Nor can there be the slightest doubt as to progression in Revelation. Some people seem to speak of this as if it were a new discovery connected with the theory of Evolution. Such persons ought to read an admirable book called “The Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation,” written many years ago, and new published by the Religious Tract Society. It is perfectly impossible to read through the Old and New Testaments as a complete book without seeing progression. It is deeply to be deplored that such a man as Professor Drummond should have said, as he is reported to have said in his Sunday lectures, at Grosvenor House, {5a} “The Book of Genesis must be regarded as presenting truth to children’s minds;” and should have illustrated this by George Macdonald’s poem, “The Baby,” adding, “not literally true, but true for the child. So Moses gave truth in the form of a poem. If you say it is a scientific book, I give it up; but if you regard it as a poem, then I can deal with it.” This appears to teach that the Book of Genesis is regarded by him as something like a nursery rhyme. But the report {5b} is evidently abridged; and I hope it is incorrect. We know that there are sixty-six books in the Bible; but we also believe that it is “a Book” complete in itself, and with all its parts so beautifully proportioned that it forms one perfect whole for the gradual development of the whole counsel of God. Thus we believe that the one verse (Gen. iii 15), “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel,” is the seed, or germ, of the whole Gospel; and that just as the oak is in the acorn, so in these few words is contained the whole covenant of God. The first twelve chapters of the Book of Genesis trace the pedigree of that seed of the woman till the call of the chosen family in Abraham; the historical books record the varied history of that family, and show how sorely the heel of the woman’s seed first bruised by the serpent; while the prophecies enlarge, and expand the blessed hope of final victory in the promised One. At length the Gospels reveal the long-expected Christ; and the Acts and the Epistles unfold the principles and progress of His kingdom, till the whole is complete in the Apocalypse, where we read of “the new heavens and the new earth,” with the curse of sin gone for ever, with Satan cast into the lake of fire, and with the seed of the woman triumphant over death and hell. As the acorn to the oak, so is that first promise to the Apocalypse. It is no poem, no myth, no nursery rhyme, but the germ of the whole counsel of God—a germ containing the whole Gospel, and requiring no less than four thousand years for its development.