Divine Emblems in the Book of Genesis

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literal and historical record of things. fft have actually occurred, yet underlying the narrative there is for us a deeper spiritual meaning, which it is the province of faith, under the teaching of the Holy Ghost, reverently to interpret and apply. While there is danger of excess and extravagance in this direction, yet this must not drive us to the opposite extreme of hard and cold literalism. The Holy Scriptures have given us the true principle of such spiritual interpretation, and there we learn both by divine statement and innumerable examples. that “All these things were types, and are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come.” These underlying spiritual teachings are not confined to those things which may be strictly termed types, but in a measure are linked with all the events of the sacred record.

In the following addresses and reflections we shall not attempt to elaborate any rigid or complete system of typology, but shall with simplicity and freedom, endeavor to draw the most practical and spiritual lessons which the Divine Spirit may enable us from the leading types and events of the inspired record-which have more or less precisely a symbolical character and scriptural suggestiveness. *

Section I. — The Creation.

The first is the story of the creation. Recogmizing, of course, the literal and historical reality of the record, we have the authority of it he scriptures themselves to regard it as the figure of the new creation, which the Divine Spirit is working out in the hearts of God’s

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THE STORY OF CREATION. vi

people, and ultimately will consummate in the Kingdom of Glory. “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” “If any man bein Christ Jesus he .is a new creation; old things have passed away, behold all things have become new.” The first chapter of Genesis is repeated in the twenty-first chapter of Revelation, “And I saw anew heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away.” Underlying the whole record of the first creation we can trace the story of grace in figure and spiritual foreshadowing. Like that ancient process the new creation begins in wreck and

‘chaos — a wreck, like that, of primeval order.

The new creation like the old emerges from a scene of darkness and desolation. Like that, also, it is preceded and introduced by the overshadowing presence and brooding wings of the heavenly Dove, and brought about by the power of the personal and Almighty Word. Then also, the first type of Christ in both creations is the dawning Light. “For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in

our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of

the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

Light is followed by Order and the separation

of the things that differ, and this word separation is almost a keynote of the entire spiritual

life, and has aradical reference to the principle of sanctification itself.

In the old creation there is much light before the celestial luminaries appear in the firmament. This is not until the fourth day. Soin the spiritual life the manifestation of Jesus in His personal indwelling and glory, comes often at a later stage, and perhaps the three days that preceded it in the creation narrative suggest, if they do not typify, the resurrection experience which must ever precede it. Salvation brings us the light of the Holy Spirit, but our deeper consecration and union with Him introduces us to the full glory of the Sun of Righteousness, - and to the dawn of that day whose “Sun shall no more go down — but the Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and thy God thy glory.” This is followed in the old creation by the introdue- ‘tion, in all its wonderful forms and fullness, of Life in the entire animal kingdom; and so in the new creation the revelation of the indwelling Christ quickens into life the whole spiritual being, and fills it in every part with fruitfulness and fullness of life, until it reaches its climax in the new man in his full maturity reflecting the glorious image of God Himself. - In both the old creation and the new there were successive stages with marked intervals like the great strata of our globe, bearing the traces of intense convulsions and mighty upheavals; so, with the transformation in our spiritual life, God has to break us off from the old experiences, and bring us out into new

“aspirations and higher planes by forces often as convulsive as those which moulded earth’s earlier ages.

And in each case it will be noticed in the records of Genesis, the progress is from the lower to the higher, from the darker to the brighter, from the “evening to the morning.”

Every new stage begins in comparative evening and ends in a clear morning, and it is as

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Saget true now as in the creation days, “It was evening and it was morning, one day.” So the transformation is going forward in every Christian heart, and “the path of the just is like the shining light, which shineth more and more unto the perfect day.” So too, the kingdom of God is going forward through the ages of time, and bye and bye “it will be evening and morning,” one eternal day. “And he that sitteth on the throne shall say, behold I make all things new. Section IT. — The Creation of Man.

The crown of the first creation was man himself. The story of his formation is accompanied with greater emphasis and fullness of detail than the entire universe. It is determined in the counsels of the Eternal Trinity, ‘Let us make man,” and it is patterned after nothing less than the Creator Himself, “in our image and in our likeness.” It is fitting that such a majestic being should be the sovereign of the lower creation, and therefore He is invested with the lordship of nature, “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” It is natural, therefore, that if the material creation is symbolical of redemption, much more is the creation of man the type of the Holy Spirit’s chief work of grace, namely the renewal and restoration of the human soul. Hence, we find in the New Testament epistles such language as this: “Put on the new man

which after God is created in righteousness —

and true holiness;” “Put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him;” “If any man be in Christ Jesus he is a new creation: old things have passed away, behold all things have become new.”

As before, so here we find many exquisite points of correspondence and resemblance.

The natural man was created by the forming

hand and breathing breath of his Maker, so the spiritual man is not only externally reformed, but internally renewed and regenerated by the very breath and Spirit of the living God. ‘The Lord God breathed into man the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” The

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