Oiv.sion.B5l235 
 
 iVo. 
 
MAN'S GREAT CHARTEJi. 
 
 AN EXPOSITIOy OF THE FIRST V II AFT F II OF 
 GEXFSIS. 
 
 FREDERICK ERNEST COaGIN, MA. 
 
 LATE KXHIBITIONER OI' ST. JOHNS COLLKCtK, CAMMRIDGK. 
 
 London : 
 
 JAMES NISBET k CO., 21 BERNERS STREET, W 
 
 1892. 
 
 [All rights reserved.] 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 The following pages are written in the belief 
 that the latest results of physical research may 
 be profitably studied in the light of the first 
 (chapter of Grenesis, and that the literary and 
 devotional study of the first chapter of Grenesis 
 may be assisted by the illumination afforded 
 tlu'ough physical discoveries. 
 
 I trust that the increase of knowledge may 
 be the means of so setting forth the revelation 
 recorded on the first page of the Bible, as to 
 admit of its being read, even by toil-worn and 
 wayfaring men, with all, or more than all, the 
 benefit that was derived in days gone by. 
 
 Five years ago I preached a course of eight 
 sermons on this subject to a country congrega- 
 tion, and, while preparing to give this instruction, 
 some apparently fresh thoughts suggested them- 
 selves, which seemed to throw considerable liglit 
 
4 PREIAC E. 
 
 ■upon tlie intellectual and practical significance 
 of tlie Biblical prologue. This is my justifica- 
 tion for venturing through this little book to 
 addiTSS a larger audience. 
 
 No attempt will be made to discover the 
 author or date of this document. Critical 
 inquiries of such a nature may be intensely 
 interesting and of great intellectual value, but 
 the worth of the first chapter of Grenesis is not 
 determined by the result of these difficult 
 studies. 
 
 The intrinsic value of the works of Shakespeare, 
 Milton, Newton, and Darwin w^ould not be 
 lessened if their title-pages were all missing, so 
 that they were thus left anonymous. And it is 
 to a similar intrinsic value of the first chapter 
 of Genesis that I wish to draw attention. 
 
 This story for many years gave the most 
 satisfactory answer to the common human 
 questions as to the origin of the world and tlie 
 reality of man's moral nature. It solved the 
 problem as nothing else did. 
 
 The poor ignorant man who sits upon a heaj) 
 of stones by the wayside, eating his dinner of 
 
PKKI'ACK. 
 
 bread and bacon, is receiving a direct satisfaction 
 for the needs of his body ; there are deep fathom- 
 less mysteries connected with what he is doing, 
 and about these he knows nothing, even the 
 terms chemical analysis and laws of assimilation 
 are a meaningless jargon to him, he is 
 altogether indifferent to a most fascinating 
 branch of knowledge directly connected with 
 what he is doing, yet he is acting reasonably ; 
 similarly, this man needs some direct satisfaction 
 for his heart and mind ; something which, how- 
 ever presented, he shall be able to receive, and 
 see for himself. Doubtless, there will be much 
 learning associated with these things which will 
 be a dead letter to him, but as it is with the 
 body, so it is with the heart and mind, there is 
 need of some direct satisfaction or nourishment. 
 Moreover, we must not forget that all our intel- 
 lectual edifices rest in the last resort upon a 
 foundation of what we call self-evident truths, 
 the affirmations of sense, reason, and conscience. 
 Having made every allowance for the pos- 
 sibility of illusion, we must depend upon liearing 
 and seeing for om-selves ; having been led step 
 
b I'REFALE. 
 
 by stei* through a long train of reasoning, we 
 must depend for the start for each step, and for 
 the finish, upon axiomatic truths, or truths which 
 every one has to see for himself ; and, notwitii- 
 standing the many diverse and contrary opinions 
 as to what is right and what is wrong, the 
 ground of the distinction, the evidence that there 
 is a rio'ht and a A^Tons: is within each man to 
 perceive for himself. 
 
 I have attempted the humble task of raping 
 off some of the mist that has settled upon the 
 mirror, so that a man may look for himself and 
 see what he is and what he is like, as in the 
 perfect law of liberty. 
 
 We have a document which without question is 
 more than two thousand years old. If we know 
 that its teaching was intelligible, acceptable, and 
 needful so many centuries ago, and find that it re- 
 mains intelligible, acceptable, and needful to-day ; 
 if we find that, notwithstanding the growth, 
 revolution, and even re^ailsion there has been in 
 the thoughts of mankind, it still answers reason- 
 ably and clearly certain questions which men seem 
 made to ask and to which they can get no other 
 
PKEFAfE. 7 
 
 answer so satisfying ; if it is so written that it 
 continues to reflect the latest-won truths, and 
 shines like natiu'e itself, Avith further mi- 
 approaehed but attractive light, and invites men 
 to realize in a fuller life an ever- widening liberty ; 
 then surely it lias an intrinsic value and even 
 authority of its own, and need not wait upon 
 critical opinions as to when and how it was 
 derived. 
 
 I am greatly indebted to the works of the 
 late Prof. F. D. Mam^ice, the Eev. P. H. Alason, 
 M.A.. President of St. John's College, Cam- 
 bridge, and of Dr. Westcott, Bishop of Durham. 
 These eminenth' distinguished scholars have 
 been occupied in separate departments of Biblical 
 stud}', but all alike enforce the cardinal lesson of 
 reverence for the words of Holy Scriptiu-e. They 
 would also insist upon the necessity of having an 
 open mind for the reception of truth from wliat- 
 ever quarter it may come. 
 
 I hope that these great lessons have not been 
 wholly lost on me, and that what is here written 
 may help to show how a jealous regard Ijoth for 
 the sacred text and for the modern inteq^retation 
 
8 PKKFAfE. 
 
 of nature, issues in a simple reoognition of their 
 relationship. 
 
 On the presentment of two different aspects of 
 truth one must not be compromised for the other, 
 but a point of sight should be sought for and 
 awaited which, in a clearer and wider survey, 
 embraces both. The search may demand a 
 sacrifice of whatever enhancement tlie prospect 
 received from near and ancient boundaries, but 
 this will be recompensed with a view incomparabh' 
 grander wlien the higher standpoint is gained. 
 
 It is tluis with the truths whicli attract us in 
 works upon physical science on the one liand, and 
 in the Bible on the other, which we see in flthuj^ 
 and physical laws, as well as in persons and moral 
 laws, in the establishment and elucidation of the 
 material order, as well as in the establishment and 
 elucidation of the moral order ; we must not close 
 our eyes to either truth, but try to climb liigher 
 and see them in their natural harmony. 
 
 Truth may have been embodied and embraced 
 by such a representation as once freely clothed but 
 now constricts it, which was a swaddling band, but 
 is becoming a sliroud. 
 
PREFAC^E. J) 
 
 Take, for example, Milton's descnption as 
 follows : — 
 
 " When God said, 
 Let tlie earth bring forth soul hving in her kind, 
 Cattle and creeping things, and beast of the earth, 
 ]^ach in their kind. The earth obey'd, and straight 
 0X3"ning her fertile womb teem'd at a birth, 
 Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms, 
 Limb'd and full grown. Out of the ground np rose, 
 As from his lair the wild beast, where he wonns 
 In forest wild. 
 
 * -jt -vf -Tf * -;f 
 The grassy clods now calved ; now half appear'd 
 The tawny lion pawing to get free 
 His hinder parts, then springs as broke from bonds. 
 And rampant shakes his brinded mane.'' 
 
 Siicli a picture may have helped the unscientific 
 mind to grasj) the stupendous but necessary 
 truths of a beginning or new departure and of 
 an efficient cause, truths which need still to be 
 realized, although Milton's particular expression 
 of them may now be a hindrance rather than 
 a help. 
 
 Conceptions relating to the whole visible 
 universe have been subjected to a vast process 
 of modification, yet the relationship between man 
 
10 PREFACE. 
 
 and the world remains unaltered, and its practical 
 importance undiminished. So, likewise, a trans- 
 formation ma}' be ^^•rought in our thoughts about 
 the Bible, by eliminating the ignorance we have 
 read into it, and by enforcing the lessons we have 
 ignored, without in the least lessening its signi- 
 ficance as a written medium of G^od's revelation. 
 
 The terms rii<uuj and ■ xettlmj aj)plied to the 
 apparent movements of the sun, and still retained, 
 seemed for centuries a most literal way of stating 
 a self-evident fact. 
 
 Similarly, some comments upon the first chapter 
 of Genesis have been regarded as coincident in 
 meaning with the text of the narrative itself, but 
 are found only to have stated part of the truth, 
 and not to have been exempt from error. 
 
 In both cases the truths embodied in the old 
 interpretations, and which gave these their worth, 
 continue as part of the fuller truth wliicli further 
 liglit reveals. 
 
 The trivial notions attached to this story have 
 been disposed of by physical discoveries, but if 
 this riddance induces us to read more carefull}^ 
 and with childlike confidence what is actually 
 
PllEFACK. 11 
 
 written, we shall find that the account liad been 
 trified with, and that I'lirtlier knowledge of God 
 in natiu'e and grace elucidates this first lesson. 
 So we shall gain a Divine compensation for the 
 loss of those childish conceptions. To render 
 some assistance towards gaining this prize is tlie 
 object witli whicli my little book is written. 
 
COXTEXTS OF IXTUODITCTION. 
 
 PACK 
 
 The exceptionally toundational character of the subject l.'> 
 Need of a special adaptation of language in dealing 
 
 with the subject ... ... ... 20 
 
 CTreatness of the work and littleness of the words... '21) 
 
 Need of imagination ... ... ... ... ... 21 
 
 Unfamiliar thoughts to be expressed by language 
 
 fashioned upon what is most familiar ... .. 21 
 
 Words transcend their etymology, they can also 
 
 transcend their colloquial usage ... ... ... 22 
 
 Underlying crude notions in words are unimportant 2.> 
 
 Difficulties of translation ... ... ... ... ... 2;> 
 
 .Significance of a living language unfixed ... .. 2."> 
 
 Impoverishment of popular vocabulary by with- 
 drawal of words for technical purposes ... ... 24 
 
 Simple language an occasion of stumbling 24 
 
 The treatment of this subject would still require an 
 
 adapted phraseology ... 2.") 
 
 The iKhip'dt/on in (renesis comformable to custom 2.") 
 
 The reward of intelligent reading ... ... ... ... 2(> 
 
ally 
 latioiiiilclipr- 
 f the 
 ject. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The subject-matter of tlie first chapter of SJi^jJiJ";;;;,, 
 Genesis is one that must needs be unparalleled. »itp 
 It is a pre-requisite in everjtlnng wliicli might be 
 suggested for comparison with it. Wliat birtli 
 is to the individual, that our theme is to the 
 whole of history. AVhat the spring is to the 
 watercourse, that the first origin is to the after- 
 course of the world. AVhat the earth is to the 
 things built upon it, w^hat the air is to lungs 
 breathing it, Avhat the sense of sight is to the 
 appearances we perceive, such is the disparit}^ 
 between the subject-matter of the first chapter of 
 Genesis and any topic in tlie world's wide range. 
 
 Here we are furnished with materials and 
 tools. Materials may mean logs of wood, or a 
 number of atoms, or localized centres of force, and 
 tools may mean liatchets, or hands, or properties, 
 or hues. 
 
16 INTRODrCTION. 
 
 Here we are not only supplied with everytbing, 
 but wc ourselves are supplied. In ourselves, in 
 our labours, and in our theories, we presuppose 
 the mystery tliis record reveals. We are 
 interwoven of the material, in the pattern, and b}' 
 the agency, which are here introduced to us. 
 Man manipidates what is alread}' made. Human 
 works and human workings, from the seemingly 
 solid material achievement to the finest sensation 
 and the most subtle mental effort, are altogether 
 dependent upon that of which we read in tlie 
 first chapter of Grenesis. Man and his construc- 
 tions impl}^ God and His creation. AVe too 
 often fail to realize the importance and significance 
 of that whicli has alwaj^s to be taken for granted. 
 
 " Explanations " of that which exists and lives, 
 and feels and reasons, mostl}^ leave untouched such 
 fundamental obscurities, as existence, energy, 
 sensation, and wisdom. The ground of all is 
 ignored. The form is admired, the substance is 
 disregarded ; the picture is reckoned priceless, the 
 artist is not reckoned at all ; the landscape is 
 lovely, the eye is forgotten ; tlie organ of sight is 
 arduously scrutinized, the sense of sight is passed 
 
INI'KODrci ION. 17 
 
 by as lacking- significance. Sensation appears to hI;,,^',!,. ;^- '^' 
 
 . . '■ Defence of 
 
 be reo-arded. as beanue- strono-er evidence to the i'i''i;';"M'iiic 
 existence of matter than to the existence of sense. 
 I gras}) the arm of my chair and say, " Of this 
 thing I am certain, it is a tangible existence, 
 nothing is more ])0sitively true "; nevertheless, my 
 feeling and judgment are more certain, more 
 positively true, and are the ground of my percep- 
 tion of that tangible existence. We lay hold of 
 thii((jti, and the very power by which we do so is 
 sunk in oblivion, simply because it is not a fJi'uuj. 
 Thus the sceptre is wrung from the senses and 
 given to their subjects ; yes, given to their 
 creations. The king is made to place his creature 
 on the tlu'one. Thought is a suborned Avitness for 
 the omnipotence oi tilings : the invisible is ignored 
 and denied, although it is the only guarantee 
 of the visible, which is worshipped ; the work is 
 had in all honour, while the workman is effaced or 
 regarded as the offspring of his own handiwork. 
 So it is that man with all his labour scarcely gets 
 below the surface, which he rakes indefatigably 
 but scarcely ventures to dig beneath. 
 
 Whilst freely using the words matter, gravity, 
 
 w 
 
18 INTKODUCTIOX. 
 
 ooliesioii, laws, and others, wliicli, witli similar 
 familiarity, refer to the most profound mysteries, 
 and whilst practically dealing with the world by 
 living and working, we generally neglect to ask, 
 who or what it is that honours the drafts we 
 ceaselessly draw on behalf of our theories as well 
 as for our existence and for every process 
 existence entails. Every road, every path, 
 however narrow, leads to the Grreat Resource of 
 all, and there is something lacking in the man 
 who never finishes his journey. 
 
 This narrative invites us to look for once from 
 within instead of from without, to consider that 
 which is real rather than that which is apparent, 
 the essential instead of the phenomenal, to think 
 upon a beginning of that Avhieh we take for 
 granted, or with regard to which we merely 
 inquire as to its growth. 
 
 This narrative invites us to meditate upon the 
 present strength and stay of ourselves and of the 
 whole order in which w^e live, instead of being 
 contented with the recognition of sequences. 
 
 The book of Genesis commences with the story 
 not only of a great w^ork, but of the great 
 
iNrR()i)r( TioN. 19 
 
 foundational and prolimiuary work in and 
 tlu'ougli ^vllicll all other works, great and small, 
 are AM'Ouglit. 
 
 Tliis work differs from other works not in 
 degree, but in kind ; it is superior to all others, 
 not because it compares favourably with them, 
 but because it will not compare with them at all, 
 being essential to each in its beginning, 
 continuance, and completion. 
 
 Every thought and every feeling, every vital 
 product and every vital process, every hour and 
 every lesson, each law and each pvopevty^ things 
 and persons, body, mind, and conscience, life 
 and light, are initiated, conditioned, and sus- 
 tained by that which is the subject of the first 
 chapter of Genesis. 
 
 Consider carefully that a beginning of the 
 universe means not some new stupendous scheme 
 of illumination, but rather the original impuke 
 and principles upon which the vibration of every 
 light- wave depends; not the parcelling out of 
 nuxterial, but the laws which the separation and 
 shape of worlds outwardly express ; not the pro- 
 gressive development of forest trees from mould 
 
 V. 2 
 
20 TXTKODTCTIOy. 
 
 or lichen, but tlie laying down of the very 
 foundation of such development in the principles 
 of heredity and variation ; not a Avork prolonged 
 through hours and ages, but a work of which the 
 whole machinery of time was only one middle 
 item ; not the measiu-eless improvement in the 
 organs of the senses, such as eyes and ears and 
 fingers, but that which spans what is to us the 
 bridgeless gulf between organization and sen- 
 sation ; not man's advance in cultivation and 
 civilization, but the embodiment of that spirit of 
 reflection, aspiration, and endeavour by which his 
 progressive advancement is achieved. 
 
 And what words have we to represent these 
 transcendent processes? How shall we name 
 facts so unfamiliar to thought, yet so funda- 
 mental, seeing that our vocabularj^ is moulded by 
 all that is common-place and superficial ? 
 Sfedrii^Lfap- Thls pccuHar singularity of the subject renders 
 
 tation of Ian- p / 1 i . i • i 
 
 fiV wUh'Si's ii6cessary a special use ot the language m which 
 
 it is set forth. 
 ?he w!lrk'an.i ^^ ^^ ^^ iudispensablc preliminary to anything 
 
 littleness ot ^ . i i i • 
 
 the words, approachiug an adequate estimate ot the contents 
 of the first page of the Bible, that both the great- 
 
iXTUoDrc iiox. 21 
 
 uess of the work and t]i(3 littleness of tlie words be 
 clearly recognized. 
 
 Vjy its nature, the thing spoken of must be 
 without parallel and without precedent, whilst, by 
 the natural exigences of language, the words must 
 be common words. 
 
 The facts related were prior to all human ex- 
 perience and expression. Yet, if the tale had to 
 be told, it was necessary to use familiar words, 
 such as were constantly associated with a state of 
 things since established. 
 
 Success in understanding this story must be ^fj^^Jj^',^ ""•'" 
 proportionate to our power of imagining a 
 universe of things where none of the distinctions 
 to which we are accustomed were yet wrought 
 out. 
 
 Words of themselves cannot produce new con- 
 ceptions in minds unprepared for them. The 
 vocabulary at disijosal for tellino^ the story was of unfamiliar 
 
 J i- O J thuujrhts to 
 
 very limited capacity, being used for conveying ily languafe'e 
 only the light burdens imposed by the needs of 11" 
 man in an early stage of civilization. Therefore 
 it is more than ever necessary to be kept in mind 
 that words are only tokens, and that their value 
 
 t IS 
 
 >st faiuiliar 
 
Words trans 
 ceiid tlu'ir 
 etyniolofry, 
 tliey can alsi 
 tiaiisc.n.l 
 tlu'ii- o.llu- 
 .luial nsa'-'.-. 
 
 22 IXTRODKTION. 
 
 must be determined by tlie subject with which 
 they deaL 
 
 Just as any literary composition upon a common 
 topic, in common words, would at once fall to 
 pieces if its various parts were subjected to an 
 etymological restoration, because its various 
 symbols both in form and meaning have changed 
 almost beyond recognition ; so must the story of 
 such an unfamiliar fact as the first o:enesis of 
 things utterly fail of its piu-pose if words are 
 confined to their common-place signification. To 
 say that a crafty knave means nothing worse than 
 a clever boy, or tliat an asylum foi- idiots is merely 
 a place where ordinary private personages can be 
 free from molestation, is to speak etymological 
 truth, but moral and practical falsehood. So, to 
 limit words in an exceptional narrative to their 
 common import may not lack an excuse, but must 
 fail to find any justification, and would be 
 ecpiivalent to maintaining tlie value of a bank- 
 note to be that of the paper and printer's ink of 
 which it is composed. 
 
 In the case of an ordinary narrative there is an 
 ascent from the origin of words up to their ever}- 
 
TXTKOnrCTTOX. 23 
 
 day meaning ; in tlie case of an extraordinary 
 narrative we must rise from the common usage to 
 that wliicli the special nature of the subject 
 demands. 
 
 The cliildish or even coarse notions that may rndniyin^ 
 be concealed witliin tlie root meanings of some of uIiimi.orlViiV.' 
 the Hebrew words employed in the first chapter 
 of Genesis have just as much and just as little to 
 do with the interpretation of the narrative, as the 
 quite as childish and quite as coarse notions 
 concealed within the root meanings of English 
 words have to do with the newest treatise in our 
 own language upon science or philosoph}'. 
 
 Moreover, this old story has to be translated t\-iS!i'iatioil''^ 
 
 int(j a language that did not exist for many 
 
 centuries after the story was first told. 
 
 There are elements of ambiguit\' which ,^f Ji'Sg' 
 . . , , . . languii^'c un- 
 
 necessarily exist 111 any verbal description f^^*^'^' 
 
 composed in a living language. The processes of 
 
 growth, assimilation, extrusion, and transmutation, 
 
 render it impossible to make an adequate and 
 
 permanent transposition of an ancient composition 
 
 into modern language. The attempt to do so 
 
 may be compared with trying to buihl a house of 
 
lur vi>c;il 
 lary 
 
 24 iNiitoDUc riox. 
 
 wliieli the beams and rafters should remain limbs 
 and l)ranches of growing trees. Words are 
 subject to many vicissitudes of fortune. They 
 may have a different significance for men of the 
 same tongue who happen to be separated by a 
 short space of time or country, and even for the 
 same man under changing circumstances. 
 Jne\\Tofi'.!iu- The increase of knowledge which generally 
 enriches language has in one respect actually 
 impoverished it. For words originallj^ used to 
 symbolize popular impressions are adopted into a 
 ^professional nomenclature, and thus accjuire an 
 artificial clefimteness by adaptation to a real 
 definiteness lately discovered in the things to 
 which these words are made to apply. This 
 process of fluctuation and specializing is in 
 constant operation, and renders a permanently 
 satisfactory translation impossible. 
 
 Moreover, the praiseworthy efforts to popularize 
 the results of modern scholarship by the use of 
 simple language meet with two obstacles in 
 minds unaccustomed to reckon with the Aveakness 
 and peculiarities of the natural genius of 
 phraseology : the one is a dulness of comprehen- 
 
 Siiniilo laii- 
 iL'uage.-iiiiicr; 
 >ii>ii (if St nil 
 I.liiiL'. 
 
Till- tirat- 
 iiiiJiit of tliis 
 
 INTRODIC TIOX. 25 
 
 sion which fails to receive anything but the 
 meanest thoughts from common words, 
 enveloping, for example, the Antipodes in a 
 shroud of mystery as people walking upside down, 
 the other is a tendency to identify a fact with its 
 expression, and which would make a new kind of 
 blasphemy out of the assertion that the skies 
 were peopled by means of the telescope. 
 
 Tempered and whetted by the manifold 
 
 subject would 
 
 experience and accumulated wisdom oi many !;5yj,,'."'','',''.;i'^ 
 centuries, the human mind can still penetrate but 
 a very little way into the profound, innermost 
 recesses of things ; much less can it make a 
 means of access to the centre, that so, turning 
 round, man might look from cause to effect. 
 Therefore, also, we lack such a special diction 
 as should exclusively and adequately express 
 the parts and relations of this mighty theme. 
 
 Thus, in our late age, just as in the earlier one, 
 when this document first appeared, it would be 
 necessary to adapt for this special purpose 
 words which are generally otherwise employed. 
 
 In the following few pages the reader's i' 
 attention will be invited to the interesting fact liii 
 
 ilildii- 
 
 ialioii ill (m'U- 
 is (■(Hit'onii- 
 
 il.' to .•US- 
 Ill. 
 
26 INTltonUCTTON. 
 
 that tlie particular adaptation of language 
 adopted in the first chapter of Genesis is plenti- 
 fully illustrated and exemplified in modern 
 literature. 
 
 If the force of sucli considerations as have been 
 advanced in this brief Introduction be fairly 
 calculated in the estimate we make of the outline 
 sketch with which the Bible begins, then its 
 simplicity, accuracy, and fertility of thought 
 and feeling will command for it the highest 
 appreciation. 
 
(CONTENTS OF CHArTER I. 
 
 Days in the foundation of the universe ... 
 Use of the word day . . . 
 
 The historic standpoint 
 
 The Biblical v ocabulary 
 
 The Fourth Commandment ... 
 
 ' ' God called the light day " 
 
 Days which are made, not spent 
 
 Conclusion 
 
 Use of the words night, evening, and morning 
 Superiority of the word day over the word light for 
 
 purpose ... 
 The first part of the work supplies a terminology for 
 
 remainder 
 The llexaemeron and its development 
 Special designations of two days 
 
 The epithet one not Jirst 
 
 The definite article used with the si.xth day 
 
 The Seventh day 
 
 The Sabbath 
 
 The Week 
 
 The harmony between (Jenesis and the Book of R 
 
 lation 
 
 .\(;e 
 
 0(» 
 
 •20— 
 
 this 
 the 
 
 54- 
 
 44 
 
 :n 
 
 42 
 44 
 
 4!» 
 
 50 
 51 
 
 -5(> 
 54 
 55 
 
 5() 
 
 5S 
 5S 
 
 6i> 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 The great work to wliicli the Biblical prologue K'Ji^jfaaH.m' of 
 introduces us, as to the very ground, atmosphere, 
 and medium of all other achievements, is divided 
 into six portions, the accounts of which respec- 
 tively conclude : one day, a second day, a third 
 day, a fourth day, a fifth day, the sixth day. 
 
 Let us consider very carefully what is the sense J.oni'da'^'''" 
 here of this word day. It is the common word day, Htandii.ii'nt. 
 and we have to ask ourselves wliat its meanino- 
 can be in the wonderfid connection in Avliich we 
 find it. 
 
 The following are some of the facts by means 
 of which an answer to the question may be 
 found : In the first place, it is to be noticed that 
 the historic standpoint is before the existence of 
 the solar system. Sun, moon, and stars have a 
 place in the narrative, but subsequent to the use 1 
 of this word da3^ Here is a fact to be as firmly 
 
;]0 
 
 as possible fixed in the mind of any one who 
 wishes to understand the story. The ordinance 
 that causes the regular spells of light and dark- 
 ness, by which the word day becomes the term 
 for a measure of time, was a thing of the future. 
 
 Therefore the introduction of the notion of 
 time into this phraseology is an obvious anti- 
 ehronism, and only became current through the 
 lack of such conceptions as those which physical 
 science has contributed to the further endowment 
 of the human mind. We must banish every 
 thought of a temporal unit as something at 
 present unheard of, and which we find later to 
 have been positively kept out of court by the 
 very construction of the story. 
 
 This fact strips our common word day of some 
 of its customary clothing ; but we shall soon find 
 that it is not forced to dress itself in foreign or 
 unbecoming habiliments. We shall not be driven 
 to an arbitrary use of a familiar word. 
 
 Although it is necessarily set free from limita- 
 tions which were then inexistent, the word still 
 retains the nobler significance which belongs to it 
 <is a token, even in the modern verbal cuiTency. 
 
:man's gkkat ciiartek. 31 
 
 It is eliai-ocd with ideas besides those which attacli 
 to its transitiveness. ^YQ speak, for example, of 
 long days in summer and short days in winter, 
 which familiar forms of speech show plainly that 
 a da}' is not merel}^ a measure of time. Its 
 meaning is not confined to the poor solitary fact 
 that it passes awa3^ 
 
 A day is a state, and not merely a span, it 
 speaks of that /'// wliiuh as well as during Avhich 
 we live, by means of which, and not only in the 
 course of which, we work. And it is evident from 
 the exclusion of the temporal ingredient, to which 
 allusion has already' been made, that we must look 
 to tliis deeper meaning, often hidden but existing 
 in our common word dtiy, for the significance 
 belonging to it in the narrative before us. 
 
 This conclusion is confirmed by the next fact to ^^'"^"1 '^^^ 
 
 «/ wurd day. 
 
 be adduced for determining the value of the word-'ipi voiab- 
 
 ^ ulary. 
 
 in this connection. We find that the Biblical 
 vocabular}^ contains tlie word with this super- 
 temporal significance, and there never could have 
 been another such opportunity for fixing this 
 significance as in the commencement of a narra- 
 tive where time is forced out of view, by being 
 
Joel iii. 1;-.. 
 Cf. Is. xxiv 
 
 32 
 
 taken up subsequently as merely part ot tlie 
 continuation of the stor3^ 
 
 We will briefly illustrate tlie usage to wliicli we 
 
 have just referred. " The day of the Lord " is 
 
 independent of the sun. The sun and the moon 
 
 are darkened, and the stars withdraw their 
 
 Mai. iv. 1/j. shining in the day of the Lord. " The day 
 
 C!f. 2 Peter b J J 
 
 cometh, it burneth as a furnace; and all the 
 proud, and all that work wickedness shall be 
 stubble ; and the day that cometh shall burn them 
 up. . . . But unto you that fear my name shall the 
 sun of righteousness arise." 
 
