to-rain upon the earth,' but only 'a mist went | fowl of the heaven, and brought it to the man,

one another, unless their fury was must have been created in, or in the miraculously restrained, or their hunger neighbourhood of, Paradise itself. But was miraculously relieved, or their whole can anyone suppose that all kinds of nature and bodily constitution changed, plants were created in Paradise, and so that the lion should cease to be a only there, so that the seeds were lion, and eat grass like the ox? Or scattered from thence to all ends of the how could Adam have given names to earth,- -as that of maize or Indian corn, all, it being remembered that, with for instance, which was not known to the Hebrews, the word 'fowl' included the Eastern Hemisphere till after the · (1009) all ‘creeping-things that fly,' as discovery of America,—or that all kinds the locust, L.xi.20-23 ? of reptiles, fishes, and insects were formed only in the neighbourhood of Paradise? Why, then, must this be believed with respect to all kinds of beasts and birds, in direct contradiction to the conclusions of Modern Science, from which we learn that certain species of animals have lived all along, in particular regions of the earth, in the same fixed habitats, from an age long antecedent to the existence of man?

1049. It is painful, though almost ludicrous, to be obliged to sit down in this age of the world, in a day of widely-extended scientific education, and deliberately reason out such a question as this. But, in the interests of truth, there is no alternative, since influential and eminent men, distinguished by their attainments in science as well as by dignified ecclesiastical position, are still found defending the traditionary view with such arguments as the following,-I quote from Archd. PRATT, Scripture and Science, p.49:

This difficulty need not stagger us, unexpected as it is. For, in the first place, it is not impossible that the regions, which are found on the opposite side of the globe, and others also, of which the limits are far from the boundaries of man's first residence, have become the scenes of creative power, at epochs subsequent to the six-days' work. [N.B. And the Heaven and the Earth were finished, and all their host,' ii.1.] And, further, there is nothing in the account of the six-days' Creation to militate against the idea, that Creation may have been going on over the whole surface of the Earth at the same time. It simply requires us to suppose that the animals, brought to Adam for him to name them, must have been those only in the neighhourhood of Paradise. [N.B. The man called names to all the cattle, and to the fowl of the heaven, and to every animal of the field,' ii.20.]

DELITZSCH, too, assumes the actual historical truth of this statement, when he observes of the 'deep sleep' which fell on Adam, p.159:

This sleep is God's work, but caused by means of the weariness of the man, the natural consequence of his attention having been directed to so many different creatures, and deeply engaged in the contemplation of them.

1050. The question here involved is, of course, this, whether we are to believe, that there was originally only one centre of creation, or more than one? If all animals of every kind-we may suppose one, or a pair, of each— came to Adam to be named, then all

1051. Thus Prof. OWEN writes, Address at Leeds, 1858:

Of the present dry land, different natural continents have different faunæ and floræ; and the fossil remains of the plants and animals of these continents, respectively, show that they possessed the same peculiar characters, or characteristic facies, during periods extending far beyond the utmost limits of human history. p.3.

The class of animals, to which the restrictive laws of geographical distribution might seem least applicable, is that of Birds. Their peculiar powers of locomotion, associated in numerous species with migratory habits, might seem to render them independent of every influence, save those of climate and of food, which directly affect the conditions of their existence. Yet the long-winged Albatross is never met with north of the Equator; nor does the Condor soar above other mountains than the Andes. . . Several genera of Finches are peculiar to the Galapagos Islands; the richly and fantastically ornate Birds of Paradise are restricted to New Guinea and some

neighbouring islands... Some species have a singularly restricted locality, as the Red to Philip Island, a small spot near New

Grouse to the British Isles, the Owl-Parrot

Zealand. The long-and-strong-limbed Ostrich
and conterminous Arabia.
courses over the whole continent of Africa
three-toed Ostriches is similarly restricted to
The genus of
South America. The Emeu has Australia

assigned to it. The continent of the Casso-
wary has been broken up into islands, includ-

Britain.

ing, and extending from, the north-eastern peninsula of Asia to New Guinea and New Apteryx is peculiar to the islands of New ZeaThe singular nocturnal wingless land. Other species and genera, which seem to be, like the Apteryx, mocked, as it were, with feathers and rudiments of wings, have wholly ceased to exist, within the memory of man, in the islands to which they

also were respectively restricted. The Dodo | North-American Indian are all derived of the Mauritius and the Solitaire are instances. from one pair of ancestors; and it would memory of the Maori ancestry, huge birds be possible to assume a different parenthaving their nearest affinities to the still-age from ours for those ancient makers existing Apteryx of that island, but generically of flint-implements, who lived, as scienI have proposed the name of Dinornis for that tific men assure us, many thousandsnow extinct genus, of which more than a perhaps, tens of thousands of years dozen well-defined species have come to my before the Scripture epoch of the Flood. knowledge, all peculiar to New Zealand. . . A tridactyle wingless bird of another genus,

