As a foundation, then, for the theocratic system he was about to establish, he had to announce the idea, not perhaps altogether new to some of those who had come out of Egypt, but one to which the thought of Greece and Rome was never conducted, that God was the Creator. Suppose, then, that he had contented himself, as we might, at this day, with stating it in that abstract form. We may be absolutely certain that the statement would have fallen dead on the ears of the people, to whom he had to address himself. They could not have taken in the idea. No effect whatever could thus have been produced upon them. He was therefore obliged, not as a matter of choice, but of necessity, to present the idea to them in the concrete. That is, to give them a series of pictures of creation. This, he had to say, was the picture of things before creation begun. This was what was done first. This was what was done next. And so on throughout the whole. And this was what was said at each act of creation. When the idea was presented to them in this concrete, dramatic form, they could understand it, and take it in. It was the only mode of thought, and the only mode of expression, that were possible then. When translated into modern modes of thought, and modern modes of expression, they simply mean God is the Creator. Nothing more. Those who would press them further, do so because they are not acquainted with the difference between archaic, rude, uncultured modes of thought and expression, and those of minds that have received culture, and been benefited by the slowly maturing fruits of ages of culture. This method of historical criticism offers similar explanations of much besides these first chapters of Genesis. It tells us that good, and true, and God-fearing men, and who were moved by a holy spirit, which they described as coming to them _ab extra_ (in which their metaphysics, if erroneous, were honestly so) could hardly in those times have thought, or expressed themselves otherwise than as they did; and that if, through some realization of the Egyptian idea of the transmigration of souls, they had returned to earth, and were now amongst us, with precisely the same yearnings for justice, truth, and goodness they had been moved by in those primitive days, they would not express themselves now as they did then, but as we do. Their metaphysics would have become the same as ours. But in either case there would be no difference in their meaning.