on of God's methods of dealing with
sin, has an account of an event that never happened? If no Flood swept
the careless people away, how is the warning of more worth than the cry
of "Wolf" when there is no wolf? If Jonah's three days' residence in the
whale is not an "admitted reality," how could it "warrant belief" in
the "coming resurrection?" If Lot's wife was not turned into a pillar of
salt, the bidding those who turn back from the narrow path to "remember"
it is, morally, about on a level with telling a naughty child that a
bogy is coming to fetch it away. Suppose that a Conservative orator
warns his hearers to beware of great political and social changes,
lest they end, as in France, in the domination of a Robespierre;
what becomes, not only of his argument, but of his veracity, if he,
personally, does not believe that Robespierre existed and did the deeds
attributed to him?

Like all other attempts to reconcile the results of
scientifically-conducted investigation with the demands of the outworn
creeds of ecclesiasticism, the essay on Inspiration is just such a
failure as must await mediation, when the mediator is unable properly
to appreciate the weight of the evidence for the case of one of the two
parties. The question of "Inspiration" really possesses no interest for
those who have cast ecclesiasticism and all its works aside, and have no
faith in any source of truth save that which is reached by the
patient application of scientific methods. Theories of inspiration are
speculations as to the means by which the authors of statements, in the
Bible or elsewhere, have been led to say what they have said--and it
assumes that natural agencies are insufficient for the purpose. I prefer
to stop short of this problem, finding it more profitable to undertake
the inquiry which naturally precedes it--namely, Are these statements
true or false? If they are true, it may be worth while to go into
the question of their supernatural generation; if they are false, it
certainly is not worth mine.

Now, not only do I hold it to be proven that the story of the Deluge is
a pure fiction; but I have no hesitation in affirming the same thing of
the story of the Creation. [12] Between these two lies the story of the
creation of man and woman and their fall from primitive innocence,
which is even more monstrously improbable than either of the other two,
though, from the nature of the case, it is not so easily capable of
direct refu