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AUTHOR: 
 
 TITLE: 
 
 ORDER OF CREATION 
 
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 ^, , ■ W. E. f William Ewart) . 1809-1898 • 
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 The order of creation; the conflict between 
 Genesis and geology. A controversy between the 
 Hon. V/. E. Gladstone, Prof. T. H. Huxley, Prof. 
 Max Miiller, M. Reville , E. Lynn Linton. New 
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 i 
 
THE 
 
 ORDER OF CREATION 
 
 THE 
 
 CONFLICT BETWEEN GENESIS 
 AND GEOLOGY. 
 
 4 C^C\NTR6VERsy 'BETWEEN THE 
 
 HoN.W. E.GLADSTONE, Prof. MAX MULLER, 
 
 • ' • < » % 
 
 Prof. T.i H.:HlixLEY, M. ' REV Ii^LE, 
 
 • * • • ' ..■''. 
 
 E. LYNN LINTON. 
 
 • > * ■. 
 « 1 • I 
 
 • > J • 
 
 • * • » » I ' 
 
 New York: 
 
 THE TRUTH SEEKER COMPANY, 
 
 28 Lafayette Place, 
 
 V 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Dawn of Creation and of Worship. By TTon. W. E. 
 
 GL.VDSTONE, . . . • • 
 
 The Interprelcr-H d Gt-nosls and the Inlrrpreters of 
 Nature. 13 v Prof. T. II. IIixi.ey, . 
 
 Pot^tscript to Solar Myths. 15y Prof. 3Iax IMIjm.ek, 
 
 '^^^<ji:rii to GoncsH: A Plea for a Fair Trial. By P.on. 
 W. E. Gladstone, . . . - 
 
 *' Dawn of Creation"— An Answer to 3Ir. Gladstone. 
 By Albekt Kkville, D.D., . 
 
 Mr. Gladstone and Genesis. By Prof. T. 11. IIuxlky, 
 
 A Protest and a Plea. By Mrs. K. Lvnn Linton, 
 
 5 
 
 43 
 
 64 
 
 70 
 
 107 
 134 
 IGl 
 
THE ORDER OF CREATION' 
 
 PAWJ>f' OF CREATION AND OF WORSHIP. 
 
 BY W. E. GLADSTONE. 
 
 Among recent works on the origin and history of 
 religions by distinguished authors, a somewhat con- 
 spicuous place may be awarded to the FroVegombies 
 de r Ilistorie des Jleligions, by Dr. Keville, profes- 
 sor in the College of France, and Hibbert Lecturer 
 in 1884. The volume has been translated into 
 English by Mr. Squire, and the translation* comes 
 forth with all the advantage, and it is great, which 
 can be conferred by an introduction from the pen of 
 Professor Max Mtiller. It appears, if I may presume 
 to speak of it, to be characterized, among other 
 merits, by marked ingenuity and acuteness, breadth 
 of field, great felicity of phrase, evident candor of in- 
 tention, and abundant courtesy. 
 
 Whether its contents are properly placed as prol- 
 egomena may at once be questioned ; for surely the 
 proper office of prolegomena is to present prelimi- 
 naiies, and not results. Such is not, however, the aim 
 of this work. It starts from assuming the subject- 
 ive origin of all religions, which are viewed as so 
 
 * In his Prolegomena to the History of Religwns. My refer- 
 ences tliroughout are to the translation by Mr. Squire (Wil- 
 liams & Norgate, 1884). 
 
 f 
 
6 THE ORDER OF CREATION. 
 
 many answers to tlie call of a strong human appetite 
 for that kind of food, and arc examined as the several 
 varieties of one and the same species. The conclusions 
 of opposing inquirers, however, are not left to be con- 
 futed by a collection of facts and testimonies drara 
 from historical investigation, but are thrust out of the 
 way beforehand in the prefaco (for, after ii\\ lyrolegom- 
 ena can bo nothing but a les 3 homely phrase for a pref- 
 ace). These inquirers are so many pretenders, who 
 have obstructed the passage of the rightful heir to 
 his thi-one, and they are to bo put summarily out of 
 the way as distuibers of the pu/)iic peace. The 
 method pursued appears to be not to allow the facts 
 and arguments to dispose of them, but to condemn 
 them before the cause is heard. I do not know how 
 to reconcile this method with Dr. R^vilic's declai'a- 
 tion that he aims at proceeding in a '^stiictly scientific 
 spirit." It might be held that such a spirit required 
 the regular presentation of the evidence before the 
 delivery of the verdict upon it. In any case I vent- 
 ure to observe that these are not truly i>roZ.-/o;>Ac;ir/, 
 but epllcgomeyia to a history of religions not yet 
 
 placed before us. 
 
