Page:Studies in the Scriptures - Series I - The Plan of the Ages (1909).djvu/50

 44 Tkt Plan of the Ages.

forth in these books $ and the Hebrew nation, by common consent, for over three thousand years, has claimed these books as a gift to them from Moses, and has held them so sacred that a jot or tittle must not be altered thus giving assurance of the purity of the text.

These writings of Moses contain the only credible his- tory extant, of the epoch which it traverses. Chinese his- tory affccfts to begin at creation, telling how God went out on the water in a skiff, and, taking in his hand a lump of earth, cast it into the water. That lump of earth, it claims, became this world, etc. But the entire story is so devoid of reason that the merest child of intelligence would not be deceived by it. On the contrary, the account given in Genesis starts with the reasonable assumption that a God, a Creator, an intelligent First Cause, already existed. It treats not of God's having a beginning, but of his work and of its beginning and its systematic orderly progwss " In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. ' * Then stepping over the origin of the earth without detail or explanation, the narrative of the six days [epochs] of profit- ing it for man proceeds. That account is substantially cor- roborated by the accumulating light of science for four thousand years ; hence it is far more reasonable to accept the claim that its author, Moses, was divinely inspired, than to assume that iho intelligence of one man was superior to the combined intelligence and research of the rest of the race in three thousand years since, aided by modern im- plements and millions of money.

Look next at the system of laws laid down in these writ-, ingu. They certainly were without an equal, either in their day or since, until this nineteenth century ; and the laws of this century arc based upon the principles laid down in the Mosaic Law, and framed in the main by men who acknowl- edged the Mosaic Law as of divine origia.

�� �