naturally and truthfully be described by an Oriental as God's manifest appearance. Even spiritual uplifts, such as those of Pentecost, could be described as the fulfillment of the prophecies of Joel after the sun had been turned into darkness and the moon into blood. The Hebrews believed in the immanency of God; that he was present not simply in miracle, but that the storm was his chariot and the thunder his voice, and that all the ordinary activities of nature had their being and movement in him. All wisdom was from him and all strength, even the skill of the Tyrian architects and metal workers who built the temple of Solomon and the power of unholy men, like Samson and Cyrus. They especially believed that all religious knowledge came from him and to him should be ascribed the glory. When men brought cases to the judge they were said to bring them to God (Exod. xxi, 6; xxii, 8, 9). Indeed, the rulers of the people were called gods (ibid. and Psa. lxxxii, 6) because they were the representatives of God, through whom he manifested his wisdom and his power. When Jethro suggested to Moses a helpful plan (Exod. xviii, 21) Moses could afterward speak of having received this plan from God (Num. xi, 16; Deut. i, 13). Every holy man who brought some great truth to light was thought of-and rightly thought of—as Jehovah's spokesman, interpreter, representative.' Moses and the other holy prophets spake not in their own name, but in the name of Jehovah. As the Spirit commanded so spake they. God did reveal to them his name, his nature, his will, as to no other men of ancient or modern times. The power and truth of their words prove that. "By their fruits ye shall know them." Their inspiration was not always creative; it was often protective, selective, directive. St. Luke used former writings in his composition of the gospel, and so, according to their own statements, did the good men who wrote the Hebrew history. We now find that Moses did not ignore the laws which were in force around him at the time he wrote, but rejected, approved, revised, or purified these according to his inspired wisdom. He would not have been a good lawgiver if he had broken away from the common law of his day without a

I was once personally addressed by a Mohammedan as follows: "An angel visited me this morning and revealed to me God's will.** It was a missionary who had called upon him and given him directions in regard to the care of his health.

reason. Old truth is as good as new truth. Circumcision was not a new rite, but it came to Abraham with a new meaning. Baptism was an old institution, but Jesus adopted it to signify something far more glorious. The golden rule was not new, but Jesus filled it with a new spirit.

6. The best thought emphasized by the new discovery is this: that Jehovah is "God of the whole earth." God's fatherhood did not begin with Abraham; God's love did not begin with Moses; God's direction of nations did not begin with Israel. He was as much interested in the exodus of the Philistines from Caphtor as in that of Israel from Egypt (Amos ix, 7). The driving of the Philistines from Palestine was doubtless as great a providence to them as to the Hebrews. So Israel later was driven out of Palestine by the Babylonian army. Job was not a Hebrew, but God loved him so well that his spiritual struggles fill one of the biblical books. Nineveh was a heathen city, but the book of Jonah proves that God loved it as tenderly as he did Jerusalem. Jethro was a Midianite, but he could give to Moses laws concerning the government of the people which came like a divine command to the soul of the great Hebrew lawgiver. It was the command of Jehovah, though it came through the lips of Jethro. There was some wisdom which Jehovah whispered to Jethro even before he revealed it to Moses. So Hammurabi was not hidden from the divine help and guidance. And as St. Paul could say that in his work he was debtor to Greeks and barbarians, and even slaves, so Moses was debtor even to the Midianite and the Babylonian. We can learn the lesson that Israel was the chosen nation not because it was treated with partiality, or loved with partiality, but because it had its task, differing from that of all other nations as that of all other nations differed from it, and because out of Israel that new Lawgiver was to arise whose perfect law of love should supersede all former utterances by heathen or by Hebrew.

Camden M. Cabern

ART. III.-MAN-HIS PLACE IN GOD'S THOUGHT.

THE fact of a divine inspiration in the Scriptures does not admit of intelligent doubt. The first chapter of the Bible could not have been written in the absence of divine illumination. The Genesis story, unfolding, in the literary morning of the world, the drama of creation, is a marvel. It pictures God's hand as transforming chaos into orderly cosmos, a cosmos which he drapes with beauty and peoples with myriad life. And then, as if he were lonely in the world he had made, he would seek fitting companionship by the creation of man. One cannot imagine a mere unaided human dramatist originating a picture like this. One single statement lies on the surface of this narrative like a Kohinoor diamond, flaming with the fires of its own divine source. It is this: "And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him." Let us look at this wonderful statement.

