other two. Hence, the expression “let us make man," you intimate, if not directly assert, is found but in this place, in the book of Genesis. You certainly must forget that this God of Genesis is represented as going down to Babel to see what the Babelites were doing, and when starting, as saying to the persons of his court, "Let us go down, and there confound their language." Here was an event according to your own reasoning, as important as the creation of man, and much more so than the creation of this and all other worlds. The serpent is also made to say, "Ye shall be as Gods," and he is good authority; at least the author is responsible in this particular for what he puts in the mouth of this dramatis personæ. Add to all this, the Hebrew scholars tell us that the first verse should read, "In the beginning the Gods made the heaven and the earth." The writer therefore must have been a polytheist. But the author of Exodus, and the other books of the Pentateuch, must have been a monotheist. There are no we's and us's in reference to God in them, but it is throughout I and me. "I am that I am is my name;" "say that I am hath sent me unto you;" "thou shalt have no other God before me;""see now that I —, I am he, and there is no other God with me," are expressions decisive of this point."

Mr. Olmsted here says, that we are informed by Hebrew scholars, the first verse of the book of Genesis should read, "In the beginning the Gods made the heaven and the earth." So far is this from being true, all commentators are agreed that the passage should be rendered, "In the beginning God created" not the heaven, but "the heavens and the earth." It is true that the original word used to signify the Deity, is in the plural form; but it is joined to a verb in the singular number, and consequently implies plurality in unity. Dr. Clarke, commenting on the passage, says, "The original word Elohim, God, is certainly the plural form of E, or Eloah, and has long been supposed by the most eminently learned and pious men, to imply a plurality of persons in the Divine Nature. As this plurality appears in so many parts of the sacred writings, to be confined to three persons, hence the doctrine of the Trinity, which has formed a part of the creed of all those who have been deemed sound in the faith, from the earliest ages of Christianity. Nor are the Christians singular in receiving this doctrine, and in deriving it from the first words of divine Revelation. An eminent Jewish rabbin, Simeon ben Joachi, in his comment on the sixth section of Leviticus, has these remarkable words: "Come and see the mystery of the word Elohim; there are three degrees, and each degree by itself alone, and yet, notwithstand

ing they are all one, and joined together in one, and are not divided from each other."-See Ainsworth. He must be strangely prejudiced indeed who cannot see that the doctrine of a Trinity, and of a Trinity in unity, is expressed in the above words. The verb bara, he created, being joined in the singular number with this plural noun, has been considered as pointing out, and not obscurely, the unity of the divine persons in this work of creation. In the ever blessed Trinity, from the infinite and indivisible unity of the persons, there can be but one will, one purpose, and one infinite and uncontrollable energy.

Mr. Olmsted further maintains that the writer of the first chapters of Genesis must have believed God to have been a corporeal being. He says: "He (Moses) most assuredly intends to tell us that God was in human shape. His God must have been corporeal. His notion was that God was a very great man. He tells us also that God created man in his likeness, and then tells us that Adam begat Seth in his likeness. If Seth was like Adam, which you will admit, then Adam must have been in the likeness of God. If you still insist that the first and fifth chapters were written by the same person, this argument is still stronger, for the phraseology is the same throughout; the words likeness and image, being used in both cases. The first chapter has it, "Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness." The fifth has it, "And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image." Mr. O. also says: "The second verse of the fourth chapter is direct and positive to the point, that his God was a huge man; for he tells us he had sons who cohabited with women, aye, and married them and begat giants." This objection has already been noticed in the section on the style of the Scriptures, but it may be well here to give it a further notice.

That he who, in the very first sentence of his writings, aims a death-blow at the polytheism which universally obtained in the age in which he lived, viewed the Creator of the heavens and the earth as a corporeal being, is an impossibility. The evident meaning of Moses therefore is, that the image and likeness are intellectual. The mind,

or soul of Adam, was formed after the nature and perfections of God. The human mind is still endowed with extraordinary capacities; it was and must have been more so when first created. The Infidel who does not believe in the existence of mind or soul may not appreciate the saying, "it is the mind which makes the man ;" never

theless, it is not the less true on that account; and God is here represented as producing a spirit or mind formed after the perfections of his own nature, and in language suited to the capacities of those, especially those of primitive times; it is said, "God breathed into his (Adam's) nostrils the breath of life, and he became a living soul." In this passage God is represented as forming the body of man out of the dust; but the soul or mind is represented as having proceeded from God himself. God is the fountain whence the spirit of man issued, and the stream must resemble the fountain. God is holy, just, wise, good, and perfect; so must the soul be that sprang from him. The soul of man, therefore, was created after the image of God, which Paul tells us "consisted in righteousness and true holiness." Therefore, when man was created, he was wise in his mind, holy in his heart, and righteous in his actions, and this is the dictate of reason and common sense.

