to the contrary not-
withstanding ; were it not for the beating brushing and
scrubbing he gives them, soon their spiritual armour would
become as rust-eaten rickety and useless as Don Quixotte's,
the sinews of their soul becoming soft as a Sybar-
ite's, their whole spiritual manhood would shrivel
into the utter weakness and smallness of selfishness
— the very opposite of what the heroic race of heaven ought
to be; were it not for those sudden storms "the prince oi
the power of the air" raises on the sea of life, the disciples
would forget altogether the^-alue of Jesus Christ in the ves-
sel, and would begin to think that their safety and success de_
pend entirely upon their own toiling in rowing. Nothing can
be plainer than that this is the apostle Peter's opinion, (and he
is an experimental authority upon Temptation) in these words
he addresses to " the strangers scattered abroad," "Though
now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through
manifold temptations; that the trial of your faith being much
more precious than of gold that perisheth though it be tried

192

WAS MOSES WRONG?

'St;
i '

I f

i ' lii

'.y'A

with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at
the appearing of Jesus Christ." And this is certainly the
opinion of James when he writes, ''Count it all joy when ye
fall into ( — not go into, not fall de/ore,or fall under — ) manifold
temptations, knowing that the trial of your faith worketh
patience ; and let patience have (by this process) her perfect
work that ye may be perfect and entire wanting nothing."
In other words. Christian perfection is attainable only by our
being kept painfully conscious of our imperfection. For ex-
ample, long after he has perhaps thought he has gained the
mastery over his carnal nature, a strong new temptation sud-
denly assails the believer, and what is the consequence?
Although he may not yield to its pcwer outwardly he certain-
ly emerges from the trial sadly convinced at least that there
still lurks in his nature corruption enough to ruin him forever,
but for the pardoning mercy and sustaining power of the Most
High — he emerges feeling the full for e of the exhortations
"Be not high-minded, but fear. Let him who thinketh he
standeth take heed lest he fall." That is from temptation he
emerges a wiser, humbler, stronger man.

When any believer feels an inward yielding to the draw-
ing of temptation it is proof indisputable of indwelling sin
somewhere — of something which naturally responds to the
allurement. The apostolic James assures us that "every
man is tempted when he is drawn away of his otuu lust and
enticed. And when lust hath conceived it bringeth forth
sin, and sin when it is finished bringeth forth death." This
is the entire nrocss of the production of sin and its conse-

TEMPTATION, ITS PLACE IN THE ECONOMY OF GRACE. 1 93

quences. And is not the potency of this process continually
lurking within believers, although sometimes it may be in a
latent, dormant state ? And were there no other proof avail '
able, this itself is proof sufficient of how useful, nay how
indispensable Temptation is in the sanctification of moral
beings constituted as we are. - •

Temptation alone, with all the certainty of a chemical test,
detects and demonstrates the presence of corruption, for
every time the drawing power of lust toward forbidden ob-
jects is felt and successfully resisted the lust must be weak-
ened and the virtue which overcame it correspondingly
strengthened. Every such struggle which issues in the
triumph of virtue brings off the resisting and dominating
power of faith much increased in present strength, as well
as in courage for future enterprises against sin.

To sum up :

1. Everything God permits or employs in the moral uni-
verse is useful, Satan not excepted. " All things work to-
gether for good." " I am persuaded that neither death nor
life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, (compare this
with Eph. 6:12) . . . nor any other creature shall be
able( — they will try their best) — to separate us from the love
of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

2. Temptation is a sin and crime to the tempter, but not
to the tempted one, except in as far as his desires and acts
respond to it.

a !

194

WAS MOSES WRONG?

3. Temptation, when successfully resisted, is to the
tempted a priceless blessing. " Blessed is the man that en-
dureth temptation." By the grace of God, temptation con-
stitutes the gymnastic apparatus and curriculum by which
the inner man is made healthy tough vigorous robust, by
which the growing child of God is trained in moral heroism
— is drilled into the glorious military spiritual condition of
Christ-like self-denial and self-control — is daily developed
"into the_ measure of the stature" of perfect God-like man-
hood.

Temptation when it spreads around

May seem a field of woe ;
But there, by Grace, the blessed fruits

Of holiness do grow.

-'/M

i I

What a glorious Subject did Jesus, the second Adam
present to the contemplation of Jehovah when emerging
from the desert the conqueror of Satan 1

I ■

The Faithful \Aiitness.

Semi-Monthly— 16 Pages, 9 in. by 12 in. — 48 Columns. Published
on the first and third Saturday of each month.

Terms ONE DOLLAR, in Advance.

EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTORS.

