as fast as the blight on the
trees, or the smut on the corn: only being not according to nature,
or the laws of God, they do not breed as natural things do, after
their kind: but, belonging to chaos, the kingdom of disorder and
misrule, they breed fresh lies unlike themselves, of all strange and
unexpected shapes; so that when a man takes up with one lie, there
is no saying what other lie he may not take up with beside.

Wherefore the first thing man has to learn is truth concerning the
first human question, Where am I? How did I come here; and how did
this world come here? To which the Bible answers in its first line-
-

'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.'

How God created, the Bible does not tell us. Whether he created (as
doubtless he could have done if he chose) this world suddenly out of
nothing, full grown and complete; or whether he created it (as he
creates you and me, and all living and growing things now) out of
things which had been before it--that the Bible does not tell us.

Perhaps if it had told us, it would have drawn away our minds to
think of natural things, and what we now call science, instead of
keeping our minds fixed, as it now does, on spiritual things, and
above all on the Spirit of all spirits; Him of whom it is written,
'God is a Spirit'

For the Bible is simply the revelation, or unveiling of God. It is
not a book of natural science. It is not merely a book of holy and
virtuous precepts. It is not merely a book wherein we may find a
scheme of salvation for our souls. It is the book of the
revelation, or unveiling of the Lord God, Jesus Christ; what he was,
what he is, and what he will be for ever.

Of Jesus Christ? How is he revealed in the text, 'In the beginning
God created the heaven and the earth?'

Thus:--If you look at the first chapter of Genesis and the beginning
of the second, you will see that God is called therein by a
different name from what he is called afterwards. He is called God,
Elohim, The High or Mighty One or Ones. After that he is called the
Lord God, Jehovah Elohim, which means properly, The High or Mighty I
Am, or Jehovah, a word which I will explain to you afterwards. That
word is generally translated in our Bible, as it was in the Greek,
'The Lord;' because the later Jews had such a deep reverence for the
name Jehovah, that they did not like to write it or speak it: but
called God simply Adonai, the Lord.

So that we hav