a purely natural process resulting from the more intelligent employment of that knowledge which it is the purpose of the Bible to unfold to us.

These two principles of the inclusive and the exclusive are intertwined in a double thread which runs all through Scripture, and this dual nature of its statements must always be borne in mind if we would apprehend its meaning. Asking the reader, therefore, to carefully go over these preliminary remarks as affording the clue to the reason of the Bible statements, I shall now turn to the first chapter of Genesis.

"In the Beginning"

The opening announcement that "in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" contains the statement of the first of these two propositions which are the fundamental premises from which the whole Bible is evolved. From the Master's instruction to the woman of Samaria we know that "God" means "Spirit"; not "a Spirit", as in the Authorised [King James --- Ed] Version, thus narrowing the Divine Being with the limitations of individuality, but as it stands in the original Greek, simply "Spirit" --- that is, all Spirit, or Spirit in the Universal. Thus the opening words of the Bible may be read, "in the beginning Spirit" --- which is the statement of the underlying Universal Unity.

Here let me draw attention to the twofold meaning of the words "in the beginning". They may mean