THEOLOGICAL REVIEW:

A JOURNAL

OF

RELIGIOUS THOUGHT AND LIFE.

"Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is
the place where men ought to worship."

***

"The hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jeru-
salem, worship the Father.
But the hour cometh, and now is, when
the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth for the
Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship
Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." (John iv. 20, 21, 23, 24.)

:

VOL. V. Nos. XX.-XXIII.

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16-17-39

THE

THEOLOGICAL REVIEW.

No. XX.-JANUARY, 1868.

I. THE CREATION.

THE story of the Creation given in the first chapter of Genesis has been made the field of such battles as surely no other passage of the same number of lines has ever witnessed. It is a Representative story, as Emerson might say; it is the foremost and best known of the many quasihistorical passages in the Old Testament. When the "credibility of the Hebrew Scriptures" is spoken of, this chapter is generally nearest to the mind of the speaker; and when that credibility is assailed or defended, we have not to wait long before the controversy arrives at this chapter, and, having arrived at it, is in no hurry to advance further. When “Genesis”—its age, authorship or credibility-is specially named, we may be sure that the stories of the Creation, with perhaps those of the Deluge thrown in, are mainly, if not exclusively, meant. The great contest of "Geology versus the Bible," or, more mildly, "Modern Science in its relation to the Bible," would hardly exist if this one chapter were cancelled.

It is desirable to remember these facts for several reasons. Genesis is a book of fifty chapters; and it is a little hard that the forty-nine should, through mere looseness of language in those who speak of the one only, be the victims of a scepticism not intended for them; more especially as the first chapter (or, more strictly, from the beginning to ii. 3) stands alone as a complete and independent story, and is scarcely even referred to afterwards; so that it might be struck off with absolute impunity to the rest of the book. Much, if not the larger part, of the history of the great Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, followed by that of

VOL. V.

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