Rev. S. H. Kelloih;, D.D.
Rev. N. West, D.D.

Rev.

Rev,

Rev.

Rev

Rev.

Rev,

Rev

Rev.

A. T. Pierson, D.D.
E. P.Goodwin, D.D,
A. J. Frost, D.D.
W. Dinwiddle, D.D
W.G.Morehead, D.D
A. Erdnian, D.D.
. Thos. O. Lowe,
John Wilkinson, M.A
W. Frith, M.A.
H. M. Parsons,
J. Mutch, M.A.

/. McEwen,
,A. R. Dickson,B.D
G. Al. Howie,
J. Goforth,
A. 15. Mackay, M.A
\y. H. Barnes, M.A
C. A. Cook,
W. J. Erdman,
C. M. Whittlesey,
R. P. Mackay, M. A
R. Cameron, M.A.

Hon. S. H. Blake, Q.C.
OCCASIONAL CONTRIBUTORS.

Rev. J, H. Brookes, D.D.
Pastor Joshua Denova.\»

Rev. H. P. Welton,
Rev. E. P. Marvin,
Rev. J. C. Quinn, M.A.
Rev. E. A. burnham.
Rev. S. V. Robinson,
Rev. Jas. Smith,
Rev. Dr. Cochrane,
Rev. Jacob Freshman,
Rev. Geo. Soltau,
Col. P.iget,
Hon. Judge Ardagh,
Hon. Judge Macdonald,
Dr. B.-iedeker,
Dr. Young,
Dr. L. W. Munhall,
Dr. W. McK. McLeod,
W. H. Howland,

B. W. Douglass,
J. Denham Smith,
r. G. Gribble,

R. U. Garrett,

C. Falconer,

Arthur Burson,
W. A. Parlane,
John Currie,
F. Schiverea,
Chas. S. Bullock.
J. E. Wolf,
Harold F. Sayles,
A. Lloyd Thomas,
C. A. Coleman,
W. G. Carr.
Mrs. Geo. Sol*' ,
Mrs. Hele .rown.

Mrs. J. P. ..._,\ot,
Miss Sharpe,
Miss E. Dryer,
Miss Katie A. Clarke,
Miss Bella Clarke,
Miss C. E. Lay,
Miss B. E.Mudie,
Miss S. R. Geldard,
Miss A. Macpherson,
Miss F. G. Macdonald.

In additicn to these we have opened correspondence with Missionaries in Lidia,
China, Japan, Africa, France, Mexico, Brazil, Chili, Grenada, and other fields of labor.

WORDS OF COMMENDATION.

The contributors are men of such ability that they have no need of
.any kind of commendation from us. We wish the paper a large suc-
cess. — Record of Christian Work.

Its published list of editorial writers gives assurance that the leading
articles will be stirring and conscientious, and the appearance of the first
number indicates that it will be carefully edited. — Canadian Baptist.

The prospectus, which promised us a publication of superior merit, is
amply redeemed in the inital number. The Faithful Witness at
once steps to the front as one of the ablest and likely to be one of the
most popular religious publications in Canada. * * Of its future
success there need be no apprehension. — The Globe (Toronto).

Sample copies sent on application to

S. R. BRIGGS, Publisher,
Toronto Willard Tract Depository, Toronto, Canada.

} 'i.

I'i

!■]

'\t

jl:_:.,.li

Three Invaluable Books

By THE Late REV. DR. W. P. MACKAY.

GRACE AND TRUTH.

(OVER 3(NI THOVSAAiD HOLD.)

i2mo., 269 pages, clear type. Price, cloth fine, 75c. ; cheap edition,

in stiff paper covers, 30c.

-A.BRIIDG!-EID E3DITI03Sr.

Just issued, an abridged edition of this most excellent book.
Paper covers, 20c.

SPECIAL TERMS IN QUANTITIES FOR DISTRIBUTION.

SECOND EDITION. FOURTH THOUSAND

Over 2,000 Copies Sold in Three Months.

ABUNDANT GRACE.

Crown 8vo., 250 Pag<^s. Cloth 75c., Paper 35c.

The work contains (i) Portrait specially engraved from a photo-
graph (furnished by his brother Rev. A. B. Mackay, of Montreal) ; (2)
a Brief Biograpical Sketch of the late Dr. Mackay ; (3) Memorabilia of
the author, by Miss Annie Macpherson, of London, England ; (4) A.
Prefatory Note, by Rev. J. 41. Brookes, D.D., of St. Louis, Mo.; (5)
Twenty selected addresses ; (6) A series of brief articles on Gospel
Sut)jects.

The Seeking Saviour

AND OTHER BIBLE THEMES.