 Thus the day of judgment is not simply a 
 certain time when there shall be judgment, but 
 is judgment itself; it is the revelation of the fire 
 and light of true searching and discriminating* 
 judgment. The New Testament contains similar 
 
 icoi. iv. :!r,. language. St. Paul writes, "It is a very small 
 thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's 
 day. . . . Judge nothing before the time until the 
 Lord come, who will both bring to light the 
 hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the 
 
 1 Cor. iii. 12, counsels of the hearts"; also, "If any man buildeth 
 on the foundation gold, silver, costly stones, wood, 
 
man's great charter. 33 
 
 haj, stubble ; each man's work shall be made 
 manifest : for the day shall declare it, because it 
 is revealed in fire." 
 
 Christ Himself said, " Abraham rejoiced to see st. j.^im viii. 
 my day ; and he saw it, and was glad. Yerily, 
 verily, I say unto you. Before Abraham was, I 
 am." Zaeharias prophesied of Christ as the Day- 1^ -J;"''*' ' 
 spring from on high, which should shine upon 
 them that sit in darkness and the shadow of 
 death, and guide onr feet into the way of j^eace : 
 and St. Matthew recognized in the coming of '^^ ^att. iv. 
 Christ the fulfilment of Isaiah's prophecy : " The g: ']^>-- ^^^j.^, 
 people which sat in darkness saw a great light ; 
 and to them which sat in the region and shadow 
 of death, to them did light spring up." 
 
 The Lord acts as the light, He shines upon or. Ei.h. v. u. 
 men, and their thoughts are revealed to them- 
 selves by contact with Him. He Himself 
 scatters the darkness. He is the Sun of Eighteous- 
 ness. His presence makes the day. Thus the ^ -rrapovda. 
 Biblical vocabulary contains the word day apart 
 from its temporal signification, which fact sup- 
 ports the natural conclusion as to the meaning of 
 the word in its present connection deduced from 
 
luellt. 
 
 34 
 
 the order of physical things brought before us in 
 the narrative. 
 woni'lhv'"' '^^^^ fourth Commandment is the next piece of 
 iimnan.i- ' evideucc to be adduced for determining the mean- 
 
 Hilt. O 
 
 ing of the word day in this narrative. We read : 
 " Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy 
 
 work For in six days the Lord made 
 
 heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them 
 /.s'." It should be noticed that there is no 
 Hebrew here for the preposition in, as is shown 
 in the version of 1611 a.d. by the use of italics. 
 
 Here again the notion of time in relation to 
 God's work would be obviously out of place, for if 
 the six days of the Lord meant a period of time 
 equivalent to the period of time denoted by the 
 six days of our week, then the Commandment 
 would be obeyed by one week's work in a man's 
 life, or else it requires man to work a very much 
 longer time than G-od worked ; the one alternative 
 being absurd, and the other rendering the ground 
 or reason of the Commandment utterly futile. 
 
 If it is not fatal to an interpretation that it 
 involves the text in absurdity or futility, there is 
 yet a further argument against the supposition 
 
ma;n's grkat (hiakter. 155 
 
 that the six days of the Lord denote a period of 
 time, in the fact that the Israelites were com- 
 manded to observe a larger week of years, and a 
 still larger one consisting of seven of these longer 
 periods with the year of Jubilee for its Sabbath. 
 
 If it be objected that with any other inter- 
 pretation the word day is used twice in the same 
 context in different senses, it is only necessary to 
 observe that in the one case it is used with respect 
 to G-od, the substance, and in the other with respect 
 to man, the image ; and that an image has limi- 
 tations which do not affect its original. Grod's days 
 make man's days possible. Grod's working makes 
 man's working possible. The commandment has 
 appended to it not the reason only for its observ- 
 ance, but the ground which makes obedience 
 practicable. The distinctive energies which in the 
 fulness of God are simultaneous, may well be best 
 realized in man by successive efforts. All that man 
 is requu'ed to do in his periodic workings is pro- 
 vided for in G-od's working, the account of which we 
 are about to study. 
 
 He in whom man lives and moves and has his Acts wii. 2s. 
 being worketh even until now, and man is able to st.joiuivi;. 
 
 c 2 
 
36 
 
 Cor. xii. c. work because God works. There are diversities 
 of workings, but the same God, who worketh all 
 things in all. 
 
 Man made in the image of God, is required to 
 work dimng periods consisting of six days each, 
 and part of the reason why the term " six da^'s " 
 is used to characterize the o]peration of God may 
 be to assm^e man that in the Divine energy there 
 is such a supply for all his efforts as perfectly 
 corresponds with his need. But more light will 
 be thrown upon this as we proceed. 
 
 The fom-th Commandment has been introduced 
 here only to show that the sense of the word day, 
 as referred to the working of God, is that of a 
 substantive reality, and is the ground or cause, 
 not merely the exemplar of man's working day. 
 Man is not bidden to work every year fifty-two 
 times the term dming which God once worked, 
 because God did so once work, but rather, man is 
 bidden to do what God provides him with the 
 means of doing ; and the correspondence between 
 God's days and man's days is like that between 
 foundation and superstructure, or between substance 
 and shadow, or between the original and its image. 
 
man's great charter. 37 
 
 Fomilily, for determining tlie meaning of this rse^^nf_^thc 
 word we have the direct assertion, " God called ti-m "Goer*" 
 
 ' railed the^ 
 
 the light day." This name was not given to the '""''^ '^''^' 
 phaniotn of siieccssioit, to a measure of time, 
 whether large or small. Thus again the narra- 
 tive forbids us giving any time value to the word 
 day, or using it as a chronological unit for 
 measuring the interval between chaos and 
 cosmos. 
 
 Moreover, the assertion is positive, and dii^ects 
 our attention to a phase of meaning which 
 distinctly exists in our common word. It is the 
 light of da}^, and not its transitiveness, that we 
 have to dwell upon. 
 
 The advantage of the word day over the 
 word light for its present purpose w^ill be 
 considered shortly. Here it will be worth while 
 to spend a little time in thinking of the fidness 
 of meaning which ancient and modern language 
 has given to the word light. 
 
 Thought of materially, this ethereal element is 
 indispensable in the world both for life and for 
 loveliness. " Without liffht natm-e was without i-iv-isier 
 
 ° i|iiuu-(l in 
 
 life, it was dead and inanimate. A benevolent '"'f-'i'-e uie 
 
 Delufe'e, ' 
 1). 99. 
 
38 
 
 MAN S GREAT CHARTER. 
 
 Addison. 
 
 Hume. 
 
 Gibbou. 
 
 Macaulay. 
 
 Darwin, 
 "Descent." 
 
 Geikie.. 
 
 God, in bestowing liglit, has spread on the 
 surface o£ the earth organization, sentiment, and 
 thought." Thus light is widely and richly 
 suggestive, and corresponds with fundamental 
 elements that are nameless in other spheres than 
 space, and is the means of supplying an 
 appropriate form of speech. Consider the 
 following expressions from various kinds of 
 literature as exemplifying the wide use of the 
 phraseology based upon light. 
 
 " Cheerfulness keeps up a kind of day-light in 
 the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual 
 serenity." 
 
 " Eefinement in the arts spread but a very faint 
 light over this island." 
 
 " Their debts of honour (for in that light 
 they have transmitted to us those of play), 
 they discharged with the most romantic fidelity." 
 
 A person's countenance " lighted up by the 
 mingled lustre of intelligence and benevo- 
 lence." 
 
 " The light reflected by the principle of grada- 
 tion." 
 
 " Astronomy, physics, and chemistry have in 
 
man's great chartek. 39 
 
 late years all contributed to cast much liglit on 
 the earliest stages o£ the earth's existence." 
 
 When things to be described are, for any 
 reason, unknown to language, it is misleading to 
 stigmatize as figurative the particular adaptation 
 employed, when it may really be the plainest 
 speech the language permits, and is only figura- 
 tive in the sense in which nearly all language is 
 figurative. 
 
 The few quotations given above from one or 
 two works belonging to general literature will be 
 a sufficient reminder of the extensive use of this 
 diction of light. The fact being that physical 
 light is suggestive of very much more than 
 itself. It suggests what we have or what we need 
 in other spheres. It suggests an ideal which 
 should fulfil all that physical light indicates but 
 cannot furnish. Could this ideal be found, it 
 would deserve the name light more than does 
 sunshine which has only suggested, and been 
 as an index to the great reality. 
 
 Therefore, St. John calls Christ the true Light, to ^ws t6 
 using an adjective which signifies not only the 
 reality, but the completeness of the light, which 
 
Archbishdii 
 Trench, 
 *' Synonyiii 
 of \.T., • 
 1.. 20. 
 
 40 
 
 is not necessarily opposed to the fal^c, but very 
 often to tlie shadowy and outlinear. So a tree 
 may be an oak, and yet fall very short of being 
 all that the oak suggests ; it may fail to express 
 its mother-Idea ; it may be weak and tender, and 
 at the mercy of every breeze that blows : we may 
 never see an oak that quite fulfils our idea of 
 what an oak should be ; but, if we should, we 
 might say of it, "that is a true oak." So, too, 
 when we speak of a true man, we often mean much 
 more than that the man is truthful, or that he is 
 a man in contrast with a beast or a plant ; rather, 
 we mean to infer that we have an idea of what a 
 man ought to be, and that this particular indivi- 
 dual approaches or realizes our idea. Now, light 
 suggests something that should do for other parts 
 of natm^e what light does in its own place ; it 
 suggests something similar for the intellect and 
 for morals; it helps us to grasp thoughts far trans- 
 cending itself, as a proper name calls to mind a 
 person. St. John believed that in Christ there 
 was all this which light indicates, but is not, so 
 he calls Christ the true Light. 
 
 St. John commences his gosjiel in words that 
 
41 
 
 recall the first chapter of Grenesis, saying that the 
 
 Word, whom he identifies with the light, already 
 
 was at the moment marked by /;/ the ^^('fj^'iiif''if(/ f.-.;J''lil\'y-'-^' 
 
 and that all tJi'nig>> irerc made throiajh Ili/i^, and loc. 
 
 that in HiDi iran life ; and the life was the light of 
 
 men — and tJierc /ca.s tJie true light {even the light) 
 
 ivJtivJi lighteth evevij man, voniing into the world. 
 
 Thus, before anything was made, a Being 
 existed whose nature and character anticipated 
 and included every species of illumination. The 
 light is an expressive name for Him who quickens 
 and awakens and discloses and distinguishes and 
 adorns and dii-ects and supervises throughout the 
 realms of existence. 
 
 In his "Advancement of Learning" Bacon 
 remarks, "To descend from spirits and intellectual 
 forms to sensible and material forms, we read 
 the first form that was created was Light, which 
 hath a relation and correspondence in nature and 
 corporal things to knowledge in spirits and 
 incorporal things." Similarly, in the same writer's 
 " Essay of Truth," we read, " The first creature 
 of God, in the works of the days, was the light of 
 the sense ; the last Avas the light of reason ; and 
 
42 man's great charter. 
 
 His Sabbath work, even since, is the illumination 
 of His spirit. First He breathed light upon the 
 face of matter, or chaos; then He breathed light 
 into the face of man ; and still He breatheth and 
 inspireth light into the face of His chosen." This 
 sf jamesh'? ^^ ^^^^ bocause He is light and the Father of 
 
 LIGHTS. 
 
 wor.fday'' Fifthly aud lastly, it is shown by the first 
 are made, not occurrence of the word that a day is somethino: 
 
 spent. «^ o 
 
 which Grod makes, not which He spends. " God 
 said, Let there be light ; and there was light. And 
 Grod called the light Day." Moreover, G-od said, 
 " Let there be lights in the firmament of the 
 heaven, to divide the day from the night ; and let 
 them be for dajs and years. And God made the 
 two great lights ; the greater light to ride the day, 
 and the lesser light to rule the night." 
 
 Thus God is represented as making days, and 
 
 I making the whole ordinance by which the days 
 
 we spend are made, and as making day before He 
 
 made that arrangement, which gives a time value 
 
 to our word day. 
 
 The thought of God as being timeless is 
 presented here in the simplest and most convincing- 
 
man's great chakter. 43 
 
 manner. So far as we have the capacity to 
 conceive it, just so far do we find it here expressed 
 that God makes time. 
 
 These five considerations lead to the conclusion ^^^.^f^Jf 
 
 p /^ . Conclusion. 
 
 that the word day m the first chapter ot (j-enesis 
 is free from time, and is full of light; that it 
 means a luminous condition which Grod made, a 
 quickening principle, a first necessity of some 
 thing or some work which exists or is done by 
 means of it. Therefore each of these six days is 
 a distinct portion of the work, each is an 
 eff'ulgenee of the whole light of creation, each is 
 the cause, basis, and medium, the formative and 
 energizing idc(( of a whole department of the 
 world. 
 
 The day of physical illumination, the day of 
 vegetation, the day of life, are not periods of time 
 in which light, vegetation, and life were respec- 
 tively formed, but the lucent principles or 
 fundamental processes of the things themselves, 
 in Avhich each luminary, plant, or animal has its 
 origin, through which it is constituted, and by 
 which it is conditioned. Day is not a time- word, 
 but stands for that state or those laws of exis- 
 
I'seuftli.' 
 ^v<)l•(l.s ni^'ht, 
 evening, and 
 niDrnin!-'. 
 
 44 MAX'S GREAT CHARTER. 
 
 fence by means of which anything is what it is, 
 or for the very essence of that to wliich it is 
 related. Tliese six days are the light of 
 
 XATURE. 
 
 This laboured attempt to disclose the meaning 
 of the word day stands in marked contrast with 
 the easy sim]3licity of the Biblical narrative ; just 
 as the drudgery of scouring a mirror clean from 
 the consequences of neglect and misuse contrasts 
 severely with the calm, spontaneous service 
 rendered by the mirror itself, which seems to 
 mock the fitfulness and fatigue of human 
 endeavour. But as every inelegance in the 
 process of cleansing is forgotten in the result, so 
 whatever tiresome signs of effort may be visible in 
 this investigation into the meaning of a single 
 word, they will need little apology, if some of the 
 irrelevant notions defacing the narrative have been 
 removed, allowing the story to be understood 
 more simply as it is told. 
 
 Having arrived at a conclusion as to the sense 
 in which the word day is used, we will now con- 
 sider its attendant terms night, evening, and 
 morning. 
 
man's great ciiartkr. 45 
 
 In verses 2 to 5 we read : " Darkness was 
 upon the face of the deep. God said, Let there be 
 light : and there was light. And Grod divided the 
 light from the darkness. And God called the 
 light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And 
 there was evening and there was morning, one 
 day." 
 
 Here is described the process of making day. 
 It is a work beginning in the night, in a much 
 more literal sense than the general usage of the 
 words. This is not commencino^ a work clurino- 
 the night, but upon the night itself. Darkness 
 was upon the face of the deep, and God said, " Let 
 there be light." 
 
 Now, after we are told of the production of 
 light, the story goes on to say that God divided 
 the light from the darkness, implying that day 
 was preceded by a state in which light and dark- 
 ness were mingled, that is to say, by a condition 
 of twilight. The darkness Avas lightened, but 
 not dispelled. This stage was followed by a 
 clearer light. And the declaration that God 
 called the light day is made after this division of 
 light and darkness. 
 
46 man's great CTIARTEII. 
 
 A simple explanation is tlins given of the 
 plirase, " and there was evening and there was 
 morning, one day." 
 
 The night or darkness was followed by the 
 mingled state, or evening, and this by morning, 
 which ushered in day one. So was begun a 
 lasting day, which still is wherever light is, which 
 is limited by darkness, not by time, which we read 
 of as brought out of darkness through evening to 
 morning. 
 
 Thus with the most ordinary words the mighty 
 works of Grod are related. The particular shades 
 of meaning in the common words which lend them- 
 selves to the narrative are accentuated by the 
 obliteration of certain local colours which gener- 
 ally accompany them. Time is eliminated from 
 the significance of the word day, and consequently 
 from its accompanying terms. The order — night, 
 evening, morning, day — emphasizes the timeless- 
 ness of Grod's activity, and, in addition, indicates its 
 luminous progressiveness. With God, evening leads 
 to morning, the mingled state of light and dark- 
 ness prophesies the victory of day. By retaining 
 these common words and reversing their general 
 
man's gkeat CHART]-: If. 47 
 
 sequence tlie truth is brought out that God makes 
 tliese clays, that He manifests them gradually, that 
 they are consummated in the attainment of morn- 
 ing light, thus contrasting with works that man 
 carries on during the day and finishes at night. 
 
 The common Hebrew word for evening which jer.xxv. 20-20. 
 is used here is exactly that which is elsewhere trans- 
 lated" ;y^/;////<:Y/ people," showing that the idea of the 
 mingling of light and darkness was prominent in 
 the word. Our English " evening '■ does not contain 
 this thought, being supposed etymologically to 
 signify the " after " part of the day. But every one Prof, sktat. 
 can mentally travel in an instant from the word to 
 the thing, and observe, without the aid of etymo- 
 logy, that evening, whatever word symbolizes it, is 
 the mingled state of obscurity or gloaming, neither 
 night nor day, but something between the two. 
 
 Unless we are careful to maintain the point of 
 view of the narrative, which is previous to the 
 sun's installation ; and unless we keep close to its 
 own defined meanings of day and night ; and 
 unless we follow its own order from night to a 
 mingled state of light and darkness, and so to 
 daylight ; we shall be betrayed by the tendency of 
 
48 man's great charter. 
 
 oiu' feeble, time-bound and pbrase-bound imagina- 
 tions, into reading in a night between evening 
 and morning. 
 
 The order — evening, night, dawn, day — depend- 
 ing upon a luminary is so habitual to our minds 
 and language, that the sequence of stages in the 
 process of making day ah iiN'tio, however literally 
 expressed, is more easily disregarded than 
 recognized. 
 
 There was no ready-made sun to rise and 
 dispel the darkness and bestow a day. Night 
 was succeeded by evening, evening by morning. 
 Thus the word evening indicates the gradual 
 transition tow^ards a morning light under the 
 unique circumstances of there being no sun to 
 produce it. 
 
 This intermediate position of evening, as w^ell as 
 the distinction and substantive realit}^ of God's 
 days as compared with this particular planet's 
 time periods, seem illustrated by a passage in the 
 zech. xiv. 1-7. book of Zechariah : " Behold, a day of the Lord 
 cometh," saith the prophet, "and it shall come to 
 pass in that day, that the light shall not be wdth 
 brightness and wdth gloom : but it shall be one 
 
40 
 
 da}^ ^N'liicli is known nnto tlie Lord ; not day, and 
 not night : but it sliall conic to pass, that at 
 evening time tliere shall be light." 
 
 X modern instance will exemplify the imiversal 
 api)li('ati()n of this mode of expression. "In the "Jragments 
 
 ^ of Scienci'," 
 
 domain now under review," writes Professor '' "'^* ' 
 Tyndall, " men of science had first to work their 
 wa}^ from darkness to twilight, and from twilight 
 into day." Of course this refers to the discovery 
 of day, whereas G-enesis refers to the making of 
 day. 
 
 We can now discern why, in this narrative, the superioiity 
 
 •^ ' 'of the word 
 
 preference is given to the word day over the word wlatriShV,'*' 
 
 for the 1HU-- 
 
 light. God (tailed the light day, directing our ^'"^''* 
 attention at once to that sense of the Avord which 
 in this case includes all the meaning of light, for 
 the temporal limitations which usually accompany 
 the thought of daylight are excluded bv the historic 
 standpoint. Whereas the word day has this 
 serviceable superiority over the word light, that 
 it suggests and makes available its companion 
 words night, evening, and morning : a series of 
 words which lend themselves with the utmost 
 facility to the expression of progress, while, in 
 
 D 
 
oO man's great charter. * 
 
 the possession of an objective background, they 
 liave an enormous advantage over mere abstract 
 terms. 
 
 Such words assist the mind as do the parables 
 by putting into recjuisition a simple commonplace 
 of the senses, as a fixed centre, about which a 
 thoughtful mind can describe the arc, circle 
 or sphere of which it is capable. 
 
 It is scarcely possible to conceive a form of 
 expression for the idea of a secret, unobtrusive 
 beginning, and a continuous improvement unto 
 a final perfection, which Avould be so generally 
 applicable and so easily understood as that 
 supplied by these words in this order — night, 
 evening, morning, day. 
 ilf thS'S.lk''^ This language, moulded upon the first division 
 
 supiilies <a 
 
 lor't/.e"'"^'^ of the work, provides a terminology for the rest. 
 Each work is a day or light which is brought to 
 morning ; each is an enduring state which condi- 
 tions a whole domain of the universe ; each is 
 manifested gradually ; in each the evening or state 
 of obscurity leads to morning. In Grenesis day 
 means llgltf^ and the kind of light is relative to. 
 that which it illuminates. Each of these six days 
 
:VIA>f's GKKAT CIIAUTER. 01 
 
 is tlie liglit of its own proper part of tlie lumiuously 
 ordered wliole. Eeacli, wlien it becomes perfect, is 
 called a day, a day begun, for fJicre ican inorifinr/ 
 one day^ tlio-c ira-^ movnuKj a second day, and 
 similarly, until thfre was niorniiKj the slvih day. 
 
 The first day of the six was material light ; the H.ei-.ma'n'.nts 
 
 1 T 1 1 j« 1 n 'levelopincnt. 
 
 second was the diaphanous and essential nrma- 
 ment, light-sustaining and life-supporting, the 
 bond of intercourse for all creatures; the third 
 was life according to the modern use of the word, 
 the principle underlying growth, assimilation, and 
 heredity ; the fourth was the regulative institution 
 of the heavenly bodies which has ordered men's 
 lives, guided their travels, instigated and 
 instructed their minds, inspired and elevated their 
 aspirations ; the fifth day was sentient life ; and 
 the sixth was the light of reason, self-deter- 
 mination, imagination, conscientiousness, and 
 religion. 
 
 The language employed not only expresses the 
 gradual opening out or disclosure of each of these ' 
 days separately, but it may, moreover, indicate the 
 emanation of one from another, pointing not only 
 to the development of each day, but further still, 
 
 D 2 
 
52 MA^'s GREAT CHARTER. 
 
 to the development of the Hexaemeron, or a single 
 whole, consisting Avhen completed, of six days. 
 
 Bearing upon this thought it is to be observed 
 that there is no night mentioned as preceding 
 any of these days except that before day one. 
 
 The significance of this peculiarity will perhaps 
 be made plain if we study the different shade of 
 meaning that would have been presented by the 
 phrase, " and there was night and there was 
 evening and there was morning a second day," or 
 " and there was night and there was dawn and 
 there was morning a second day." Either of 
 which would give the impression that these days 
 were separate and isolated, while the latter might 
 seem to imply that a perfect external luminary 
 had arisen as the light of this component province 
 of the whole cosmieal system, instead of the 
 advent of a gradual immanent light involving the 
 very existence of the order it illumines. 
 
 On the other hand, the night being mentioned 
 only once for all, together with the use of the 
 word evening instead of dawn, implies the unity 
 of the whole work, and expresses a luminous con- 
 tinuity of progress from day unto day, a progress 
 
man's great charter. 53 
 
 marked by the rising of (iiwthvr morn on iiiid- 
 J toon. We have already seen that this language 
 lias been so fashioned by the theme treated of, 
 and the mode of treatment, that the word evening 
 foreshadows morning ; but if a thought could be 
 grasped of some connection between day and day, 
 between one lasting luminous work and another 
 lasting luminous work, between one sort of light 
 and another sort of light, then the natural 
 association of the word evening prepares it to 
 express this thought. 
 
 A new science sometimes springs from one 
 already established, and little by little comes to 
 occupy a distinct field of its own without dis- 
 placing its parent science ; a new industry starts 
 from an old but not necessarily decayed one, 
 without destroying its parent industry ; so 
 apparently a new day or light may originate 
 within one already formed, and gradually come to 
 a distinct morning of its own, witliout causing any 
 declining in the day or light in which it is 
 generated. 
 
 Thus the word evening may retain its common 
 backward reference to light, in addition to the 
 
 Vi. "Paradise 
 Lust, " V. .iio, 
 
54 MA^•^S GREAT CHARTER. 
 
 forward reference which the construction of this 
 storj has adaj^ted to it. So it may mark an 
 amorphous state in the forward movement from 
 light to light, and guard the distinctions announced 
 by the days from any notion of disjointed 
 separateness. 
 
 This language not only expresses the progressive 
 development of each order of the universe, but 
 also the progressive develoj^ment of order from 
 preceding order, or to use another form of 
 phraseology, this diction based on the facts of 
 night, evening, morning, and day, speaks in the 
 simplest way of an evolution of law, in addition 
 to an evolution according to law. 
 fiatifmso?'^' T^'^'o of these days are qualified in a special 
 i. The'epitiiet manner. That which is first of the six is not 
 
 onr nut nrf<t. 
 
 described as ,/?V.s7, but as oiw. And the sixth is- 
 the only day distinguished by the definite 
 article. 
 
 Grocl called the made light dc/f/ ; but this was 
 
 not the first light, it was only number one of a 
 
 series of made lights or days. Glod, the Father 
 
 1 St. John i. 5. of lights, is Himself light. All other lights are 
 
 but namesakes of this true light. Every genuine 
 
definite arti 
 
 cle with tilt- 
 
 xth day. 
 
 MAN S GRKAl' CHAK 1 Kit. 00 
 
 light Springs iVom llim ; He, the ideal light, is 
 tlie ultimate source of each specific light. This 
 absolute priority is kept inviolate by the use here 
 of the word " one " instead of " first," so that to 
 material light only a relative precedence is 
 ascribed. 
 
 The particular definiteness of the sixth day ^^^^j^i S '' 
 is fully warranted by tlie fact that this day "• u««'"t 'i 
 brings to perfection a number of associated, not si' 
 isolated, days. Whether these days are, as we 
 have reason to suppose, actually related and 
 organically connected, or are merely distinct 
 component rays of the light of nature, they make 
 a perfect whole. 
 
 These days form a perfect creation, which, 
 however, is not a complete thing in itself, but is 
 in absolute dependence upon God. The circle of 
 creation is perfected by this sixth day, for at 
 length there is a capacity for Grod Himself in the 
 human heart. But creation is only completed 
 when the uncreated light fills this capacity ; 
 when the created receptacle receives the uncreated i-i 
 complement, being filled with all the fulness of 
 God. 
 
The seventh 
 'lay. 
 
 56 man's great charter. 
 
 The spiritual light is first ; and creation was 
 perfected when there was a recipient fitted to 
 apprehend this light. Creation is comjilete in so 
 far as it is actually susceptive of Grod. 
 
 Thus we easily perceive why tlie word one^ 
 rather than the word fl)'>if^ should be chosen f(»r 
 material light, the typical but lowest in an 
 ascending scale of days, through which days the 
 idea of light is amplified step by step, until it is 
 enshrined in humanit}^ We also recognize the 
 appropriateness of the use of the definite article 
 with the sixth day, Avhich is the consummation of 
 the whole light of creation. 
 
 A consideration of the account given of the 
 seventh day will confirm several of the conclusions 
 at which Ave have arrived from a review of the 
 other available evidence. Our narrative is con- 
 tinued into the second chapter of Genesis, where 
 we read : "On the seventh day God finished — 
 and he rested on the seventh day — and God 
 blessed the seventh day and liallowed it ; 
 because that /// it He rested," &c. 
 
