world with a heart that is "deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked" (Jer. 17:9). This is the heritage of The Fall. This is the entail of Adam's transgression. Man is a ruined creature, and "darkness," moral and spiritual, rents upon the face of his understanding. (Eph. 4:18).

3. "And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." Here is where hope begins to dawn. God did not abandon the primitive earth, which had become a ruin. It would not have been surprising, though, if He had. Why should God trouble any further about that which lay under His righteous judgment? Why should He condescend to notice that which was now a desolate waste? Why, indeed. But here was where sovereign mercy intervened. He had gracious designs toward that formless void. He purposed to resurrect it, restore it, refructify it. And the first thing we read of in bringing about this desired end was, "the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." There was Divine activity. There was a movement on the part of the Holy Spirit. And this was a prime necessity. How could the earth resurrect itself? How could that which lay under the righteous judgment of God bring itself into the place of blessing? How could darkness transform itself into life? In the very nature of the case it could not. The ruined creation was helpless. If there was to be restoration, and a new creation, Divine power must intervene, the Spirit of God must "move."

The analogy holds good in the spiritual realm. Fallen man had no more claim upon God's notice than had the desolated primitive earth. When Adam rebelled against his Maker, he merited naught but unsparing judgment at His hands, and if God was inclined to have any further regard for him, it was due alone to sovereign mercy. What wonder if God had left man to the doom he so richly deserved! But no. God had designs of grace toward him. From the wreck and ruin of fallen humanity, God purposed to bring forth a "new creation." Out of the death of sin, God is now bringing on to resurrection ground all who are united to Christ His Son. And the first thing in bringing this about is the activity of the Holy Spirit. And this, again, is a prime necessity. Fallen man, in himself, is as helpless as was the fallen earth. The sinner can no more regenerate himself than could the ruined earth lift itself out of the deep which rested upon it. The new cre

ation, like the restoration of the material creation, must be accomplished by God Himself.

4. "And God said, let there be light, and there was light." First the activity of the Holy Spirit and now the spoken Word. No less than ten times in this chapter do we read "and God said." God might have refashioned and refurnished the earth without speaking at all, but He did not. Instead, He plainly intimated from the beginning, that His purpose was to be worked out and His counsels accomplished by the Word. The first thing God said was, "Let there be light," and we read, "There was light." Light, then, came in, was produced by, the Word. And then we are told, "God saw the light, that it was good."

It is so in the work of the new creation. These two are inseparably joined together-the activity of the Spirit and the ministry of the Word of God. It is by these the man in Christ became a new creation. And the initial step toward this was the entrance of light into the darkness. The entrance of sin has blinded the eyes of man's heart and has darkened his understanding. So much so that, left to himself, man is unable to perceive the awfulness of his condition, the condemnation which rests upon him, or the peril in which he stands. Unable to see his urgent need of a Saviour, he is, spiritually, in total darkness. And neither the affections of his heart, the reasonings of his mind, nor the power of his will, can dissipate this awful darkness. Light comes to the sinner through the Word applied by the Spirit. As it is written, "the entrance of Thy words giveth light" (Psa. 119:130). This marks the initial step of God's work in the soul. Just as the shining of the light in Genesis 1 made manifest the desolation upon which it shone, so the entrance of God's Word into the human heart reveals the awful ruin which sin has wrought.

5. "And God divided the light from the darkness." Heb. 4:12 tells us, the Word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." This is not a figurative expression but, we believe, a statement of literal fact. Man is a tripartite being, made up of "spirit and soul and body" (1 Thess. 5:23). The late Dr. Pierson distinguished between them thus: "The spirit is capable of God-consciousness; the soul is

