s.

This is clearly seen in those records of Chaldaeo-Babylonian thought
deciphered in these latter years, to which reference has already been
made. In these we have a watery chaos which, under divine action, brings
forth the earth and its inhabitants; first the sea animals and then the
land animals--the latter being separated into three kinds, substantially
as recorded afterward in the Hebrew accounts. At the various stages in
the work the Chaldean Creator pronounces it "beautiful," just as the
Hebrew Creator in our own later account pronounces it "good."

In both accounts there is placed over the whole creation a solid,
concave firmament; in both, light is created first, and the heavenly
bodies are afterward placed "for signs and for seasons"; in both, the
number seven is especially sacred, giving rise to a sacred division of
time and to much else. It may be added that, with many other features in
the Hebrew legends evidently drawn from the Chaldean, the account of the
creation in each is followed by a legend regarding "the fall of man" and
a deluge, many details of which clearly passed in slightly modified form
from the Chaldean into the Hebrew accounts.

It would have been a miracle indeed if these primitive conceptions,
wrought out with so much poetic vigour in that earlier civilization
on the Tigris and Euphrates, had failed to influence the Hebrews, who
during the most plastic periods of their development were under the
tutelage of their Chaldean neighbours. Since the researches of Layard,
George Smith, Oppert, Schrader, Jensen, Sayce, and their compeers, there
is no longer a reasonable doubt that this ancient view of the world,
elaborated if not originated in that earlier civilization, came thence
as a legacy to the Hebrews, who wrought it in a somewhat disjointed but
mainly monotheistic form into the poetic whole which forms one of the
most precious treasures of ancient thought preserved in the book of
Genesis.

Thus it was that, while the idea of a simple material creation literally
by the hands and fingers or voice of the Creator became, as we have
seen, the starting-point of a powerful stream of theological thought,
and while this stream was swollen from age to age by contributions from
the fathers, doctors, and learned divines of the Church, Catholic
and Protestant, there was poured into it this lesser current, always
discernible and at times clearly separated from it--a current of belief
in a process o