 AVe must notice three things in this account : 
 first, the prepositions on and in are represented in 
 
the Hebrew, and in each case by the same j^repo- 
 sitional prefix het/f ; secondly, this day is not simply 
 called blessed and holy, but it is blessed and holy, 
 because in it God rested ; thirdly, there is no 
 evening or morning, no gradual becoming, of this 
 day or light mentioned. 
 
 If the general view we have adopted be correct, 
 the word day here must signify light ; it must be 
 real as a state or condition ; it must be 
 independent of time ; in itself there must be the 
 qualities of blessedness and holiness ; and further, 
 it must be exceptional in the absence of develop- 
 ment. These conditions are satisfied almost to the 
 letter where St. Paul speaks of the blessed and J,,'''"' '' 
 only Potentate dwelling in light unapproachable. 
 And St. James says, " Every good gift and every j^i •'••"'"■ 
 perfect boon is from above, coming down from 
 the Father of lights, with whom can be no 
 variation, neither shadow that is cast by turn- 
 ing." 
 
 Thus the light of God is first and last. In 
 itself it is not subject to variation or development, 
 but tlirough created days there had been prepared 
 that which might receive and reflect this uncreated 
 
Ub MAN S GREAT CTIARTKll. 
 
 (T.ir.t.ii.!.. spiritual liglit, that which might show forth the 
 excellences of Him who called it out of darkness 
 into His marvellous light. 
 
 J Cu'r.' i V.' i This possibility is realiz(^(l in the dawning- 
 upon men of the light of the Cxospel of the glory of 
 Christ, who is the image of (rod. And 8t. Paul 
 draws attention to tlie unity of creation by his 
 uniformity of language, Avhere lie says, " seeing- 
 it is Grod that said, Light shall shine out of dark- 
 ness who shined in our hearts, to give the 
 light of the knowledge of the glory of God in 
 the face of Jesus Christ." 
 
 Tiir sai.hath. The historic Sabbath, first after, and secondly 
 before, six days' work ; the Urim (lights) ; the 
 
 j:.\. xxvi. :!i- Shekinah : the shinino- of the face of Moses : the 
 
 4(1, xxvii. -.'(I. ' ^ ' 
 
 2^ure golden candlestick of one piece, and its 
 seven lamps fed with pure olive oil, one of which 
 was perhiips kept alight continually ; these 
 s^anbolized the light which shineth without burn- 
 
 sr, i.uUri.Ts. ingout, the Dayspring from on high, 6»xpressed in 
 the Transfiguration, and incarnated in Jesus who 
 is the fulfilment of the Sabbath. 
 
 ThewtH-k. Our week has been made subservient as a 
 
 sjnnbol, and has been used as a means by which 
 
man's great (FIARTER. 59 
 
 man can apprehend the workfnhiess and restful- 
 ness of his Divine Architype. 
 
 The seventh day, without beginning or end, 
 marks the changeless attributes of G-od; tlie six 
 days whose beginnings are noted, but of whose 
 ends no hint is given, mark tlie reality of tlie 
 Divine activity. Each of the six days is brought 
 to morning. All six are continued. Man lives 
 in these six days. The world was made in six 
 days, in six parts each of which is a day. It is 
 still sustained by Grod as a world of six days, the 
 constitution of which rests upon a sixfold light. 
 The light of nature is maintained by the light of 
 Grod. Man's working being divided into 
 sextupal parts is typical of the Divine working. 
 Man's rest is on the changelessness of his Creator ; 
 the character of that rest should correspond with 
 the character of that in God which abounds 
 beyond creative activity. Man's serial week 
 repeated is a practical representation of God's 
 synthetic and simultaneous week continued, the 
 one being an image or shadow of the other. Yet, 
 although time may be a mere shadow shaped by 
 our weakness, nevertheless, by working iu that 
 
K.'v. xxi. ■2:\- 
 
 I'lov. 
 
 <'f. Cul 
 Zci-h. ; 
 
 60 avian's great chakter. 
 
 .shadow to bring sometliing to ftiUer (Jf(f/ we may, 
 by oiu" little labours, show in whose image we are 
 created. 
 
 The exposition given above of some of the dis- 
 tinctive phraseology of the first chapter of Grenesis 
 harmonizes with that we find on the last pages of 
 the Bible, where we read of a city that hath no need 
 of the sun, neither of the moon to shine upon it : 
 for the glory of Grod did lighten it, and the lamp 
 thereof /v the Lamb. And the gates thereof shall 
 in no wise be shut by day (for there shall be no 
 night there). 
 
 The closing chapter of the Bible corresponds 
 with its preface. The last chapter of the Reve- 
 lation is, in thought and language, a fitting sequel 
 to the first chapter of Grenesis. 
 
 The record of Revelation is a history of the dawn , 
 the struggle, and the victory of light. There are 
 i>.ni. viii. many evenings, but they lead to mornings, and at 
 last this evening-to-morning process will lead to 
 the Perfect Day. 
 
 AVhatever be the destiny in store for this world 
 and of the days whose mornings are liere chron- 
 icled, they will liave attained a glorious consumma- 
 
man's f^KEAT (HARTKU. 61 
 
 tion when mankind, having escaped from cornip- 
 tion and partaken of the Divine Natnre, rests -' i" 
 securely within tlie liglit of God. 
 
 '• To vour question now, 
 AN'liich touches on the workman and his work, 
 ' Let there be h'i^ht, and there was light' : 
 
 'Tis so. 
 For was. and is, and will be, are but is ; 
 And all creation is one act at once, 
 The birth of light : but we that are not all, 
 As parts, can see but parts, now this, now that, 
 And live, perforce, from thought to thought, and make 
 One act a phantom of succession : thus 
 Our weakness somehow shapes the shadow Time, 
 But in the shadow will we work, and mould 
 The woman to the fuller day.'' 
 
 Tennyson, " The I'rincess," III. 
 
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER II. 
 
 Help from physical science ... 
 
 Day One 
 
 " Beginning," iiot defined with the article ... 
 
 Careful language 
 
 The heaven and the earth 
 
 The words create SLiid make ... 
 The Spirit of (^od moved ... 
 Day one, a type of (lod's works... 
 
 Second Day ... 
 
 Waters: use of the word 
 A dividing tinnament ... 
 Heaven ... 
 
 Third Day 
 
 Heaven, earth, waters ; coming into familiar form 
 Biblical references to unfamiliar state of world ... 77 
 The significance of processes and constancy of pro- 
 cesses ... ... ... ... ... ... 78 — 80 
 
 Light of life : vegetative or organic ... 81 
 
 . No reference in this section to ( Jod's work in 
 
 achieving His will ... ... ... ... 82 
 
 ^lagnifying the significance of some mysteries 
 
 by minimizing that of others ... 83, 84 
 
 .Substances of organisms, earthy ... ... ... 84 
 
 Unity of the light of organic life 85 
 
 ]• 
 
 A(;r 
 
 
 (;5 
 
 65- 
 
 -73 
 
 
 i5.-y 
 
 
 66 
 
 
 (i7 
 
 ()7- 
 
 -71 
 
 
 72 
 
 
 73 
 
 76- 
 
 -76 
 
 
 73 
 
 
 74 
 
 
 75 
 
 76- 
 
 -S6 
 
 
 76 
 
64 man's great charter. 
 
 PAC E 
 
 Fourth Day ... 86—92 
 
 Sections of the work : one, two, and three, corre- 
 lated by same phraseology : this connection ilhis- 
 trated by the modern scientific theory ... 86 — 88 
 
 Wisdom established in the heavens 88—92 
 
 Fifth Day 92—99 
 
 Common translation possibly misleading ... ... 9H 
 
 The ^vords fold SLiid ir/i ale 98 
 
 Light of life : animal or sensitive ... ... ... 9+ 
 
 A new, unaccountable. unthinkal)le, mysterious de- 
 parture ... ... ... ... ... ... 9") 
 
 The word c/'ea^e for the second time... ... ... 96 
 
 Use of the words ciai/ and cv(ni'n)[i ... ... 97 — 99 
 
 The Sixth Day 100—111 
 
 Nice distinction in employment of words ... ... 101 
 
 Advent of land animals signifies no new creation or 
 
 day, but marks progress ... ... ... ... 102 
 
 Descent of man lO,*^ 
 
 Animalism the soil for the seed of human life ... 103^ 
 
 Domination of man 104 
 
 The Godlike higher nature 104 
 
 The word frea^e for the third time 105 
 
 The image of (rod 106 
 
 The new day, a ray from the wfn'de source of truth lOS 
 
 Comparison of the modern scientific interpretation with 
 
 that of Milton 109 
 
 The circle from light to light Ill 
 
CHAPTEE II. 
 
 We Avill now consider in further detail the 
 accounts of these six days, using for iUustration 
 a few of the facts and theories which the votaries 
 of physical science have discovered and pro- 
 pounded. 
 
 Students of ph^^sics, having discarded the 
 fanciful theories of their predecessors and become 
 earnest seekers after truth, have been rewarded 
 with discoveries or revelations which reflect light 
 upon this first lesson in the Biblical record of 
 Eevelation. 
 
 In His own way the Holy Spirit makes the 
 first chapter of Grenesis intelligible and suitable to 
 the present age. 
 
 In the HEGIXNING GoD CREATED THE HEAVEN 
 AND THE EARTH. 
 
 Both our standard versions admit the thought 
 of something more absolute than is warranted by 
 
 E 
 
66 man's great CHAlMKll. 
 
 the original, for the definite article is an un- 
 authorized insertion to accommodate the sentence 
 to English ears. Hebrew has no indefinite 
 article, and the definite article is not used with 
 " beginning," as it is with " heaven " and 
 ^' earth." This shows, by a very simple instance, 
 the impossibility of making a translation the 
 exact counterpart of its original, it must 
 unavoidably admit or omit something which the 
 original omits or admits. Nor should we ascribe 
 to pedantic trifling the taking notice of such 
 niceties as this. 
 
 We have seen that this narrative has avoided 
 the use of the word " first " for that which is 
 such only in a limited sense and relatively to a 
 particular series, and that it has distinguished tlie 
 sixth and consummating item of tliat series by 
 qualifying it alone with the definite article. 
 
 A style impressed with such marked 
 discrimination demands, on being reproduced in 
 a foreign language, most carefully-chosen exjjres- 
 sions, and where coincidence of meaning is 
 unobtainable, simple justice to the original 
 requires the discrejmncy to be pointed out. 
 
man's (iRKAT (H ARTE II. 67 
 
 Tliis beginning, tlien, is such an one as man cJu^lnYdm 
 looks for or is able to think about. Tliere is a 
 background ; but, for us and for the purpose in 
 hand, this beginning is a starting-point. 
 
 The hcuvvn and ihe earth. We subsequently 
 read of God making the firmament and calling 
 it heaven, preparing the dry land and calling 
 it earth, making the sun and moon and 
 setting them in the firmament. Before these 
 events happened — that is, before the firma- 
 ment, the dry land, and the sun and moon 
 Avere made or differentiated — this expression, 
 ^'the heaven and the earth," would denote the 
 whole material constituents of the universe. 
 
 " God crcafcd the heaven and the earth." We 
 must notice the word " create." It is only used 
 of three events in the whole work. 
 
 Our human words are being applied to the 
 vast and profound operations which lay the 
 foundations of worlds, and their meanings 
 are magnified together so as to retain some- 
 thing of a relative proportion between them- 
 selves. 
 
 The comparative rarity of the Hebrew word 
 
68 
 
 Nil "create'' is seen by contrast with the frequent 
 
 n^v recurrence of the Avord " make." For notwith- 
 
 standing the natural fact that it is very often 
 employed with direct reference to the work we 
 are considering, as, for example, in the title 
 Creator, yet altogether it is used in the Bible less 
 that sixty times, whereas the original for ''make" 
 occurs upwards of 2,600 times. 
 
 The less common word " create," is kept here 
 for representing three cardinal moments of 
 the Divine energy. 
 Exod. XX. 11. When the phrase "heaven and earth" in the 
 fourth Commandment is used not for the formative 
 material, but for the ordered whole produced b}' 
 the six days, then it is said, " Six days the Lord 
 7nade heaven and earth." 
 
 Man can neither make nor destro}' matter. 
 This palpable stuff of the universe is supposed to 
 consist of very small particles called atoms. 
 These indivisible entities are believed to be so 
 very tiny " that if a drop of water A\ere magnified 
 until it Avas the size of the earth, and the atoms 
 of which it was composed were correspondingly 
 magnified," they would appear no larger than 
 
man's great chartkr. 69 
 
 i'licket balls. A single <lrop is as niucli larger 
 tlian an atom, as tln' whole world is larger than a 
 cricket ball. 
 
 Notwithstanding tliis superlative sniallness, 
 each atom is supposed to be as Avell defined as 
 ti iiifoiufavfurcd (dilcJe. Possibly the substance of 
 these atoms is similar in all, so that the difference 
 between one sort of material and another may be 
 due to size, form, and arrangement, rather than to 
 any fmidamental difference in matter itself. 
 
 The doctrine of evolution "sets out from a given ^''i^jj^./''^ '" 
 
 . Brit.," ' 
 
 pomt in tune, at which it assumes a definite ,\j*;]"^,',\'^!J'''''' 
 arrangement of material (and mental) elements to ' 
 have obtained." 
 
 "Of the beginning of the universe, says 
 Professor Clifford, we know nothing at all. 
 Again, Professor J. Clerk-Maxwell tells us that 
 Ave must from the first assume an infinite number 
 of molecules exactly alike in their weight and 
 rate of vibration ; and he distinctly' argues against 
 the supposition that this system (jf like elements 
 can have been evolved. It is plain that every 
 doctrine of evolution must assume some definite 
 initial arrangement whicli is supposed to contain 
 
/U MANS (fREAT CHAR'tKH. 
 
 the possibilities of the order wliich anc find to be 
 evolved, and no other possibilit}'." 
 
 Such, then, at present is the scientific limitation. 
 Bej^ond the ascertained course of development, 
 beyond the assumed coui'se of development, 
 beyond any conceivable course of development, lies 
 the substance which develops ; and this, in its 
 twofold character of bod}' and soul, the outward 
 material substance which is the subject of growth, 
 and the inward spiritual substance which is the 
 cause of growth. The niysterj^ of the rich 
 autumn fields was liidden long since in the void 
 furrows of the heavy dull soil ; the garnered 
 grain has no secret that was not bosomed in the 
 scattered seed ; and the present " heaven and 
 earth " is only the outgrowth of the germinal 
 " heaven and eartii " we read of in this first verse 
 of tlie first chapter of Genesis. The laborious 
 interest of the husbandman, tlic watchfid interest 
 of the artist, and the studious interest of the man 
 of science, are each centred on a limited process. 
 The toil of a Triptolemus, of a Claude, and of a 
 Linnreus is exhausted upon a mere episode of the 
 Drama of Creation. 
 
.man's (iRKA'r cHAirrKii. 71 
 
 Moreover, we must carefully observe tlu* 
 cliaraeter of this limitation. It is not like the 
 boundary of an estate which owes nothing to 
 Avhat is beyond. It does not confine a self-suffic- 
 ing- whole ; rather, it is the line which separates a 
 superstructure from its foundation, or the visible 
 part of a tree from its roots. The problem of the 
 world can no more be solved by a survey which 
 ignores all bej^ond this limitation, than can the 
 rainbow be explained by the action of simply 
 terrestrial causes. 
 
 Beyond the evolution of heaven and earth there 
 is need of some fundamental provision involving 
 heaven and earth. This is a slue qtid iiou not only 
 of scientific theory, but even of scientific specula- 
 tion. Naturally, human language possesses no 
 special word for a work so far transcending not 
 only human work, but even human conception of 
 work. It is onl}' possible to employ the least 
 common of familiar words, and tliis accommoda- 
 tion is made in the sentence, '' Grod cukated the 
 heaven and the earth." 
 
 This constitutive substance appears to be 
 denominated in the second verse by the three 
 
72 MAN S GREAT CHARTER. 
 
 words, earth, deep, and waters; and to be qnalified 
 as waste, void, and dark. So we are brought 
 into the presence of the formless mass of 
 undifferentiated world-making material. 
 
 "The Spirit of Gtod moved upon the face of 
 
 THE waters. AnH GoB SAID, JjV.T THERE RE 
 LIGHT : AND THERE WAS LIGHT." 
 
 The Spirit of Grod moved upon the fluid 
 material, and it became by the energy imparted 
 to it a faintly luminous nebula. 
 
 The teaching of the text will be illustrated by 
 the following brief citations from modern scientific 
 writers : — 
 
 " Darkness might be defined as lether at rest ; 
 Science?' J..1. light as ootlier in motion. Both light and heat 
 
 are modes of motion." 
 .1. Noimau " The normal condition of everytliino" in natm^e, 
 
 Lockyer, *^ ^ ' 
 
 •'Manchester far OT near, is in this state of unrest, and if it were 
 
 Science Lec- 
 tures," ]). lOit 
 
 I'lfif. Tvn 
 <lall, -'Fi-i 
 ments of 
 
 •J 
 
 not so there would be for us no external world." 
 
 " Light is not a substance, but a process going on 
 
 a substance." 
 
 '' The working power of nature consists of actual 
 or potential motion, of which all its phenomena 
 are but special forms." 
 
 Prof. (J. 
 Clerk- 
 Maxwell, . 
 
 ';»;"9:- m a substance. 
 
 Hrit., 
 viii., .')(ii». 
 
 Prof. Tyn- 
 (liill, " Frag- 
 ments of 
 Science," vul 
 i., p. 7->. 
 
>tAN's GREAT CHARTER. ' '^ 
 
 As the matter of this ,t^md Vujht condensed, the 
 darkling glow was superseded by a growing 
 brilliance, the vast distinction between light and 
 darkness was gradually manifested, and to the 
 perfected light God gave the name of day. From 
 night there was a transition to some degree of 
 lig^it, producing the mingled state of evening; 
 thence, light still increasing, dawned the morning 
 of ilmj our, the type and model of all God's works. 
 -And God said, I.et there re a fir- 
 mament IN THE MIDST OF THE WATERS, AND 
 LET IT DIVIDE THE WATERS FROM THE WATERS. 
 
 And God made the firmament, and divided 
 
 THE WATERS WHICH WERE INDER THE FIR- 
 MAMENT FROM THE WATERS WHICH WERE AIJOVE 
 THE FIRMAMENT." 
 
 The following passage from the Book of Micah Mi 
 may preserve our imagination from an involun- 
 tary anachronism and help to fix our minds with 
 some precision upon the sort of " waters " with 
 which the text is dealing : " The mountains shall 
 be molten under him, and the valleys shall be 
 cleft, as wax before the fire, as waters that are 
 poured down a steep place." 
 
In the presence of fluid light, with sun, moon, 
 and stars all in the distant future, on the eve of a 
 dividing firmament, which, as we find in the 
 16th and 1 7th verses, extends not to earth's 
 cloud-land, but to the sun, moon, and stars ; 
 we must not, in justice to the narrative, relax 
 our mental effort so as to let our thoughts lapse 
 amidst familiar sights and lesser distinctions. 
 
 The students of physics teach us that the glow- 
 ing earth stuff was so moved as to become divided, 
 and that our own planet was formed from matter 
 which was once contiguous with that which now 
 forms the moon and the sun. AVe are also told 
 that throughout the space Avliich separates stars 
 Maxwii/ ■ '"^^^ planets and satellites, there is a light-eon- 
 BriV,'' veying icther, capable of penetrating all trans- 
 parent bodies, and probably opaque bodies too, and 
 that within certain limits the earth is surrounded 
 by an atmosphere of oxygen and nitrogen. 
 
 God called this dividing firmament lieaven. 
 Heaven is a name frequently used for the Spirit's 
 abode. To those who are aware how entirely all 
 living things depend upon this which (iod called 
 heaven, the fitness of such an adai)tation of the 
 
MAN S GRKAI' (11 AKTKU. t •) 
 
 word to a higher pur}>ose will be plainly apparent. 
 This heaven is the medium of all the benefits 
 dispensed by the sun, moon, and stars. It 
 supports light and heat and life on the earth. It 
 enables fellow- creatures to have communion one 
 with another. It is invisible, and yet is nearer ^t;.«'.;, i^"!^'' 
 
 ■ »/ XVII. Jl. 
 
 and in closer relation to us than anything we can 
 see. We dwell in it and it dwells in us. We 
 cannot embrace it, but it embraces us. It submits 
 to our apprehension, while it entirely bathes our 
 comprehension. 
 
 This enlightening and quickening heaven is a 
 second day. 
 
 In any connotation of tlie sentence,'^ (fHfl crc/i/ if (/ 
 H'an and moniitnj /ras (/(/// (( xcvond,''^ it must be 
 perceived that, A\hatever else the word da>' might 
 mean, it cc)uld not mean a measure of time. The 
 notion of time would be utterly irrelevant, being 
 obviously excluded b}' the fact that the giving of 
 the ordinance itself upon which time depends has 
 a place in the narrative, but a subso([uent ]>lace. 
 
 *• Zpall the (1(1)/ npiiravd Dante, 
 
 , , . , ., . / / .. Paradise," 
 
 .1 dan iieir-r/fi n. 2i7. 
 
 This dav or liy-ht is the heaven bv which we 
 
76 MAX S GREAT CHARTER. 
 
 see and in "wliich we live. Such is a second 
 day. 
 
 '' Axj) Groi) SAID, Let the avaters under the 
 
 HEAVEN ]JE gathered TOGETHER INTO ONE PLACE, 
 AND LET THE DRY LAND APPEAR I AND IT WAS SO. 
 
 And GrOD cali,ed the dry land Earth ; and 
 the gathering together of the waters 
 ( alled he Seas: and God saw that it was 
 
 GOOD." 
 
 Drawing near to tliat whicli to us is the wonted 
 state of things, words begin to assume their 
 common specific significance. Those which were 
 massed together for a designation of the undiffer- 
 entiated material become severalized as the 
 universe changes from a homogeneous w^hole to a 
 whole of united distinctions. 
 
 The firmament has received its name of heaven, 
 
 and here the dry land or dryness receives the 
 
 name of eartli, and the waters, gaining more of 
 
 the characteristics of the familiar fluid, receive the 
 
 Ttxt Hook of name of seas. Professor Gleikie says that under 
 
 <ieoloj,'jM).:i4. "^ 
 
 the pressure of the primeval atmosphere the first 
 (MassHuoivuf condensed water mioht have had the temperature 
 of a dull red ]ieat or of molten lead. 
 
MAN S GREAT fllAlM KK. < i 
 
 The liible student should not find it over- 
 whelmingly difficult to accustom himself to ideas, 
 such as this, which are suggested by physical 
 science. For let him give careful attention to the 
 thoughts contained in the following passages : — 
 
 " The day cometh, it burneth as a furnace." ^'=^' '^ 
 
 " The mountains quake at Him, and the liills ^=»''"" 
 melt ; and the eartli is upheaved at His presence.'' '. ' ''^ 
 
 "' For the Lord, the God of hosts, is he thai ^^^^^^ 
 toucheth the land and it melteth, all that dwell 
 therein shall mourn ; and it shall rise up wholly 
 like the river; and shall sink again, like the 
 river of Egypt." 
 
 " The mountains rose, the valleys sank ^'^ ^i 
 
 Unto the place wliich thou hadst founded for 
 them." 
 
 In such passages the thought of the solid fabric 
 of the Avorld being reduced to a condition like 
 water is distinctly presented. And a cliild could 
 understand that if the mountains should be again 
 molten, and the valleys cleft, as wax before the Micai 
 fire, as waters that are poured down a steep place ; 
 then wliat we now know as water would at once 
 be evaporated, and when the re-cooling took 
 
 IX. .1. 
 
 Vt. iii 
 
78 ^fan's (.kkat fiiAirn-.K. 
 
 place would be the last of tlie visible world to 
 resume its familiar form. 
 
 The "water" would gradually give up to 
 common water all such characteristics as made the 
 name appropriate for thfit which, being unknown, 
 was without a special name of its own. 
 
 Heaven, earth, and water graduall}^ assume the 
 familiar distinctive forms to wldcli these words 
 severally apply. 
 
 IvaiiLi^' ^^^^ waters of the ocean are suffiuient to cover 
 
 ism," 1.. -Mc. the whole globe to a depth of two miles, but the 
 manner of cooling by which the earth reached its 
 present condition was such as to make its surface 
 sufficiently uneven to cause the existence of dry 
 land. 
 
 Our usual inc|uiries in such a case stop short 
 at discovering the manner of cooling, and upon this 
 we base scientific theories of the world and prac- 
 
 iirit '^TrV ^^^^^ calculations for the mechanical arts. Iron 
 increases in \olume at tlie moment of passage 
 from the liquid to the solid state, and decreases 
 from the moment of solidification down to the 
 
 uramrkc'nv Ordinary temperature. Each metal has its own 
 
 Art. ' ' ' 
 
 "Metals.- peculiar rate of contraction and expansion, which 
 
Kiwy. 
 
 man's (iHKVr ( li \1M KK. 70 
 
 is interestingly exemplified in the case of a certain 
 small bronze statue which was made with an iron urft'J- 
 
 Art. " Metiil- 
 
 core; the different measure of contraction in the'""''' 
 two metals has caused the figure to split. Also 
 the ])arting witli excess of temperature takes a 
 certain time in jn-oportion to the surrounding con- 
 ditions. A large casting, as, for example, a piece of 
 ordnance or a heavy bell, will take several weeks to 
 cool. The constanc}" of facts of tliis kind liaving 
 been sutliciently demonstrated to be relied upon, 
 advantage is taken of it in metal work, and upon 
 a similar constancy theories are based as to the 
 time occupied and the incidents that accom2:)anied 
 the solidifying and cooling the material which 
 forms our planet. Taking this '' constancy" for 
 granted, we ask, how long the earth will have 
 taken to cool down, and wliat effects will have 
 followed the changes of temperature. 
 
 As a rule, we do not sufficiently dwell upon the 
 virf/o' and universal signficance of this constancy. 
 We study the results of an ascertainable process at 
 work in material particles of tlie world, but we do 
 not usually tliink of the cause behind the process 
 so as to continue our investigation by seeking after 
 
80 
 
 the origin of there being any process at all, and of 
 there being this particular process, crowned with 
 so transcendent a consummation, wlieu an infini- 
 tude of other processes might be imagined which 
 would have entirely different results. Yet it is 
 to this principal origin, rather than to auy 
 secondary occasion, that we must attribute the 
 existence of an ordered universe instead of a 
 chaos or nothing. 
 
 As a particular instance, the distribution of land 
 and water, one of the first things requisite for 
 making the earth habitable, has been occasioned 
 by the action of secondary causes, and by such a 
 "constancy'' as that of Avhicli we have just spoken, 
 and all this is the field of physical science; but 
 this surface field is sup})orted hy the granite 
 foundations of the living rock beneath, and i& 
 wrapped in the mantle of heaven above, and 
 therefore it exists, and is fruitful ; so by what- 
 ever means occasioned the distribution of land and 
 water, like everytliing else, has its fundamental 
 dependence upon the principal cause of all. To- 
 this oiu- narrative points by declaring that God 
 said, " Let the waters be gathered into one place^ 
 
:\IAX'S GREAT CIIAKIEH. 81 
 
 and let tlie dry laud appear." There is no other 
 final explanation of the event ; there is no other 
 principle of promulgation for the laws of cooling, 
 shrinking, and settling. 
 
 Apparently there is no new departure here of 
 sufficient magnitude to be denoted by the word 
 " create " or " make,'' nor have we reached a new 
 day. 
 
 '"And Groi) said. Let the earth put forth 
 
 GRASS, HERIJ YIELDING SEED, (aND) ERUIT-TREE 
 bearing FRL'IT after ITS KIND, WHEREIN IS 
 THE SEED THEREOF, UPON THE EARTH I AND IT 
 
 WAS SO. And the earth brought forth 
 
 GRASS, HERB YIELDING SEED, (aND) FRUIT-TREE 
 BEARING FRUIT, WHEREIN IS THE SEED THEREOF, 
 AFTER ITS KIND ; AND GoD SAW THAT IT WAS 
 GOOD." 
 
