tation. It can be demonstrated that the earth took longer
than six days in the making, and that the Deluge, as described, is a
physical impossibility; but there is no proving, especially to those who
are perfect in the art of closing their ears to that which they do not
wish to hear, that a snake did not speak, or that Eve was not made out
of one of Adam's ribs.

The compiler of Genesis, in its present form, evidently had a definite
plan in his mind. His countrymen, like all other men, were doubtless
curious to know how the world began; how men, and especially wicked
men, came into being, and how existing nations and races arose among the
descendants of one stock; and, finally, what was the history of their
own particular tribe. They, like ourselves, desired to solve the four
great problems of cosmogeny, anthropogeny, ethnogeny, and geneogeny. The
Pentateuch furnishes the solutions which appeared satisfactory to its
author. One of these, as we have seen, was borrowed from a Babylonian
fable; and I know of no reason to suspect any different origin for the
rest. Now, I would ask, is the story of the fabrication of Eve to be
regarded as one of those pre-Abrahamic narratives, the historical truth
of which is an open question, in face of the reference to it in a
speech unhappily famous for the legal oppression to which it has been
wrongfully forced to lend itself?

Have ye not read, that he which made them from the beginning
made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man
leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; and the
twain shall become one flesh? (Matt. xix. 5.)

If divine authority is not here claimed for the twenty-fourth verse of
the second chapter of Genesis, what is the value of language? And again,
I ask, if one may play fast and loose with the story of the Fall as
a "type" or "allegory," what becomes of the foundation of Pauline
theology?--

For since by man came death, by man came also the
resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in
Christ shall all be made alive (1 Corinthians xv. 21, 22).

If Adam may be held to be no more real a personage than Prometheus, and
if the story of the Fall is merely an instructive "type," comparable to
the profound Promethean mythus, what value has Paul's dialectic?

While, therefore, every right-minded man must sympathise with the
efforts of those theologians, who have not been able altogether to close
their ea