The Brinkley argus., 1913-01-03

LECooAN i<n
 GOLDEN TExT-Tn the beginning God created the heaven and the earth' Gen. Il.
 Tn our scheme of lessons we return to the Old Testament and confine our study for the ensuing year to the nrst six books of the Bible. u
 The word Genesis means begin nings," and in the book of that name we see recorded all the information of the beginning of things that our heavenly father deemed necessary III the development of the scheme or re- demption.
 After all the assaults of its enc mics. and of the skeptics, the nrst verse of the book of Genesis contains all the clear, concise, and positive knowledge man possesses about the origin of this Universe. God ere ated." not, God Is all and all is God. Pantheism has no ground upon wnicn to stand. Tn the beginning God ere ated," therefore he is above and was before the heaven and the earth. The beginning of all right thinking and true living, of every proper reia- ton of life, is God and yet we are withholding that knowledge from young America upon the speclous plea that the bible Is sectarian.
 Truth of the Trinity.
 Following this statement of the cre- ation come the steps of rehabilitation, for the words in verse two denote waste, void, or confusion and one Hebrew scholar contends for the word ruin" See also Isa. 45:18 R. V. Thus 1t seems that upon this created earth there must have come judgment, presumably upon some pre-Adamite race and that what follows, verse two, is not the original creation but the steps whereby this earth was made ready as a habitation for man.
 Lord Kelvin said, scientific thought is compelled to accept the idea of ere ative power" There is wonderful agreement between modern science and the account in Genesis: CD The biblical accounts by their wording provide for both creation ard the evo- lutionary development of created things; (2) Science has failed to pro- duce matter, life, or the soul of man; and of these in each instance the bible says God created while of all else 1t says he made.
 The great truth of the trinity Is re- vealed in these first three verses CD God, V. i; (2) Spirit, V. 2; and (3) God said"--the word, see John Il.
 Verse five does not call the light a day meaning twelve hours. but rather a period of time, just as we speak of an Arctic day" which is six months.
 Animal life cannot assimilate these clements unless they are already fixed in organic vegetable life. How and where life originated no science has discovered. Pasteur's dictum that, "it is nothing but life which gener- ates life" still stands unshaken. And so the constant and only satisfactory answer to the questions. how. where and why, of all these things of this material universe is God. God ere ated, God made. he created. and then set into being those forces and laws whereby the earth, the sky, the sun and the moon have gone on with un broken regularity. He made possible those processes whereby man devel ops, the oak grows, and animal and vegetable life reproduce each after its own kind
 But creation was not yet complete Man. the last created. was the crown ing glory of this earthly creation Verses 26-30 will be studied in con nection with next weeks lesson ant are referred to here simply to give 6 complete account of creation | would be wei, however, to refer tc the fact that the great God and ere ator made provision for the immorta souls of mankind by arranging for hi, training in the knowledge and charac ter of himself, the father, by the in stitution of the Sabbath. as soon al he had prepared place in whici man was to dwell.
 The dignity and majesty of the Ian guage of Genesis is sublime.
 Astrologers tell us that our sun ant solar system Is only one of perhaps million others. A recent writer tell. us that ray of light which would travel the equivalent of nine timei around the earth in one second woul, take nine years to travel across tn, great nebula in the constellation O Orion. And God made" all of this The fool hath said in his heart ther, is no God" and it Is the man nex door to the fool who tries to stipu late what God ought or ought not t, do
 What a beautiful story this is t, tell to children. A mother drew he three-year-old sons attention to tn, beauty of field and mountain an, added God loves the beautiful an, loves little boys too" Neither spok for moment. Then the son aske, his mother If she were praying Yes" said the mother. Then
 want 10 say prayers too" said tn boy. It is tremendous responsibi ity to give to others their first ide of God May God keep us all on thi the first Sunday Of the New Year t learn the meaning of the first fou words of our lesson