hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: 23. Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. 24. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. 1. Here are, then, thirty-seven passages in the New Testament in which these three Chapters of Genesis are either directly quoted, or are made a ground of argument. Of these, two are by our Lord Himself, and both of them direct quotations; twenty-five by St. Paul, three being direct quotations; one by St. Peter; seven in St. John's writings; one by St. James; and one by the assembled Apostles. The inference which I would draw from this circumstance is, that our Lord and His Apostles regarded these three Chapters as historical documents worthy of credit, and that they made use of them to establish truths—a thing they never would have done had they not known them to be authoritative. The texts quoted or referred to lie, moreover, scattered through the Chapters in such a way, that no claim of authority can be set up for one part which cannot be equally demanded for every other. The creation of matter, the formation of the worlds and all things in them, the command that light should shine, the separation of the waters and the appearance of dry land; the creation of man out of the dust; dominion given him over the irrational world; his being made in the image of God, and having a living soul; God resting the seventh day from all His works; Adam being first made and then Eve, the woman from and for the man, their being made male and female; the law of marriage, the man cleaving unto his wife so that two should be one flesh; the fall, and entrance of sin and death into the world, its origin in Satan's guile tempting and deceiving Eve in the form of a serpent with lying words, Adam not deceived but tempted through Eve, the curse upon the serpent that the seed of the woman should bruise the sepent's head; the origin of all nations in one blood; the existence of the tree of life in Paradise ;-all these topics are severally drawn from the Chapters under consideration, by our Lord and His Apostles, in a manner which precludes every hypothesis, but that they regarded the opening portion of the Sacred Volume to be of historic credibility and plenary authority. The notion that these Chapters are myths or merely parabolic, as some have hastily conjectured, or that they were acted over in a vision to Moses, as others have suggested regarding the account of the six days' work, is only a device for getting rid of their historical character. But this fact can never be set aside by any such artifice, that they are quoted and used as circumstantial narratives by infallible authority.* 2. The historical credibility of these chapters having * As a specimen of the notions of some of these writers, I give the following extracts from an English translation of a work on Genesis by a late German critic of some celebrity: “Among all the civilized nations of antiquity, the dawn of genuine history (whether more or less authentic) is preceded by a series of myths and legends, whose patriotic object it uniformly is, to trace the origin and to exalt the early glories of the people. “A narrative may be recognized as mythic, when it refers to a period in which no written records could have existed, when things not cognizable by the senses, or beyond the reach of human experience, are related in it as historical facts, and when these statements of supposed facts are interwoven with rude conceptions of nature and of the Deity, or when they betray throughout a tincture of the marvellous. (all of which were insensibly incorporated with the older elements, and at times threw them completely into the shade); until at length these traditions were seized upon and appropriated by the poet and the historian, so that they were never committed to writing until long after the nation, among whom they arose, had arrived at maturity and independence, and had begun to pay attention to its history."Introduction to Book of Genesis, by Dr. Peter Von Bohlen, translated by James Heywood, Esq., vol. i. pp. 1, 2. "In the systems of Zoroaster and Menu the account of the formation of the world is completely incorporated with the laws; and the Hindoo still adheres so tenaciously to this usage, that every work which lays claim to the name of Purana or ancient, must pursue a fivefold object, and, in conformity with the general distribution of the Israelitish and every other primæval history, must separately treat of the creation, the theogony, the chronology, and genealogy of the ancient heroes, and their individual history.”—P. 5. "Here and there, in myths .. we may dimly trace some historical fact, which has been individualized and embellished in been thus established, their Inspiration immediately follows from an examination of their contents. Nothing short of a Divine Communication could the progress of time, until it has acquired an epic character, as in the expedition of Ramos to Ceylon, the siege of Troy, the voyage of the Argonauts, or the departure of the Israelites out of Egypt."-P. 9. "The records of all religious systems, in all times and in every nation, are so favoured by their peculiar position, that the popular views they contain become sacred in the eyes of their professors, under the influence of early education, and cannot be viewed without prejudice, or thoroughly understood except by those beyond their pale; and the Hebrew nation, whose whole literature was early stamped as Divine, and transferred as such to Christianity, has been far from escaping the ordinary consequences; the whole of their history has in fact been utterly perverted, and been completely misunderstood, because the mythic element has been raised to the rank of the historical, and mistaken zeal for the interests of religion has in consequence fettered for centuries the spirit of philosophical inquiry. It is true that, since the classical authors have been subjected to so severe a scrutiny, a somewhat freer range has been allowed, and that similar principles of criti cism have been applied with like success to the writings even of the Hebrews, but the struggle of antiquated prejudice has not yet terminated in any settled compromise. "One party, while they willingly admit the mythic colouring of primæval history, insist nevertheless that the Pentateuch is still to hold its place among historical writings; and Bertholdt so little understands the investigation of De Wette, that he actually fears that they may terminate in reducing the whole Hebrew people, as they appear on the theatre of antiquity, to a mere empty phantom. Hence we are justified in saying that a philosophical history of the Israelites, drawn up on proper principles, is still wanted. Leo has been the first to sketch the true outline in his Lectures. "On the other side we have to encounter, even down to the present day, that simple and primitive belief, which considers the Pentateuch as entitled to full historical credence, and which supposes that Moses was its author, so that every new inquirer is compelled to commence afresh with the settlement of the arguments still adduced in support of these opinions, instead of being able to devote the whole have furnished the information which they contain regarding the origin of matter, and the formation of attention they deserve to the poetical beauties, and the aesthetic and religious import of these venerable writings."-P. 28. In the second volume, after a professed critique upon this portion of Holy Scripture, he writes as follows :- "The most antenable of all the interpretations is the historical, which was upheld by the Fathers of the Church, the Rabbins, and the older doctrinal divines, who insisted upon the narrative being a pure statement of fact and Divine inspiration. "Next comes the figurative mode of interpretation, which is the most arbitrary, and is nearly allied to the allegorical. . . . "... Allegory, like all other interpretations of Scripture which are called deep, sees a symbolical meaning in everything; and it is a readier instrument for an exposition, inasmuch as it may be employed with less solid erudition.... "Critics in recent times have universally [!!] decided upon the mythical interpretation."- Vol. ii. p. 54. May we be preserved from such critics, and such philosophy! in which the main points of evidence are tacitly passed by; and while the man is professedly searching for the light, he voluntarily shuts himself up in the darkest dungeon. The dreams of this self-confident critic are to supersede all the testimonies of all the writers of the Old Testament and New, and our Lord Himself, as well as contemporary history, and the concurrent traditions of the Jews, and above all the overwhelming internal evidence which the books afford themselves. One who sets thus lightly upon the Wori of God in one portion, is in grievous danger of deriving no great benefit from any part of the revelation it brings from heaven for lost sinners. It is lamentable to see, from the notices of his biographer, how destitute he appears to have been in his dying hours, of those comforts and hopes, which the Sacred Volume he so slightingly passed under his critical eye is designed to give, and which distinguish the Christian philosopher from the heathen sage. "Von Bohlen's faith in the immortality of the soul is described by his biographer as the firm anchor to which his mind held fast, in the prospect of approaching dissolution.”—P. xxiii. "Ardent to the latest moment of expiring life, observes his friend Wilda, for what he consilered to be the truth, our Bohlen peacefully and with resignation awaited the call of the Most High, in the firmest, confidence that the Almighty would receive him as an affectionate father." |