 These words signalize the dawn of organ izaf ion 
 ill action. Hitherto there has been organization, 
 but now we come to self-adapting organiza- 
 tion, and the mystery of causation can less easily 
 be overlooked. As comprehensively embodied 
 in a single living organism with its ada})tations 
 constantly proceeding before our Aery eyes, an 
 
 F 
 
82 man's great (jfakter. 
 
 ordering and regulating cause is pressed more 
 ohtrusivel}^ upon us tlian it is in tli(^ immense 
 order of the universe, wliere all tliat can be 
 observed is but as a particle, and our Avliole vigil 
 is but as a moment. 
 
 Ignoring tlie significance of organization, we 
 come to an insoluble difficulty at tbe point of transi- 
 tion from organized structure to a vital organism, 
 and this is at present one of the most effectual 
 cheeks upon the absolutism of any general theory 
 of simple progressive development. 
 
 The statements in the narrative concerning 
 both parts of tliis third portion of the work are 
 distinguished by the omission of any reference to 
 the activity of Grod in performing His will such as 
 occurs elsewhere. 
 
 We read that God created the heaven and the 
 earth ; that the Spirit of God iiiorcd upon tlu^ face 
 of the waters before it Avas said, let there be 
 lio'ht ; tliat God indde the firmament of wliich He 
 had spoken : but there is no intimation of a 
 Divine process in this account of tlie third 
 portion of the work. 
 
 I would venture to suggest that perhaps this 
 
man's (,kkat charter. 83 
 
 exceptiou is owing, in tlie first part, to 
 the existence in tlie preceding work of 
 the force, or measure of Divine energy, 
 required for this new development, and in the 
 second part either to the same reason, or to the 
 fact of vital energy being so intimately. connected 
 ^\'ith the Will of God as to exclude the thought of 
 process or to withstand the po^^'er of words to 
 express it. TJiis latter alternative has, however, 
 opposed to it the fact that some conjunctures, 
 apparently more fimdamental, are indicated by 
 tlie words create and make. 
 
 Thus with great diffidence we are inclined to 
 think that physical science somewhat magnifies 
 the difficulty here at the advent of a living 
 organism by minimizing the prior significant 
 mystery of structural organization. Before the 
 dawn of physical life there was existence and 
 order. If these latter realities always impressed 
 our minds with the testimonj^ they bear to their 
 own spiritual origin, we should not be as startled 
 as we are by the advent of life. But whereas the 
 ever-increasing knowledge of the material 
 universe tends to put the advent of existence and 
 
 F 2 
 
81 man's great (HAKTEK. 
 
 order farther and farther back, and evades 
 giving any account of it ; on the other hand this 
 same knowledge accentuates the necessity of the 
 advent of life, and that within calculable limits of 
 time. The difficulties are of the same kind, but it 
 is possible to ignore the one, and impossible to 
 ignore the other. In saying that physical science 
 seems to magnify the difficulty of accounting for 
 the origin of life, we mean, of course, that it does so 
 relatively by making too little of the other 
 difficulty. 
 
 According to our narrative, we observe that in 
 this portion of the work there is no creating, 
 moving, or making, but only a fresh direction. It 
 cf 2 Pet iii -> ^^^ ^^® Will of God that the earth which had 
 been compacted out of and by means of water 
 should bring forth vegetation. From the cedar to 
 the hyssop, all plant organisms are of the earth ; 
 their substance is akin to unvitalized substances 
 about them, they decay down into lifeless mould, 
 which may again be built up into living tissue, 
 yet their bright verdure and lustrous blossoms 
 shed a fresh radiance upon the earth. 
 
 The material having been prepared, there at 
 
:M\n's C.KKA'I" ClIAKIKK. S'5 
 
 leiigtli appeared the physical basis of vitality, 
 followed by assimilation, growth, and heredity. 
 
 Alodern science has now for many years been 
 demonstrating the unity of this day of life, 
 teaching us to look upon all vital organisms as 
 related to one another, as actuated by the same 
 principles, and exhibiting, in their endless variety 
 of forms, the same agent, and reflecting the same 
 light. It takes only one day to make a living 
 world out of soil, air, and water ._ 
 
 As we have seen, an acceptation of the word day 
 divested of the notion of time has been secured so 
 that f//(' <l((u of r('(jetafioii is just a literally true 
 term for the wakening and quickening principle 
 of vegetation. 
 
 Thus the activity of every plant depends upon 
 the light or day of organic life. Plants can only 
 do their work while it is day, while this light is in 
 them ; withdraw the vitalizing principle, and then 
 in that night tliey cannot work. 
 
 Before tliis day, in spite of all the brightness of 
 the Avorld, there still hovered over it the darkness 
 of death. Into this darkness there shot forth a 
 gleam of rpiickening light, the harbinger of a 
 
86 >[an's (jkkat charter. 
 
 third day, continuous with the other two days, 
 
 and shining by help of them : Ve<jetatio}t l>righte)i- 
 
 liKj the deaert globe of land and frrtteris a third day. 
 
 "And God said. Let iiekkk mk mghts ix the 
 
 FIRMAMENT OF THE HEAVEN TO DIVIDE THE DAY 
 FKOM THE MGHT ; AND lAVV THI'.M 15E FOR SIGNS 
 AND FOR SEASONS, AND FOR DAYS AM) YEARS : 
 AND LET THEM BE FOR LIGHTS IX THE FIRMA- 
 MENT OF THE HEA\ EN, TO GIVE LIGHT UPON THE 
 EARTH : AND 11 WAS SO. AnD GtOD MADE THE 
 TWO GREAT LIGHTS; T'HE GREATER LIGHT TO 
 RULE THE DAY, AND THE LESSER LIGHT TO RULE 
 THE NIGHT : (lIE MADE) THE STARS ALSO." 
 
 There are two interesting points of Language 
 
 to be noticed in this statement. The form of 
 
 ■jpxn expression, rmd God xaid there sIki/J he, or kf there 
 
 ^'?!' ^0 ^^: he^ is onlj' used in connection with the first, 
 
 second, and fourth portions of the work. And the 
 
 ■ipN*] expansion of this form into And God mild let 
 
 ^•7; Q*^I^^^. tJiere })e — (ind God made, is used only of the 
 
 .f" second and fourth portions. 
 
 So that these three portions of the work, the 
 first, second, and fourth, are bound together, as it 
 were, by phraseology. The light-giving substance, 
 
man's great ciiarti.u. 87 
 
 the tninsluceiit firniameut, aiul the solar and 
 stelhir system, are closely imited parts of the 
 whole work ; they together compose a great 
 section whicli cnlminates in the ordinance tliat 
 affords signs and seasons, and da}'s and 
 years. 
 
 The connection of these three portions of the 
 work is illn<trated by the Nebula hypothesis, 
 according to which, if extended to the whole 
 stellar system, as well as to its part, the 
 solar system, the original cloud of fire-dust 
 condensed, threw off from itself rings, somewhat 
 similar perha})s to those now encircling the 
 planet Saturn, which collapsed and assumed the 
 shape of spheroids : thus, and by kindred 
 processes on a smaller scale, the nebulous matter 
 was resolved into stars, planets, and satellites, 
 some of which, but particularly the sun and moon, 
 by the clearing of our atmosphere, became visible 
 as an establislied order of luminaries, rendering 
 an inestimable and manifold service for the 
 dwellers on tliis planet. 
 
 This scientific theory illustrates the narrative of 
 Genesis, in tlie first ]>lace, by presenting a <lefinite 
 
^8 MA^'s GKEAT CHARTEK. 
 
 couception of an early luminous state of the 
 universe before the existence of tlie familiar 
 luminaries ; secondly, by its conception of a 
 division in i\\Q Jiidd Jiaze of U(jhf, separating the 
 2:)art beneath the heaven — that is, our earth — from 
 the part above the heaven — that is, the sun, moon 
 and stars — which explains both the Huid condition 
 of the universe, and also the thought of a firma- 
 ment reaching to the sun, moon, and stars ; 
 thirdly, by being in itself a formulated tlieory 
 conceived in great part from studjdng the ordered 
 array of heavenly bodies, it is a sample of the 
 good purpose served by the appearance of the orbs 
 of heaven through the atmosphere of earth. It 
 is eas}^ to imagine how a very slight difference in 
 the laws of light, or in the constitution of the 
 iether, or in the condition of our atmosphere, 
 might have left the earth without a sight of the 
 ordinance of heaven. 
 
 Of course, *' laws " being as they are, the state 
 of tilings could not be different, which is really 
 nothing wiser than saying the world is as it is ; 
 and this is one of the few things allowed to be 
 self-evident. In the same way a masterpiece of 
 
:\IAn's (;RKAT ClIAKTEK. 89 
 
 architecture (?ouUl not be other than it is, seeing 
 that both bricklayer and stonemason worked so as 
 to produce it. But the credit of tlie wliole, as a 
 piece of architecture, is due to him by whose in- 
 spiration both brickhiyer and stonemason performed 
 their tasks. 80 the inestimable service rendered 
 to man by the sun, moon, and stars is owing to 
 laws being as they are, that is to say, it is owing 
 to the principal cause of the universe. 
 
 There is no final explanation of the benefits 
 devived from the sj^stem of sun, moon, and stars, 
 acting as knninaries to this earth, than tliis : A^'I) 
 
 GOD SKT OR GAVE THEM IX THE FIRMAMENT OF 
 THE HEAVEX, TO GIVE EIGHT UPON THE EARTH. 
 
 If the scientific view be correct, and its relation 
 to this narrative be that which we have adopted, 
 then the formation of sun, moon, and stars had 
 been proceeding by means of the second day, tlie 
 causative principle of celestial spaces in the un- 
 congealed mass which was the inchoate heaven 
 and eartli. And tliis fourth day is the cause of 
 the special relation of the heavenly bodies 
 towards the sense and intelligence of creatures 
 about to inhabit the (nirth ; the cause of sun, moon, 
 
90 
 
 and stars fulfilliDg a certain fuiietioii for our 
 benefit ; the cause of their being able to act as 
 himinaries. 
 
 By this fourtli day we ha\'e the orderly succes- 
 sion of light and darkness, day and night, diminu- 
 tive portions of those spoken of in the beginning 
 of the narrative; yet truly day so far as it is light, 
 truly night so far as it is darkness. By tliis fourth 
 day we have the regulative thought of time. 
 
 Bj' this fourth day we have learned many 
 things, and been enabled to make such a theory of 
 the universe as that of which we have just been 
 speaking. By this fourth day we have been pro- 
 vided with signs which have been the key of 
 knowledge, with seasons that have enabled us to 
 arrange our work, with days in which to labour, 
 and nights in which to rest. 
 
 By this fom'tli day a dynamic influence has been 
 exerted upon the facultj' by which we acquire 
 knowledge. Astrology is not to be judged by 
 the information to which it led so much as by 
 the invaluable exercise it gave to the faculty of 
 observation. This influence is seen in tlie word 
 coihsidcr, which literally means to contemplate the 
 
man's GRF.AT CTIAKTKK. 5)1 
 
 stars. l*rofessor Tyndall has pointed out that, ii,^[|"^'i^.;';;,!"' 
 at first, througli sheer want of capacity, the mind 
 refuses to take in revealed facts, but by degrees 
 the steady contemplation of these facts so 
 strengthens and expands tlie intellectual powers, 
 that where truth once could not find an entrance, 
 it eventually finds a home. So, while we lay aside 
 many of the notions formed by those who have 
 unweariedly watched the hosts of heaven, we are 
 the inheritors of mental powers improved by such 
 contemplation. 
 
 By this fourth day there is displayed before errs. vin. :j, 
 man's eyes the stately pageant of an established i.vxxix^:)(i. 
 order with which he cannot intermeddle ; Avhich 
 man has not made, and which he cannot destroy. 
 This has enabled man to get above himself by 
 giving him a measm-e of his own littleness and of 
 God's greatness, and by showing that his own 
 glory, if glory he has, must be in tliinking the 
 thoughts of God ; by this sign man must be 
 through his spirit superior to all things put 
 together, or he is the merest dust of the balance. 
 
 This fourth day is concerned therefore with the 
 setting or (living these heavenly bodies in the 
 
92 man's rniEAF ( harter. 
 
 firmament, as luminaries to the earth, as, in 
 several senses, a ruling institution in relation to 
 man. 
 
 This fourth day of Groil includes all our days, 
 and, before it closes, all of them must be 
 numbered. The earth itself was once as^low, but 
 when it ceased to be self-luminous, it was 
 probably surrounded by an atmosphere too 
 heavily laden for the passage of light from 
 without, so that it Avas left in utter darkness. As 
 the air cleared, ra}'s of sunlight struggled through, 
 and thus there was a suffused light in Avhich it is 
 likely plant-life began to flourish, and then the 
 earth was gradually covered with profuse vegeta- 
 tion, which conduced to the further jnirifjdng of 
 the atmosphere. The fourth day dawned in the 
 apparition of the defined orbs of the luminaries, 
 a system of manifold enlightenment for a being, 
 now foreshadowed, who should be susceptible of 
 1" -M.'- such brio'htness. This, ///.v n finci' Vniht in /i(/I/f, is 
 a fourth day. 
 
 " And Groi) SAID, Let the waters urixg 
 
 FORTH AP.UXDAXrLY THE MOVlXCi CREATURE THAT 
 HATH ]JEE, AND LET FOWJ> KEY AHOVI', THE 
 
 inorijui 
 xci. 1(1. 
 
man's great CHAUiKll. 93 
 
 EARTH IX I'lli; OPKN ITIOIAMEXT OF IIKAVKN. 
 
 Am) God ( keated the great whales, and 
 every eiving creature itiat moveth, which 
 the avaters iiroighl' forth abundantly, 
 
 AFTER THEIR KINDS, AND EVERY WINCtED FOWE 
 AFTER ITS KIND." 
 
 The translation proclnces a misleading resemb- 
 lance between this accovmt and that of the earth 
 bringing forth grass. *' Let the water bring forth ^v'\i^'' 
 abundantly the moving creature that hath life," 1"!)^^ Qvsn 
 is expressed by the original in five words, swann, ^l'^ ^ ■.■:.■ 
 tJie-icaters, swarjjf, breath, life. The word .s/rai'/jt 
 occurs twice, first as a verb in the future, secondly 
 as a noun. Such repetition is a common form of 
 emphasis. 
 
 In verses 20 and 21, we learn tliat the 
 waters were to swarm with, and that the}' 
 did swarm with, living creatures ; but we do not 
 learn that the waters generated them, nor tliat the 
 waters brought forth the living creatures in the 
 same way that the earth brought forth grass. 
 
 The two equivocal words fowl and whale are 
 simple examples of tliat ambiguity of language to 
 which allusion was made in the short Introduction. 
 
Prof. K. 
 Liilhaai. 
 
 94 man's great chautek. 
 
 Trade and domestic usage have been limiting 
 the word fowl to a certain sort of poultry, 
 whereas it was as comprehensive as tlie word bird, 
 and more so than the word bird is at the present 
 day. The name whale has been subjected to 
 similar limitations. Its use is now technicallj^ 
 confined to " an aquatic mammalian of the order 
 cetacea." 
 
 The sense of the word is '' roller," from the 
 rolling of porpoises, and is closely allied to 
 " wheel.'' It was originally applied to any large 
 Ji-sh, including the walrus, grampus, and porpoise. 
 
 The word translated whales was not even 
 restricted to creatures inliabiting the water, and is 
 the same original for which we read " dragons," 
 and " serpents." The word for fowl means a 
 flying-thing. Thus in both cases the correspond- 
 ing Hebrew words demand that the full breadth 
 of meaning be restored to their English counter- 
 parts. 
 
 Of all changes and conjunctures that Ave have 
 hitherto met with in the course of tlie world's 
 formation, this advent of living creatures is the 
 most important. It is the first step in the great 
 
man's (illEA'r ( llAIMl.K. 95 
 
 retiex action Avliieli becomes perfect in man. The 
 work itself, up to this point, contained neither 
 feeling nor perception. Notwithstanding all 
 eartli's brightness, the night of insensibility still 
 hung over it. We may distinguish between 
 the power evinced in originating a solar system 
 and in tlie growtli of a crystal, between simple 
 accretion in a not-living body and complex 
 assimilation in a vital organism ; but the transition 
 to the animal senses marks, with far greater 
 distinctness, a new revelation of the Power from 
 Avhom the world is derived. 
 
 TJie assertions of scientific authorities upon 'f- i!«'itany 
 
 ■•- '■ liitrod. to 
 
 this point are very explicit. Dr. Wallace, the ihi-Ainnz!'.!!. 
 
 co-discoverer with Darwin of the paramount i-n? iV'""*. 
 
 importance of " natural selection," says that the 
 
 introduction of sensation is beyond all possibility 
 
 of explanation by matter, its laws and forces ; 
 
 that we have here the certaintv that somethiua' I'lindi.ai 
 
 ^ Jolin Ciir.l. 
 
 new has arisen. Mr. Huxley tliinks that any- Iik"' '^■' '' 
 thing so remarkable as a state of consciousness 
 coming about as the result of iiTitating nervous 
 tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance 
 of the Djin when Alladin rubbed his lamp in the 
 
l.L. 
 
 90 :V[AN's (illKAT (HAHTEK. 
 
 story. The passage from tlie ph} sics of the 
 brain to the eorresj^oiiding facts of consciousness 
 is, to Professor Tynd-all, unthinkable. And the 
 .Tain Sully, wntcr of One division of the article " Evolution '' 
 in the " Encyclopaedia Britannica " bears similar 
 testimony. He sa3^s, " all the laws of physical 
 evolution can never help us to understand the 
 first genesis of mind ; and this difficulty is in no 
 way reduced by Mr. Spencer's conception of a 
 perfect gradation from pnrely physical to con- 
 scious life. The dawn of the first confused and 
 shapeless feeling is as much a mystery as the 
 genesis of a distinct sensation.'' 
 
 This inscrutable occurrence, which, to science, 
 is a new thing, unaccountable, unthinkable, and 
 a mystery, is distinguished by the use, for the 
 second time only, of tlie exceptional word create : 
 Grod CREATED the great whales, and every living 
 creature that moveth. 
 
 Not a single one of the senses is physically 
 intelligible. Whatever (ininidied jcJhj first felt 
 even the slightest irritation, or the feeblest 
 quivering of any sensation, was the earnest of a 
 new day, and a token of the most eventful fresh 
 
97 
 
 departure since God created the lieaven and tlie 
 earth. The great whales are the representatives 
 of this new creation, the breath of life, including 
 feeling and perception. The breath of life in this 
 sense of perceptive existence, or as that which 
 translates motion into sensation, is induced by the 
 Divine energy, denoted by the unusual word 
 create. The fifth day is the abiding light of 
 sensitive light. 
 
 Although this fresh departure is a new thing, 
 unaccountable, unthinkable, and a mystery, yet 
 it is so obscure in its first beginning as to elude 
 detection. Mr. Wallace, who affirms that the seSS-- p. 
 merest rudiment of sensation or self -consciousness 
 is infinitely removed from absolutely non-sentient 
 or unconscious matter, says that the transition is ism/'pl^ro. 
 as absolutely imperceptible at its point of origin 
 as the change that takes place in the curve in 
 which a body is moving when the application of 
 some new force causes the curve to be slightly 
 altered. 
 
 The language formed upon the actual making 
 of day from darkness tln-ough an obscure passage 
 of evening, supplies a perfectly adequate expression 
 
98 
 
 for progress by the most imperceptible gradations. 
 This language is partially illustrated by the name 
 eozoon, meaning dmcn of life; but the comparative 
 suddenness of dawn with its rapid merging into 
 morning, caused by the rising of a luminary already 
 perfected, disqualifies the common advent of day 
 from forming such an accurate expression for the 
 coming to light of a really new and distinct 
 genesis. 
 
 " The first confused and shapeless feeling ' ' is due, 
 not to the rising of an entirely formed luminary, 
 but to the struggling into existence of the light 
 itself ; not to an external order, but to a light im- 
 manent in that which it illuminates. 
 
 Thus the word evening might suggest a name 
 for a class of things in which sensation is very 
 slight, or in which the existence of sensation is 
 doubtful ; so crejmscukir might be used in rela- 
 tion to this intermediate regmiui profisficuin to 
 describe some modification in an organism 
 instead of a mere manner of life. 
 
 But, as we have seen, the word evening very 
 easily includes a backward reference to light. 
 By the form of this narrative the common word 
 
MA^-'S GREAT CHARTER. 99 
 
 liiis been made to foreshadow the morning of a 
 coming day, but it also familiarly refers to a 
 previous day. Now a day was already bright in 
 the organic life of vegetation, and it is out of this 
 that the new light struggles into existence. "The l^Sce:^ 
 
 vul. ii., p. i!4C. 
 
 vegetable," says Professor Tyndall, " shades into 
 the animal by such fine gradations, that it is 
 impossible to say where the one ends and the 
 other begins." 
 
 The lasting day of living things, the inward 
 light of vegetative organisms, had already 
 dawned ; but as concerning sight and sense, it was 
 still night. Subsequently there was something 
 associated with this light of crescent or vegetative 
 life which went beyond the efi'ect of its intensest 
 brilliancy; something different in kind from the 
 power evidenced in the peerless products of the 
 vegetable kingdom ; something not developed 
 from this light, yet within it, and only within it. 
 
 There was an ever-so-slight suffusion of an 
 entirely fresh sort of light somewhere in the path 
 of organic life's rays, a mingling of a new indis- 
 tinct principle. This was the evening to be fol- 
 lowed by the morning of sentient life, a fifth day. 
 
 G 2 
 
100 man's great charter. 
 
 " And GroD said, Let the earth bring 
 
 FORTH THE LIVING CREATURE AFTER ITS KIND, 
 CATTLE AND CREEPING THING, AND BEAST OF THE 
 EARTH AFTER ITS KIND ; AND IT WAS SO. AnD 
 
 God made the beast of the earth after 
 its kind, and the cattle after their kind, 
 and every thing that creepeth upon the 
 ground after its kind : and grod saw that 
 it was good." 
 '^oSmof Science now supposes that all birds, beasts, and 
 p. 533. ' fishes are lineally descended from an ancestral 
 
 A. R. Wal- 
 
 whils'm?''' fish, or, at least, a creature fitted for aquatic life. 
 
 p. 401). 
 
 Assuming the general truth of this hypothesis, 
 an interesting illustration is afforded of the nice 
 distinction in the use of words observed in oui^ 
 narrative. 
 
 It was pointed out above that sensitive life was 
 not hrought forth or derived from anything pre- 
 viously existing. 
 
 Although it may have arisen, and probably did 
 arise, within some vegetable organism, within the 
 light of organic life, yet it was not of it, it was 
 not a simple development from it. 
 
 Sensitive life was stated on the authority of 
 
101 
 
 science and Scripture to be a new thing in the 
 world distinct from vegetation. The language as 
 to the evening made room for the intimate connec- 
 tion of organic life with sensitive life as its 
 necessary environment or invoJucnoii ; while the 
 use of the word create, and the avoidance of the 
 word for derivation, accentuated the newness of 
 the gift with which the world was enriched. 
 
 If science is correct in this particular, there is 
 no such break between beast and fish as between 
 fish and plant, but rather the interval can be 
 filled up, by the well trained imagination, with a 
 fairly intelligible progressive development. 
 
 Corresponding with this scientific belief we 
 have in our narrative, not an absolute Id he, or 
 •swarm, or the word create, but simply let the earth 
 bring forth. The earth was already endowed with 
 sensitive life and no new thing was wanted for 
 the evolution of cattle, creeping thing, and beast 
 of the earth. 
 
 Moreover, how clearly and simply this narra- 
 tive distinguishes and unites the material and 
 spiritual aspects of evolution : the outward 
 progress and the inward power ; the visible and 
 
102 man's great charter. 
 
 the invisible. Is one looking for the external 
 facts of the world's history ? — if so, it is quite 
 true the earth brought forth the beast of the earth. 
 Is one, with soul unsatisfied, asking why there is 
 a history, and what is the efficient cause of that 
 whole infinite wonder called a living creature ? — if 
 so, he is answered : Grod made the beast of the earth 
 after its kind. As after the creation of heaven and 
 earth we read that God made the firmament and 
 the sun, moon, and stars, so after the creation of 
 breath of life, represented by the great whales, 
 we read that God made the beast of the earth. 
 
 The order ascending from plants to land animals 
 is an evident advance towards creatures having 
 life more abundantly, finding more in life, more 
 warmth and feeling, a greater variety and intensity 
 of sensation. They are ujoward steps, which may 
 be generally distinguished by the facts of seeding, 
 spawning, laying eggs, and bearing young. 
 
 Although marking progress, these land creatures 
 do not bring in a new day. There is room even 
 to question why they occur here rather than in the 
 previous account of the fifth day, and modern 
 scientific theory is ready with a reply. 
 
man's grkat charter. 103 
 
 The descent of man from animal progenitors or 
 the genealogical connection of man with other 
 members of the animal kingdom appears to be 
 the most explicit hypothesis as to his physical 
 origin. If we may not regard this as the 
 accepted theory, yet, from the favourable 
 reception accorded it by those who are authorities 
 in such matters, Ave shall be justified in provision- 
 ally adopting it. 
 
 In this case, verses 24 and 25 introduce 
 the account of the sixth portion of the work, 
 just as verses 9 and 10 introduce the account 
 of the third portion of the work. In both 
 cases there is a reference to the soil or basis 
 for a new vitality. The relation of man to beast 
 is somewhat similar to that between vegetation 
 and the earth. The physical basis of life is to 
 plants what the sensitive basis of life is to men. 
 We have read that Grod made the creatures which 
 the earth brought forth, and we are about to read 
 of Grod's making a particular race of creatures. 
 
 "A^u God said. Let us make max in our 
 
 IMAGE AFTER OUR LIKENESS I AND LET THEM 
 HAVE DOMINION OVER THE FISH OF THE SEA, 
 
104 man's great charter. 
 
 and oyer the fowl of the air, and over 
 the cattle, and over all the earth, and 
 over every creeping thing that creepeth 
 upon the earth." 
 
 M?n^"vo\? "Man," says Darwiii, *' in tlie rudest state in 
 which he now exists is the most dominant animal 
 that has ever appeared in the earth. He has 
 spread more widely than any other highly organ- 
 ized form ; and all others have yielded before 
 him." 
 
 But we cannot stop here. Darwin also speaks 
 
 M?iV' voui., o^ man's godlike intellect. Mr. Huxley says that 
 
 p. 405. 
 
 "Man's Place HO oue is more strongly convinced than he is of 
 
 in Nature," 
 
 ^''^^°- the vastness of the gulf between civilized man 
 
 and the brute, or is more certain that whether 
 from them or not, he is assuredly not of theuL 
 
 ismrp.'47-i. -^^^ -^^- Wallace speaks of this advance from 
 animal to man as one of the stages in the de- 
 velopment of the organic world, when some new 
 cause or power must necessarily have come into 
 
 lb., p. 40. action. There are faculties, he says, which clearly 
 point to the existence in man of something which 
 he has not derived from his animal progenitors 
 
 lb., p. 474. and which could not possibly have been developed 
 
thi'opology, 
 ill " Ency. 
 
 man's great charter. 105 
 
 by means of the same laws which have deter- 
 mined the progressive development of the organic 
 world in general, and also of man's physical 
 organism. He refers to the love of truth, the 
 delight in beauty, the passion for justice, the thrill 
 of exultation with which we hear of any act of 
 courageous self-sacrifice, as the workings within us 
 of a higher nature which has not been developed 
 by means of the struggle for material existence. 
 
 Mr. E. B. Tylor says that the opinion is deeply ^^'^- '^^" 
 rooted in modern as in ancient thought, that only ^^''^^■' 
 a distinctively human element of the highest im- 
 port can account for the severance between man 
 and the highest animal below him. 
 
