EXPOSITORY DISCOURSES, &c. DISCOURSE I. ÒN THE BOOK IN GENERAL, AND THE FIRST DAY'S CREATION Genesis i. 1-4. ĺr is common for the writers of other histories to go back in their researches as far as possible; but Moses traces his from the beginning. The whole book is upon the origin of things, even of all things that had a beginning. The visible creation, the generations of man, moral evil among men, the spiritual kingdom of the Messiah, the new world, the church in the family of Abraham, the various nations and tribes of man: every thing, in short, now going on in the world, may be traced hither as to its spring-head. Without this history the world would be in total darkness, not knowing whence it came, nor whither it goeth. In the first page of this sacred book a child may learn more in an hour than all the philosophers in the world learned without it in thousands of years. There is a majestic sublimity in the introduction. No apology, preamble, or account of the writer: you are introduced at once into the very heart of things. No vain conjectures about what was before time, nor why things were done thus and thus ; but * simply so it was. In this account of the creation nothing is said on the being of God: this great truth is taken for granted. May not this apparent omission be designed to teach us, that those who deny the exist |