The two species of Orang are confined to Borneo and Sumatra; the two species of Chimpanzee are limited to an intertropical tract of the western part of Africa. They appear to be inexorably bound by climatal influences, regulating the assemblage of certain trees and the production of certain fruits. With all our care in regard to choice of food,bution, there is evidence of a plan,-of a clothing, and contrivances for artificially maintaining the chief physical conditions of their existence, the healthiest specimens of Orang or Chimpanzee, brought over in the vigour of youth, perish within a period never exceeding three years, and usually under shelter, in our climate. p.36.

the work of the last three hundred years. | the remark in v.24 would be a pure reflection, The Creator has implanted in this group of without any explanatory object; and, as the races an instinct, that, in spite of themselves, story of the creation of the woman is only drives them through all difficulties to carry brought to a close in v.25, it would disturb out their great mission of civilising the Earth. the historical connection. It is not reason, or philanthropy, which urges them on; but it is destiny. When we see great divisions of the human family increasing in numbers, spreading in all directions, encroaching by degrees upon all other races, wherever they can live and prosper, and gradually supplanting inferior types, is it not reasonable to conclude that they are fulfilling

a law of nature?

1054. G.ii.22.

And Jehovah-Elohim built the rib, which he took out of the man, into a woman.'

But then the first man would be represented as using these words, when he could as yet have had no idea of the relations of father and mother, or even of the nature of marriage itself. We might, therefore, suppose that v.24 may be a note of the Jehovist himself, as well as iii.20, because she was the mother of all living. Still the context makes this supposition in both cases

1057. KALISCH remarks on the above

MILTON, Par. Lost, Book viii, ap-improbable.
pears to regard the act here described
as having taken place only in a vision,
though his language is painfully literal
and graphic:-

Mine eyes He closed, but open left the cell
Of fancy, my internal sight; by which,
Abstract, as in a trance, methought I saw,
Though sleeping, where I lay, and saw the
shape

Still glorious before whom awake I stood;
Who, stooping, open'd my left side, and took
From thence a rib, with cordial spirits warm,
And lifeblood streaming fresh; wide was the
wound,

But suddenly with flesh fill'd up and healed;
The rib He form'd and fashion'd with His
hands.

1055. KALISCH notes, Gen.p.91:

text, Gen.p.116 :

6

We must not forget to mention that similar reflections to these are found in the holy books of the Hindus and Persians: The bone of woman is united with the bone of man, and her flesh with his flesh, as completely as a stream becomes one with the sea into which it flows.'

Thus in the Hindu marriage cerethe husband says, As. Res.vii. 309: mony I unite thy breath with my breath, thy bones with my bones, thy flesh with my flesh, thy skin with my skin.

CHAPTER XI.
GEN.III.1-III.24.

1058. G.iii.1.

And the serpent was subtle out of all animals of the field, which Jehovah-Elohim had made: and he said unto the woman, &c.' Dr. THOMAS BURNET observes, Arch. Phil.p.295 :

The Greenlanders believed that the first woman was fashioned out of the thumb of the man. It is, therefore, absurd to urge that the delicate body of woman was formed -not out of the dust of the earth, but-of organic matter already purified, or that the rib points to the heart of man and his love. The Hebrew historian intended to convey his idea of the intimate relationship between man We read that all these great and multiand woman, and of the sacredness and indis-farious matters were transacted within the solubility of conjugal life; and he expressed short space of a single day. But I burn with this idea in a form which was familiar to his pain, when I see all things upset and discontemporaries, and which will, at all times, ordered in a little moment of time, and the be acknowledged as a beautiful and affecting whole nature of things, scarcely yet arranged mode of enforcing a moral truth of the highest and dressed out, sinking into death and desocial importance. formity before the setting of the first day. In the morning of the day God said, that all was very good;' in the evening all is execrable. How fleeting is the glory of created and that by the Hand of Omnipotence, the inthings! The work elaborated through six days, famous beast has destroyed in so many hours.

1056. G.ii.23,24.

And the man said, This time this is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: therefore shall a man forsake his father and his mother, and cleave unto his wife, and they shall become one flesh.'

DELITZSCH says, p.162:-

Is this utterance a prophetical saying of Adam about marriage, or merely a reflection of the narrator? It is, indeed, the custom of this writer [the Jehovist], to insert in the history remarks beginning, as this, with therefore,' x.9,xxvi.33,xxxii.32. But

Dr. BURNET would have been re

lieved of some part of his difficulties, if he had known that the statements which he contrasts were written by two different authors.

1059. We are now, however, arrived these and similar remarks are all of an at the point where DELITZSCH produces archæological character, and lie within the historical matter-in-hand. On the contrary, his promised solution of the difficulties

noticed in (1046), which we commend | existence by God, yielded to the corrupting to the reader's consideration: Gen. influence of that might, and must, consep.164-9.