 This godlike higher nature, which places so vast 
 a gulf between civilized man and the brute, that 
 although derived from it he cannot simply be 
 classed with it, is thus accounted for in our nar- 
 rative : " And god created man in his own 
 
 IMAGE, IN THE IMAGE OF GOD CREATED HE HIM ; 
 MALE AND FEMALE CREATED HE THEM." 
 
 Here for the third and last time we meet with 
 the word create. God created the heaven and the 
 earth, God created the great whales and all 
 
106 man's great charter. 
 
 breath of life, and Grod created mau in His own 
 image. The three several orders of the world 
 represented respectively by gravitation, sensation, 
 and reflection, or by body, soul, and spirit, are each 
 ultimately ascribed to the action of Grod denoted 
 by our chief word create. 
 
 The image of Grod in man is evinced by the 
 keen intelligent interest man takes in all Grod's 
 works, from stones to stars, from merest weeds to 
 oaks and cedars, from a worm to a lion, from 
 material stuff to immaterial spirit ; by the simi- 
 larity of his activity to that spoken of in this 
 chapter and implied in nature ; by his concentrated 
 attention to, and his appreciation of, all that 
 we sum up in the word character ; by his sense of 
 duty and responsibility and accountability ; by the 
 measureless capacity, the undeveloped possibilities, 
 
 cf. u. ixiv. 1 the potentiality of man ; by the human desire 
 springing from heart and mind that Grod would 
 
 "FragmLiits rend the heavens and come down, for, as Prof. 
 
 of Science,^ ' ' 
 
 '''■""^'""' Tyndall says, "religious feeling is as much a 
 verity as any other part of human consciousness." 
 "Desceutot Mau, the wonder and (jlory of the universe, 
 p-213- ' ' ushers in the morning of the sixth day. 
 
man's great chakter. 107 
 
 Whatever traces of his characteristic endow- 
 ments may be detected in other animals, it is bnt 
 the indefinite evening until man arrives. He 
 reflects new light in the w^orld, even " a ray from 
 the infinite source of truth." 
 
 It is very interesting to find that Linnceus had 
 thought of the adjectives diunuis and owcturnns, 
 to distinguish the species homo which is man, from 
 the species /iomo which phj^sically resembles man. 
 When /wi)w iiocturuus or vespertiinis becomes /w})io 
 diunuis, the ^vork is finished. There is a falling 
 short, until in some sense it can be said, "Ye were Eph. v. s. 
 once darkness, but are now light in the Lord ; ye i Thess. v. 5. 
 are all sons of light, and sons of the day." 
 
 The Bible account of the sublime transfigura- 
 tion of man which distinguishes him from the 
 brute creation is interestingly illustrated both as 
 to thought and diction by the following description 
 
 taken from a scientific point of view : "In |l,^^"tfuS"'^" 
 
 I'l'- 111. 11-- 
 comparing civilized man with animals, writes 
 
 Professor Huxlo}', "one is as the Alpine traveller, 
 
 who sees the mountains arising into the sky and 
 
 can hardly discern irZ/ere tJie deep shadowed crays 
 
 and rosedte pcalis end, and wJiere the clouds of heaven 
 
Cf . Milton's 
 "P. L.,"l)k. 
 vii„ line 511, 
 "to corres- 
 pond with 
 Heaven." 
 
 108 man's great charter. 
 
 hegiii — oiu' reverence for the nobility of manhood 
 will not be lessened by the knowledge that man 
 is, in substance and in structure, one with the 
 brutes ; for he alone possesses the marvellous 
 endowment of intelligible and rational speech, 
 Avhereby, in the secular period of his existence, he 
 has slowly accumulated and organized the 
 experience which is almost wholly lost with the 
 cessation of every individual life in other animals ; 
 so that now he stands raised upon it as on a 
 mountain top, far above the level of his humble 
 fellows, and tramfigured from Jtin grosser nature htj 
 reflect ing, lie re iind there, a ray from the infinite 
 source of tj'iith.^- 
 
 The momentous transition from simple animal- 
 ism to human nature is conspicuously marked by 
 the use, for the third and last time, of the word 
 create. This emphasis is further intensified by 
 the threefold repetition of the word create in this 
 connection, thus giving to the fact so accentuated 
 an unique importance, an importance which is 
 amply vindicated by the climax of this new 
 departure bringing the world into correspondence 
 or communion with Grod. 
 
man's great chahter. 109 
 
 If with the scientific commentary on the first 
 chapter of Genesis, thus very briefly indicated, 
 we compare tlie seventh hook of Milton's " Para- 
 dise Lost'' and what is there said on the subject 
 under the name of Eaphael the Divine inter- 
 preter, I think the advantage will be found 
 unmistakably on the side of the former. 
 The scientific commentary is more expository, 
 it keeps more closely to the text, and is more 
 reverent. 
 
 All the words telling of progress and processes 
 are shown to be significant, while it contains 
 nothing to suggest unbecoming thoughts about 
 God ; much less such a degrading representation 
 as that in Milton's reference to the Creator, as 
 turning round on one foot and with the other 
 describing the world's circumference. 
 
 In dealing with the subject of light the 
 superiority of the scientific interpretation is most 
 clearly seen. It seems somewhat worthily to fill 
 in the grand outline of the text, whereas om- 
 great poet is evidently cramped by his view of 
 nature, and is unable to find any meaning for 
 the sun's late origin. In fact, he imagines a 
 
110 man's great charter. 
 
 luminary, as substitute, in the place left vacant 
 by the sun's unreasonably postponed advent. 
 
 " (Light) from her native east, 
 To journey through the aery gloom began, 
 Spher'd in a radiant cloud, for yet the sun 
 Was not ; she in a cloudy tabernacle 
 Sojourn'd the while.'' 
 
 Then 
 And 
 
 " A mighty sphere he fram'd, unlightsome first," 
 
 " Of light by far the greater part he took, 
 Transplanted from her cloudy shrine, and plac'd 
 In the sun's orb, made porous to receive. 
 And drink the liquid light." 
 
 Milton, with his magnificent gift of imagination, 
 could not eliminate the sun from his thoughts, 
 even when setting himself to picture a state of 
 things before the sun's existence. He must have 
 light in a cloudy tabernacle, jom^neying from her 
 native east, producing the familiar day and night 
 of time, and accordingly, without the slightest 
 textual justification, rounds off his narrative with 
 a seventh evening forerunning night. Thus ilic 
 resolute and persevering search of t lie scientific worker 
 after nature\ secrets has resulted in a more faith- 
 ful rendering of this Biblical prologue than that 
 
man's great chaktkr. Ill 
 
 produced by the immortal genius of Milton. No 
 gem in tlie ample treasury of the poet's rich and 
 rare imagination has the lustre of those brought to 
 the surface by the invincible patience and cease- 
 less drilling, picking, and digging, of a small band 
 of scientific miners. l*liysical science has supplied 
 the conceptions by means of which the luminous 
 language of our narrative can reflect its light. 
 
 God called the light day, and the great work 
 grew under the Divine influence by successive 
 rings of light, till the last circle touched the shore 
 of eternal light, and vibrated back to the centre. 
 
 '' And man appears at last. So far the seal 
 Is put on life ; one stage of being complete, 
 One scheme Avoiind up : and from the grand result 
 A supplementary reflux of light 
 Illustrates all the inferior grades, explains 
 p]ach back step in the circle." 
 
 Broicniny. 
 
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER III. 
 
 PAGE 
 The Worker in his Mork : the material and its form 1 15— 144 
 Movement. 
 Man. 
 The activity of (4od. The world neither causeless, 
 
 magical, nor mechanical 144—149 
 
 The words create, moved, made 145 — 148 
 
 The work progressive 148 
 
 Activity conferring activity ... ... •■• ••• 148 
 
 The beneficence of God : blessedness in ci-eatiou ... 149 
 
 God the ground of contemplation and appreciation ... 155 
 
 The direct words of God— 155—163 
 
 i. are the necessary complement to the /«?''.< of 
 
 nature ... ... ... ••• ■■• • • l'^7 
 
 ii. distinguish the determinate from the indeter- 
 minate 159 
 
 iii. are complementary to instinct 160 
 
 iv. show the ground of all correspondence ... 162 
 
 God greater than His Work 163 
 
 The word ms^^' 7 163 
 
 The light to which Creation does not extend ... 164 
 
 Tiie li'-iit that knows neither night, evening, nor 
 
 morning 
 The emblem in physical light... 
 
 165 
 165 
 
 Our narrative the complement of scientific treatises 166 
 
 II 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 This imposing universe, in all its majestic 
 vastness and magnificent variety and richness of 
 detail, lias been called tlie vestm-e of God ; be it 
 so. He is still wearing it, for it is full of life an<l 
 movement, and its outlines show the presence of 
 an indwelling mystery. 
 
 The grossest matter is only gross because we 
 have not eyes to see the fineness of its texture 
 and the indestructible perfection of its funda- 
 mental tracery. The flowers which bloom and 
 die away in the course of a process of growth 
 make visible the glory which does not gi-ow, 
 but which is hidden by the obtuseness of man's 
 sight. 
 
 Many distinct processes concm-red in the pro- 
 duction of this little book : type, leaves, and 
 cover have had a long unwritten history, but at 
 this moment the existence and order of atoms 
 
 H 2 
 
116 
 
 and molecules, whicli are now here and which 
 through all that history have remained the same 
 and unchanged, are a myster^^ which displays the 
 presence of a Divine worker, in the same way that 
 the book in its present form displays the presence 
 of a human worker. 
 
 If, gazing at the ordered world, the human 
 mind asserts that this was not always thus, and 
 insists upon getting bej^ond it, so, when passing 
 beyond all processes of growth and development, 
 the liuman mind finds that the first particles of 
 matter, like bricks and hewn stones, of which the 
 whole is built, are themselves signs of ordered 
 work, man can see therein their maker. 
 
 The material of the world is a present sign. 
 Time has not abated its mystery. That it 
 existed yesterday is no explanation of its exist- 
 ence to-day. Science has not distilled the spirit 
 of order out of it, but has rather displayed more 
 clearly than ever the spirit of order that 
 pervades it. Its Protean transformations have 
 not altered it. The sign of its being a rational 
 result is indelibly stamped upon it. Work and 
 reason shine through it. Notwithstanding a 
 
man's great charter. 117 
 
 oertciiu sort of familiarity we have with matter, 
 the freshness of its significance is untarnished, for 
 in itself it remains unchanged. 
 
 This is an instance whore familiarity and 
 ignorance go hand in hand. For investigation 
 into the nature of matter has not simply resulted 
 in its vindication from the charge of grossness, but 
 has set up a strong doubt as to whether oiu- 
 conception of matter is not fundamentally at 
 fault. If the analysis of the material world could 
 be completed, would it lead us to a substantive 
 particle or to a centre of force, to a piece of some- 
 thing or a point of energy ? The question is not 
 yet resolved. 
 
 To some minds the material world seems the 
 most indubitable reality, and they appear not to 
 reflect that they who receive the impressions and 
 make the deductions are far more real. Every 
 assertion that a man makes about the outer world 
 is based upon his own invisible self, intelligence, 
 and sensation. The authoritative status of his 
 soul is assumed in all man's convictions about the 
 material world. That inner self, by means of 
 which man is positive of anything, is itself more 
 
118 man's great ciiartkr. 
 
 positive. The strength with which he affirms the 
 character or nature of a stone springs from the 
 strong confidence of his soul. 
 ¥SzS'' ^^- Huxley says that it is an indisputable 
 
 vol. xxii. 
 
 ^-^"0- truth that what we call the material world is 
 
 known to us under the forms of the ideal world, 
 
 and that, as Descartes tells us, our knowledge of 
 
 the soul is more intimate and certain than our 
 
 lb. knowledge of the hodj-. 
 
 The same writer says that matter and force are, 
 so far as we can know, mere names for certain 
 forms of consciousness. 
 
 Now, whether force and matter are distinct 
 entities, or one and the same thing, they are not 
 created b}' their products. The inscrutably 
 intricate loom, and the ethereal warp and woof, 
 by which, and of which, the world has been and 
 still is being woven, are not products of the 
 marvellously wrought fabric, but are its proximate 
 causes. 
 
 Phenomena cannot account for the laAvs or 
 processes of which phenomena are the effects ; no 
 development can explain the existence of 
 material and forces which are the life and 
 
119 
 
 substance of development ; therefore all that is 
 fundamental in the existing order is a sign of an 
 indopondont source. 
 
 The first chapter of Grenesis helps us to read 
 the revelation whicli the material world contains 
 somewhat in the same way that a good picture 
 helps us to see natural beauties. 
 
 The writing and the picture do not, or should 
 not, take the place of nature, their office is to 
 enable us to see tliat which, although present, is 
 unperceived. They concentrate our attention on 
 certain aspects of the truth of things, and so 
 improve our vision for all that we look at after- 
 wards. Thus, when we read that God created the 
 heaven and the earth, the assertion is not to be 
 received as true simply because it occurs in a 
 book regarded as sacred, but rather it is presented 
 as a truth self-evident when once plainly 
 exhibited. It is to be seen as a neglected trutli 
 in natm-e is seen in a picture, so that when we 
 turn from the statement or from the picture to 
 natm-e, we may see therein that which the art of 
 writing or painting lias pointed out. 
 
 Sometimes a semi-intellectual mist obscures 
 
" Theory of 
 Heat," 
 
 J. Clark Max- 
 well, pp. :jii, 
 312. 
 
 1'2() :\ian's great chahter. 
 
 what under normal circumstances would be quite 
 evident. A pictiu-e may be perfectly true to 
 nature as a picture, and yet a graduated scale 
 would sliow not only that everything represented 
 is smaller than the reality, but perhaps that a 
 man is made taller than a tree, and a liouse larger 
 tlian a mountain, while nearly all the angles are 
 different from the measurements in natui(\ 
 Thus a picture may appear right to the uncritical, 
 wrong to the shallow critic, and right again to 
 the well-cultivated critic. 
 
 That Grod created the heaven and the earth 
 may appear quite self-evident to the uncritical, 
 less self-evident to one who has commenced to 
 think, but self-evident again to one wlio has 
 tliought more deeply. 
 
 The intellectual progress of late years has 
 scarcely, if at all, altered the revelation of God in 
 nature. The concejotion of evolution is no more 
 obliterative than that of growth. Any particular 
 thing may be the result of generation, destruction, 
 and variation, but the molecules of which it is 
 composed " are unalterable by any of the processes 
 which go on in the present state of tilings, and 
 
121 
 
 every individual of each species is of exactly the 
 same magnitude, as thougli tliey had all been cast 
 in the same mould, like bullets. The individuals 
 of each species also agree in the nature of the 
 light which they emit .... that is, in their 
 natural periods of vibration. Tliey are, therefore, 
 like tuning-forks all tuned to concert pitch, or like 
 watches regulated to solar time." Tlie writer 
 just quoted goes on to state his belief that the 
 molecules are the only material things which still 
 remain in the precise condition in which they 
 first began to exist, and he asks why we should 
 not look to them for some indication of that spirit 
 of order, " our scientific confidence in which is 
 never sliaken by the difficulty which we experience 
 in tracing it in the complex arrangements of 
 visible things, and of which our moral estimation 
 is shown in all our attempts to think and speak 
 the trutli, and to ascertain the exact principles of 
 distributive justice." 
 
 Thus whereas the uneducated sees God through 
 flowers and fruit, the educated sees Him througli 
 the seed wliich produces them ; wliile tlie one 
 spells out tlio name of (jrod in the larger type of 
 
122 man's great chautkr. 
 
 the starry heavens, the other reads of Ilini in the 
 closer print of molecules and atoms. 
 
 As, however, it is with light and seeing, some 
 being unable to see because the faculty of sight is 
 wanting, and others being unable to see because of 
 obstacles in the path of the light's rays, so it is 
 here, all do not see alike, and some seem to be 
 blind. Occasionally help may come from without 
 to remove a cataract from the eye or to draw aside 
 a curtain that impedes the light, but no ai-gu- 
 ment to prove that a man ought to see is of 
 any avail against blindness, and a man who 
 sees needs no argument to prove that which is 
 self-evident. 
 
 Moreover, it does not necessarily follow that 
 a man's faculties are in a state of harmonious and 
 j)roportionate development. On the contrary, it 
 would almost appear to be the rule that one 
 faculty is cultivated at the expense of another, 
 so that the individual whose assertions are 
 decisive in one field of human interest may 
 elsewhere be destitute of authority. Tlie 
 inestimable contributions of Charles Darwin to 
 modern science are consecrated by an awful 
 
man's (iRKAT CIIARTKR. 123 
 
 sacrifice. He himself acknowledged it to be -^ii J;!,^' ':j"f iV'*," 
 accursed evil for a man to become so absorbed in loV, lo.-; 
 any subject as he was in his. He believed that 
 the parts of the brain upon which the higher 
 tastes depend had in liini become atrophied, and 
 that his mind had become " a kind of machine 
 for grinding general laws out of large collections 
 of facts." 
 
 It is no disparagement, therefore, to the worth 
 of what a man has accomplished, or to his capacity 
 for instructing others upon a subject with which 
 he lias made himself thoroughly conversant, if his 
 utterances upon things in general are canvassed 
 like those of ordinary men, and his opinions upon 
 matters which he has voluntarily, or involuntarily, 
 removed far from him are met with a not ill- 
 natured smile. " It is not given to the human Mucauiay. 
 intellect to expand itself widely in all directions 
 at once, and to be at the same time gigantic and 
 well proportioned." 
 
 The world discloses its Maker as clearly in its 
 first details, to those who can conceive them, as it 
 does, in its state of development, to those wlio can 
 onl}' decipher a meaning from large letters. Botli 
 
124 
 
 for ignorant and learned the light is of the same 
 nature. The material world, however it is looked 
 at, whether by the naked eye, or through 
 microscope or telescope, whether with little or 
 large imagination, bears the impress of being an 
 effect ; and if we are so constituted as to be 
 impelled to inquire after the cause, then, that 
 God created the heaven and the earth, is still the 
 only answer. 
 
 In a similar way, the assertion that the Spirit of 
 God moved before there was light points to the 
 revelation which the existence of force makes in 
 the universe. Whatever be the conception we have 
 to form of matter, we must carefully distinguish 
 all we can see and handle, or at least mentally 
 ri-nidHzc, that is, picture to om' minds, as we do a 
 molecule or an atom which is too small for actual 
 vision, from that which, under the names of 
 attraction, force, energy, c^c, we represent to 
 ourselves as possessing matter and giving rise to 
 a state of unrest, and so causing phenomena. 
 
 Neitlier as distinct from nor as associated with 
 matter can we possibly picture force which deals 
 with visible things as its property. 
 
man's great charter. 125 
 
 Mr. Alfred Wallace, Avriting of certain clear 
 intimations of a world of spirit to which the 
 world of matter is altogether subordinate, says 
 that to this spiiitual world we may refer the 
 marvellously' complex forces which we know as 
 gravitation, cohesion, chemical force, radiant force, 
 and electricity, without whicli the material 
 universe could not exist for a moment in its 
 present form, and perhaps not at all, since 
 without these forces, and perhaps others whicli 
 may be termed atomic, it is doubtful whether 
 matter itself could have any existence. 
 
 Although the words force, law, properties, and 
 such like, are unavoidable in treating of natural 
 phenomena, it is necessary to keep in mind the 
 fact that in using them we encroach upon another 
 region not belonging to phenomena. 
 
 We must not suffer the limitations of language 
 to confine our views of the fulness of life and 
 thought. A saying and its meaning are not 
 exact counterparts of one another. The signifi- 
 cance of a set of words depends directly ujion the 
 methods and notions of the person addressed. 
 Literalness is never more than a matter of deofree. 
 
126 man's great ciiaeteu. 
 
 Signs, letters, phrases, stories (even Mse ones) may 
 be the elements from which a new expression has 
 to be formed. 
 
 We shall do well to attend carefully to the fol- 
 lowing remarks of Professor Huxley on the subject : 
 "ontiiePhy- ''In itself it is of little moment whether we 
 
 sical Basis of 
 
 fn'rariK u'(I t's cxprcss the phenomena of matter in terms of spirit, 
 
 " Mind and 
 
 InerLT. '"^^ or tlie phenomcua of spirit in terms of matter. 
 
 Ili'Ji:^;"' ^'"' Matter may be regarded as a form of thought ; 
 thought may be regarded as a property of matter. 
 Each statement has a certain relative truth .... If 
 we find that the ascertainment of the order of nature 
 is facilitated by using one terminology, or one set 
 of symbols, rather than another, it is our clear duty 
 to use the former, and no harm can accrue so long 
 as we bear in mind that /re are dealing merehj 
 with terms and si/mhoUy 
 
 Thus when our task is not to ascertain the order 
 of nature, but rather its cause and significance ; 
 when we are regarding it from i\\Q point of view 
 where the phenomena of matter are seen to be 
 exponential of tlie S23iritual world, we must bear in 
 mind that the customary language, including such 
 words as force, law, properties, has been only 
 
man's gkeat charter. 127 
 
 relatively true; true, tliat is, to llie one-sided 
 view, which is all Ave can adequately study at a 
 time. And we must be on our guard lest the 
 mere terms and symbols of an absorbingly 
 interesting jmrsuit acquire an absolute value, 
 and tyrannize over all our conceptions. 
 
 We employ the word force, and almost of 
 necessity co-ordinate with it pronouns in the neuter 
 gender. But it is nothing more than a symbol 
 for the Invisible, who or which conditions the 
 visible. Of course, if this force is thought of as a 
 thing, such as a steel or elastic spring, or as 
 material steam, we are still dealing only with a 
 symbol, which must be as carefully distinguished 
 from that symbolized by it as a name is distin- 
 guished from a person. The great danger is lest 
 words and imagination be so misused as to project 
 an image of the visible world upon the place of 
 the invisible, and the ocean be forgotten in look- 
 ing at a reflection of the island. 
 
 The phrases " inherent forces," " self-existing 
 laws," " self-contained energy," are dangerous, 
 because, being like very large vessels for com- 
 paratively small quantities, they are specially 
 
128 man's great charted. 
 
 liable to mislead. They contain unnecessary 
 dogmatic assumptions, which, however, as a lule, 
 have no bearing upon the subject in the treatment 
 of which they are used. So they may generally 
 answer their purpose just as a true or false assertion 
 or a large or small number might take the place of 
 the symbol x in an algebraical problem, and, 
 although a clumsy substitute, would not prevent 
 the working out of a solution. 
 
 The epithets " inherent," " self-existing," "self- 
 contained," seem used to prevent us from looking 
 beyond. When, however, our scientific procedure 
 along a course of sequences is barred, surely it 
 is unwise to establish a self-denying ordinance, 
 and forbid to sight what is denied to a limited 
 intellectual method. Nicely Jxtlanced forccH are as 
 significant as a nicely adjusted machine. When 
 we have worked our way back, step by step, to 
 the most elementary _/oyvy/.v of force, we have only 
 attained a conventional starting-point. From 
 this spot begins the scientific race, a race that is 
 very long and eventful and absorbing, and 
 marvellous and honourable and glorious ; but the 
 course of it is but a track in the arena of human 
 
man's gueat ctiautkk. 121) 
 
 interest . The life of the humblest liuman being 
 is beyond it in e\ erv direction. 
 
 To one person a locomotive engine is a single 
 wonderful contrivance, to another it is a wonder- 
 ful complexity of contrivances. The one knows 
 very little about it, the other knows all that there 
 is to be known ; but each is equally sure that it is 
 the effect of mental and manual effort, although 
 at that personal goal where each has arrived the 
 track of ph^^sical science is out of sight. 
 
 AVhen Vse read in scientific treatises that in the 
 consideration of any sequence we can get no 
 further, the meaning is that we are at the end of 
 the tether of a particular intellectual method of 
 knowledge. But just as when we can walk no more 
 we can still hear and see, so we can use other 
 means of knowledge when one has been 
 exhausted. 
 
 The energj' possessed by animals is scientifically- 
 traced back to vegetation. The energy }>ossessed 
 by the vegetable kingdom is traced back to the 
 sun, and the energy of the sun is that of .siii/j)/r 
 motion. " When we have acquired the notion of 
 matter in motion, and know what is meant by the 
 
 I 
 
130 man's OKEAT niARTEIl. 
 
 Heat!"?. J?!, energy of tluit motion, Ave are unable to conceive," 
 
 says Clerk Maxwell, " that any possible addition 
 
 to our knowledge could explain the energy of 
 
 motion or give us a more perfect knowledge of it 
 
 tban we have already/' 
 
 "Fragments Wlio or wliat uiadc tlic suu, aud gave his rays 
 
 vol. ii, i>. .v2. their alleged power? Who or what made and 
 
 ■ bestowed upon the ultimate particles of matter their 
 
 wondrous power of varied interaction ? Science 
 
 does not know ; the mystery, thcjugh pushed back, 
 
 remains unaltered. These nre questions of 
 
 Professor Tyndall and his answers. " Of tlie 
 
 inner rpialit}' that enables matter to attract 
 
 matter," says the same writer, '' we know 
 
 nothing." 
 
 In what sense is such motion .siwplc, except in 
 the sense that a seed is simple ? It contains the 
 same mystery in this seeming naked sim2>licity as 
 when clothed in one of its immberless forms, and 
 it contains, too, the mystery of its manifold 
 transformations. 
 
 Whether, therefore, we look at matter and 
 movement in tlie fulness and variety of their 
 development, or in the compactness of a primitive 
 
MAN'S (iRKAT CIIAHTEK. VM 
 
 molecule and siiiiplc motion, the vision they give 
 of their Maker is very much the same. Creation 
 by God and movement by Grod are in both cases 
 alike tlie only ways of accounting for the 
 universe. 
 
 Equall}' from oitlior standpoint, ////' Invi-sihlc \i» 
 fliiiKj-s of Him .siiHY the (■I'oafioii of flic world arc 
 rlcdrh/ -scvii^ heiinj perceircd tJn'oiKjIi flic flilmj-s fJint 
 are made. 
 
 The tiniest speck of dust, the smallest sporule 
 or seed, the frailest insect, by the fact of existence, 
 by vitality, by sensation, clearly and unmis- 
 takahl}^ betoken a mystery Avhich no form of 
 thought, moulded on conceptions of length, 
 breadth, and thickness, can possibly penetrate. 
 WJiaf is set' It JiafJi not been made out of fJiimjs Ui 
 icJilcJi appear. 
 
 The fancy that some apparently small thing 
 might " just liappen," or occur '' by accident," 
 however natural in a world full of unaccountable 
 events, is fraught with an insidious disorder 
 whicli is fatal to thouglit. J low insignificant is 
 a speck of dust ! How trifling is its breaking in 
 twain ! How unworthy of mention is the simple 
 
 I 2 
 
132 man's GKEAl CIIAKIT.H. 
 
 movement of the tA\'0 particles, wlietlier of 
 approach or recess ! What a matter of course is 
 the offspring of any particular sporule or seed, 
 and how natural that there should be some slight 
 variations ! Yes, but such fancies are not tlie 
 fruit of thought, rather they are a withering 
 blight whicli is tlie bane of thought. 
 '' Happening," and '• accident," and often even 
 ''nature," are amongst the number of those 
 dubious words that have a disastrous pro- 
 pensity for stiHing thouglit. 
 
 Wanting clear-sightedness, men can fancy the 
 universe to be only a large machine, which, as it 
 is going, will continue to go so long as it is left 
 alone ; not considering that the (Jo'ukj of their 
 analogous human contrivances depend altogether 
 upon the physically unknowable. It is quite true 
 man can leave alone the machine he has made, 
 but he leaves it to be maintained and worked by 
 a higher power : by that displayed in gravitation, 
 cohesion, expansion, condensation, and the varied 
 interaction of numberless forces : he leaves it to 
 the regular working and co-ordinating activity 
 of the power behind the visible world. 
 
man's (;kkai' (TiAirrKit. 133 
 
 Man attaclies liis little cuiTlele to the chariot of 
 nature, and, travelling safely with empty shafts, 
 he sees no need for steeds or charioteer to move 
 and guide the vehicle that towers above his head 
 and carries hiui along. 
 
