being born second, which we know he was not. It refers rather to the fact that this man Adam was the beginning of a new spiritual order, as Christ was also the beginning of a new spiritual order, and that both sustain a federal and formative relation to those who sprung from them, in the one case by natural birth, and in the other by spiritual. "Adam was the first man who bore the image of God in respect of qualities possessed by none other before the incarnation of the Saviour; and the second and last who received that image unimpaired by sin, was Christ, who is the image of the invisible God, and the express image of His person in the highest sense." There is nothing therefore in the expression, "the first man Adam," which really affects the question before us, and nothing that I know of in any other part of Scripture which absolutely and positively forbids the supposition of pre-adamite races of men.

If we pass outside Scripture the few indications we can discern in the dim twilight seem to support the idea of a new and independent beginning of a superior race. This is a matter on which the opinion of specialists should be sought for our guidance; I will therefore quote again from a high authority, whose opinion we have sought before. Professor Boyd Dawkins says-" It is a remarkable fact that the domestic animals appear to have been introduced into Europe en masse, and not as might have been expected, one after another. It is clear that they were not domesticated in Europe, but that they came here with their masters from the south-east-the central plateau of Asia—the ancient home of all the present European peoples.

"This conclusion is confirmed by an examination of the neolithic cultivated seeds and plants. From the Swiss pile-dwellings Professor Heer has shown that there were no less than eight kinds of cereals. Several of our most familiar seeds and fruits grew in the neolithic gardens and orchards,— smaller than now and nearer to the wild forms from which they have descended. It is remarkable that the seeds of the

wild plants found in the lake-dwellings are absolutely identical with those of the present time; while the seeds of the plants under cultivation have been improved by the care of man, in the many centuries which separate the neolithic age from our own times. It is therefore evident that in the fields, gardens, and orchards, the pile-dwellings possessed vegetables not traceable to the wild stocks now growing in Switzerland . . . . The origin of the domestic animals as well as of the cereals proves that the neolithic peoples migrated into Europe from the south-east, from the mysterious birthplace of successive races-the Eden of mankindCentral Asia. This south-eastern derivation will go far to explain the sharp line of demarcation between them and their predecessors the cave men who retreated before them farther to the north and north-east The introduction

of this civilization is the starting point of the history of the present inhabitants of Europe. To the neolithic peoples we owe the rudiments of the culture we ourselves enjoy. The arts they have introduced have never been forgotten, and all subsequent progress has been built upon their foundation. Their cereals are still cultivated by the farmer, their domestic animals still minister to us, and the arts of which they only possessed the rudiments have developed. into the industries-spinning, weaving, pottery-making, mining, without which we can scarcely realize what our lives would be."1

Here then I repeat we have in these facts presumptive evidence in favour of the supposition with which we started that there was a new and distinct point of departure in the history of man on the earth, a new creation in a higher range both of endowment and destiny. This new and higher range of manhood is the ruling force of the world to-day, and has absorbed, possibly is still absorbing into itself the inferior races which were here before it. For though there

I Early Man in Britain, pp. 302-308.

may have been diversity at starting all tends to unity at the end. The incarnation of the Son of God is widereaching in its effects on the human race. His mediatorial kingdom will include within itself not only all in this world but more worlds than this. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ hath "made known unto us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He hath purposed in Himself. That in the dispensation of the fulness of times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth; even in Him." These expressive words-"all things,-the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth”—should be left as broad as God has left them, and they seem to suggest that as the efficacies of Christ's priesthood were without bound, so His kingly power shall be without limit.

But here I must pause. Secret things belong unto the Lord our God, and the path of high speculation is a perilous path for mortals to tread. The point I want to make clear, the only point I care to press now, is that it is not true that the Bible is hopelessly at issue with the results of modern research, that the general impression as to what the Bible teaches and what it actually does teach are not always the same thing. In its account of the Creation as we have seen it harmonizes with the results of scientific discovery in a manner which gives it an additional claim upon the confidence of mankind. And on the subject of the Antiquity of the Human race, its broken hints and shadowy intimations harmonize as it seems to me with the independent conclusions of the researches of to-day. More should not be expected from a book which has a spiritual object in view, and was not intended to antedate or make unnecessary the results of human enquiry.

The ground of divine revelation is still firm and solid beneath our feet, and God's book is to us what it was to our fathers that light for the day's life which is each day's need.

VIII.

THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF ITS

PRACTICAL PURPOSE.

I AM about to set up a claim for the Bible which I think all reasonable men will admit to be perfectly fair, namely, that it be judged in the light of the one thing, which according to its own showing it specially aims to do. If a medical man stood forth in the community professing to deal with bodily disease, to mitigate human suffering, it would surely show no great wisdom to refuse to call him in till you were quite satisfied that he was a statesman, a great historian, or a man learned in antiquities. He might very reasonably say "I have some knowledge and interest in the directions. you speak of, but really I am not before the community as a statesman, an historian, or an antiquary. Let my claim to your confidence be tested by the way in which I do the one thing I profess to do, by the way in which I deal with disease and suffering." I think all would feel that that was a very fair thing to say; and the claim which would be so fair in ordinary life, can hardly be unreasonable when put forth on behalf of the revelation given to us of God. We ask that it may be judged in the light of the practical work it has been specially sent to do. It does not profess to be profitable for speculation or controversy, or specially for history or science. If it may speak for itself, it professes to be "profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for

instruction in righteousness; that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works."

else.

There can be no doubt that apart from this the book is a very wonderful production. It is, if you will, a great manual of Eastern antiquities, giving us information of those old world-kingdoms of the past which we can obtain nowhere It is a handbook, again, of political experience. In the remarkable history of the people of Israel there are lessons to be learnt which always seem to be capable of fresh application. We see there what makes nations and what mars them, what a nation can do, what it can suffer, how it may be affected by the conduct of its rulers, and how it may make its rulers like itself. The burning words of the prophets to the Jewish nation have not become obsolete by the lapse of years. Some of them might have been written on set purpose for our own people and our own time.

So again in reference to the practical conduct of life. If a young man setting out in the world desired to know how he could best succeed in business not for a month or a year merely, but for a lifetime, you could hardly give him better advice than that he store his mind with the pithy wisdom, the shrewd penetration, and the strong common sense to be found for example in the Book of Proverbs. A shrewd man of business in a neighbouring county used sometimes to startle people by saying "Read your Bible, the Bible is the most money-making book in the world." It seemed a very sordid way of judging the matter, but being a man of keen insight and knowing that if truth is put in the form of mere platitude men will hear and assent and -forget, he put it so. He knew very well that there is a temporal side to every man's life as well as a spiritual, and in his own business, beginning with almost nothing he had made his monetary position one of strength and safety by forming the habits and following the maxims laid down in the one book he had been taught to reverence. Therefore counselling men out of his own experience he said to his