o, all
those difficulties only attract me. Do you happen to know--of course
you would know--do those German books, or the others, give anywhere any
additional details of the man himself and his sayings and doings--little
things which help, you know, to round out one's conception of the
individual?"

Again the priest and the doctor stole a furtive glance across the young
minister's head. It was Father Forbes who replied.

"I fear that you are taking our friend Abraham too literally, Mr. Ware,"
he said, in that gentle semblance of paternal tones which seemed to go
so well with his gown. "Modern research, you know, quite wipes him out
of existence as an individual. The word 'Abram' is merely an eponym--it
means 'exalted father.' Practically all the names in the Genesis
chronologies are what we call eponymous. Abram is not a person at all:
he is a tribe, a sept, a clan. In the same way, Shem is not intended for
a man; it is the name of a great division of the human race. Heber is
simply the throwing back into allegorical substance, so to speak, of the
Hebrews; Heth of the Hittites; Asshur of Assyria."

"But this is something very new, this theory, isn't it?" queried Theron.

The priest smiled and shook his head. "Bless you, no! My dear sir, there
is nothing new. Epicurus and Lucretius outlined the whole Darwinian
theory more than two thousand years ago. As for this eponym thing, why
Saint Augustine called attention to it fifteen hundred years ago. In
his 'De Civitate Dei,' he expressly says of these genealogical names,
'GENTES NON HOMINES;' that is, 'peoples, not persons.' It was as obvious
to him--as much a commonplace of knowledge--as it was to Ezekiel eight
hundred years before him."

"It seems passing strange that we should not know it now, then,"
commented Theron; "I mean, that everybody shouldn't know it."

Father Forbes gave a little purring chuckle. "Ah, there we get upon
contentious ground," he remarked. "Why should 'everybody' be supposed
to know anything at all? What business is it of 'everybody's' to know
things? The earth was just as round in the days when people supposed it
to be flat, as it is now. So the truth remains always the truth, even
though you give a charter to ten hundred thousand separate numskulls to
examine it by the light of their private judgment, and report that it is
as many different varieties of something else. But of course that whole
question of private judgment versus authority is