tance with natural history, and might almost be suspected of knowing some facts of geology;" yet this acquaintance he could not possess. The simplicity of the words and deep accurate meaning agreeing with latest attainments of science; the painting of things which men could not have seen, and description of works which man could have no knowledge of; are from a human mind acquainted with the deep things of God.

The heavens were undoubtedly in existence when our earth was formed. The heavens are not the firmament, which was created the second day; nor are they simply the sun, moon, and stars, spoken of in the fourth day. Heavens may mean all these and many more. The apostolic word (Eph. iii. 10) declares that the manifold wisdom of God is made known by the earthly Church to angelic powers of heaven; as if to show that God's eternal world-plan did not begin with the earth, even as it will not end with the earth. Science tells us that star-formation is yet in progress; and Scripture states that the Lord is even now preparing mansions (John xiv. 2). It is not needful to inquire whether heaven may be a spiritual world, entering, enclosing, and extending far beyond all material existence. The Scriptural doctrine is, "long before the earth was fashioned for man, there were heavens, and morning stars, and angels; regions more glorious than the earth, heavens more ancient than the firmament; and heavenly inhabitants who excel in strength."

There have been acts of a wonderful and startling character, of which we possess but few incidents, in the origin and fall of spirits (Job xxxviii. 12, 13; Is. xiv. 12; Lu. x. 18; John viii. 44; 2 Peter ii. 4; Jude 6; 1 John iii. 8). The fall of angels, as connected with our own early history, may be thus stated:-Man was placed in paradise to dress and keep it. The secret meaning of those service-words becomes apparent in the fact that a tempter became the cause of ruin. There was evil for man to overcome: evil outside of him, not human-but angelic or spiritual.

How far demoniacal malignity introduced or magnified

1 "Notes on the Earlier Hebrew Scriptures," p. 14: Sir G. B. Airy, K.C.B. "Mosaic Record of Creation:" A. M'Caul, D.D.

Fall of Angels and of Man.

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suffering in the early animal world, Scripture does not reveal; unless the "wasteness or emptiness," spoken of in the second verse of Gen. i. mean, as some think, a caused or wasting desolation. In Jer. iv. 23, the words are used of destruction wrought as punishment for sin. In Isaiah xxxiv. 11, they mean an after-destruction of that which once had been beautiful. In Rom. viii. 20-22, we are told that the creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly but in hope. Nevertheless, the Scripture statement, "God did not make the earth to be waste," is verified by the six days' process. The earth was wasteness and emptiness, or, as translated, "without form and void," because it had not yet been shaped, nor fitted for living creatures. arin wasteness, is sometimes used as synonymous with, non-existence, and a for nothingness. It is certain that all good operation, all healthful, orderly production, proceed from the Will of God; and that the Divine plan, working a conditioning influence, renders even wasteness and desolateness receptive of Divine energy. The disorder, in its degrees of evil, though made a means of discipline, is attributed to the agency, direct or indirect, of the devil and his angels; who, having fallen from their allegiance to God, sought evermore to mar His good work. Hence we know why wrath seems mingled with love; why there is pain, strife, death; why providence is that entangled maze, which only a faithful wise and loving heart can read aright.

The fall of angels, and their evil influence on men, must not be put away as poetical and figurative; there is meaning, and that of a most awful character. What it is, as to the earth, we are painfully conscious of in the sin of our race, in the continual conflict of flesh and spirit, and in the dread of judgment to come. The record of it is a true history of real acts, not a mythological account of natural disturbances, nor a personifying of processes and laws by which God worked. "Specially remarkable, miraculous it really seems to be, is that character of reserve which leaves open to reason all that reason may be able to attain. The meaning seems always to be ahead of science, not because it anticipates the results of science, but because it is independent of them, and runs, as it were, round the

"1

outer margin of all possible discovery.' The numerous passages of Scripture which affirm or imply the existence and agency of extra-human and super-human orders, are connected with a vast scheme. Accurate study will give consistency to this evidence, dissipate many difficulties, and expand our knowledge of those mysterious beings with whom our own destinies are so marvellously involved.

