natural science for the last
forty years.

The original "Prolegomenes de l'Histoire des Religions" has not come in
my way; but I have read the translation of M. Reville's work, published
in England under the auspices of Professor Max Muller, with very great
interest. It puts more fairly and clearly than any book previously known
to me, the view which a man of strong religious feelings, but at the
same time possessing the information and the reasoning power which
enable him to estimate the strength of scientific methods of inquiry and
the weight of scientific truth, may be expected to take of the relation
between science and religion.

In the chapter on "The Primitive Revelation" the scientific worth of
the account of the Creation given in the book of Genesis is estimated
in terms which are as unquestionably respectful as, in my judgment, they
are just; and, at the end of the chapter on "Primitive Tradition," M.
Reville appraises the value of pentateuchal anthropology in a way which
I should have thought sure of enlisting the assent of all competent
judges, even if it were extended to the whole of the cosmogony and
biology of Genesis:--

As, however, the original traditions of nations sprang up in an
epoch less remote than our own from the primitive life, it is
indispensable to consult them, to compare them, and to associate
them with other sources of information which are available.
From this point of view, the traditions recorded in Genesis
possess, in addition to their own peculiar charm, a value of the
highest order; but we cannot ultimately see in them more than a
venerable fragment, well-deserving attention, of the great
genesis of mankind.

Mr. Gladstone is of a different mind. He dissents from M. Reville's
views respecting the proper estimation of the pentateuchal traditions,
no less than he does from his interpretation of those Homeric myths
which have been the object of his own special study. In the latter case,
Mr. Gladstone tells M. Reville that he is wrong on his own authority,
to which, in such a matter, all will pay due respect: in the former, he
affirms himself to be "wholly destitute of that kind of knowledge which
carries authority," and his rebuke is administered in the name and by
the authority of natural science.

An air of magisterial gravity hangs about the following passage:--

But the question is not here of a lofty poem, or a skilfully
constructed nar