But had then the animals at that time reason? Could the Serpent at that time speak? This question is too readily settled, if it is said that the Serpent is the symbol of pleasure (CLEM. ALEX. and others, after PHILO), or of the evil propensity (PHILLIPSON), or of the onesided understanding (BUN-a close when plants and animals began to SEN). Others, who do not care at all if these fundamental histories are regarded as mere fables, maintain that the author has really meant that the animals could then speak. But, after it has been shown in chap.i that man was the conclusion of the progressive creations of God, and in ii.7 that God directly breathed into him the breath of life,' the author, surely, will not again displace the so-sharply-drawn boundaries of creation, and make now the beasts to be brothers and sisters of men, endowed with speech and, therefore, with reason! Let it be only considered that out of the Serpent speaks the deepest possible wickedness. That it speaks at all, is not a bit more strange than that it speaks such downright wickedness. That it speaks at all, is a wonder. That it speaks such utter wickedness, proceeds from this, that it is the instrument of a higher, but deeply-degraded, nature. It is thus a demoniacal wonder that it speaks..

But when was it that evil entered into the Creation? We are here arrived at the point, where the two yet outstanding contradictions must be removed, viz. that G.i only knows of a creation (i) of plants, and (ii) of animals, antecedent to the creation of man, whereas G.ii brings them both back into close connection with the creation of man, [placing them, however, both subsequent to it]. So, then, when did evil enter into the creation? Not first after the six-days' work,-for the remains of animals and plants of the old world, ever coming before our eyes in greater number and variety, are acknowledged to be older than the origin of man; and not already before the six-days' work,-for the 'desolation and emptiness' concealed no Mollusks and Saurians; it was the conglomerated mass of a world very different from a world of such creatures as these, exhibiting themselves as lowest links in the chain of development of the present creation.

...

Demoniacal powers have interfered with their work in the course of creation,-not, certainly, as demiurgic powers, which might have opposed contradictory caricatures to the creation of God, against which supposition Zoology raises a protest which must be admitted, since it shows in the old-world Fauna the same laws of construction and relations of form as in the existing,-probably, however, in such a way that they misled the Earth translated thus into misery, stirred up the dark fiery principle of the creature, and made unnatural intermixtures and mongrel formations, mutual murder, disease and death, common among the races of God-created animals (!) Thus the Divine Creation was not merely a working-out of the dark matter into a bright living form, but also a struggle with the might of evil; whole generations, called into

quently, be swept away. They were imbedded in the bowels of the mountains. The first act of the Third Day does not contradict this. For it consisted in the separation of the dry land from the water, not in unchangeable fixed definition of the earth's external form. The shaping of the mountains began on the Third Day, without having been brought to appear. The Earth became again and again the grave of the organic beings, which she had long borne upon her surface. If we cast a glance forwards, the reason for the judgment of the Flood, vi.1-4, will show us that we are saying nothing strange to the Scriptural view. Also the story of the temptation of man entitles us to look backwards. The creation of the Earth and its inhabitants was, in some sense, a struggle of the Creator with Satan and his powers, as the redemption is a struggle of the Redeemer with Satan and his powers. This background of the Creation is veiled in G.i; the writer has purposely veiled it; but we, to whom, through the N.T. Revelation, an open look is allowed into the vanquished kingdom of darkness, we know that the and behold! it was very good' is a word of victory, and that the Divine Sabbath is a rest of triumph, similar to the 'it is finished!' of the Redeemer and the triumphal-march of the Ascension. . . The Nature, which was taken possession of by the spirits of evil, is destroyed, and-here is the solution of the two contradictions-a plant-world and an animal-world have now come into being, (as the last links of the plant-and-animal-creation which was begun with the third and sixth days,) such as corresponds to him, who is called to be lord and conqueror of evil, viz.

Man.

It is now clear why Satan seeks to mislead the man, against God's command, to taste the deadly fruit of the Tree of Knowledge: he wishes to destroy man, and, with him, the whole of the last creation . . . It is clear also why he, since his power of destruction is so limited and confined in the paradisaical plantworld, makes use of a beast in order to befool man, and to enslave him together with the last of the creations. The narrator confines himself to the external appearances only of the event, without raising the veil from the being behind. He might well have raised it, since even the heathen legend gives a full, though distorted, account of it; but he veils it, because the unveiling would not be good for the people of his time, inclined to heathenish misbelief, and heathenish intercourse with the demon-world (!). That the Devil himself tempted the first pair, says the Book of Wisdom, ii.23,24. It was also not so unknown to the narrator as might appear from his silence, since, even in the human race external to Israel, a consciousness of this meets us in many a legend and mythology. Serpent is the first creature, through which Ahriman corrupts the first-created land of Ormuzd; Ahriman is represented as appearing in the form of a Serpent, and is even named the Serpent.

The

1060. The reader will perceive that,