and

case through any of our senses. We can only know References Him in the revelations of Himself which He may be Authorities. pleased to make, and in those works on which He has put His impress, and through those human relations which He declares may in measure fitly represent Him.

prehensibility of God a trouble or a joy.

Now, men may make of this incomprehensibility of The incom God a great trouble. We may make it the occasion of a reverent joy. We bow with adoring awe before Him Who must be to the creature the Eternally Unknown. No man, in the moments of his most rapt contemplation, has ever so far transcended earthly scenes, and earthly thoughts, as to obtain a vision. of the true God. He was not seen on Sinai, only the glory round Him "like the body of heaven for clearness," out of which He spoke. He was not seen by Isaiah, only the golden-tinted clouds that canopied His great white throne. He was not seen on the spur of Hermon mortal vision only beheld white splendour, and mortal ears only caught the mysterious sounds of an awful voice. Human eyes fill with dark, blinding spots when they gaze upon the noon-day sun. It is everlasting blindness even to look up towards the sunshining of God. No man has ever passed into the world of spirits, and of the perfect vision; and yet, with a joy unspeakable, human souls may say, "He is our God for ever and for ever."

:

NOTE ON THE NAMES OF GOD.

The names we find are either El, or combinations of El and its El with some other word, or the distinctive and special

combinations

and

derivation.

References term Jehovah. El generally appears in the plural form as Authorities. Elohim, which Gesenius translates the revered; and Its Furst, the mighty. It is derived either from the Arabic Alaha, to fear, reverence, worship; or more probably from the Hebrew Elah, to be strong, or mighty. By this name the Deity was known throughout the patriarchal and introductory age of the Jewish Church. The actions ascribed to the Elohim generally reflect the powerful and unmoral forces of nature. When good and evil come to be spoken of, the name Jehovah at once appears.

The following are interesting combinations of El with other words :-The most High God (El-elyon, Gen. xiv. 18); the Everlasting God (El-elim, Gen. xxi. 33); the jealous God (El-kana, Exod. xx. 5); the mighty God and terrible (El-gadol and nora, Deut. vii. 21); the living God (El-chi, Jos. iii. 10); the God of heaven (El-shemim, Psalm cxxxvi. 26); the God Almighty (El-shaddai, Exod. vi. 3).

Jehovah a Jehovah is distinctly a proper name. It was given proper name. directly by God Himself to Moses (Exod. iii. 14; vi. 3) ; but having it in his mind, Moses very properly uses it, in the appropriate places, when editing the early documents. It is the name for God as related to the moral condition of His creatures, and especially as revealing Himself, in covenant and manifestation, for their redemption. The more general term Elohim properly signifies God's general relations to the world of things and people: the more specific term Jehovah signifies His more precise and personal relations in revelation and redemption.

Meanings of the word Jehovah.

Actual form

of the word

as given to

Moses.

It is generally agreed that the word Jehovah means the self-existent one; but a slight change in the word would make it mean He Who is to be, and some have thought there might be thus, in the very name, a suggestion of the coming Messiah and Redeemer. It should be observed that we have actually only the consonants of the Divine Name, IHVH, and that the vowels have been added by men to make up the word. Curiously enough the vowels have been taken from another word for God, Eloah, and

and

applied to these consonants, and it is in this way that the References word Jehovah has been formed. We cannot represent Authorities. the Divine name on the ordinary principles of Hebrew interpretation better than by Hayah or Yehveh, or as Ewald gives it, Jahveh.

Further information on this Divine name will be appropriate when the revelation made to Moses at the Burning Bush is considered.

CHAPTER VII.

THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD.

"The first creation of God in the works of the days was the light of the sense; the last was the light of the reason; and His Sabbath-work ever since is the illumination of the spirit.”—Bacon.

"Man may tell us of the development of the world from the theistical or atheistical point of view, but the simplest and most religious way is to look at this world as the expression of the will of God. It is sufficient if we feel that the light reveals to us something of the will of the Eternal; enough if the beauty of nature can speak to us of the mind of God; if the blue heaven above and the green earth below tell of our Father's home; if day and night, light and darkness are symbols of the word God has spoken out of Himself in the creation of the world."-F. W. Robertson.

and

References THE first chapter of Genesis is the introduction to a Authorities. Book which is to contain the records of God's more

The first

Genesis

chapter of direct dealings with man, the highest-the distinctly introductory. unique creature-which He was pleased to make. Mandiffering Unique, as a creature subject to all the natural laws by

from all the

creation.

rest of which he was surrounded, yet endowed with a marvellous power of independent will, which would enable

him to mould, and modify, and control both those laws and all other living creatures.

1

and

This first

It does not therefore consist of a really precise and References definite account of the processes of creation, but, in Authorities. view of its main and high object, it contains a series of chapter not a distinct and repeated affirmations of God's supreme relations to all forms of existence, in all their order, all

cosmogony.

object.

their origin, all their growth, all their relations. It is Its real designed to impress on us that the world was not created by chance, by self-generation, by impersonal powers of nature, or by many agents acting either in harmony or in antagonism. God is distinct from that He has made. God is the one primal source of all things. God's will is represented in all laws that rule. God's good pleasure shapes all ends. The proper religious object of this chapter is reached, when it has strongly impressed on mind and heart the existence, independence, and personality of one Divine Being, the universality of His rule, the omnipotency of His power, and the eternal persistence of His relationship to the world He has created.

The character of the narrative cannot be better The charac

indicated than in the following passage by Dr. Rainy: "That this chapter is very different, both in what it says and in what it leaves unsaid, from what many persons think they might expect, in view of all that is known of geologic eras and processes, may be granted. It is so mainly for this reason. When a brief and summary view of events and processes is to be given, they must be thrown together under leading heads, in a few divisions, and the most important aspects alone presented. But what shall be judged most important will depend on the object in view. The object of the

ter of the

narrative of

the creation: by

Dr. Rainy.