Crown 8vo. Price, — Paper Covers, 50 Cents ; Cloth, 90 Cents.

"They are full of Scripture Truth, and are aglow with the Gospel
he so delighted to preach." — Footsteps of Truth.

"Full of the vigour and earnestness which pervade all the lament-
ed author's writings." — British Messenger.

SOLE PUBLISHERS IN CANADA,
S. R. BRIGGS, Toronto Willard Tract Depository, Toronto, Canada.

TWBNTT-PIPTH THOUSAND.

)n,

)tO-
(2)

kof
A.

(5)
ipel

nts.-
spel

nt-
ada.

C. H. SPURGEON, OF LONDON,

Sending an order for forty copies of this work says : " It is a
book, and if possible would like to reprint it and place
a copy in the hands of each of our students."

capital

NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS

-FOR—

BIBLE READINGS

Compiled by S. R. BRIGGS and J. H. ELLIOTT.

A most suggestive help for the pulpit, the prayer room, the gospel meeting, or
other religious services.

Contains eighty pages of short chapters on methods of conducting Bible Readin;;s,
etc., followed by nearly two hundred pages, with outlines of OVer SiX hundred
Hible Readings, the contributions of leading Ministers, Evangelists and others.

262 pages, 12mo, with Complete Index.
Bound in Cloth, Library Edition, - - - $1 00
Cloth Flexible, Travelers' Edition, - . - 75

Paper Cover Edition, _----_ 50

SCRIPTURAL STUDIES

By the Late CHARLES BRIDGES, M.A.

With Preface by the Right Rev. E. H. BICKERSTETH, D.D.

Crown 8vo, Price 70 cents.

" We have rarely had the pleasure of looking through a volume of 'Scriptural
Studies,' with so mnch satisfaction. . . We could wish that it might be in the
hands of ten thousand Christians who would make it a text-book for the study of
the Word." — Rev. Dr. Pentecost.

" 'This work will bear favorable comparison with Hengel,' says the Preface. A
careful study of the contents confirms the truth of this statement, and discloses a wealth
of spiritual thought and power of assimilation rarely to be met with." — Christian.

"We have no hesitation in commending this valuable work." — Church Guardian.

"The fact that this book has reached the ninth edition is proof conclusive that it
must have some extraordinary merit." — Canada Presbyteriau.

"A most valuable addition to the Bible students library. "-Evangelical Churchmar..

"Contains a wealth of spiritual thought." — The ll^atchmnn.

"Contains an immense amount of scripture truth, and so arranged that it can be
readily grasped by the Bible student." — Glad Tidings.

S. R. BRIGGS, Toronto Willard Tract Depository, Toronto, Canada.

*^ SEVENTH YEAR OF PUBLICA^TION.

..f:

Present Cipcuiation, 12,000 Monthly.

NOTES FOR BIBLE STUDY,

32 PAGE MONTHLY.

ISSUED IN CONNECTION WITH THE

''Bible Reading and Prayer Alliance,''

Each month's issue contains matter for Bible Study, as follows : —

4 Pages "Notes" on Daily Readings.
4 Pages "Notes" on Weekly Topics.
9 Pages International S. S. Lessons.
1 Page Children's Bible Study.
6 Pages General Studies.

Single Subscription, 36 cents a Year.

CLUB RATES.— To One address (if to separate addresses add
3c. per copy.) Three copies, $i.oo ; 6 to lo copies, each 30c.; over 10
to 50 copies, each 25c.; over 40 copies, each 20c. For each of the re-
mairing months of the year, to single subscribers, three cents, and to
clubs over 20 copies, two cents.

All Subscriptions end with the December Number.

Remittances may be made for clubs by P. O. O. and Bank Bills or
Cheques — (Have P.O.O. and Bank Cheques made payable to the order
of S. R. Briggs.) All amounts under $1.00 may be sent us in Canadian
or United .States Postage Stamps.

A Calendar of the year's course of study, issued by the Alliance
Committee, will be sent to new subscribers.

BOUND VOLUMES. Vols. I, II, III, IV, V and VI for 1881-82-
83-84-85-86 with index complete to each volume, in uniform cloth bind-
ing. Each 50c. The six volumes for $2.50, post-paid.

All subscriptions and correspondence to be sent direct to r

S. R. BRIGGS, '

Toronto Willard Tract Depository, Toronto, Canada.

ATION.

ruDY.

liance."

Follows : — '

rs.

ap.

iddresses add
30c.; over 10
ch of the re-
rents, and to

iimbep.

Bank Bills or
to the order
in Canadian

the Alliance

for 1881-82-
■n cloth bind-

ida.