by physical criticism, that no such event as that
described ever took place; to exhibit the untrustworthy character of the
narrative demonstrated by literary criticism; and, finally, to account
for its origin by producing a form of those ancient legends of pagan
Chaldaea, from which the biblical compilation is manifestly derived. I
have yet to learn that the main proposition of this essay can be
seriously challenged.

In two essays[12] on the narrative of the Creation, I have endeavoured
to controvert the assertion that modern science supports, either the
interpretation put upon it by Mr. Gladstone, or any interpretation which
is compatible with the general sense of the narrative, quite apart from
particular details. The first chapter of Genesis teaches the
supernatural creation of the present forms of life; modern science
teaches that they have come about by evolution. The first chapter of
Genesis teaches the successive origin--firstly, of all the plants;
secondly, of all the aquatic and aerial animals; thirdly, of all the
terrestrial animals, which now exist--during distinct intervals of time;
modern science teaches that, throughout all the duration of an immensely
long past, so far as we have any adequate knowledge of it (that is far
back as the Silurian epoch), plants, aquatic, aerial, and terrestrial
animals have co-existed; that the earliest known are unlike those which
at present exist; and that the modern species have come into existence
as the last terms of a series, the members of which have appeared one
after another. Thus, far from confirming the account in Genesis, the
results of modern science, so far as they go, are in principle, as in
detail, hopelessly discordant with it.

Yet, if the pretensions to infallibility set up, not by the ancient
Hebrew writings themselves, but by the ecclesiastical champions and
friends from whom they may well pray to be delivered, thus shatter
themselves against the rock of natural knowledge, in respect of the two
most important of all events, the origin of things and the palingenesis
of terrestrial life, what historical credit dare any serious thinker
attach to the narratives of the fabrication of Eve, of the Fall, of the
commerce between the _Bene Elohim_ and the daughters of men, which lie
between the creational and the diluvial legends? And, if these are to
lose all historical worth, what becomes of the infallibility of those
who, according to the later scriptures, hav