 The first enemy whom Dr. Roville dispatches is 
 M. de Bonald, as the champion of the doctrine that 
 *• in the very beginning of the human race the creat- 
 ive power revealed to the first men by supernatural 
 means the essential principles of religious truth;| 
 together with *' language and even the art of writing" 
 
 (pp. 35, 3G). 
 
 In passing. Dr. Eeville observes that " the religious 
 schools, which maintain the trulh of a primitive 
 revelation, ai-e guided by a very evident theological 
 interest" {Ibid.)', the Protestant, to fortify the 
 
 \ 
 
 DAWN OF CRKVTION AND OF WORSHIP. 7 
 
 authority of the Bible ; and the Roman Cathohc, to 
 prop the infallibility of the chui'ch. 
 
 It is doubtless true that the doctrine of a prim^ 
 itive revelation tends to fortify the authority.of re- 
 hgion. But is it not equally true, and equally 
 obvious, that the denial of a primitive revelation tends 
 to undermine it? and, if so, might it not be retorted 
 upon the school of Dr. Reville that the schools which 
 deny a primitive revelation are guided by a very evi- 
 dent anti- theological interest? 
 
 Against this antagonist Dr. Reville observes, inter 
 alia (p. 37), that an appeal to the supernatural i^per 
 se inadmissible ; that a divine revelation, containing 
 the sublime doctrines of the purest inspiration, given 
 to man at an age indefinitely remote, and in a state 
 of "absolute ignorance," is "infinitely hard" to im- 
 agine; that it is not favored by analogy; and that it 
 contradicts all that we know of prehistoric man (p. 
 40). Thus far it might perhaps be contended in re- 
 ply, (1) that the prehminary objection to the super- 
 natural is a pure petltlo princlpll, and wholly re- 
 pugnant to "scientific method;" (2) that it is not 
 inconceivable that revelation might be indefinitely 
 graduated, as well as human knowledge and condi- 
 tion; (3) that it is in no way repugnant to analogy, if 
 the greatest master of analogy. Bishop Butler 
 {Analog I/, P. II. ch. ii. § 2) may be heard upon 
 the subject; and (4) that our earhest information 
 about the races from which we are least remote, 
 Aryan, Semitic, Accadian, or Egyptian, ofi'ers no con- 
 tradiction and no obstacle to the idea of their havmg 
 received, or inherited, portions of some knowledge 
 divinely revealed. 
 
 But I do not now enter upon these topics, as I 
 
8 
 
 THE ORDER OF CREATION. 
 
 have a more immediate and defined concern with the 
 work of Dr. Reville. 
 
 It only came within the last few months to my 
 knowledge that, at a period when my cares and 
 labors of a distinct order were much too absorbing 
 to allow of any attention to archeological history, 
 Dr. Reville had done me the honor to select me as 
 the representative of those writers who find waiTant 
 for the assertion of a primitive revelation in the tes- 
 timony of the holy scriptures. 
 
 This is a distinction which I do not at all deserve ; 
 first, because Dr. Reville might have placed in the 
 field champions much more competent and learned* 
 than myself; secondly, because I have never at- 
 tempted to give the proof of such a waiTant. I 
 have never written exprofesso on the subject of it; 
 but it is true that in a work published nearly thirty 
 yeai's ago, when destinictive criticism was less ad- 
 vanced than it is now, I assumed it as a thing gener- 
 ally received, at least in this covmtry. Upon some of 
 the points which group themselves round that as- 
 sumption my views, like those of many other inquir- 
 ers, have been stated more crudely at an early, and 
 more maturely at more than one later period. I 
 admit that vaiiation or development imposes a 
 hardship upon critics, notwithstanding all their 
 desire to be just; especially, may I say, upon such 
 critics as, traversing gi*ound of almost boundless ex- 
 tent, can hardly, except in the rarest cases, be mi- 
 nutely and closely acquainted with every portion 
 of it. 
 
 * I will only name one of the most recent, Dr. Reusch, the 
 author of '' Bibel undNatur" (Bonn, 1876). 
 