 This tyranny of sensuousness must be broken 
 by attention to the inner athrmation that there 
 must be a cause, if not a reason, for the least 
 appreciable thing that comes to pass. And in the 
 effects we may see the character of the cause. 
 
 Dr. W. B. Carpenter, in his address before the JJIt'"' 
 British Association fl872), spoke of man's 
 recognition of the unity of the power of which 
 nature's phenomena are the diversified manifes- 
 tations as the culminating point in man's 
 intellectual interpretation of natiu^e. '' The 
 <'onvertibility of the physical forces, the correla- 
 tion of these with tlie vital, and the intimacy of 
 that nPXUH between mental and bodily actiN'ity 
 .... whi(.'h cannot be denied, all lead," he said, 
 " upwards towards one and the same conclusion ; 
 and the pyramid of which that philosophical 
 conclusion is the apex Jia-s its foiui(latio)i in thv 
 jiriniitii'c i/tsti/icfs of Jnoitanifi/.''^ An instinctive 
 
13-1: man's (;R1v\T CHAlMEIt. 
 
 belief in tliis unity is at tlie basis of tliat 
 intellectual search wliicli leads to a philosopliical 
 belief in this unit3\ Witli respect, therefore, to 
 the main conclusion, cultivated and uncultivated 
 are in much the same position. But there is a 
 class of people greatly to be pitied. Those, that 
 is, who possessing little knowledge, are so over- 
 awed by the body of knowledge, which they 
 think others possess, that they are afraid to give 
 credit to their natural instincts, and feel compelled 
 to commit the best treasures of life to the keeping 
 of the pitiless flood of fluctuating and contentious 
 opinion. ])ut how does the matter stand ? 
 Starting Avith sight, and, by its means, we 
 examine the eye, we pass by way of tlie cornea, 
 aqueous humour, crj'stalline lens, vitreous humour, 
 to the retina, upon which images are formed. 
 ?,':?/• ■',■ ■^'- Moreover, " when liffht falls on the retina, 
 changes are there induced which stimulate the 
 optic nerve -fibres, and these fibres carry impres- 
 sions through the optic tracts to the corpora 
 quadrigemina. Wliaf then occnrx h matiev of 
 co)\jecturc ! " Now, this scientific excursion, in 
 spite of the minutest examination of everything 
 
 M.D 
 
135 
 
 cu roxfe, makes vision U(^ clearer, and leaves the 
 great mystery of sight as great a mystery still; 
 if it were a significant mystery before we started, 
 it is no less a signilieant mystery Avhen we arrive 
 home again. IJ^c -src : This fact we start from, 
 then we travel from one thing to another, till we 
 arrive at the last ner\'e or fibre we can reach, 
 from whicli we have to take the unavoidable 
 leap, to the fact that, somehow or another, kc -sec. 
 I trust this little book bears me witness 
 tliat I am not so insensate as to disregard or 
 undervalue the progress of the physical sciences, 
 but I Jo feel it necessary to point out that tlie 
 generality of men and women are under no 
 obligation to live, with regard to their common 
 sense, and five senses, and their best gifts and 
 noblest aspirations, in an intolerable bondage to 
 the few .s((i'((iif-s who happen to be the intellectual 
 luminaries of their particular generation. Let us 
 see that the chief facts and their significance are 
 immovable, then give all honour to the untiring 
 /eal and ceaseless toil which lla^■e advanced 
 the education of mankind, and explained and 
 ameliorated many of the conditions of human life. 
 
136 ^fan's great charter. 
 
 Man is a type of the world, and possesses his 
 own invisible nature as a faculty for realizing the 
 *' Power that moves all things." Man's body, like 
 the outward world, is visible and palpable ; its 
 structure has been tlie subject of diligent scrutiny, 
 its functions have been laboriously investigated ; 
 but after every interstice has been scrupulously 
 examined, and every labyrintliine intricacy 
 dexteroush' traced, the investigator and explorer 
 is nowhere to be found. 
 
 The following up of human faculties to their 
 source in the brain, the allocation of certain 
 powers to certain portions of grey matter, even if 
 each particular sense could be tracked home to a 
 definite set of molecules, does not narrow the 
 gulf between seen and unseen, between tliat which 
 can be and that wliicli cannot be mentally visua- 
 lized, or represented to tlie mind as having size 
 and shape. 
 
 Ever since man has recognized sense and feeling 
 as localized in his own bodily organism, the 
 intimate correspondence between his seen and 
 unseen self has been perfectly obvious, and it 
 would only be knowledge of a kind that lias all 
 
man's (UiEAT CHAR IKK. 137 
 
 aldiig been in liis possei^sioii, if it were possible to 
 toiieli with the point of a needle the particle of 
 brain wliich is tlie very centre of any ]»arti(ular 
 element of human life. 
 
 The facts of sight, hearing-, and touch, as well 
 as of thought, consciousness, and will, are left over 
 as an unfathomable niyster3\ They issue from the 
 unseen, from the utterly unpicturable, from the 
 world that cannot even in imagination be made 
 an object of sight. That which sees can be seen 
 by no mortal eye, that wliich hears cannot be 
 heard, nor can that which feels be felt. 
 
 This invisible self of man is the one available 
 means for realizing the character and nature of 
 the invisible power manifested in the world about 
 us. Man is the key of knowledge to the mystery 
 of the universe. No tJiing will unlock it ; no 
 intellectual formula can force it open. Man him- 
 self must enter the wards. Neither physical nor 
 mental effort will open it with an3^thing else. 
 
 Surely it is an astonishing oversight that a man 
 should be earnestly seeking to find some means of 
 realizing what the force is which he sees mani- 
 fested in thousands of forms around him, and yet 
 
138 MA^'s (nU'-AT CHARrKlJ. 
 
 neglects the force which sets liini to work at the 
 
 problem. While man stands aloof in working at 
 
 the proLlem which the Avorkl j^resents, and omits 
 
 himself, except that visible and mechanical part 
 
 of him-elf which is outside the whole personal 
 
 force through which he faces the problem, he 
 
 omits the chief fact in the da fa for determining 
 
 the problem, and ignores the one known essence of 
 
 activit}' that bears the slightest resemblance to 
 
 the soul evidenced in the universe. I pick \\\) a 
 
 stone ; the action affords full scope for illustrating 
 
 certain branches of physiology, anatomy, and 
 
 mechanics, but these sciences do not attempt to 
 
 give a complete account of the action. I cannot 
 
 be ignored and I cannot be explained ; so when I 
 
 let go of the stone, and it falls to the ground, 
 
 there is a similar incompleteness in the scientific 
 
 explanation, and the only way of completing it is 
 
 cf. "Origin by briiifT^ins* in another T, not myself. By a iciJI 
 
 of the Laws ^ » & ' . . 
 
 it is raised, and tliat by another iri/l it falls, is the 
 onl}' final explanation. In each case alike there 
 is a full measure of intermediary scientific 
 sequences. 
 
 Physical science deals with the succession of 
 
 of NaUire,' 
 by Sir 
 Edniund 
 Beckett. 
 V. 44. 
 
MAN S GREAT ("IIAUrKK. 
 
 i:U) 
 
 })liouomeiia. Its indefatigable votaries examine 
 and describe wliat order is adhered to in the 
 diilerent departments of the nniverse which they 
 have made the object of their assiduons investiga- 
 tions. They generalize the discovered order into 
 hues of nature or uniformities of things, which 
 summarize the manner according to which the 
 investigated events happen. But when in 
 tliought we try to pass from imagining sensible 
 particles to the essence that causes cohesion, 
 motion, work, and growth, we have notliing 
 whatever to rely upon unless it is the will of 
 which each is separately conscious. Leaving out 
 the will of man, we advance just so far in under- 
 standing the movements in nature as with the 
 same omission we could advance in understanding 
 what would then appear to be the mechanical 
 actions of man. Man's feeble will may well seem 
 an infinitesimal unit to measm-e the infinite power 
 eA'idenced in nature. But although no nudtiple 
 that we can imagine could raise the will of man 
 to an erpiality with the force displayed in the 
 universe, yet it alone of idl that we can think of 
 appears to be of the same nature. 
 
140 man's (illEAl" CHARTER. 
 
 Man knows of will, wisdom, reason, and love 
 as the mainspring of action and progress. Man 
 can select, can arrange for the production of new 
 forms, can work to obtain perfect specimens, andean 
 adapt things to altered circumstances. Man can 
 specialize, differentiate, co-ordinate, and with 
 thought can utilize for new purposes articles that 
 have become unfit for the offices which they at 
 first fulfilled. The power by which man does all 
 this is invisible, and is not known under an intel- 
 lectual form. It is personal power. If, however, 
 in watching a man at work, Ave forgot personal 
 power, lie would soon become to us as much a 
 machine as nature appears to be, and we should 
 sum him up as a bundle of thing-like forces. 
 Mr. Wallace believes that the brain, hand, and 
 Human 'spo- larynx of savages possess i((tent cqyfifadcs which 
 man has not the power of acquiring for himself, 
 and Avhich, being temporarily useless, cannot bo 
 attributed to natural selection. Xow, some of our 
 domesticated animals are similarly endowed with 
 characteristics Avhich would never have been 
 acquired if they had been left to themselves. The 
 " portly presence " of the English black horse, the 
 
 Ct. (inatre 
 fa-ps" "The 
 
 ■-'0. 
 
141 
 
 milk-yielding power of Ayrshire cows, the long, 
 heavy, and bright fleeces of lincoln sheep, and the 
 early profitable maturity of the Berkshire hog, 
 are due to the interference of man. In man 
 himself there are supposed to be traces of similar 
 intervention, and " Mr. Wallace attributes tliis 
 intervention, to a xvpei'ior infcllliicnvc which acted 
 on the human species, just as the latter has acted 
 on the rock-pigeon to produce from it the pouter 
 or the carrier, and which employed analogous 
 processes." 
 
 A wTiter on natural liistory says tliat through ;{[ '( 
 the companionship between man and lower 
 creatures, " it seems very clear that either the 
 higher gives to the lower an intelh'gence not its 
 own, or that it develops powers which would have 
 lain dormant had they not been called forth by 
 the contact of a superior being.'' 
 
 Man knows of the influence of a liiglier wisdom 
 upon a loAver wisdom, of a higher civiHzation upon 
 a lower civilization, of the skilful upon the 
 unskilful. A power capable of producing pro- 
 gress and manifesting a progressive tendency' is 
 known — it is personal power. The movement 
 
142 
 
 forward is due to a spii-it in advance. Tliis 
 personal power is the solitary means of realizing 
 the nature and character of that otherwise 
 " unknown quantity '' called force or energy. 
 
 Man is conscious of a personal spirit, his own 
 spirit, as a cause of order, a('hic\'ement, and pro- 
 gress. This consciousness lie can use as a key 
 to penetrate Avithin that Avhicli is ordered and 
 assimilated, within that which is the visible thing- 
 grown, and its material surroundings, to a 
 kindred spirit that orders, makes, and causes 
 progress. 
 
 Natui'e is as a garment woven and worn, 
 and, taking this personal power into account, 
 man draws near to Him anIio weaves and wears 
 it ; but apart fi'om this personal jjower, nature 
 is but a magic robe devoid of meaning. 
 
 Nature is a noun in the objective case, and 
 the governing verb can only be found when man 
 adds retlection to observation. The meanings of 
 such Avords as force, law, function, tendency, are 
 rooted in the essence of personality as distin- 
 guished from the elements of things. 
 
 A sTiperficial view of the tlieory of natural 
 
man's CilJKAl' (IIVKIEIJ. 143 
 
 selection l)etrays the mind into giving np man's 
 faculty of design as Leing no clue to the character 
 of the power that underlies natural phenomena. 
 The universe is full of apparently obvious indica- 
 tions of design, but tlie diligent inquirer discovers 
 that each faet tliat liad been so interpreted merely 
 is as it is, because it happens to succeed. Eyes 
 were not designed to see with, but siglit becoming 
 a fact proved to be a safeguard, and those who 
 could see best succeeded best. Thus the organ 
 of sight is wliat it is tlirough natural selec- 
 tion. All of wliich is very interesting, and may 
 be perfectly true, but, to be satisfied with it, 
 manifests a ^\•ant of sagacity. If the eye is not 
 an example of design in itself, it is nevertheless 
 an indicaticni of a marvelloush' ordered co-ordina- 
 tion of activities whicli sustain and modify existence, 
 and which include all that is summed up in Icirs 
 of light, sensation, life, and lieredity. 
 
 Somewhat in the same way, signs of a common 
 ancestry of disconnected tribes or nations are in 
 danger of being disregarded when it is shown to 
 be probable tliat the same inventions, customs, or 
 myths are due to independent development ; not- 
 
144: :n[a\'s (ikeat chartek. 
 
 witlistaiiding- wliuh, the similarity of development 
 points to a mental uniformity which in tiu-n 
 indicates a common origin. 
 
 So do the tendencies and forces of natm'e 
 indicate a power, between whom and man there is 
 some mental nniformity. Man reflects the light 
 of natnre, hut he does more, he rellects a light, 
 bright beyond nature, intimations of which appear 
 in this Biblical prologue. 
 
 Human nature responds to the relationship 
 which this narrative discloses, both between man 
 and the world, and between man and Glod. 
 
 This narrative brings into prominent relief the 
 The world activitv of Grod, and the variety of His activity. 
 
 not causeless. J ' J J 
 
 He created. His spirit moved. He divided, set, 
 made. Such words are, of course, as inadequate in 
 themselves to represent His activity, as the paint- 
 marks on a pictnre to represent the fulness of a 
 landscape. Yet they point to that manifold 
 activity, and the symbols become full of meaning 
 as the activity in nature is recognized. Three 
 conceptions of the origin of tlie universe are put 
 on one side : the causeless, the magical, and the 
 mechanical. God is the cause, but neither a 
 magical nor mechanical cause. 
 
 Tlip activity 
 of God. 
 
man's great charter. 145 
 
 The words of God are shown to be no ^'/^^■;[',''^"«*' 
 abracad((J)ra, for they are frequently followed by 
 terms expressive of the energy required to fulfil 
 them. 
 
 We have to contend not only against the 
 incompetence of language, as moulded on the 
 commonplace, but also against its tendency to 
 mislead, as having been used to embody coarse and 
 baseless notions. 
 
 The word create having rccei\ ed a connotation 
 from some crude theory of the origin of the 
 imiverse, becomes discredited by the confutation 
 of that tlieory. In reading, that ojjiin'oii as to the 
 genesis of man is ilivided h-tu'een the theories of the "Enci.Biit..- 
 
 ^ ' ' " Antliropol- 
 
 ^^rO f/reat schools of biology, that of creation and that ^^^' 
 
 of evolution, we must guard against the assump- 
 tion that the first chapter of Grenesis supports 
 one school to the exclusion of the other, based 
 upon the occmTence there of the word create, but 
 not tlie ^^'ord erohition. 
 
 Such an assumption overlooks the fact that the 
 word create in (Jcucsis implies no definite method 
 of procedm-e, that it is used us distinct from the 
 simple command, Let there he, that it is only used 
 
 K 
 
146 
 
 of three moments in tlie whole work, and that it 
 does not occur in the account of the pi'oduction 
 of organic life : grass and herb and fruit-tree 
 were not created. 
 
 When the narrative is shown not to l)e 
 
 dependent upon eosmical systems demonstratively 
 
 fallacious, but to be better illustrated by A'iews 
 
 accredited by closer study and more copious 
 
 information, yet, it may still demand an 
 
 effort to forget the fallacy with whidi tlie 
 
 language lias been weighted, by the predecessors 
 
 of our modern scientific men liaving fatliercd 
 
 their tli(^ories upon it, by using its vocabulary. 
 
 lecEcaT'' Thus tlicre is nothing magical attadiing to tlie 
 
 sayings of God nor to the word create. Neither 
 
 is there anything mechanical necessarily implied 
 
 in the assertion that the Spirit of Grod jj/ocrc/, and 
 
 that God ijiade. 
 
 5"n"i The word translated '' moved " is used once 
 
 Tjeut. XXXII. £q^, r^^ eagle "fluttering" over her young, and 
 
 (Kaiy"'" once for the "shaking" of the bones of a man 
 
 who is broken-hearted and overcome. These are 
 
 the only other cases in which the word occurs 
 
 throughout the Bible. That which is similarly 
 
>[an's great chartek. 117 
 
 translated in verses 20 and 21 is a different 
 word. 
 
 So tlie thought of movement is lightly placed 
 on the foundation of this representation of the 
 world's origin, but no more ; a word of frequent 
 occmTence and greater precision would assuredly 
 have debased the thought by fixing it down to a 
 conceivable mode of motion. The particular 
 mode being still beyond man's conception, we can 
 only see in the word the supply of that motion 
 which the scientific man discovers to be funda- 
 mental and universal. 
 
 The word translated " made ' ' is indeed commonly hl'T 
 
 employed for the work of an artificer, but liere it 
 is secured against any limitation to a mechanical 
 significance by its use in the text for a tree 
 making fruit, or, as it is naturally rendered, n? yv 
 "hearimj fruit." ^^2 ^l^ 
 
 A definite conception of the mode of dod's 
 activity is out of reach, resembling in this the 
 mode of activity of man's personal power. But 
 there is nothing in the words to confine the 
 thought to a fractional part of the energy induced 
 by that activity. And as an inadecpiate concep- 
 
 K 2 
 
Activity con 
 ferring activ 
 ity. 
 
 148 man's great charter. 
 
 tion of the method is avoided, so it is noticeable 
 that there is an avoidance of any conception of 
 inadequate means. 
 JropiessivJ That the work is true work is also seen in its 
 progressive results, from light to life, from life to 
 sensation, from sensation to reason and conscience ; 
 as in detail, from light mingling with darkness to 
 a separation leading to day, or from fish and birds 
 to beast and man. 
 
 Although the mode and means of this activity 
 are hidden, something of its character is seen. It 
 is an activity which confers activit}^ Matter is 
 made to give light, the earth to clothe itseK in 
 verdm-e, plants to produce plants, the heavenly 
 bodies to move and fulfil a pm^i^ose, living 
 creatm^es to swarm, fly, creep, and be fruitful ; 
 man to subdue the earth and have dominion over 
 the fish, the fowl, and every living thing that 
 moveth upon the earth. 
 
 The activity induced is not only activity ; not 
 only activity ever becoming more varied and 
 intense, but it is an acti\dty gradually reflecting 
 the quickening, spontaneous, productive, govern- 
 ing, free, creative energy which occasioned it. 
 
man's great charter. 149 
 
 Light was followed by the quickening 
 atmosphere; then came the perfectly renew- 
 ing life, through heredity, of vegetation ; then, 
 the ordinance of the lieavenly bodies, associating 
 the idea of ruling with the facts of illuminat- 
 ing, regulating, and preparedness to guide 
 and teach ; then, the light of feeling, and 
 ever more abundant life, until there was 
 man, whose spirit springs uj) to the source of life, 
 who could freely resolve to work as Grod did, when 
 in the beginning He created the heaven and the 
 earth. 
 
 Thus we are led to the beneficence of Grod set S,ee"r(5n.i 
 forth in this narrative. When mists arise and 
 hide the charms of hill and valley, of peaceful 
 river and free open sea, when the clouds gather 
 and obscure the sun, it is well to have a picture in 
 one's mind of the abiding truth of things; so 
 when man is overtaken by a temporary depression, 
 and his eyes have become dim by poring too long 
 over a detail that can only be understood in its 
 relation to a thousand other details, it is well to 
 have kept before him, as in this narrative, the 
 character of the whole. Is this a blessed world ? ,-?,' ^patior 
 
150 
 
 Is it a blessed thing to be alive l-" Is it true that 
 fish, bird, beast, and man are blessed bv being fish, 
 bird, beast, and man ? This question has been 
 answered with an angry and most emphatic 
 negative. Life, it has been said, is distinctly not 
 worth living. Men have said so. But why does a 
 man keep the gift and grumble at it, if he thinks 
 that " //e ItiiiiseJf ml'jlif his quietus malif wifJi a bare 
 bodkin ."" 
 
 Those who take a pessimistic view of human 
 life are very likely to see animal life in the same 
 sombre and gloomy tones. The uncultivated 
 observer concludes that, taken all round, life is 
 distinctly worth having, and he believes that the 
 birds and beasts are happy. When, however, 
 intellectual spectacles are put on, perhaps it seems 
 that happiness is very illogical, and that it ought 
 not, and therefore does not, exist to any appreci- 
 able extent. Yet, maybe, wlien the spectacles are 
 laid aside, and clear intelligent eyesight sees 
 things as they are, there is a full appreciation of 
 the common view. Mr. Alfred Wallace is a man 
 who has come to very close quarters with the actual 
 condition of creaturely existence. Haeckel calls 
 
The " Flistoiy 
 t.r Creation." 
 vol. i. p. 135. 
 
 AIAX'S GRKA'l ClIAllTEK. 151 
 
 liini one of the boldest and most (listingiuslied J/"ei'eation, 
 scieutilic travellers of modern times. What is his 
 testimony ^ " We oonclnde," he says, " that the ^l"\; 
 popular idea of the struggle for existence entailing 
 misery and pain on the animal world is the very 
 reverse of tlie trutli. Wliat it really brings about 
 is the maximum of life and of enjoyment of life 
 with the minimum of sulfering and pain." 
 
 The question as to the natural blessedness of 
 man is sadly complicated by the misery which he 
 himself has made to be part and parcel of his 
 inheritance and of his lot. ''The slings and 
 arrows of outrageous fortune " are mostly from the 
 armoury which man has stored to his own hurt. 
 
 '• The o[)pressor s wrong, the proud man's contumely, 
 The pangs of despised love, the law's delay ; 
 The insolence of otlice, and the si)urQs 
 That patient merit of the unworthy takes," — 
 
 these instruments of tortm'e are derived from 
 the uncontrolled passions of human nature, and 
 conceivably may one day be as obsolete as the 
 rack, tliumbscrew, iron-boot, and wheel. The 
 misery of man as contrasted with r>ther animals is 
 due to his being insufficiently human. His true 
 
152 
 
 natui-e is dominant over the world, but instead of 
 exercising liis natural sovereignty to subdue the 
 earth, and rule over all animalism, liis own 
 included, this suj^eriority to the animal world has 
 been used in support of his animal passions to 
 create civil war in his own nature, and divide man- 
 kind into a host of Avarring individuals. Most 
 of us have scarcely passed the dim evening state 
 of the progress from mere sensuous existence to 
 the morning of human life ; but in the fact that 
 we do, in our heart of hearts, appreciate the light 
 that shines in the noblest characters of uiuversal 
 history ; in the fact that we say it was well done 
 when we are told about the deeds of high courage, 
 of patient endeavour, of self- obliterating love, 
 which have been wrought by the saviours of the 
 Race ; in the fact that, when we do see human 
 natm^e in its distinction from animal nature, as in 
 a Newton, a Livingstone, a Wesley, a Coleridge 
 Patteson, a Sarah Martin, a John Howard, a 
 Florence Nightingale, a General Gordon, a 
 Father Damien, and in the true human succession 
 witnessed by the grand array of poets, scientists, 
 artists, scholars, heroes, and saints, we do echo the 
 
man's gkeat ciiAirrER. 153 
 
 *' very good " pronounced in this first chapter of 
 Genesis ; and in tlie fact tliat we recognize in 
 Christ the Day spring from on high, there is 
 testimony borne within om- own iiatm*e to a 
 blessedness beh^nging to us, although Ave may not 
 yet be basking in the full light of it. 
 
 We are glancing at this blessedness, which, 
 both as a possession and as a hope, gilds the 
 universe, in order that we may recognize in nature 
 the truth of oiu- pictm'e, and that we may turn 
 again from our picture and see what is the 
 permanent meaning of nature. Eeally, to see 
 blessedness in the make of things, we must go 
 beyond anything that we have momentarily 
 realized, and study the presence of the idea of 
 blessedness, and of the searcli after blessedness, 
 and the sense that blessedness ouylif to he. Were it 
 as seldom possessed and enjoyed as the most miser- 
 able pliilosophers fancy it is, there would remain a 
 witness that blessedness is involved in creation ; 
 for there has been manifested or evolved an 
 ecstasy that triumphed over the most untoward 
 outward circumstances, and in expectancy, and 
 maybe in agony, it is testified tliat the world is in 
 
154 man's great charter. 
 
 travail with a blessedness with which it lias been 
 quickened. There is a living, thongh perhaps an 
 unborn blessedness ; and to adopt the language of 
 the narrative with regard to blessedness, mueli of 
 the world may not have emerged from evening to 
 morning. 
 
 This narrative leads us to think of the unity, 
 wisdom, workfulness, and goodness of the 
 Efficient, of whom all nature is the effect. 
 
 From a cause whicli simply makes a thing move, 
 up to the goodness of that cause, is a journey 
 which takes us ever nearer to the cause of man's 
 whole nature, including its capacity and its 
 yearnings. We may not omit man, rather we 
 must specially observe him, when we gaze at the 
 world, to consider the cause of it. I, regarded as 
 inseparable from the whole universe, or, as a 
 distinct personality, am an utterly dependent 
 parcel of existence. It matters not whether ni}^ 
 genealogical tree springs from the soil, nor 
 Avhether millions of types of creatures have passed 
 away and I survive ; there is a cause, an efficient 
 and sufficient cause, of what I am to-day. Our 
 new knowledge has taught us much about 
 
:\IAX'S (illKA'r ClIARTKR. 155 
 
 generative processes, but all along man has Leen 
 aware of a generative process which resulted in 
 his formation. The processes which are in 
 operation about me, and within me, depend upon 
 a cause, and the fact that I am able to take 
 account of them, and see that they are good, 
 demands a cause sufficient for this contemplating 
 and appreciating effect which I am. Whatever 
 may be my independence, or jiower of origination, 
 as a man, I certainly did not originate either the 
 power of contemplation or of appreciation. 
 
 This meditation is made in order that it may 
 not be thought that our picture is untrue to 
 nature. Want of observation often leads to the 
 depreciation of a picture, which, if properly 
 studied, would reward the spectator with a new 
 revelation. 
 
 In addition to the references to the works of lords ofGi 
 Clod, we have our attention drawn in tliis narrative 
 to the direct words of God. Fourteen times the 
 sayings of God are recorded : as ordo'iufj light, a 
 firmament, the appearance of thy land, vegetation, 
 the luminaries, living creatures in Avater and air, 
 beasts of the earth and man ; as (jifhifj nann'-s to 
 
156 
 
 light, the firmament, the dry land, and to the 
 collected waters ; in blessing the creatures in the 
 sea, and fowls of the air, and man ; and in assigning 
 food to man and beast. 
 
 What does such language convey to our minds ? 
 Would not expressions that referred only to Grod, 
 as willing or determining and working or 
 fulfilling His will, have conveyed all the truth 
 Avithout tlie risk of introducing such a difiiculty 
 as the thought of Grod using some particular form 
 of human speech ? Was not language capable of 
 representing all that is here represented without 
 the possibility of raising in any mind such a 
 question as " does Grod speak Hebrew " ? I 
 answer at once that it was better He should be 
 conceived of as speaking Hebrew than as not 
 speaking at all. Correspondence is of such vast 
 importance in this world, which includes human 
 development and culture, that a cause in which 
 the ground of this should be absent would be a 
 cause less than its effect. 
 
 Let us think out clearly a few thoughts which 
 such language contains. 
 