the seat of self-consciousness; the body of sense-consciousness." In the day that Adam sinned, he died spiritually. Physical death is the separation of the spirit from the body; spiritual death is the separation of the spirit from God. When Adam died, his spirit was not annihilated, but it was "alienated" from God. There was a fall. The spirit, the highest part of Adam's complex being, no longer dominated; instead, it was degraded, it fell to the level of the soul, and ceased to function separately. Hence, today, the unregenerate man is dominated by his soul, which is the seat of lust, passion, emotion. But in the work of regeneration, the Word of God "pierces even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit," and the spirit is rescued from the lower level to which it has fallen, being brought back again into communion with God. The "spirit" being that part of man which is capable of communion with God, is light; the "soul" when it is not dominated and regulated by the spirit is in darkness, hence, in that part of the six days' work of restoration which adumbrated the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, we read, "And God divided the light from the darkness."

6. "And God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters ....and God called the firmament heaven" (Gen. 1:6, 8). This brings us to the second days work, and here, for the first time, we read that "God made" something (1:7). This was the formation of the atmospheric heaven, the "firmament," named by God "heaven." That which corresponds to this in the new creation, is the impartation of a new nature. The one who is "born of the Spirit" becomes a "partaker of the Divine nature" (2 Pet. 1:4). Regeneration is not the improvement of the flesh, or the cultivation of the old nature; it is the reception of an altogether new and heavenly nature. It is important to note that the "firmament" was produced by the Word, for, again we read, "And God said." So it is by the written Word of God that the new birth is produced, "Of His own will begat He us with the Word of truth" (James 1:18). And again, "being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God" (1 Pet. 1:23).

7. "And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God said. Let the earth bring

forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself" (Gen. 1: 9-11). These verses bring before us God's work on the third day, and in harmony with the meaning of this numeral we find that which clearly speaks of resurrection. The earth was raised out of the waters which had submerged it, and then it was clothed with vegetation. Where before there was only desolation and death, life and fertility now appeared. So it is in regeneration. The one who was dead in trespasses and sins, has been raised to walk in newness of life. The one who was by the old creation "in Adam," is now by new creation "in Christ." The one who before produced nothing but dead works, is now fitted to bring forth fruit to the glory of God.

And here we must conclude. Much has been left untouched, but sufficient has been said, we trust, to show that the order followed by God in the six days' work of restoration, foreshadowed His work of grace in the new creation: that which He did of old in the material world, typified His present work in the spiritual realm. Every stage was accomplished by the putting forth of Divine power, and everything was produced by the operation of His Word. May writer and reader be more and more subject to that Word, and then shall we be pleasing to Him and fruitful in His service.

2. CHRIST IN GENESIS 1

In our first meditation upon this wonderful book of beginnings we pointed out some of the striking analogies which exist between the order followed by God in His work of creation and His method of procedure in the "new creation," the spiritual creation in the believer. First, there was darkness, then the action of the Holy Spirit, then the word of power going forth, and then light as the result, and later resurrection and fruit. There is also a striking foreshadowment of God's great dispensational dealings with our race, in this record of His work in the six days, but as this has already received attention from more capable pens than ours, we pass on to still another application of this scripture. There is much concerning Christ in this first chapter of Genesis if only we have eyes to see, and it is the typical application of Genesis 1 to Christ and His work we would here direct attention.

Christ is the key which unlocks the golden doors into the temple of Divine truth. "Search the Scriptures," is His command, "for they are they which testify of Me." And again, He declares, "In the volume of the Book it is written of Me." In every section of the written Word the Personal Word is enshrined-in Genesis as much as in Matthew. And we would now submit that on the frontispiece of Divine Revelation we have a typical programme of the entire Work of Redemption.

In the opening statements of this chapter we discover, in type, the great need of Redemption. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." This carries us back to the primal creation which, like everything else that comes from the hand of God, must have been perfect, beautiful, glorious. Such also was the original condition of man. Made in the image of his Creator, endowed with the breath of Elohim, he was pronounced "very good."

But the next words present a very different picture"And the earth was without form and void," or, as the original Hebrew might be more literally translated, "The earth became a ruin." Between the first two verses in Genesis 1 a terrible calamity occurred. Sin entered the