 DAWN OF CREATION AND OF WORSHIP. 
 
 9 
 
 I also admit to Dr. Reville, and indeed I contend 
 by his side, that in a historical inquiry the author- 
 ity of scripture cannot be alleged in proof of the ex- 
 istence of a primitive revelation. So to allege it is a 
 preHminary assumption of the supernatural, and is, 
 in my view, a manifest departure from the laws of 
 " scientific" procedure; as palpable a departure, may 
 I venture to say, as-that preliminary exclusion of the 
 supematm'al which I hav« already presumed to 
 notice. My own oflfense, if it be one, was of another 
 chai'acter; and was committed in the eai'ly days of 
 Homeric study, when my eyes, perhaps, were dazzled 
 with the amazing richness and variety of the results 
 which reward all close investigation of the text of 
 Homer, so that objects were blurred for a time in my 
 view, which soon came to stand more clear before me. 
 
 I had better, perhaps, state at once what my con- 
 tention really is. It is, first, that many important 
 pictures draw^n and indications given in the Homeric 
 poems supply evidence that cannot be confuted not 
 only of an ideal, but of a historical relationship to 
 the Hebrew traditions, (1) and mainly, as they are 
 recorded in the book of Genesis ; (2) as less authen- 
 tically to be gathered from the later Hebrew learn- 
 ing ; (3) as illustrated from extraneous sources. Sec- 
 ondly, any attempt to expound the Olympian myth- 
 ology of Homer by simple reference to a solar theory, 
 or even to nature- worship in a larger sense, is simply 
 a plea for a verdict against the evidence. It is also 
 true that I have an unshaken beHef in a divine revela- 
 tion, not resting on assumption, but made obHgatory 
 upon me by reason. But I hold the last of these 
 convictions entirely apai't from the others, and I de- 
 rived the first and second not from preconception, of 
 
10 
 
 THE ORDER OF CREATION. 
 
 which I had not a grain, but from the poems them- 
 selves, as purely as I derived my knowledge of the 
 Peloponnesian war from Thucydides, or his inter- 
 preters. 
 
 The great importance of this contention I do not 
 deny. I have produced in its favor a great mass of 
 evidence, which, as far as I have seen, there has been 
 no serious endeavor, if, indeed, any endeavor, to repel. 
 Dr. EeviHe observes that my views have been sub- 
 jected to " very profound criticism " by Sir G. Cox, 
 in his learned work on Ai'yan mythology (p. 41). 
 That is, indeed, a very able criticism, but it is ad- 
 di-essod entirely to the statements of my eai'liest 
 Homeric work.* Now, apart from the question 
 whether those statements have been rightly under- 
 stood (which I cannot admit), that which he attacks 
 is beyond and outside of the proposition which I have 
 given above. Sir G. Cox has not attempted to de- 
 cide the question whether there was a primitive reve- 
 lation, or whether it may be traced in Homer. And I 
 may say that I am myself so little satisfied with the 
 precise foim in which my general conclusions were 
 originally clothed that T have net repiinted and shall 
 not reprint Ihe work, which has become very rare, 
 only appealing now and then in some catalogue, and 
 at a high price. When there are representatives, liv- 
 ing and awake, why disturb the ashes of the dead? 
 In later works, reaching from 1865 to 1875,t I have 
 
 * " Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age. 3 vols. Ox- 
 ford, IboS. 
 
 t" Address to the University of Edinburgh" (Murray, 
 18G5); ''Juventus Mundi" (Macniillan, 18G8) ; ''Primer of 
 Homer" (Macniillan, 1878); especially see Preface to " Ju> 
 ventusMundi," p. i. 
 
 DAV.N OF CREATION AND OF WORSmP. 
 
 11 
 
 confessed to the modification of my results, and have 
 stated the case in terms which appear to me, using 
 the common phrase, to be those yielded by the legit- 
 imate study of comparative religion. But why should 
 those who think it a sound method of comparative 
 rehgion to match together the Vedas, the Norse 
 legends, and the Egyptian remains, think it to be no 
 process of comparative rehgion to bring together, 
 not vaguely and loosely, but in seai'ching detail, cer- 
 tain traditions of the book of Genesis and those re- 
 corded in the Homeric Poems, and to argue that theii* 
 resemblances may afi'ord proof of a common origin, 
 without any anticipatory assumption as to what that 
 oiigin may be ? 
 