I. Man is God-made. He is not a product of some blind chance. He is not the result of some fortuitous concourse of atoms. He is not an accident. God made him. There has been much discussion about man's origin. Even to-day it is widely debated as to whether he is the child of a specific and direct creative act, or whether he may not be derived from processes of evolution which have wrought through eons of history. The first word of the Bible is, "God created man." But let us not at this point quarrel withevolution. If one is an evolutionist, believing that man is the product solely of evolutionary processes, he will be forced before he reaches the end, if he be a clear and reverent thinker, to put God into his evolution. It is a cheap caricature, and as ignorant as cheap, of evolution to make it describe man as the child of an ape. If in some features of his anatomy, as possibly in some zones of his instincts and his thoughts, man bears apparent kinship to the ape, yet when all these points of likeness are bunched he stands forth as something infinitely different from any ape. There is nothing in an ape that can be made to account for a man. And it would be just as vain to assume that some process of purely natural variation decides that of two creatures sprung from a common

ancestry the one shall be an ape and the other a man. This would be a pure begging of the question. We have no right to ascribe to nature the power to take on such variations. Unaided nature does not know how to take new departures for definite ends. This is the function of volitioning mind. It may be that variations have decided that man's pathway in nature shall be an ascending one; but, if so, these variations have not been born of blind matterthey have been thrust upon the line of man's development by the hand of a thinker-God. We will not quarrel with the evolutionist. We have, however, a right to demand, if he insists that man is a product of evolution, that he give us a philosophy of evolution large and vital enough for its purposes. And this will mean an evolution with God in it, an evolution that embraces a divine method in creation. We must not shrink from the old philosophic axiom that a cause must be equal to its effect. Let us look at this. Man is an effect. He is the product of some cause. Let us name this cause-evolution. But the cause must be equal to that which it produces. The general rule in nature is that the cause is something greater than its product. The cyclone that lays the forest may rage on after the last monarch tree is uprooted. The flood that ravages a city may sweep on beyond the homes which it has desolated. The brain that invents a watch or a steam engine has not exhausted its force in these creations. It still has a fertile and trained energy for other and possibly greater achievements. And so this cause which we christen evolution must certainly be equal to, if not much greater than, its product-man. But what is man? We might suggest an answer in the language of the great dramatist: "What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!" Reading carefully the Genesis narrative, we note that one purpose there assigned to man was rulership. He was to carry to his place in nature the scepter of dominion. He was to have dominion over the fishes of the sea, the fowls of the air, and the beasts of the field. And how marvelously has this old prophecy been fulfilled! Not only do fish and bird and beast furnish him food, but man

flies the signal of his dominion everywhere on sea and sky and earth. He traverses the wide wastes of seas in unsinkable fleets, using the stars as his pilots. Across boundless skies he sends, on naked air, a thousand times more swift than the flight of bird, the flashing couriers of his thought. In chariots that speed with lightning wheels he rides across plain and mountain, and he forces the very Falls of Niagara to press their omnipotent shoulders into the collars of his industries.

And does any seriously claim that the ape is brother to this being? Look at the history of the two. The ape kindles no fires, forges no weapons, writes no literatures. He chatters and scampers in the jungle, and looks and lives precisely as did his ancestors thousands of years ago. His race carries with itself no prophecy of improvement. At best he remains, and will forever remain, but a cunning beast. Man, upon the other hand, wherever and whatever his origin, has made himself the creator of history, has transformed the very earth into an empire for the ways of his own genius. He is the builder of civilizations. On broad bases of justice and equity he has erected superb systems of law and of government. He has builded his great cities, and has adorned his palaces and gardens with the splendors of immortal art. He is the creator of languages-languages which enshrine undying literatures; languages which breathe the eloquence of the orator's passion, and which, touched by the soul of sympathy and love, have carried untold consolations to earth's sorrowing everywhere; languages which, kindled with the inspirations of music, have sung themselves into symphonies and oratorios worthy of celestial choirs. He is the great inventor, the fearless magician who plunders every secret chamber of nature that he may capture her last law as the obedient servant of his imperious purpose. He masters optics and forces the sun to paint his pictures. He puts his eye to the microscope and his sight teems with myriad life; to the telescope, and his vision, like omniscience, sweeps the immensities. And who to-day can say what this wizard inventor shall accomplish? It looks as though possibly by to-morrow he may put his lips to the phone and the world will be his whispering gallery and all men will be within speaking distance.