With all the solemnity of a second outcry from the heavens, the Divine Messenger utters the words already cited: in which are three things to be observed. (a) The oath: “ By myself have I sworn, is the oracle of Yehweh." There was an oath (as we observed at the time) involved in the formal covenanting of chapter xv.; but with suitable differences between the oath-taking then and the oath-taking now. Then it was not so prominent as to require express mention: now it is set in the forefront of the Divine oracle. Then the swearing was mutual: now it is God alone who mediates with an oath. Then the oath was bound up with a partially fulfilled condition on the human side; Abraham being then justified by faith but not by works, his faith not having then been made perfect, and hence he was after that still exhorted to walk before God and become perfect: now all this is changed, and as Abraham has completed his self-surrender and learned to revere God and to trust Him under all circumstances, no further exhortation is tendered, and the Divine assurance is given in the most positive form possible. God's counsel is immutable, and now can be shown to be so to the heirs of promise. Not that God has two oaths, one binding and the other not; but that, so long as a covenant proceeds upon unfulfilled conditions, even the utmost faithfulness does not demand a one-sided adherence to its stipulations. Henceforth the Abrahamic Covenant is immoveable. (b) The formal and emphatic recognition of Abraham's perfected obedience: "Because thou hast done this thing . . . because thou hast hearkened to My voice." The whole covenant has sprung from Divine favour, and the character of Abraham has been moulded under express Divine guidance; still, there is the recognition of the final triumphant act of obedience as that on which the fulfilment shall now most certainly proceed. There is no getting over the conditionality of the covenant: only the condition has now been fully performed, so far as Abraham at least is concerned. And unless God can break faith with his Beloved Friend, the covenant must now inevitably go on until every good thing promised in it has been Divinely made good. (c) Although we can scarcely say that anything new appears in the promissory part of this oracle, yet an intensity of expression suited to the occasion everywhere pervades it: "I will richly bless thee and abundantly multiply thy seed," etc. (Compare xiii. 16; xv. 5.). That Abraham might have enemies was merely hinted at chap. xii. 3; here it is assumed that he will have them; but they are to be completely defeated;-and so once more, over their defeat, the universal blessing to all nations is assured. JOSEPH B. ROTHERHAM.

"IN THE BEGINNING."

IT is a is in armly

is a widely accepted notion that there is difficulty in reconciling the

believe that many are afraid of science for that reason; they are unwilling to study it for fear that it should tend to shake their faith in the Bible. And one of the most difficult points, perhaps the most difficult of all, to reconcile with Divine revelation, is supposed to be the dis

coveries of the science of geology as to the manner of the formation of the earth, when considered side by side with this first chapter of Genesis. People say that the two do not agree, and therefore that one of them must be wrong; that the two accounts of the formation of the world do not tally. Now there never was a greater mistake. So far from this chapter contradicting the deductions of science, it is a most glorious, a most marvellous proof of their accuracy.

Even at the outset an insuperable difficulty is said to be that science tells us that the creation of the world was a work of countless ages, while the Bible says it was a work of six days; and many consider that these are to be understood as literal days, forgetting that in the sight of the Lord a thousand years are as one day, and one day as a thousand years. It seems to me impossible to conceive of time with reference to God the Eternal.

Now let us glance at the wonderful and striking agreement between the revelations of science and those of this first chapter of Genesis.

The study of geology, apart from the Bible, leads us to the conclusion that the various steps in creation were taken, that the various parts of creation were completed, exactly in the order in which they are set down in the Divine Book.

Take the facts as they occur.

The Bible tells us that the earth was without form and void, and speaks of the deep, the waters. Now scientific men are pretty well agreed that at one time the earth must have been in a fluid condition. It is said that this is so even now in the case of some of the heavenly bodies, and that in time they will solidify as has already happened in the case of the earth.

And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind. Here again is science exactly corroborated by the Bible. Geologists tell us that the oldest strata of the earth's surface contain no fauna, no animal remains at all, only vegetable. But this is not all. They tell us further that the earliest forms of vegetation were gigantic grasses, such as are found fossilised in the coal deposits, and that no flowers are found until a much later period, in fact, very little antecedent to the appearance of man. The next step in the creation of the world, we read, was the formation of the inhabitants of the water. Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life. Again we have geology going side by side with Divine revelation; for the first animal deposits encountered in the earth's crust are those of the remains of denizens of the water, huge species of cuttle-fish, &c. After these we come next in order to the fossils of gigantic birds, as in the Bible-And fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

See how exactly the correspondence between science and Divine revelation is here maintained. Geology says that the first kind of animal life was that of the water, and consisted of gigantic creatures now extinct, and that then followed different varieties of birds. The Bible says:-And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind. The coincidence speaks for itself.

But to go still further :-And God said, Let the earth bring forth the

living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind. Once more geology is with the Bible, for it is undisputed that quadrupeds were the next inhabitants of the earth.

And then, last of all, in the uppermost deposits of the earth's surface, we come to traces of man, God's crowning work in the world. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.

The correspondence between the chain of events in the creation of the earth as set forth in the first chapter of the Bible, and the same series. as deduced by geology, is complete: first the waters, next the dry land, then the vegetable world, then the fishes, then the birds, then the animals, and, lastly, man, after God's own image. It is grand, it is glorious to think that man has been allowed by his own labours and researches to arrive at the same conclusions as are given in Divine revelation as to God's mode of procedure in the beginning.

H. E. SWAIN.

CORRESPONDENCE.

A QUESTION.

DEAR SIR,-I have read with much interest the various articles on the Intermediate State that have appeared in your excellent Magazine; but there is one point which, so far as my memory serves, has not been touched, viz., our Lord's words in Matt. xii. 40:"As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." This of course cannot mean His imprisonment in the tomb, for that was two nights; besides which a rock sepulchre would surely never be spoken of as "the heart of the earth.' Compare this with the words of Jonah (ii. 6), "Thou hast brought up my life from the pit" (Margin); and with the passage in Numbers when speaking of Korah and his confederates it is said, "They and all that appertained unto them, went down alive into the pit." Do not these verses countenance the belief that Sheol or Hades is not, as some

contend, a mere figure of speech, but a local habitation for the departed, and that it is the interior of the very earth which we inhabit ? Yours very sincerely,

WILLIAM MACREDIE, J.P.

Melbourne.

ANSWER.

SIR,-I have never before heard it suggested that the "three days and three nights," of which St. Matthew here speaks, referred to any other than the period of time during which our Lord lay in His grave. The simple solution of Mr. Macredie's difficulty lies in the fact that the Jews counted any portion, however small, of a day as an entire day of twenty-four hours. Dean Alford, in his note on the above passage, says, "If it be necessary to make good the three days and nights during which our Lord was in the heart of the earth, it must be done by having recourse to the Jewish method of computing time. In the Jerusalem Talmud

LITERATURE.