ry doctrine belongs in effect
to our own generation. The former is not open to evidence; the latter
depends solely upon evidence. The former is based on authority; the
latter on investigation. The doctrine of direct creation can merely be
asserted, it cannot be argued; the statement once made, there is nothing
more to be said; it is an _ipse dixit_ pure and simple. The doctrine of
evolution, on the contrary, founded as it must be on ascertained facts,
is fully open to argument, and depends for its acceptance on the
strength and validity of the evidence in its favor.

If the doctrine of the direct creation of man had been originally
presented in our own day, proof of the assertion would have been at once
demanded, and the only evidence admissible would have been that of
witnesses of the act of creation. There could, of course, have been no
human witnesses, as there would have been no preceding human beings, and
witnesses not human have, in the present day, no standing in our courts.
As the case stands, however, the doctrine arose in an age when man did
not trouble himself about evidence, but was content to accept his
opinions on authority; and this, strangely enough, is held by many to be
a strong point in its favor, it gaining, in their minds, authenticity
from antiquity. It is claimed, indeed, to be sustained by divine
authority, but this is a claim that has no warrant in the words of the
statement itself, and one to which no form of words could give warrant.
To establish it, direct and incontestable evidence from the creative
power itself would be necessary, and it need scarcely be said that no
such evidence exists. It is not easy, indeed, to conceive what form such
evidence could take. It would certainly need to be something far more
convincing than a statement in a book.

It might have been better for civilized mankind if the opening pages of
Genesis had never been written, since they have played a potent part in
checking the development of thought. As the case now stands, the
cosmological doctrines they contain can no longer claim even a shadow of
divine authority, since they have been distinctly traced back to a human
origin. It has been recently discovered that they are simply a
restatement of the Babylonian cosmology, as given in a literary
production ages older than the Bible, an epic poem of very remote date.
They are, doubtless, an outgrowth of the cosmological ideas of early
man, and those who accept them m