PERIOD I.

FROM ADAM TO THE CALL OF ABRAHAM.

B.C. 4004-1921.

CHAPTER I.

GOD'S WORK OF CREATION. · -THE FIRST FOUR DAYS.

N the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep,

Where eldest Night
And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold
Eternal anarchy amidst the noise

Of endless war, and by confusion stand.

And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

Hail, holy Light! offspring of Heaven first-born,
Or of the Eternal coeternal beam,

May I express thee unblamed? since God is light,
And never but in unapproachèd light
Dwelt from eternity; dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence increate.
Or hear'st thou rather, pure etherial stream,
Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the sun,
Before the heavens thou wert, and at the voice
Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest

The rising world of waters dark and deep,
Won from the void and formless infinite.

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 made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

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 called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. 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, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day.

A million torches, lighted by Thy hand,
Wander unwearied through the blue abyss ;
They own Thy power, accomplish Thy command,
All gay with life, all eloquent with bliss.

What shall we call them? Piles of crystal light,
A glorious company of golden streams,
Lamps of celestial ether burning bright,

Suns lighting systems with their joyous beams?
But Thou to these art as the noon to night!

And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew

Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
This glorious canopy of light and blue?

Yet 'neath the curtain of translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus with the host of heaven came,
And lo! creation widened in man's view.
Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O Sun! or who could find,
While fly, and leaf, and insect lay revealed,
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind!
Why do we, then, shun Death with anxious strife? -
If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life?

THE WORK OF

CHAPTER II.

CREATION COMPLETED.

- THE SABBATH

ORDAINED.

As sparks mount upward from the fiery blaze,

So suns are born, so worlds spring forth from Thee;

And as the spangles in the sunny rays
Shine round the silver snow, the pageantry

Of heaven's bright army glitters in Thy praise.

Thy Word created all, and doth create;
Thy splendor fills all space with rays divine;

Thou art, and wert, and shalt be! Glorious! Great!
Light-giving, life-sustaining Potentate!

A

ND God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 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, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

Therefore of clay, base, vile, and next to naught,
Yet formed by wondrous skill, and by His might,
According to an heavenly patterne wrought,
Which He had fashioned in His wise foresight,
He man did make, and breathed a living spright
Into his face, most beautifull and fayre,
Endewed with wisedome's riches, heavenly, rare.

Such He him made, that he resemble might
Himselfe, as mortall thing immortall could;
Him to be lord of every living wight

He made by love out of His owne like mould,
In whom He might His mightie selfe behould:
For Love doth love the thing beloved to see,
That like itselfe in lovely shape may bee.

And 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 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

So.

Blessed that eve!
The Sabbath's harbinger, when, all complete
In freshest beauty from Jehovah's hand,
Creation bloomed; when Eden's twilight face
Smiled like a sleeping babe: the voice divine
A holy calm breathed o'er the goodly work:
Mildly the sun upon the loftiest tree

Shed mellowly a sloping beam. Peace reigned,
And love, and gratitude; the human pair

Their orisons poured forth; love, concord reigned.

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

With silent awe I hail the sacred morn,

Which slowly wakes while all the fields are still :
A soothing calm on every breeze is borne,
A graver murmur gurgles from the rill,
And Echo answers softer from the hill,
And softer sings the linnet from the thorn,

The sky-lark warbles in a tone less shrill.
Hail, light serene! hail, sacred Sabbath morn!
The rooks float silent by in airy drove;

The sun a placid yellow lustre shows ;
The gales, that lately sighed along the grove,
Have hushed their downy wings in dead repose;
The hovering rack of clouds forget to move :
So smiled the day when the first morn arose !

MARRIAGE.

THESE are Thy glorious works, Parent of good!
Almighty! Thine this universal frame,

Thus wondrous fair; Thyself how wondrous then!
Unspeakable, who sitt'st above these heavens
To us invisible, or dimly seen

In these Thy lowest works; yet these declare
Thy goodness beyond thought, and power divine.
Speak ye, who best can tell, ye sons of light,
Angels for ye behold Him, and with songs
And choral symphonies, day without night,
Circle His throne, rejoicing; ye in heaven.
On earth join all ye creatures to extol

Him first, Him last, Him midst, and without end.

HESE are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, and every plant of the field before