position has to be taken up at once, prayerfully chosen, and hopefully held. The period of transition, the period of anxious suspense of judgment, is drawing to a close. It is seen and felt that the interpretation of Holy Scripture is not less literal, not less spiritual, not less in conformity with the pattern which the Divine Teacher gave, when it is rendered more true to history by the fiery tests of criticism and literary analysis.

Some there are who gladly avow their belief that Scripture and Science are not at variance, yet are loth enough to make use of Science as God's gift. But, undoubtedly, it must be the maxim of all reverent exposition to treat Science as the friend and not as the foe of Divine Revelation. It may be that Science seems to be but a disappointing friend when it shows the path of traditional interpretation to be no longer practicable. But the utterance of truth is the proof of purest friendship; and Science, if it closes one way, guides us to another which hitherto has been hid from view.

The present volume consists of eight papers based on a course of Lectures delivered at Cambridge in 1890-91. They are reproduced with a few slight alterations from the Expository Times, to which Magazine they were contributed at the request of its kind and energetic Editor.

The object with which they were written was to discuss the contents of the opening chapters of Genesis, in a simple and untechnical style, with special reference to the modifications of view which the frank recognition of the claims of Science and Criticism seems to demand.

The reception which the papers have met with in various quarters has encouraged me to consent to their appearance in a separate volume. I have thought it better to ask the reader kindly to make due allowance for the form in which they originally appeared, than to attempt the task of recasting them in a different mould.

CAMBRIDGE, Aug. 2, 1892.

HERBERT E. RYLE.

VIA EST DEI LEX; META GLORIA EST DEI.

THE national history of Israel may be said to date from the era of the Exodus and the Covenant of Mount Sinai. The beginnings of the Hebrew race are described in the narrative that tells us of the call of Abraham and records the selection of the family with which are identified the names of the three great ancestors of the chosen people.

But the Hebrew narratives, and the traditions from which our Book of Genesis was compiled, went back into ages infinitely more remote. It was natural for the Hebrew historian to preface his record of the origin of the chosen people with a record of the origin of all nations, the origin of the human race, and the origin of the universe. The materials for such a preface were to hand. He has placed them before us in their simplicity and beauty, making selections from his available resources, so as to narrate in succession the Hebrew

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