ogy and history of which we are in possession?

Why twist the self-evident fact that the Bible story of creation was the
work of unscientific men of strong imagination into a far-fetched and
unsatisfactory puzzle of symbol and allegory? It would be just as easy
and just as reasonable to take the _Morte d'Arthur_ and try to prove
that it contained a veiled revelation of God's relations to man.

And let me ask one or two questions as to this matter of the revelation
of the Holy Bible. Is God all-powerful or is he not? If he is
all-powerful, why did He make man so imperfect? Could He not have
created him at once a wise and good creature? Even when man was ignorant
and savage, could not an all-powerful God have devised some means of
revealing Himself so as to be understood? If God really wished to reveal
Himself to man, why did He reveal Himself only to one or two obscure
tribes, and leave the rest of mankind in darkness?

Those poor savages were full of credulity, full of terror, full of
wonder, full of the desire to worship. They worshipped the sun and the
moon; they worshipped ghosts and demons; they worshipped tyrants, and
pretenders, and heroes, dead and alive. Do you believe that if God
had come down on earth, with a cohort of shining angels, and had said,
"Behold, I am the only God," these savages would not have left all
baser gods and worshipped Him? Why, these men, and all the thousands
of generations of their children, have been looking for God since first
they learned to look at sea and sky. They are looking for Him now. They
have fought countless bloody wars and have committed countless horrible
atrocities in their zeal for Him. And you ask us to believe that His
grand revelation of Himself is bound up in a volume of fables and errors
collected thousands of years ago by superstitious priests and prophets
of Palestine, and Egypt, and Assyria.

We cannot believe such a statement. No man can believe it who tests it
by his reason in the same way in which he would test any modern problem.
If the leaders of religion brought the same vigour and subtlety of mind
to bear upon religion which they bring to bear upon any criticism of
religion, if they weighed the Bible as they have weighed astronomy and
evolution, the Christian religion would not last a year.

If my reader has not studied this matter, let him read the books I have
recommended, and then sit down and consider the Bible revelation and
story with the same f