The Pre-Adamite world, occupying innumerable ages, answers the request of geologists for vast duration; and allows, if need be, for Pre-Adamite men. If such precursors existed of the Adam-man, as the Adam-man preceded the Christ-man, they were brute men, in whom was no breath of God; but, at best, only life yearning for more life. It is just possible, that as plant and animal had their order; the more primitive of each being more simple, and those following, for the most part, more highly organised; there may have been rudimentary men formed, as Scripture says, out of the ground. These may possibly have lived on for many generations until, in fulness of time, they were regenerated or recreated as the Adam, our forefather. There are thoughtful men who accept this as not unscriptural, and as explanatory of a scientific difficulty. We will not say, as Delitzsch, "The man who, in the ape, greets his brother only a little left behind, must needs have first substantially brutalised himself, or he would rather shudder at this counterpart of his own degradation." It is better to allow those who think that our structural resemblances to the nearest allied quadrumana are of a character indicating that both man and ape are derived from some earlier common stock, to state their opinion: the body being formed by a perfectly natural process, and existing so that-"The soul did but mean the breath, It knew no more;"

then came the divine gift of immortality by means of endowing the (rap) flesh, with (vsúua) the spirit; thus the (once) body, dwelt in by the (4x) psyche, became, through (vua), the spirit a divine man. Hence, though descended from the brute, man is immortal by the birth of a spirit in

1 "Primeval Man," p. 367: Duke of Argyle.
2 "Biblical Psychology," part ii. sec. I.

him which bridged the gulf between meanness and majesty. Since which time it has ever been

"More upward, working out the beast;

Letting the ape and tiger die."

Be in no hurry to solve every difficulty. All the sciences, even those professing most accuracy, are surrounded by many and great mysteries. Every root of study is lost in the unknown, and every height of knowledge enters a transcendental expanse. All scientific men, in the course of life, change their opinions as to the mysterious agencies and complex mechanism of the world. It is well to accept as part of our discipline, and an exercise of faith, that we must watch and wait. The exact point of time in which it pleased the Eternal to create man cannot be ascertained, but if man had existed very many thousand years on the earth, whether in brute form or rational image, he must have left memorials; yet not a vestige is found of that assumed ancient life-not a relic of old bestial condition. All flint instruments are accounted for by a reasonable antiquity; and the savage forms of life, however degraded, were not brutal. The hypothetical advance of our race through stone, bronze, and iron ages, may fairly illustrate the advance of art; but not necessarily the growth of mind, nor "progression from blind force to conscious intellect and will." All primitive traditions commence life about the same era, and the oldest reliable historical record is the Hebrew, the right interpretation of which gives high antiquity to the genesis of man.

Savagery is a condition much further advanced from brutelife than is the cultured man from the savage; therefore, savagery and civilisation must be taken as lower and higher stages of the same formation. To assume the development of brute into savage, and to endow the brutal origin of the savage with all those elements which culture develops into the faith and science of a Christian philosopher, takes for granted and natural that which is without one example in the whole course of history. The best applied scientific treatment, however extended and systematic, cannot develop a brute into a human being; nor, when we have the human being, can we always. civilise him-he generally perishes under the operation; nor,

having civilised him, can we by any sort of higher culture develop Homers, Miltons, Shakespeares, Newtons. The Divine narrative, that man was created with mental and spiritual capacities, contains fewer elements of real difficulty than those which cumber the brute-hypothesis.

Ancient records tell of our ancestors in caves, clothed with skins, and eating raw vegetables. The teeth in old skulls never exhibit caries. They are worn down flat, and therefore roots may have been as often eaten as flesh. We need not go to Lucretius for a large-boned, hardy, lawless race; nor, to poetic traces of culture beginning outside and ending inside the range of human memory; Scripture records that a childlike condition was the earliest stage; but the children soon became men. Prior to the classical age, the civilisation of Egypt culminated; behind it lay the progress of the pyramid kings; and, yet earlier, Scripture record shows considerable culture of that kind which belongs to a primitive people.

Advancing art, if piety is lost, corrupts simplicity. All historical civilisations are, indeed, notorious for the separation of worldly intelligence from piety, so that the true theory of mankind is, that both development and degradation have their place in history but against the brutal or even savage condition of the primitive race exists the fact-"No example can be brought forward of an actually savage people having independently become civilized;" and the result of European intercourse, during the last three or four centuries, has been the destruction rather than the development of barbarous tribes.

If we ask the counter question,-"Is there any recorded instance of a civilised people falling into a savage state?" the answer is, "Egyptians, Hindoos, Chinese, tracing civilisation back to a period more than five thousand years in the past, testify of a culture better than that now possessed." It is well known that impurity tends to degradation, and causes the loss of more than was gained by artificial culture. Ancient Grecian genius slumbers, and no cry can awake it. The modern Italian has long lost the proud state and place of the old Roman. The Hebrideans were for ages 1 "Romische Geschichte," part i. p. 88: Niebuhr.