Where it is said, "Adam begat a son in his likeness, after his own image," the evident meaning is, that this son of Adam was not in the image and likeness of God, after which Adam was created. He by his fall lost that image; he had become imperfect, sinful, corrupt, and mortal; therefore it was impossible for him to beget a pure and holy offspring, unless it is possible for a bitter fountain to send forth sweet waters; or that a cause can produce effects totally dissimilar from itself. Seth, therefore, was begotten in the image and likeness of his father, Adam; i. e. imperfect, sinful, corrupt, and mortal; and the reason for the passage here objected to by Mr. O. is obvious; from Seth through Noah, all the human family are descended, and the obvious and natural inference to be drawn from what is here said, is, that all men are affected by that moral taint which Seth received from his father, Adam.

Had Mr. Olmsted consulted some Hebrew scholar, he might have learned that the last clause of the 26th verse of chapter iv. where it is said, "Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord," in the original, signifies that they called upon the name of the Lord in an idolatrous manner. So that here we have an account of the origin of idolatry. The sons of God, signify the true worshipers of God, by which term they are distinguished from the sons of Cain, who were idolaters. This is not the only passage of the Scriptures in which the true worshipers of God are thus denominated: they are so called in Job, chapter i. verse 6; ii. verse 1; xxxviii. verse 7; Hosea, i. `verse 10; John, i. verse 12; and in many other places. In the passage objected against by Mr. O. we are informed that the sons of God,

or his true worshipers, being taken with the beauty of the daughters of the idolaters, the descendants of Cain, made matches with them, thereby they were corrupted, and the result was, that all manner of impiety, impurity, and violence filled the whole earth. This Moses here notices that he might give the reason why the whole posterity of Seth, except Noah and his family, were destroyed by the deluge as well as the race of Cain, for they had defiled themselves with their affinity and were corrupted by their vicious practices. It may be objected that this does not remove the difficulty preferred by Mr. O. when he says, these sons of God begat giants; but there is no such statement in the Scriptures. The language is, "There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children unto them, the same became mighty men, which were of old, men of renown.” The giants therefore are not represented as the fruits of these marriages, but the mighty men, the men of renown. Dr. Clarke informs us that by the term giants, is meant "those who had apostatized, or fallen from the true religion." The original word, which is translated giants, is nephilim, according to Dr. Clarke derived from naphal, "he fell." He further informs us, that by following the Septuagint our translators render the "term giants, without any reference to the meaning of the word, which we generally conceive to signify persons of enormous stature.. But the word, when properly understood, makes a very just distinction between the sons of men and the sons of God; these were the nephilim, the fallen earth-born men, with the animal and devilish mind. Those were the sons of God, who were born from above; children of the kingdom, because children of God." He also says, "It may be necessary to remark here, that our translators have rendered seven different Hebrew words by the one term giants, viz. nephilim, gibborim, enachim, rephaim, emim, and zamzummim; by which appellatives are probably meant in general, persons of great knowledge, piety, courage, wickedness, &c., and not men of enormous stature, as is generally conjectured."*

Some of the statements concerning Cain have been urged by Infidels, as affording evidence that the Mosaic writings are unworthy of credit. The narrative of the rejection of his offering and the acceptance of that of Abel, say they, is a silly fable, and is disparaging to the character of God. This difficulty will vanish when the nature and design of the sacrifices are considered, which were eucharistical,

and expiatory; the former consisted of the fruits of the earth, and was simply an offering of gratitude; by this offering Cain acknowledged God as the Lord of the universe and the dispenser of secular blessings; but he offered no expiatory sacrifice, which consisted in a living animal, the life of which God accepted instead of that of the offender; the crime of Cain consisted in his refusal to acknowledge he was a sinner, therefore his offering was rejected.

Dr. Kennicott contends that the original, which our translators render Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock, should have been rendered, Abel brought it also," that is, the gratitude offering; and beside this he brought also the first born of his flock," and it was by this alone he acknowledged himself a sinner and expressed his faith in the promised Messiah. Hence the meaning of that passage, chap. iv. 7, "If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? And if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door:" evidently is, If thou art so righteous as to need no atoning sacrifice, thou shouldst be accepted; as thou art not, sin will lay in the way, till thou hast removed it by an atoning sacrifice or sin-offering.

It is also objected to the Mosaic narrative, that Cain is represented as being afraid that some one would kill him; which, say they, was an impossibility, seeing that according to Moses he and his father Adam were the only men then upon the earth. It should be observed that the death of Abel took place in the one hundred and twentyeighth or one hundred and twenty-ninth year from the creation of Adam. Now supposing that Adam and Eve had no other sons than Cain and Abel at that period, yet as they had daughters married to these sons, their descendants must have been numerous. Supposing them to have been married in the nineteenth year from the creation of Adam and Eve, they might have had eight children by the twentyfifth year; in the fiftieth year, there might have been sixty-four persons upon the earth; in the ninety-eighth, four thousand and ninetysix: and in the one hundred and twenty-second year they would amount to thirty-two thousand seven hundred and sixty-eight. If to these we add the other children descended from Cain and Abel, their children and their children's children, we shall have in the aforesaid one hundred and twenty-eight years, four hundred and twenty thousand one hundred and sixty-four men, without reckoning the women, or such as are under the age of seventeen.

Against this it may be urged, that there is no evidence that the antediluvians began to have children before they were sixty-five years of age. Granting this to be true, yet even according to the supposi