Evolution and Genesis.

Genesis contains a cosmogony—a history of the origin of the universe and of man.

But tor whom was that history written? "In every work regard the author's end" is a sound canon of criticism; let us apply it here. The history was written for a community of suddenly emancipated slaves—a people degraded, mentally and morally, by centuries of bondage amongst idolaters. The story of the Exodus and of the forty years subsequent desert life is filled with the proofs of their ignorance, petulance, levity, and general incapacity for re- page 11 ceiving elevated teaching of any sort. They were, in short, a community of children, and this fact is the key to the teaching given them. The first lesson in their education was, that the Deity who had delivered them from Egypt, and now claimed their homage and obedience, was the Author of nature and of man. And this lesson was given, not in the terms of modern philosophy, but in those of a child's first lesson book.