 In the first place, it lays it down most distinctly 
 
MAN S GREAT CHARTER. 157 
 
 that this world was designed. A vibrating elastic 
 medium we call mother gives light, it was meant or 
 designed to give light ; there is a division which 
 makes of the universe a unity of combined 
 distinctions, a whole of many parts ; this dividing- 
 firmament partly composed of atmospheric air 
 was designed ; there is diy land, there was meant 
 to be dry land ; there is life, there was meant to 
 be life ; the heavenly bodies act as luminaries, 
 they were meant to act as luminaries ; there are 
 various sensations, such as feeling, seeing, and 
 hearing, these sensations were designed ; there is 
 man, and it was meant that there should be man. 
 
 Now all these works may be viewed in a The cihecfc 
 
 words of Ood 
 
 twofold aspect, as things and as parcels of laws : pilmelitarr' 
 
 to our " laws, 
 
 as things they might be planned and made, but ^^ "»^"'''- 
 as parcels of laws other language will better 
 express the originating of what we find. "We 
 frequently speak of natui^al events happening in 
 obedience to laws. Obedience means to hear or 
 listen to. Thus oui- common language corre- 
 sponds exactly with that of the first chapter of 
 Genesis. The countless selective groupings, the 
 various distinctive vibrations, the balance, 
 
158 
 
 co-ordination, and interaction of forces, witli 
 all the harmony of their incessant movements, 
 and all the order of their inconceivable complexity, 
 are due to obedience. 
 
 Thus man's work may often consist in 
 planning and performing, without speaking, 
 because God does the informing. Man fashions 
 a table or builds a house, but all tliat he employs 
 is obeying Divine behests within its unsearchable 
 recesses. 
 
 A law states a rule, but does not designate a 
 force. It partially replies to the <piestion as to 
 liow phenomena occur in relation to metliod; it is 
 absolutely silent as to cause. Tlie question 
 "How?" can often receive correct replies, yet 
 different even in kind. For a particular pin-pose 
 we frequently look to the time-table to find liow 
 the trains run, and ignore the engineer, 
 brfore'the " ^o spcak of cmi/ kw," Said Dr. W. B. 
 
 British Assti- - . , . , 
 
 SStuir Carpenter, "as ' regulatmg or ' governmg 
 
 1 872. 
 
 phenomena, is only permissible on the assumption 
 that the hiw is tlie expression of the jjwdas 
 oj)e/-(uu(i of a governing Power." 
 
 Tlius the direct commands of Grod exju-essed in 
 
man's GliEAT CliARI'KR. 159 
 
 this first chapter of Grenesis arc the necessary 
 complement to the laws of nature of which Ave 
 read in scientific treatises. 
 
 Causation is not ascrihed to these sayings ; in 
 fact, they are frequently followed by the words 
 which express causation, as where God said, " Let 
 there be a firmament," followed by the statement 
 that Grod made the firmament. If, therefore, the 
 firmament is presented to us as a thing, then we 
 have learned that Grod designed and made it ; if as 
 a bundle of present multitudinous obediences, we 
 have learned that Grod gave the word which is 
 implied by those intricately involved but not 
 disconcerted movements of air and icther. 
 
 In the second place, it is to be noticed that this Thedhecf, 
 
 J- ' %vords ot (Jod 
 
 direct lan^uao^e ascribes a i »articular definiteness ?iiish the 
 to certain things in this world. The first chapter deTerminiit"!" 
 of Genesis is full of distinctions which could not 
 have been made by employing a uniformly narrow 
 language that should refer merely to designing 
 and making. God gave names to light, the 
 firmament, the dry land, and the collected waters. 
 The words day and heaven have already received 
 some share of attention, as tlie meaning attached 
 
1()0 man's great charter. 
 
 to them in tins narrative is very important for its 
 interpretation and for the Biblical vocabulary 
 generally. Here let us notice that this giving of 
 names lias distinguished what is comparatively 
 fixed from what is fluctuating and progressive, 
 light, air, earth, and water are thus contrasted 
 with the organic contents of the world. How 
 sadly it would have clashed with our modern 
 theories to have read that to the lordly cedar, the 
 graceful palm, and clustering vine God gave 
 their names ; or even if it had been said that He 
 named the whales which He created. Our 
 pictiu'e would have lacked much of its value 
 as a permanent record by thus being out of 
 ^perspective. 
 ThciinHi In the third place, there is a lare-e ffroup of 
 
 words of (;o.l -^ ' & o r 
 
 Jiemcnl.uT" facts whicli is dominated by what we call instinct. 
 
 to iHstinrt. 
 
 Disregarding the fundamental distinctions in the 
 world, we may arrive at a notional simplicity, but 
 clear thought will find fixed gulfs, and incommen- 
 surable facts, and unconformable plains, and that 
 transmutation is limited, and that the base metals 
 will not be converted into gold. No figurable 
 arrangement of material particles is any more a 
 
man's great chartek. IGl 
 
 measurement for instinct than a tA\'o-l'oot rule is 
 for common sense. Tliis tliouglit, I tliink, helps 
 us to appreciate tlie variety of Grod's activity 
 Avhich our narrative represents. To pick out a 
 single example : the honey-bee is a formation 
 exquisitely fashioned, and is also the embodiment of 
 wonderful instincts ; in ea(.*h as23ect it is a token of 
 a present eaiise, and the thought of a cause that 
 both makes and speaks is one which neither 
 divides the cause nor confounds the distinctive 
 effects. The particular words " make " and 
 •' speak " of com'se suffer from the natural 
 inadequacy of human language, but that is 
 necessaril}' allowed for at the commencement of 
 such a project as this of putting into human 
 language facts which human thought can only 
 feeblj' apprehend, and at its best can scarcely 
 hope fully to comprehend. One of the most 
 fundamental of instinctive acts is the appropria- 
 tion of food, and this corresponds with the definite 
 assignment of food to the animal world : / hare 
 given evcri/ (frevn Jierh for mc(d. 
 
 The rarmvorl might seem to be disregarded in 
 the appointment of food, but this apparent excep- 
 
102 
 
 stokes? ^- tion is not real. '' The food of animals is derived 
 itfit Hhini ^ii'^ctly or indirectly from vegetables, indirectly 
 oni>«M.. .b. ^^ so far as it consists of the flesh of other 
 animals, throngh which we come down to vege- 
 table feeders at last." The animal world spends 
 the treasnre stored by vegetation. 
 wonlso^Goci ^^^ ^^^ fourth place, and lastly, this direct 
 rhegrouiuinf speccli sliows that in the first cause here revealed 
 
 all correspnii- ^ 
 
 <ience. there is the ground for those correspondences 
 
 which form the chief blessings of life. The 
 ground is in God Himself. He not only 
 informed creation, but within the first cause 
 there was communication, as is clearly expressed 
 in the 2(3th verse, where we read that God said, 
 '' Let us make man." 
 
 Thus we can see that the progress of creation 
 is not ever farther away from God, but towards 
 Him, and ever nearer to Him ; it is not like an 
 inverted pyramid, starting from nothing as a base, 
 with infinity for its apex : but commencing with 
 a sufficient cause, creation is ever giving fuller 
 expression to its perfections. The blessings of 
 human correspondences, communion, or friend- 
 ships, are not groundless ; they are not beautiful 
 
man's gukat charter. 1G3 
 
 effects witlioiit a cause, they are founded upon (J od, 
 who is not the apotheosis of singleness or sameness, 
 nor a thing-like force, nor a deified arithmetical 
 unit, any of which would be inconceivable, 
 as the cause of such a universe as this ; but 
 rather He is represented as a unity of 
 combined Distinctions, a Perfect Communion, the 
 ground of all interdependencies and harmonies in 
 the universe, the basis of family life, the source 
 and stay of all love. 
 
 This leads us to the thous'ht that G-od is greater c.o.i jrmiter 
 
 ° ^ than His 
 
 than His work ; it does not extend to the illimit- ''"'''■ 
 able. God is more than creative energy, for we 
 read that He rested on the seventh day. 
 
 The word translated " rested " is the root of ni'C* 
 
 the word Sabbath. It is used in the statement J"-^'"-^ ^- •-• 
 that the manna cased. On the seventh day God 
 ceased from the activity denoted by creating and 
 making. The word rcsfcd is negative, but in the 
 assertion God rested on the seventh day, a 
 positive element is introduced by the prepositional 
 part of the sentence. We have previously had 
 occasion to point out that in the 20th chapter 
 of Exodus the prepositional prefix iJi is not used 
 
 I. 2 
 
164 man's great chahter. 
 
 before the six days, but that it is used here in the 
 2nd and 3rd verses of the second chapter of 
 Genesis, before the seventh day ; that it is used 
 three times in this connection ; that it is the same 
 prefix which is translated either on or in. Thus 
 for the character of God's rest we must look 
 to the significance of that in which He rested. 
 
 We have dwelt at some length upon the 
 declaration that Grod called the light day, and if 
 we keep this in mind while thinking of the day 
 in which God rested, we shall be set free from 
 such a paralysing thought as that of God's 
 activity ceasing for a time, and our attention 
 can be concentrated upon the character of that 
 light in which God ceases from creating to 
 make. 
 
 The light of creation is all from God, but is 
 
 not the whole light of God. Even here, through 
 
 the discoveries of scientists, physical light appears 
 
 "Fragments more symboHcal than ever. Professor Tjoidall 
 
 vo . 11., p. 8t). ^g^(3]^gg y^g ^}^^^|- ^^Q thirds of the rays emitted b}^ 
 
 the sun fail to arouse the sense of vision, and that 
 lb., voi.ii., the visible radiation is, as it were, built upon the 
 
 p. 450. ^ 
 
 trkLlght")." invisible as its necessary foundation. Physically 
 
plan's great ciiAirrKK. 105 
 
 considered, lifflit and heat are of tlie same i'-- v"i. u. 
 
 , Prof. G. G. 
 
 nature. stc.kes, 
 
 " Light as a 
 Cleans nf In- 
 
 Thus the invisible rays, or (light itself ;;:';;r^'''"'' 
 being invisible) the rays at both ends of the 
 spectrum which are emitted continuously with 
 the luminiferous rays of the sun, but fail to 
 excite the sense of vision, are emblematical of the 
 light in which God ceases to illuminate the 
 physical world, to whicli creation does not extend, i Tim. vi. k,. 
 the light unapproachable. 
 
 It was not at the end of a day, as after a tiring 
 period of work, but it was in the seventh day, or 
 light, God brought the work to an end. There is 
 a light of natm^e, and that light is manifold, but, 
 even so, it does not include all the the light of God. 
 In the Divine nature there are both the daylight of 
 work and the daylight of love, not sequent but 
 co-existent. Natm-e receives in succession rays 
 which start simultaneously. That in which God 
 ceased had neither niglit,nor evening, nor morning ; 
 it was, is, and will be, day. 
 
 This darkness with excess of light stands for 
 that which is beyond the capacity of creation. A - 
 dim glance at the particular blessedness of it seems 
 
1()() man's great (HAinKU. 
 
 to be given in that inward communion and 
 fellowship to wliicli reference Las been alread}' 
 made, and which further knowledge and experi- 
 ence lead us to regard as the light of love. 
 anil plrS^ Tlius, wlicrcas the scientist diligently scrutinizes 
 
 in Col. i. 10. 
 
 iKTiaSv— the method of procedure m nature, our narrative 
 St. John i. ■.). speaks in simple language of the present ultimate 
 y4yov€v : Occasioner, in whom all things hold together, the 
 tA ttIvtcl' Living Force who actuates and animates the whole, 
 7vvJffTr)Kev. of whom and through whom and unto whom are 
 ^f. Rom. xi. ^Yl things, who is over all and through all and in 
 
 E,.h.iv.«. all^ 
 
 This record of days, of mornings added to 
 mornings, of growing and manifold brilliance 
 verging on the invisible light of Grod ; this record 
 illustrated by discoveries in physical science, by 
 personal self-knowledge, and by the revelation of 
 Jesus Christ— presents us witli the thought of an 
 all-sufficient Cause of the world, including man 
 and his relationships, intelligence, affection, and 
 aspirations ; it offers to the acceptance of our reason, 
 heart, and conscience, the One Light at once, from 
 whom nature receives various rays as in a spectrum, 
 the One Source of energy, intelligence, and love. 
 
CONTENTS OF CHAPTEll IV. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The image of God ... 109 
 
 First traces of man I70 
 
 The efficient cause is greater, not less, than man ... 171 
 
 Animal life transtigured 172 
 
 Man's dealing with each of the six days, images the 
 
 Power that moves all things ]~H 
 
 Man's inquiring, imaginhig, and believing, with the 
 
 luminous response, manifest his unique position, 
 
 and the significance of it 175 
 
 Originality of man's energy : the worker an emblem of 
 
 God 178 
 
 Measuring work by its progress 181 
 
 Man the luw-giver 183 
 
 Explanation of man's moral and religious nature ... 185 
 
 Prayer— llest in God ... 1(M)_1(>,H 
 
CHAI^TEK IV. 
 
 One of the most fundamental facts in this record 
 is tlie representation of man as in the image of 
 God, and it is extremely interesting to notice how it 
 has escaped the error which seems to await such a 
 task, that of representing instead, God in the 
 image of man. 
 
 Some one has said that if an ox could 
 think of God, it would picture llim as an 
 ox, as a man pictures Him as a man ; very possibly 
 it would do so. Such a thought points to the diffi- 
 culty of avoiding a portraitm^e of man to do duty 
 for the presence of God. But here God is 
 represented neither on the one hand as a mere 
 abstraction, nor on the other hand with a single 
 physical feature. He is the som-ce of existence, 
 the origin of various powers, the central fulness 
 of life and community of life, and yet there is a 
 remarkable absence of the merely magnifying 
 
Lost, 
 L'-.'il. 
 
 170 MA^'s GREAT CHAKTEH. 
 
 of human methods. In human life, amidst 
 human limitations, there is presented a phase of 
 that Avhieh in God is absolute. In fact, the 
 remarkable thing is just the absence of Milton's 
 golden compasses. Boundlessness is to man a 
 negative conception. God called the light day, 
 but man finds it hard to' hold to that definition 
 even in this narrative ; to him limitations are as 
 necessary to the idea of day as is light itself, and 
 man is related to God as man's idea of day is 
 related to light. 
 
 When we look beyond history and tradition 
 for the first traces of man's existence, we find 
 them to be of a kind peculiar to the human 
 species, and such as pre-eminently distinguish 
 it from all other living beings. Man is discovered 
 by his works and tools. 
 ••Natunii "At lens'tb," writes Mr. Wallace, "there came 
 
 Selection," *=' ' ' 
 
 1'. -J^'. -j^^^ existence a being in whom that subtile force 
 
 we term mi ml became of greater importance than 
 his mere bodily structure. Though with a naked 
 and unprotected body, ////-s gave him clothing 
 against the varying inclemencies of the seasons. 
 Though unable to compete with the deer in swift- 
 
 <;r;uit Allen 
 
 Tiof. W. II. 
 I'Mower. 
 
man's great ckauteu. 171 
 
 ness, or with thv wild ])ull iu streugtli, ////x gave 
 him weapons with which to capture or overcome 
 both. Though less capable than most other animals 
 of living on the herbs and fruit that unaided nature 
 supplies, this wonderful faculty taught him to 
 govern and direct natiu'c to his own benefit, and 
 make her produce food for him, when and where 
 he pleased, h'rom the moment "when the first 
 skin was used as a covering, when the hrst rude 
 spear was formed to assist in the chase, when fire 
 was first used to cook his food, when the first seed 
 was sown or shoot planted, a grand revolution was 
 effected in nature, a revolution which in all the 
 previous ages of the earth's history had had no 
 parallel ; for a being had arisen who was no 
 longer necessarily subject to change, with the 
 changing universe — a being who was in some 
 degree superior to nature, inasmuch as he knew 
 how to control and regulate her action, and could 
 keep himself in harmony Avith her, not by a 
 change in body, but by an advance of mind." 
 
 There must be a wide difference both between 
 the cause and the process, and between the process 
 and the consequence. The cousct^/iriicc is man : 
 
("f. "Lifenf 
 F. ]). Man- 
 vice," vol. ii., 
 It. 277. 
 
 172 M.VN's GRF..\T ClIARrKR. 
 
 Man, as we know him, is the latest stage in a 
 certain series of structural changes, which we call 
 the proce-s-s ; but these structural clianges depend 
 upon the cause of existence, of structure, and of 
 change. Because there is more in man than in 
 anything else in the world, therefore more of the 
 cause is seen in him. Man looks below to trace 
 the course of his ascent, but he must lift up his 
 Jiead to find the cause ; he stoops to discover his 
 starting-point, but lie stands erect, and seeks the 
 heavens for the power which has raised him ; the 
 stream springs from the soil at one's feet, but the 
 fountain of living waters is high up tlie eternal 
 hills ; energy is from above, though it operates 
 through that which is beneath. 
 
 In man as man animal life is transfigured. Man 
 is not an animal p/n-s a spirit which remains apart 
 from and unconnected with his animal nature, but 
 the new light adds a lustre to that already existing. 
 As the vitality of a plant is intimately connected 
 with that which it imbibes from the earth, air, 
 and water, so that a })lant or vegetable organism 
 is glorified matter, similarly the life of a 
 sentient animal is intimately connected with its 
 
man's GKKAT CIlAKTKIf. 173 
 
 body, wliieli is an orgaiiisiu glorified b}' the senses ; 
 so likewise the spirit of man is intimately con- 
 nected Avith his animal nature, so that body and 
 soul and spirit are one man, an animal trans- 
 figured in the image of God. 
 
 Man's dealing with each of the six days differs 
 widely from that of any other living creature. 
 In contradistinction to everything else, he shows 
 himself to be the child rather than the mere 
 production of nature. By the meagrest be- 
 ginnings of art and science seen in the infancy 
 both of the individual and of the race, man enters, 
 as it were, nature's workshop and kindles for 
 himself a fire, moulds the earth after his own 
 ideas, and with nature's tools makes his little 
 vegetable kingdom of cultivated plants. 
 
 Man producing light by the friction of two 
 sticks imitates, if unconsciously, nature's work in 
 her glowing meteoric nebulse. Man with hand or 
 wheel fashioning bowl or cup, imitates the pottery 
 of nature in her suns, moons, and stars. Man's 
 cereals and garden fruits and flowers manifest his 
 resemblance to Him who has clothed the world in 
 its rich and radiant verdancy. 
 
174 
 
 CHARTER. 
 
 Human interferences with tlie things of nature 
 quite beyond any animal needs seem almost to 
 suggest the meddlesomeness of a child which 
 seeks amusement amidst tilings belonging to 
 grown-up peo2)le. Man finds quite a fascinating 
 enijiloyment in such things as the artificial 
 formation of light, air, and water ; the making 
 the solid into liquid, the liquid into gaseous, the 
 gaseous into solid, and generally in finding out 
 and, if possible, copying the metliods of nature. 
 
 Moreover, in the profound abyss of heaven, 
 altogether outside the minute sphere of his handi- 
 work, man by mental effort makes the mighty 
 constellations minister to him. The heavens are 
 telling a wonderfully interesting story, but man 
 alone can hear it. The listeners have heard to 
 better purpose in these latter days ; but in the ages 
 long ago our primitive ancestors looked above 
 il?'"VstnV- them and learned signs and seasons. "By the help 
 
 iiumy,'' K.A. 
 
 pioctor. Qf \}^Q stars the shepherd, during the night, could 
 count the hours, the traveller track his course 
 througli the uniform wastes of the desert, and the 
 mariner guide his bark over the ocean ; the 
 husbandman, also, learned to regulate his labours 
 
MAN S GREAT CHAinER. 
 
 175 
 
 by tlie appearance of certain constellations, wliioh 
 gave him warning of the approaching seasons." 
 
 And further, just as there are cultivated, or, as 
 we may say, man-made plants, so there are domestic 
 or man-made animals. Not only does man use 
 dogs, sheep, and horses ; hut, working with nature, 
 he produces the particular sort of dog, sheep, or 
 horse that he desires, and which never existed till 
 he was the means of making it. The domestic 
 breeds of birds and beasts are the effect of a con- 
 scious or un(»onscious childlike imaging of nature 
 by man. 
 
 In this moulding each of the six works to a 
 fuller day, or at least a day specialized and 
 iidajDted to his developing needs, man demonstrates 
 his kinship with the spirit of the universe. 
 
 Man endeavours to place his mind beside the 
 worker as distinct from the work. The know- 
 ledge of what is, does not satisfy man, he is 
 impelled to ask, how is it ? and wliy is it ? 
 
 *' To explain the origin of the world in which we <inatiefiiges- 
 live, that of beings surrounding us, and our own, ■^"^'^''" 
 is evidently one of the most general aspirations of 
 the human mind. The most (.-ivilized nations, as 
 
170 man's great CIIAllTER. 
 
 well as the most savage tribes, have satisfied this 
 want in one way or another. Even Australians, 
 whatever may have been said to the contrary, 
 haA'e their rudimentary cosmogony, which those 
 who have taken some interest in the matter have 
 made them relate." 
 
 " The outward facts of nature," writes Prof. 
 Tyndall, " are insufficient to satisfy the mind. We 
 cannot be content with knowing that the light 
 and heat of the sun illuminate and warm the 
 world. We are led irresistibly to inquire, 
 ' What is light, and what is heat ? ' and this 
 question leads us at once out of the region of 
 sense into that of imagination." 
 
 Independently of scientific conclusions at which 
 men may arrive, w^e have this irresistible leading 
 out of the region of sense, this primary imjiulse, 
 this prophetic searching, this human asking with 
 the confidence of there being an answer Avhieh 
 man can understand ; we have this grand venture 
 of the spirit of man as a sign of his relationship 
 with the universal spirit of wisdom and work. 
 Man's spirit affirms that there is reason at the 
 heart of things, and such reason as is akin to his- 
 
man's (iKi'.Al' ( HAK'll'K. 177 
 
 own reason. A new point of light glows for 
 a while amongst a myriad seattered stars. " I 
 don't nnderstand it," says an astronomer, " but I 
 can"; and shortly tliere appears the account of a 
 world that was consumed, and its distance in 
 millions of miles, and the number of years that 
 must have elapsed since its place knew it no more, 
 before the catastrophe could be witnessed from the 
 earth. 
 
 " All the apparently irregular motions of the Locky. 
 heavenly bodies have been reduced to law and 
 order b}' Xe^^'ton, who showed that all the 
 motions were really regular, and therefore could 
 be calculated beforehand." 
 
 " Newton 1 )ondered all these thing's. He Prof. tm.- 
 
 ^ ^ dall, "iM-ag- 
 
 looked, as Avas his wont, into the darkness until it sSccV' vol. 
 
 ii., 1). *J(!. 
 
 became entirely luminous. How this light arises 
 we cannot explain, but as a matter of fact it does 
 arise.'' 
 
 Surely the irresistible looking with which man 
 peers into nature, and this inexplicable light with 
 which he is rewarded, are, separately and in their 
 correspondence, significant of a close connection 
 between the human mind and the spirit who 
 
178 
 
 originates and supports all tilings. But whatever 
 we might argue as to their significance, if we Avere 
 left alone to draw our own conelusions, here on 
 tlie one hand are the facts, and on the other 
 hand there is this Biblical explanation, that man 
 is created in the image of (iod, who is light, 
 who said, Lrf flwre he Ihjlif, and there was light, 
 Avho called the light da}^ and who added day to 
 day until lie manifested Himself in man. Here, 
 I say, are certain facts, and a Biblical ex] Sana- 
 tion ; and just as a man decides as to a concord of 
 sounds (piite apart from mechanical measure- 
 ments or a theory of music, so let him decide 
 here whether his relationship to God is not the 
 one satisfactory exjdanation of his manhood as he 
 finds it. 
 
 Newton exemplified man's belief in and love of 
 order. He showed that not only did he from 
 analogy believe there was a regular system, but 
 also that his spirit Avas unsatisfied until he could 
 recognize it. He must see it. 
 
 Man's attitude with regard to the univers<' is 
 that of a worker toAvards a piece of work. 
 
 Man's spirit to Avork transcends the needs of 
 
man's (.kkat (haktkk. 170 
 
 liis grosser luiture. Otlier creatures work with 
 jiu end ill view, l)ut man Avorks witli infinity in 
 front of liim ; they seem to be at home and at 
 rest while he is on pilgrimage. He works not 
 only for an object, but because it is his nature 
 to work. Thus wrote Budgell in the Spect((for : }<o.]u;. 
 " Those AN'lio have searclied iiit(^ human nature 
 observe that nothing so much shows the nobleness 
 of the soul, as that its felicity consists in action. 
 Every man has such an active principle in him, 
 that he will find out something to employ himself 
 upon, in whatever place or state of life he is 
 posted"; and the following from Carlyle hears ^|^^Jj';[^ . 
 like testimony : " In all the sports of children, 
 were it only in their wanton breakages and 
 defacements, you shall discern a creative instinct ; 
 the manikin feels that he is a born man, that his 
 vocation is to work. The choicest present you ;'J'"^\^',"^ 
 can make him is a tool." Again, '' Labour is ' ' 
 life ; from the iniiKjst heart of the worker rises his 
 God-given force, the sacred celestial life-essence 
 breathed into him by Almighty God ; from his 
 inmost heart awakens him to all nobleness — to all i'-- 1"-- 
 knowledge, ' self-knowledge, ' and mucli (4se, as 
 
 M 2 
 
180 man's great chautek. 
 
 soon as work fit!}' begins." And again, " All true 
 work is sacred ; in all true ^^'ork, were it but true 
 hand -labour, there is something of Divineness. 
 Labour, wide as the earth, has its summit in 
 heaven. Sweat of the brow ; and up from that 
 to sweat of the brain, sweat of the heart ; which 
 includes all Kepler calculations, Newton medita- 
 tions, all science, all spoken epics, all acted 
 heroisms, martyrdoms, — up to that * agony of 
 bloody sweat ' which all men have called Divine I 
 "Past and brother, if this is not ' worship,' then I say. 
 
 Present," 
 
 the more the pity for worship ; for this is the 
 noblest thing yet discovered under God's sk}'." 
 The same writer speaks of " Giant Labour " as 
 " the truest emblem there is of God the World- 
 worker, Demiurgus, and Eternal Maker." Con- 
 sider these assertions of scientist and philosopher, 
 and the light that is thrown upon them by this 
 first chapter of Genesis, with its representation of 
 God as the Great Absolute Worker and of man as 
 made in His image. 
 
 Look at the multiform energy of man attested 
 by his works, by his progress, by his fixed 
 determination to progress ; look at that almost 
 
 11. 140. 
 
MAN S (iinvVr CllAlMl-.K. 
 
 181 
 
 <reative energy with wliicli man opens up new fields 
 of labour, tliat insatiable spirit wliieli no attain- 
 ments can satisfy, that ceaseless stretching forward 
 towards a goal which he is fc^-ever placing well in 
 advance of his present achievements : This being 
 called man who is (ihcai/s hicoining rather than 
 couic^ whose measure includes a defiance of limits — 
 brings us in sight, if anything can, of the life to 
 which the worlds and all that is therein bear 
 witness, displays the emblem of the Power that 
 moves all things, and by liis measiu'eless capacity 
 proclaims himself a child of the Infinite. 
 
 " There is in the human intellect," says 
 Professor Tyndall, " a powel' of expansion — I 
 might almost call it a power of creation — which 
 is brought into play by the simple brooding uj)on 
 facts." At any rate, by literatm-e, (as in the 
 drama), by sciences, arts, professions, and other 
 departments of labom% man has made worlds 
 organized and systematized, and, in j^art, he lives 
 in them. 
 
 The marking progress, Ijy the development of 
 the work, and not by the extraneous and 
 irrelevant notion of time, appeals to the spirit of 
 
182 man's great (IIAK'iKK. 
 
 tlie man who endeavours to i:ia]iv iiinv, who turns 
 a deaf ear to the brutish cravings for compliance 
 with seasons, and regards the necessary attention 
 to the Avants of his animal nature as a restraint 
 upon his spirit. The free labourer working at 
 that in which he takes delight is very intent upon 
 it ; he has a plan, and the rough material ; in his 
 mind there is the thing he means to realize. 
 The stages reached in the course of embodying' 
 his idea are the units hj whicli he calculates 
 progress. He works to get light on his subject, 
 to bring it out of the darkness which envelops it, 
 and make his thought as clear as daylight. 
 
