tribe wandering in the desert who finally
settled in a small and barren country. It brought the truth to them so
clearly that they have persuaded much of the world of that truth and
bid fair to persuade the rest. The story has grown with the mind of
man. As it served the Hebrew in his time it has grown to serve others
to this day. Each generation has read the story in the light of its
own times and each generation will continue to read the story in the
light of its advancing knowledge. The only part of the story that can
be affected is the clothing, the inherent truth remains forever.
Furthermore, the story which persuaded the childhood of race is the
story which will persuade the childhood of to-day. In no other form
could the great truth of the Bible be brought to our children as well
as in the form of these early chapters. In early life our children
will accept these stories as literally as the ancient Hebrew accepted
them. As they grow in knowledge, unconsciously and without jar, if we
do not jar them, our children will read into the story what God has
taught them in the world outside. The shock which came to their elders
need never come to them. It is our fault if our children are disturbed
by the conflict between religion and science which disturbed us. There
is no difference between God's revelation of Himself, as we have it in
the Bible, and God's revelation of Himself in nature. The better we
know the Bible and the better we know nature the clearer this will be
to us.

Perhaps the most severe shock that has come to the mind of religious
man from the teachings of science has been the at first almost
unsupportable idea that man is the descendant of creatures of which
the ape is to-day the nearest representative. He had learned from
Genesis the altogether adorable conception that he was made in the
image of his Maker. It lifted him; it strengthened him; it gave him
more power to struggle. He might know that he had marred that likeness
by wrong-doing, he might understand that the fullness of the glory of
God's image could not shine through his own face. Yet he believed that
he was, in spite of all his imperfections, made in the image of his
Maker. Now comes this horrible linkage with a miserable brute to
either shock and confound him or to degrade him. We can easily
imagine, some of us have bitterly experienced, the shock of this
changed conception. But it was only because we mistook the clothing
for the truth in