title of God-"the Shepherd, the Stone of Israel"is to be noted in passing, in connection with what has already been said concerning stone-worship.1

One passage in this poem has had a factitious interest, from its being taken as a prediction of the Messiah:

"The Sceptre shall not depart from Judah
Nor a law-giver from between his feet,

Until Shiloh come.

And unto him shall the gathering of the people be."

Jewish rabbins, and, after them, Christian doctors, reading the passage as above, have found in it a prediction of the Messiah. Such an interpretation, however, long antedates the age of the awakening of the Messianic expectation, and is an historical anachronism. Moses is silent upon this matter, and even some of the prophets are very vague—outlining an impersonal rather than a personal Messiah, a nation rather than an individual—as Zephaniah and the Second Isaiah. In fact, this belief arose centuries after the age of the patriarchs, as a late historic development of the mature nation; which slowly fashioned, from its experiences of sorrow, the high hope of a Deliverer and Teacher and Saviour. This vision only cleared in the consciousness of the nation a few generations before the coming of Christ.

And, in truth, a more accurate translation of 'See Note 6 to Chapter VIII.

this passage, whose substantial correctness is quite generally admitted, leaves no room for this Messianic meaning; but makes it speak of Judah's greatness in the wilderness-wanderings, a greatness which lasted until the settlement in Canaan-of which the traditional locating of the ark at Shiloh was the sign.

"The Sceptre shall not depart from Judah

Nor the staff of power from between his feet,
Until he come to Shiloh;

And unto him shall be the obedience of the peoples.'

" 1

The remainder of the book, from the twenty-ninth verse of chapter forty-nine [xlix. 29-1.], records the death of Jacob; the stately funeral cortege that paid the last honors to the father of the great Joseph, accompanying the body to the ancestral buryingplace in Canaan; the natural suspicion of the brothers that Joseph would now revenge himself upon them; the magnanimous way in which "he comforted them and spake to their hearts;" his long life; his assurance to his people that they should be brought by God to the land of promise; and-last entry in all earthly annals-his death and burial. 2

Genesis thus brings down the origins of Israel to the age in which the Hebrews settled in Egypt.3

'Sharpe's translation.

2 See Note 7 to Chapter VIII. See Note 8 to Chapter VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CONCLUSION.

As we close our study of Genesis, we may take a retrospect of its contents and character.

We have found, in the first general division of the book, a group of primeval poems, kindred in nature to the cosmogonies and myths and legends of other peoples. We have found, in the second general division, a narrative which weaves into the story of the Hebrew Patriarchs the compositions of at least two historians, of different ages and schools of religious thought. These narrators did not invent the stories which they wrote. They found them already existing among the people, in the form of oral traditions which had long been growing among the several tribes of Israel. Not all of the popular traditions were embodied in these narratives, but, from the large mass of the people's tales, such portions were selected as seemed of greatest historical value, and of most ethical usefulness; this latter consideration being dominant in the minds of the historians of "the people of religion." Naturally, therefore, we have found ourselves chiefly occupied in reading stories of the great Patriarchs, the founders of the

Tribes; and such stories of these ancestral Hebrew heroes as illustrate their religious and moral character, or the religious and moral character of the age in which they lived.

These stories, thus handed down through successive generations, preserve substantial memories of real historical characters; but they also embody reminiscences of tribal histories, which crystallized around the names of the heads of the houses; so that it is not always easy to distinguish between the forms of persons and personifications. This, how

ever, does not in the least affect the value of the ethical and spiritual truths embodied in the lofty forms of the patriarchs. Whenever we have come upon spiritual realities, experiences through which were received visions of God, we have found reason to feel quite sure that we were in the presence of real human beings, "amid the abysmal depths of personality."

As handed down orally from father to son, through many generations, the original spiritual. realities clothed themselves in the drapery woven by the imagination of unspiritual ages, and became entangled in the lower forms of legend which abounded in the tales of the people. We have found it easy, however, to penetrate through the drapery of legend to the form of personal experience shaping the story; and to feel the great souls of the Hebrew heroes, agonizing over the dark problems of earth, com

muning with the Eternal and finding the secret of peace.

Bedded in these primeval poems and in these personal and tribal traditions, we have found genealogical lists, apparently of actual individuals; which prove to be mythological fragments, the names of outgrown gods, and ethnographical tables, giving the Hebrew view of the inter-relationship of nations. We have found also, inserted in the narrative, fragments of other traditions than those of the great patriarchs, and fragments that appear to have been drawn from the traditions of other peoples; while we have come across at least two ancient songs, which have been threaded into the story.

Having seen all this, we cannot fail to recognize in Genesis a truly human book; a book which embodies the literary labors of men like ourselves, in by-gone days-poets, philosophers and historians; as well as the ruder mental efforts of primitive peoples, in shaping their oral traditions.

Is Genesis, then, merely an ordinary human book? If it were merely a human book it would still be not at all an ordinary book, but a most extraordinary one. It preserves fragments which are, perhaps, the very oldest bits of literature that have been rescued from the wreck of the ancient world. Its group of primeval sagas presents us with the noblest forms which the Semitic philosophy and poetry fashioned for the speculations of these wonderful peoples con