Certain great thinkers, who, however, in many respects can not be classed among proper Christians, have indeed recognized and acknowledged the profound significance of this opening of the Gospel. Only they adopted a spirit of hostile analysis, which, as it attacked so many of the great works of olden time, did not spare even this divine monument. They lost themselves in all sorts of superfluous hypotheses as to the source from which this or that passage was derived, and with what object it was introduced. Much simpler were it, without having recourse to any such artificial explanations, to receive the divine truth in sincerity as it is offered to us. If we must ascribe some special design for its composition, it will be sufficient to suppose, that after the Evangel of Life and the new era commencing therewith had been sufficiently set forth as history in a triple narrative, it was requisite to add thereto this Evangel of the Beginning--as the Gospel according to the spirit of the highest science, in so far as this is fully identical with the divine faith, and henceforward was always to continue one with it. It was quite in the natural order of things that the word which was uttered at the beginning of the material creation, and is the basis of the first revelation, should also at the opening of the second revelation, and the spiritual creation of a new era, be repeated (though in a different and far higher sense) for the soul in the realm of truth:--“And God said: Let there be light, and there was light.” LECTURE X. OF THE TWOFOLD SPIRIT OF TRUTH AND ERROR IN SCIENCE; OF THE CONFLICT OF FAITH WITH INFIDELITY.