religion, are pure and lofty and full of saving power. Even science, I
say, owes much to Genesis. The story of the Creation in the first
chapter of Genesis must not indeed be taken for veritable history; but
it is a solemn hymn in which some great truths of the world's origin are
sublimely set forth. It gives us the distinct idea of the unity of
Creation,--sweeping away, at one mighty stroke, the whole system of
naturalistic polytheism, which makes science impossible, when it
declares that "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
In the same words it sets forth the truth by whose light science alone
walks safely, that the source of all things is a spiritual cause. The
God from whose power all things proceed is not a fortuitous concourse of
atoms, but a spiritual intelligence. From this living God came forth
matter with its forces, life with its organisms, mind with its freedom.
And although it may not be possible to force the words of this ancient
hymn into scientific statements of the order of creation, it is most
clear that it implies a continuous process, a law of development, in the
generations of the heaven and the earth. This is not a scientific
treatise of creation, but the alphabet of science is here, as Dr. Newman
Smyth has said; and it is correct. The guiding lights of scientific
study are in these great principles.

Similarly the ethical elements and tendencies of these old writings are
sound and strong. I have shown you how defective many of the Mosaic laws
are when judged by Christian standards; but all this legislation
contains formative ideas and principles by which it tends to purify
itself. Human sacrifices were common among the surrounding nations; the
story of Abraham and Isaac banishes that horror forever from Hebrew
history. Slavery was universal, but the law of the Jubilee Year made an
end of domestic slavery in Israel. The family was foundationless; the
wife's rights rested wholly on the caprice of her husband; but that law