 When a man voluntarily sets himself to work, 
 then he is no mere machine, without interest in 
 what it accomplishes, no slave for whom time was 
 made, anxiously watching the slowly-moving 
 hands on the dial, or sighing for the setting sun 
 to release him from drudgery ; but he measures his 
 work by the progress of his work, by how much 
 clearer his idea has become. The light he 
 watches is the growing light in his plan, the 
 coming into position and order of its various 
 parts, the development of his subject, the grow- 
 
man's GKKAT (HARTKK. 18'i 
 
 ing dajliglit wliicli pUices facts and arguments In 
 their relative positions ; the dawning towards 
 which he presses is one that shall arise in his 
 mind, or in the expression of liis tliought, in 
 words, or in a picture, or a statue, or a mechanical 
 contrivance, or perhaps some article for use or 
 ornament, or, better still, a noble deed. It is the 
 getting nearer his object that measures his 
 progress. In such a spirit man works towards 
 light, and the mingled state of obscurity, or 
 evciiuuj, is proplietic of morning. Such a worker, 
 whether in the study, or at the bench, before the 
 easel, or in the laboratory, can understand the 
 order, night to evening, evening to morning, which 
 is the beginning of a lasting day. 
 
 We will now turn to another remarkable iudi- ,^|;i",|'"' ^'■"" 
 cation of the peculiar position which man occupies 
 in this world. It is a sign at cmce of his 
 distinction from the rest of creation and of his 
 kinship with the Creator. That the universe is 
 governed according to law is being ever more and 
 more clearly demonstrated, and is the first article 
 in the creed of science, but when in our survey of 
 all tilings ^\c arrive at man we find a lawg'^cr. 
 
184 man's great charter. 
 
 His lavv's are often worse than questionable, they 
 fall very far short of doing nnqualified honoiu' to 
 humanity ; but this making laws is full of signifi- 
 cance. 
 
 The necessity and the possibility of a race 
 of creatures formulating, obeying, and enforcing 
 laws, as it were, on its own account, marks out 
 mankind as a wonderfully distinct thing in toe 
 world. The Roman Empire is the great historical 
 expression of the human faculty for government 
 according to law. Every ruler and every subject 
 of that Empire might have been dissected, as the 
 world is dissected, without there being any nearer 
 approach to the source of that strength which 
 secured the stability of the political world. Here 
 in the mind of man we find the one solitary force 
 which bears any sort of resemblance to that which 
 is evidenced in the whole and every part of the 
 material world. 
 
 AVhether we look to nations or smaller 
 communities, or to individuals, we have this 
 government according to law established by the 
 human will. If a business man could be watched 
 as physical phenomena are watched, a striking 
 
man's (iUr.AI' CHARTER. 185 
 
 resemblance would be seen in the fact of regularity ; 
 in all examples the cause remains unseen, but in 
 the case of a man we are cons(nous of the causative 
 principle. I can make a law, and I can keep it ; 
 I can determine to walk four miles an liour, and 
 do so ; I can make up my mind which way I 
 will go, and go in tliat direction. If a man choose 
 he can act with the regularity of a macliine. 
 Now, as soon as we leave what is visible in a 
 machine, we are at a loss to explain its regularity; 
 we cannot think far enough into it, we necessarily 
 stop short at laws of gravity, of attraction, of 
 heat, &G. ; but man is the one oj)en way to the 
 spirit of law, and therefore the final explanation of 
 the macliine must be found in man, and not that 
 of man in the macliine. Therefore, also, we can 
 reach a further explanation of tlie Avorld tlirough 
 man, than of man through the world ; and in the 
 spii'it of man we hnd an image of the all-per- 
 vading spirit of law and order. Man appears at 
 last and illustrates all the inferior grades and 
 explains each back step in the circle from God to 
 God. 
 
 But tliat whicli is of ijre-eminent importance in ^i^v'", '•'''•'■•''' 
 
 nature. 
 
" Life and 
 Letters," 
 p. 211. 
 
 180 man's great charter. 
 
 this preface to the Holy Scriptm^s is its explana- 
 tion of man's moral and religious nature. His 
 creation in the image of God accounts for ideals 
 and asj^irations, and duty and accountableness 
 and conscience. 
 
 " I am going to present my position," said 
 James Hinton, " that the moral faculty in us is 
 the true knowing faculty, that as in science we 
 find the world rational, so in a true knowledge we 
 shall find it right and good.'' 
 
 It would be well for us at times to inquire Avhat 
 we mean by "knowledge." The word may be used 
 in a very arbitrary manner. It is easy to drop into 
 a way of allowing it to be applied to one domain 
 and refused to another, although we possess no more 
 absolute acquaintance with that which is included 
 in the former than with that which belongs to the 
 latter. 
 
 For the sake of clearness, we will venture 
 upon a very commonplace illustration. Let us 
 take up an almanac, and turn over its pages to 
 find ^\hen there will be a ncAv moon. Now, when 
 we have found it, we accept that information 
 without questioning. Consider the character of 
 
man's great chartku. 187 
 
 this knowledge. We see the date exactly 
 recorded, and suppose that it has been derived 
 from a reliable source. What then ? Is it even 
 on tlie part of the authorities themselves absolute 
 knowledge !■" Have the}' comprehended tlie 
 whole state of things upon which that conclusion 
 depends ? By no means ! Is anything taken 
 for granted by the astronomical calculators which 
 they are imable to prove Y Most assuredl}- ! 
 They have not comprehended the actual ground 
 upon which the laws of phenomena rest, and they 
 have assumed the uniformitj' of the laws 
 of phenomena, or so-called laws of nature. 
 Not for a moment am I calling these articles 
 of faith in question, rather let us recognize 
 to the full the strength of the faith which 
 we have in such things as these, for faith 
 assuredly it is. The faith is a most reasonable 
 faith, not because we can argue it out, and relieve 
 oui'selves of the necessity for faith, but because 
 we are creatures to whom such faith is a necessary 
 element. I have referred to these things, tliat we 
 may not regard the knowledge we have by means 
 of conscience as of less authority tlian knowledge 
 
188 man's ghkat cnAirrKK. 
 
 we acquire by other means, simply because of 
 tlie basis of faith, seeing that faith is also 
 at the basis of our knowledg(i of pliysical 
 facts. 
 
 Perhaps we have been taught that conscience 
 is a development, that it can be traced in its 
 earlier stages, that it emerges from a distant 
 twilight, and that to understand what we men 
 really are, we ought to look back from ourselves 
 to the savage, from tlie savage to the ape, from 
 the ape to one of the lowest members of the 
 animal kingdom, and so back to the twilight of 
 the senses, as previously we looked back to the 
 twilight of reason and conscience; then we may 
 be sent further to look for ourselves in the 
 plant kingdom, and in the very lowest place 
 there, and so on, until we come to a narrow 
 chasm, beyond which is the inorganic with its 
 two principles of matter and attraction, or a 
 monad combining both. 
 
 I do not raise a doubt as to the probability of 
 this fascinating theory. I only Avant you to con- 
 sider how it bears upon the autliority of con- 
 science, on our distinguishing what is morally 
 
man's gkf.at chartkk. 189 
 
 right and wrong, and recognizing our respon- 
 sibility to do the one and shun the other. 
 
 Notice, then, that the reason and even the 
 senses are involved in the same process ; and if 
 evolution demonstrates the incompetence of con- 
 science, it demonstrates likewise the incompetence 
 of reason. We shall not refrain from seeing and 
 hearing because there was a time when we could 
 not see and hear, or when that from whicli we are 
 lineally descended could not see and hear. We 
 shall use om' reason such as it is, now that we 
 have it, without being affected by its ])re\ious 
 absence. So, too, with conscience : having at last 
 distinguished between right and wrong, the 
 whole analogy of our other faculties is opposed to 
 the thought of refusing the light to which we 
 have become susceptible. 
 
 Man's creation in the image of God accounts 
 for his being possessed by an ideal, Avliich is not an 
 instinctive memory from the process of evolution, 
 but which is still beyond him, unattained and 
 unrealized. It accounts for his highest aspirations ; 
 for as a child of man aspires to be manly, a child 
 of God aspires to be Divine ; it accounts for the 
 
ijcorj.'!' I'.li 
 
 Wilson „( 
 Kdiiihiu;:)! 
 
 100 
 
 sense of duty, it explains tliis hnperative fact, this 
 h((j(jcst word in tlic irorhl, by the thought of 
 j)ersonal obligation. 
 
 '' Two things fill me with awe : the starry 
 heavens, and that sense of moral resj^onsibility 
 in man " — citing this confession of Emmanuel 
 Kant, Professor Tyndall accepts it and expands it 
 thus : " And in his hours of healtli and strength 
 and sanity, when the stroke (^f action has ceased 
 and the pause of reflection has set in, the scientific 
 investigator finds himself overshadowed by the 
 same awe. Breaking contact with the hampering 
 details of earth, it associates him with a Power 
 which gives fulness and tone to his existence, but 
 which he can neitlier analyse nor comprehend." 
 And we may add, if that Power were such that 
 man could analyse or comprehend, it woidd cease 
 to give fulness and tone to his existence, and 
 association with it would never more give 
 rest. 
 
 Prayer is the approach, or attempted approach, 
 of man to the infinite source of truth. Of course, 
 all are aware of the fear and selfishness which has 
 been put into prayer, and of the loathsome 
 
man's great ClIAinKR. 191 
 
 degradatiou with which it lias been associated ; 
 but it would be as reasonable to think lightly of 
 the faculty of speeeli because of the vile abuses to 
 wliieh it has been made subservient, as to think 
 lightly of tlie faculty of i)rayer because it has 
 been seduced into the service of the most revolting 
 superstitions. 
 
 It matters but little by Avliat stages this i)ower 
 has been gained. The sense of dependence, tlie 
 sense of responsibility, the sense of a necessary 
 cause, tlie sense of something lacking which can 
 only be supplied from above, the need of some 
 court of appeal from the appalling chaos of 
 circumstances, mistakes, inequalities and distresses, 
 the recognition of orphanage as orphanage — may 
 have had a part in educing the faculty of prayer. 
 But the cry, articulate and inarticulate, expressed 
 in cultured phrase and flowing measure of classical 
 liturg}', or in the wild jargon of untutored 
 savages, the imploring cry, that dod would rend 
 the heavens and come down, indicates a higher 
 nature in man. 
 
 AVhether regarded as successful or unsuccessful, 
 the ventm^e of prayer is an index of man's 
 
192 man's GKEAT CHARTEIl. 
 
 nobility. That he is a seeker after (tocI is some- 
 tliing more than his grosser nature can account 
 for. Man is not content to remain bestial. 
 Savages will disfigure themselves to dissemble 
 their bodily likeness to the brutes, whilst other 
 men discover their dissimilarity to all other 
 members of the animal kingdom by the aspiration 
 to get beyond self and enjoy communion with 
 God. 
 
 Thus the six days are insufficient for man, 
 with these alone his nature remains in partial 
 eclipse, but when God shines upon him, the dim 
 recesses of his being are Hooded with light and 
 his dullest task is brightened by a radiance not its 
 own. 
 
 Man reflects rays from the infinite source of 
 
 truth, and also from the infinite source of love, for 
 
 ist. John iv. " he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God 
 
 IC. 
 
 Prov. iv. is. abideth in him." Moreover, " the path of the 
 righteous is as the shining light which shineth 
 more and more unto the perfect day." 
 "Man is not man as yet, 
 Nor shall I deem liis object served, his end 
 Attained, his genuine strength put fairly forth, 
 AVhile only here and there a star dispels 
 
 i 
 
man's great charter. 193 
 
 The darkness, here and there a lowering mind 
 O'erlooks its prostrate fellows, when the host 
 Is out at once to the despair of night : 
 AMien all mankind alike is perfected, 
 Equal in full-blown powers — then, not till then, 
 I say, begins man's general infancy 
 
 — Prognostics told 
 Man's near approach ; so in man's self arise 
 August anticipations, symbols, types 
 Of a dim splendour ever on before 
 In that eternal circle life pursues. 
 
 Bkowxing. 
 
CONTENTS OF CHAPTER V. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Man's title to the freedom of the universe ... 197 — 200 
 
 Man's instinctive claim justified. 
 
 Authority of the charter substantiated by every 
 human success. 
 
 Emancipation from grovelling notions. 
 
 Common ground for learned and unlearned. 
 
 Not a repertory of physical facts, but a mandate 
 for discovering them. 
 
 An outward token of man's birthright. 
 Man liberated not from work, but for work . . . 200—205 
 
 Idea of man's existence to be realized by efifort. 
 
 ;Man free to live as (lod lives : Divine road of 
 work. 
 
 Work without over-production. 
 
 Need of energy. 
 
 Workers not simply wage-earners. 
 
 To "arise and shine" a constitutional pro- 
 ceeding. 
 The record of Revelation satisfies the problem ... 20G — 208 
 
 The eye could not make the light it receives. 
 
 The account in harmony with objective and 
 subjective experience, though, maybe, not 
 deducible from it. 
 
 Cod the guarantee that man is not vanity. 
 
 Rational source for stream of tendency that 
 makes for righteousness. 
 •Service perfect freedom 209—210 
 
 Positive liberty. 
 
 Magna Charta. 
 
 N 2 
 
CHAPTEP. V. 
 
 Now, why slioiild we call this Biblical prologue f,*^"f^^J^If„J** 
 JLni^s charter, with obvious reference to the Magna universe. 
 Charta of English liberty ? What is there to 
 warrant this particular association of ideas? 
 The first chapter of Grenesis clearly asserts man's 
 title to the freedom of the universe. It amply 
 justifies the instinctive claims of the scientist to 
 understand, and of the handicraftsman to avail 
 liimself of the things about him. It puts into 
 words and substantiates the Rights of man which 
 have been partially assumed. 
 
 The authenticity of this Charter is vindicated by 
 every liuman success, whilst its authority to in- 
 spire with hope and aspiration becomes clearer as 
 the growing light of man's progress realizes in 
 some degree the immense endowment which this 
 Charter affirms to be his rightful portion. 
 
 This Charter stimulates us to advance from "the 
 
198 
 
 mere dumb wonder of ignorance " to the reverential 
 admiration of ever-increasing knowledge. It 
 lifts us up from the "grovelling awe of the super- 
 natural as exhibited in the fetish-Avorshipper to the 
 hopeful humility of the children of God." 
 
 The first chapter of G-enesis is a dispensation 
 from any despicable estimate of humanity, and 
 from an enervating dread of the objects and 
 secrets and powers of nature. It accentuates the 
 dignity of man. It tells him what he is. It 
 grants him the freedom to work. Its informa- 
 tion is a passport to education. The first chapter of 
 Genesis is the justification for the pursuit of inves- 
 tigations in the external world, and for the adapta- 
 tion of discoveries to extend the power and authority 
 of man. Here is a starting-point from which all 
 specialists may jom^ney with the blessing of man and 
 God : here they may return after every extension 
 of man's dominion, after every mental and moral 
 elevation of mankind, to regain a proportionate 
 view of their little sphere of activity, and humbl}^ 
 and thankfully attest the validity of this great 
 title-deed of the human family. Here in this 
 grand simple outline there is common ground on 
 
man's great charter. 19!) 
 
 wliieli learued imd uulearued cau meet to consider 
 the facts of nature and life. The language of 
 light is simple enough for the peasant and 
 profound enough for the philosopher. 
 
 The first chapter of Genesis could never have 
 instructed man in the details of physical science, 
 but it can ui-ge him to discover those details for 
 himself, and its broad outlines can accommodate all 
 his acquired knowledge. It expressly refuses a 
 monopoly of man's devotion, but it hands over to 
 him the whole world as that of which he must 
 make himself the master. It sends us to the 
 work, and there we shall find the significance of its 
 words. Etymology and syntax are incapacitated 
 for defining the meaning of its language, because 
 this is allied to the abiding facts of the world. 
 "Words such as light are protected from the assaults 
 of verbal quibbling by the great outward permanent 
 facts with which they are in alliance, and which 
 strengthen their symbolic power over and above 
 that derived from mere syllables. Fresh acces- 
 sions of knowledge exhibit more of tlie fulness of 
 the world and therefore of this record; but the 
 obvious facts of the world and their interpretation 
 
200 man's great CIIAllTEK. 
 
 by this charter are of the greatest practical 
 importance to the millions who are " no 
 scholars." 
 
 Tlie first chapter of Genesis is a support to the 
 noblest impulses of man, an outward token of his 
 birthright that he should not discredit his loftiest 
 aspirations by the fear that, after all, they are but 
 fancy-bred. With this he can appeal against the 
 unconstitutional claims of his animal natm'e. 
 
 This chapter of Grenesis is the patent of man's 
 nobility, and shows that in whicli his nobility 
 consists. It tells of his creation in the Divine 
 image, and exhibits the Grod-life as a life of 
 activity. 
 ]\ran liber- Thus this Charter sets him free to live as God 
 
 ated, not 
 
 but for work. Hvcs, and encourages him to realize by effort the 
 idea of his existence. 
 
 Therefore, whoever a man may be, whatever 
 
 his place in the world, it is his privilege to find 
 
 his work and do it. He can make this affirmation, 
 
 St. John v.] 7. "My father worketh even until now, and I 
 
 work." 
 
 This beginning of the Bible discourages the 
 thought of attaining one's desires anywhere off tlie 
 
201 
 
 JJiviiie road of work. By u positive exposition of" 
 the great Architype's set purpose and perform- 
 ance, the spirit is rebuked that Avonld wait npon 
 chance. It is not sufficient for a man to work 
 like a horse, he must work like God. There is a 
 fundamental difference between the two simili- 
 tudes, and realizing the right one, distinguishes 
 man from the brutes. Voluntary, self- originating, 
 thought-determining, tliought -selecting activity 
 diiferentiatps ns from our fellow-creatures in the 
 animal kingdom. We not only can do this or 
 that, bnt we can elioose to think about this or 
 tliat, and set our minds upon a purpose and 
 accomplish it. The infinite variety of man's 
 achievements, testify to the use he has made of 
 this freedom. The constant changes and indi- 
 vidual differences in our manner of life, in our 
 homes and domestic details belonging to them, 
 in our employments and all business con- 
 cerns, in our knowledge and in our ideas, bear 
 witness to the originality and freedom of our 
 activity. 
 
 This Charter, while it explains and justifies the 
 *' towering mind," tliat overlooks its prostrate 
 
202 
 
 fellows, would awake the slumbering to stand up 
 and act the man. 
 
 The student baffled in his studies, tempted to 
 take what he finds as an accident, a mere happen- 
 ing-to-be-so, disposed to ignore facts in to-day's 
 problems, because they or their equivalents are a 
 quadi'illion years old, may here find encourage- 
 ment for the better spirit that tells him of there 
 being intense meaning everywhere, and persuades 
 him to persevere towards an adequate solution, 
 and to ignore nothing in spite of inconvenience 
 and the upsetting of theories. 
 
 This Charter would not permit man to be 
 satisfied with the thought and contemplation of 
 mere sequences, of stories which tell only of this 
 following that, of one thing being antecedent to 
 another ; it points to a Cause in whose image the 
 personality of man is created, and so offers an 
 escape from the panoramic view of the universe. 
 
 There is work to be done and knowledge to be 
 acquh'ed without risk of over-production. Man 
 as man works to fill his place, not his pocket. If 
 all had heeded the command to work, which the 
 capacity for work and an inquiring mind and the 
 
203 
 
 incessant six days of God's working have all 
 along been urging, instead of too often waiting 
 to be coerced by animal wants, the world would 
 not have been so overtaxed with arrears, and a 
 double portion would have been gathered against 
 the day when nothing was to be expected. 
 
 Whether or no a particular individual needs to 
 learn and labour in order to obtain what is called 
 a livelihood, he must do this to attain a true 
 manly state of living. Men are invited to be 
 workers together with G-od in order to be men. 
 Those who are nothing but consumers reject this 
 Divine invitation. It matters not wliether he 
 places himself at the street corner, or lounges in 
 some luxurious haunt of idleness, whether he begs 
 his bread or buys it, the man who is able to work 
 and yet lives without exertion is a human 
 parasite. 
 
 The kingdom assigned to man in this Charter has 
 not yet been fully taken possession of. Such a 
 kingdom must be well known before its sceptre 
 can be efficiently wielded. The empire of man 
 awaits its consummation. Energy is essential to 
 man for the acquisition of his own life. " Behold I 
 
204 man's great ( tiahter. 
 
 IT De.it. ii. jj^yg given, saitli the Lord; begin to possess." The 
 I'f. 8t. Mart, kingclom of Heaven must be forced, and the force- 
 ful are grasping it. 
 SnS^waS- It is necessary for most men to consider the 
 
 earners. 
 
 subject of wages. They must procure the means 
 of living in order to work, although they have 
 transcended the thought of working being only a 
 method of procuring the means of living. 
 Wages must needs be of great importance even 
 to those who live to work instead of merely 
 working to live. But wages have no right so to 
 condition work as though they were the sole 
 meaning of it. AVorkers are something more 
 than wage-earners. Wages or no wages, it is 
 the prerogative of man by his own proper energy 
 to originate light and order and achievements. 
 
 This Charter would sliow us that not to work 
 is a disgrace. By it we should learn to 
 appreciate every honest work that needed to be 
 done, and cease to reckon good work as such only 
 because it commands a high price. By attending 
 to this, the time might indeed come when the 
 word " menial " as applied to work should, as 
 ah^eady foreshadowed in fiction, be obsolete, the 
 
man's great chaklkk. 205 
 
 evening confusion in men's hearts and minds 
 giving place to morning. 
 
 The murmurings of employers, the scantiness 
 of success, the frequent failiu-es, and miserable 
 discouragements might he more bravely borne if 
 men learned and laboured because the freedom to 
 do so is part of their inheritance as men. 
 
 This Charter, with good reason, might be taken 
 as the motive for such awakening words as these : 
 "I too could now say to myself : Be no longer a uSmns. 
 chaos, but a world, or even a worldkin. Produce ! 
 Produce ! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal 
 fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name ! 
 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee ; out with it, 
 then. Up ! up ! Whatsoever thy hand findeth fj-^'"^^^ ''^• 
 to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while ct- st. join 
 it is called to-day ; for the night cometh, wherein 
 no man can work." 
 
 The Great Euler is manifested herein as the Jhi,',;"' a'coi 
 absolute Illuminator, and man is represented as I'loceediug. 
 created in His image. Moreover, the thoughts of 
 illuminating and ruling are combined in what is 
 said of tlie sun and moon, w^hich are, therefore, 
 typical of what God is, and of what man should 
 
206 
 
 be. Thus the idea of government as being for 
 the benefit of the governed is brought before us in 
 this first Charter, and is accentuated by the con- 
 trasted authority to " subdue and have dominion '* 
 which was given to man to be exercised over the 
 earth and the beasts which inhabit it. To " arise 
 and shine " is not a selfish proceeding, but one 
 which naturally follows a particular endowment ; 
 it is that alone which befits the constitution of 
 things when the light is come. 
 SviEu"*^^ The unassisted study of nature might never 
 
 solves tlm 
 
 laoi.ieni. Jiavo led to a general and settled conviction that 
 man is created in the Divine image. Yet the 
 poets of old felt that man was the offspring of 
 God ; and the modern scientists, by speaking of 
 man's (jod/ikr intellect, of religious feeling being 
 (iH much a verity as autj other part of human con- 
 sciousness, of man as reflecting rays from t//c 
 infinite source of truth, and of his being associated 
 with an incomprehensible power wliieli gives ful- 
 ness and tone to his existence, show plainly that 
 they recognize certain traits in the nature of man 
 which his creation in God's image adequately 
 explains. 
 
man's grkat charter. 207 
 
 To the man wlio realizes the human character- 
 istic of searching for God, Revelation becomes 
 the most reasonable thing in the world. A child 
 deprived of his parents is unable to define the 
 need he feels, much less to create its satisfaction ; 
 but he can take his part in the relationship when 
 mother and father are restored; he cannot 
 analyse or comprehend fatherliness, but he has a 
 practical though inadequate appreciation of it. 
 When a man, not as a scholar, or a mimic, or a 
 qu'uhuoic, but wholly as a man, becomes an 
 inquirer after God, he is prepared to welcome 
 God's own discovery of Himself. God seeks such <"f- «t j.j1i 
 for His worshippers who themselves seek Him. 
 
 The eye cannot make light, but by it indivi- 
 duals have authority in the question as to whether 
 they can see or no. This authority remains in 
 spite of all hallucinations, false impressions, and 
 mists of error. So it is with the want which sets 
 man seeking for God : by this appetite individuals 
 have authority in answering the question whether 
 God has been found. 
 
 The revelation of the character of God which 
 this story contains is in accordance with that 
 
208 man's great charter. 
 
 whieli the world displays of the invisible source 
 and stay of its existence ; and man's apprehension 
 of the world, and of the unseen order which the 
 world indicates, is in perfect keeping with the 
 position assigned him here, both in relation to the 
 world and to Grod. 
 
 We might not by our unaided mental powers 
 reach the conclusions to which this document leads 
 us, but these conclusions, whether implicitl}^ or 
 explicitly adopted, whether hidden in the subsoil of 
 his character or consciously confessed, are such as 
 to impel man to work, encourage him in the pursuit 
 of truth, and respond to his conscience. 
 
 In this particular also man's natui^e is satisfied : 
 Will and order and character which man can 
 regard as baseless abstractions only to his own 
 utter undoing, are exhibited here as fundamental, 
 being before all things, belonging to the nature of 
 God, who is guarantee that man is not vanity. 
 
 This record points to a rational Soiu'ce for the 
 aiream of foideiivy wh'icJi makes for j-ig/fteoKSiic-'^s, 
 and to the great Eeality as the basis for man's 
 idea of duty. 
 
 Thus the authenticity of this Charter is attested 
 
AIAn's GllKAT CTIAKTEK. 209 
 
 by its continuing to supply througli tlio ages a 
 revelation whieli accords with man's increas- 
 ing knowledge, and in outline completes that 
 knowledge for practical purposes. 
 
 By His first crfr/rion God received a meclianical fMT'Tf, 
 
 1 TT- 1 • • • tldlU. 
 
 service, by liis second ci-cafio)) an instinctive 
 service, by His third crcatioK, which was man in 
 His own image, He induces gradually a conscious 
 service. When it is seen that the service required 
 of man is the full normal use of his faculties, the 
 liberty from all bondage of bestiality which would 
 limit his manliness, the taking possession of the 
 endowments without which he would cease to be 
 man, then it will be recognized that this service 
 is perfect freedom, and the document which 
 enunciates it is not a ban or interdict, but a 
 charter of libertj^ 
 
 Freedom is not nec]:ative, but positive. It con- ,V;''*'''^'' 
 sists, not in the absence of hindrances, but in the 
 possession of capacities ; not in being left to 
 follow one's own likings, liowever limited, but in 
 being furnished with inclinations which pursue 
 their purposes in the whole dej)th and breath and 
 height of existence. 
 
 () 
 
210 
 
 A child is not less free than a man, because it 
 is subject to parents and schoolmasters, but it is 
 subject because it is less free. Its attachment to 
 the largeness of adult life is its only possible 
 escape from the trammels of its own phj'sical 
 mental and moral littleness. A lost child is in 
 worse bondage than one in leading-strings, and 
 a father's guiding hand is its truest freedom. 
 
 The extent of man's freedom must be measured 
 by his nature. Therefore the Biblical preface 
 is fitly called the Magna Charta of man- 
 kind ; for it declares that God created man in 
 His own image, in the image of God created 
 He him : malp: and female created He th 
 
 em. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Henderson & Spalding, Limited, Printers, 3 & 5, MaryleLone Lane, W. 
 

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