attributes fatigue to the Creator, and the needfulness to Him of rest on the seventh day.

But into whatsoever high and exclusive position we are disposed to advance the human species, the rank to which we elevate him falls infinitely short of that to which the Mosaic theory has the presumption to exalt him. We coincide with the legend in giving him "dominion over the fish of the sea, and the fowl of the air, and over cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth," but when the legend asserts that "God said Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness," we at once part company with it, and refuse to recognize its presumptuous and impious assumption. We cannot attempt to materialize God, nor to give Him an impersonation in the remotest degree similar to that of one of his creatures, raised only a few grades higher than the brutes. The facial angle in man finds a caricature in the monkey, the dog, the horse, the ox, and in every vertebrated land-animal, as well as in birds of the air, and even in fishes; and shall we bring down the image of the Deity to the resemblance, however distant, of that of the brute creation?

In the early part of this work we have shown that the ancients had no conception of the Deity as a spiritual Being, and great weakness of argument is betrayed by those who would assert that both the mental and material qualities of man became changed and debased by the introduction of sin and death into the world. From whence do they derive their authority for this change in the condition of man? We have here before us the original legend which defines the material character of the dominion conferred on man.

It cannot be doubted that Moses entertained a higher opinion of this legend than that of either of the other two, from his having selected it as worthy of the first place in the book of Genesis. The Bible commences with this book, and we are now treating of the sixth day of creation, on which day man was said to be brought into existence.

The attention of the reader must here be drawn to two unmistakable deductions which are developed in the biblical transcript of the sixth day. And first, to the moral and religious fact, a fact incapable of subversion or doubt, that God is an immortal being, a being pure, perfect and incapable of change, for the Bible asserts, "in God there is no turning, nor the shadow of change." It is on this principle that a personal atonement is by sectarians asserted to be indispensable on the part of the Deity, for it will be found in the second legend, that God, having been betrayed into anger by the sinfulness of our first parents, and a curse having proceeded from Him, it became absolutely impossible that He Himself could avert the awful consequences of His curse, unless by a personal atonement, or by an act of satisfaction or punishment to be inflicted on Himself in extenuation of the curse, and in reconcilement with the condemned race, and in obliteration of the curse. Hence (according to the system of mythical argument) arose the necessity for the Incarnation, and the material sufferings of the 'Son of Man," who, by a mysterious and mythical process, became a carnal personification of the Godhead.

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But are curses alone incapable of being repealed? Do not blessings also demand from God a similar condition of indispensable performance? God had blessed

man before He cursed him, for the legend of the sixth day asserts," So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth." If, therefore, the God of the Hebrews be an immutable being, a being of a nature so pure, so fixed, and so incapable of change, that the expression of his will having once proceeded from Him, it must inevitably be carried out in all its consequences, then we must be convinced that God had removed from Himself the power of cursing. God had already blessed and could not curse, and, as a necessary corollary, the atonement falls to the ground. God being an immutable being, and having, by an act of previous blessing, removed from Himself the power of cursing, there could be no atonement, nor the needfulness for an atonement, for God could not curse, and therefore never cursed.

Secondly. The preceding deduction refers to the introduction of sin into the world; our second deduction refers to that of death, as the consequence of sin.

On the sixth day God said, "Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so."

It follows, therefore, that life was to be supported in man, and in all the brute creation by means of the gift of herbs bearing seed, and of trees bearing fruit

containing seed, which to them should be for meat. These given herbs, and trees, and fruit, and seed, were teeming with life. Now the mastication and consumption of herbs, fruit, and seed, and the chemical changes these productions undergo, in the digestive animal organs, necessarily entail death on the herbs, fruit, and seed, so consumed. Hence it is evident that death was a law enacted from the earliest moment of the creation of life, and that on the bestowal of animal life, the Creator provided for its nourishment and con tinuance, by an act of death perpetuated on another form of life; or, in other words, by means of the dissolving of one form of matter into another form, productive of material sustentation.

Death, therefore, was a law of sensitive matter, from the moment of its creation. Herbs and fruit yielding seed, advance on the road to death from the moment of birth. At that early date, the germ of the seed is already contained within them, and the seed containing the germ of life is only brought to a state of maturity, and yielded up by the natural death of the plant or the fruit. A familiar illustration of this process is found in a field of standing corn, the seed whereof becomes thoroughly ripe, and replete with life, only when the plants themselves are exhausted and die. This beautiful arrangement of the all-wise Author of nature causes the earth to be endlessly covered with a succession of new and vigorous life in the vegetable kingdom.

But an objection may be raised to our exhibition of the law of death, that it is applicable solely to vegetable and not to animal life, and that animal life was not amenable to death, until the doom pronounced by

the curse. For all the purposes of logical inference, we consider the law of death is made applicable to the whole of sensitive matter, by a proof of its existence as a law, with respect to any one form of such matter. Seed and reproduction are not confined to the vegetable kingdom. They extend themselves throughout the entire ramifications of the animal kingdom, and birth the consequence of seed, and reproduction the consequence of maturity, are as unavoidable to the one as to the other.

But we shall address ourselves to the objection raised by those who assert that the law of death is not, in the first chapter of Genesis, made applicable to animal life.

We have seen that God blessed the animal creation, "God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth." We shall first dedicate our attention to the human family, on whom God bestowed similar characteristic sexual distinctions, with those in the vegetable kingdom, "male and female created he them." God blessed them, and bestowed on them the property of being fruitful and of multiplying. Death as a penalty did not apply to them. No mention is made of it. God only subjects man to death, when under the influence of anger, as a punishment for disobedience and transgression. We will suppose God did not design him for death when He created him. On the contrary, He blessed him, to go on increasing and multiplying.

Let us take for granted that the law of fruitfulness and of multiplying, without the law of death, had commenced with the creation, and had been perpetuated to this day, in the ratio of increase which is