ole framework was false,
and nothing but the moral true? The framework, moreover, is one so
plainly _professing to be fact_, that it was certain to be received as
such by a simple people. It seems to me that there is something very
suspicious, something repugnant to notions of truth and honest dealing,
in the possible communication of underlying Divine truth through the
medium of stories, which are not stories on the face of them, but
profess and pretend to be statements of fact and authoritatively made.

But, further, it cannot be denied that, whatever allowance may have to
be made under the early Jewish dispensation for the ideas and weaknesses
of a semi-barbarous people, whatever "winking" there may have been "at
times of ignorance," the main object was, by a gradual revelation,[1] by
a system of typical ordinances and ceremonies, to lead up to the full
spiritual light of the Christian dispensation. Everything written, said,
or done, was a step--however small an one--always tending in the one
direction, according to the usual law of Evolution. The Christian
believer may then look back to the early stages as imperfect
foreshadowings and dim illustrations of the whole truth; but he would, I
should think, on any ordinary principles, be shocked to find truth
developed out of positive error. And should the error have been
discovered, as it now is[2] (in the view of these I am contending
against), this discovery might have arrested the further development of
Divine truth altogether. If Moses, or whoever wrote the Book of
Genesis--we will not cavil at that--was allowed to compose his own
fancies or beliefs on the subject of Creation, _and to state them as
Divine fact_ (no matter that the reader at the time was not able to find
out the error), would not grave suspicion attach to whatever else he put
forward? Who could tell that, on any other subject, the plainest and
most direct statement of fact was not equally a fancy, only embodying or
enshrining (under the guise of its errors) some real Divine facts? If
Genesis i. is unreliable, we have a case of a writer going out of his
way to add to certain truths, which might easily have been stated by
themselves, a number of positive declarations, _as of Divine authority_,
regarding facts, which are not facts.

[Footnote 1: I am not aware of any authority, living or dead, who has
gone so far as to deny that God's revelation to the Jewish Church was in
any way connected with Chris