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 the striking descriptions in Job xxvi., xxviii., xxxviii. There is also no time when we can say that 'Wisdom was not.' Faith declares that even in that primitive Chaos of which our reason has a horror divine Wisdom reigned supreme. The heavenly ocean, the ancient hills, the combination of countless delicate atoms to form the ground, the fixing of the vault of heaven on the world-encircling ocean, the separation of sea and dry land —all these were later works of God than the Architect through whom He made them. And how did the Architect work? By a 'divine improvisation' which allowed no sense of effort or fatigue, and which still continues with unabated freshness. But though her sportive path can still be traced in the processes of nature, her highest delight is in the regeneration of the moral life of humanity. The passage runs thus—

Jehovah produced me as the beginning of his way, as the first of his works, long since. From of old I received my place, from the beginning, from the first times of the earth. When there were no floods, I was brought forth, when there were no fountains rich in water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth; While as yet he had not made the earth with (its) fields, and the atoms of dust which form the ground. When he established the heaven, I was there, when he marked a circle upon the face of the flood, ), in the sense of 'creating,' not (as Del.) of 'revealing,' for which there is no authority. The secondary meaning 'possessed' (Aquila &c. [Greek: ektêsato], Vulg. possedit: comp. Eccles. xxiv. 6) is less agreeable to the context (see Hitzig's note). There is the same diversity of rendering in Gen. xiv. 19-22. On the patristic expositions of this passage, see Dean Goode, The Divine Rule of Faith and Practice, ed. 1, i. 299. The ante-Nicene Fathers mostly apply it to the divine generation of the Son, the post-Nicene to the generation of the human nature of Christ. Basil and Epiphanius are exceptions. The former applies the passage to 'that wisdom which the apostle mentions' (in 1 Cor. i. 21): the latter expresses a strong opinion that 'it does not at all speak concerning the Son of God.']