 It will hardly excite surprise, after what has now 
 been written, when I say I am unable to accept as 
 mine any one of the jn-opositions which Dr. Reville (pp. 
 41-2) affiliates to me. (1) I do not hold that there 
 was a " systematic " or wilful corruption of a primitive 
 religion. (2) I do not hold that all the mythologies 
 are due to any such corruption, systematic or other- 
 wise. (3) I do not hold that no part of them sprang 
 out of the deification of natural facts. (4) I do not 
 hold that the ideas conveyed in the book of Genesis, 
 or in any Hebrew tradition, were developed in the 
 form of dogma, as is said by Sir G. Cox, or in " six 
 great doctrines " as is conceived by Dr. Reville ; and 
 (5) I am so far from ever having held that there was 
 a "primitive orthodoxy" revealed to the first men 
 (p. 43) that I have carefully from the first refen-ed 
 not to developed doctrine, but to rudimentary indi- 
 cations of what are now developed and estabhshed 
 truths. So that, although Dr. Reville asks n e for 
 proof, I dechne to supply proofs of what I disbe- 
 
12 
 
 THE ORDER OF CREATION. 
 
 lieve. Wliat I have supplied proofs of is the 
 appearance in the Poems of a number of traits, in- 
 congruous in various degrees with their immediate 
 environment, but having such maiked and character- 
 istic resemblances to the Hebrew tradition as to 
 require of us, in the character of rational inquirers, 
 the admission of a common origin, just as the ^mark- 
 ings which we sometimes notice upon the coats of 
 horses and donkeys are held to requii'e the admission 
 of their relationship to the zebra. 
 
 It thus appears that Dr. Reville has dischai'ged his 
 pistol in the air, for my Homeric propositions involve 
 DO aM;um]>tioD luk to a TtfHMkm contmncd iu the 
 book of Gcnctiis, whil^i he hMexproft9SO oouttftfied 
 my KUkUitncnim of a bLstonod roUtionKhip Lciweeu 
 80Cn4^ tnulitionn of that book nod ilw^o of the Homeric 
 poems. But I will now bnefly eiamine (1) the num- 
 zicr in which Dr. lU'ivillo liAodUstt tliebookof Geooadsi, 
 aimI (2) the manner in 'which ha uiHkrtakofl, by wi^ 
 of ii|)ecimeiit to construe the mythology of Houmt, 
 and ciiliM It^ by compomon, in the impport of his 
 syietem of iutorpretalion. And iin«t with the flni- 
 naiDod of thcso tvro subjedn 
 
 Fntcring n piuteei a^painsi amigmng to the boolc 
 *' a dictatoriiil authority;' that is, I preanme, againai 
 ita containing a divine revefaitSon to anybody, lui 
 passes on to examino itn eoutonta It contains, bo 
 Mkjv, adentific errors, of which (p. '1*2, «.) he apecUKee 
 tlucc. Hiu cbiurgee are that (!) it KpcukB of tbo 
 beavrn a.s a Kolid vault ; (2) it plarcs the creation of 
 the stars after that of the eartb, and so plucea thorn 
 aolely for its use ; (3) it introducea the T<tgotab!e 
 kingdom before that kingdom could be subjected to 
 the action of solar lighL All these oopdwnnations 
 
 DAVrS OF CREATION AND OF "WORSHIP. 
 
 18 
 
 are quietly enunciated in a note, as if they were Bub- 
 ject to no dispute. Ijc.t us soo. 
 
 As to the first ; if our Hcholars ai*o right in their 
 judgment, just made known to the world by tho 
 recent revision of the Old Testament, the ** jGbrma- 
 ment " is, in tho Hebrew original, -not a sohd vault, 
 but an expanse. As to thcs necond (a) it is not said 
 in the sacred text tlmt tho stiirw wv.n) mude solely for 
 the use of the earth ; (f*) it is tni*- tlmt no other uho 
 is mentioned. But we must horo iiujuire what wiw 
 the purpose of the nan*ative t Not to re^u* cosmic 
 philosophers, but to furnish ordinary men with Bomo 
 idea of what tho Creator had done in the way of 
 proriding for them a home, and giving them a plncn 
 in nature. The tidvuntage afforded by tl>e stars to 
 them is named ulouc, they having no interest in any 
 other pnrpoNc for which the stars may exist 
 
 The assertioai that tho nUn are vtut<H! to have beeii 
 ** created " after the earth w more scriouM. But hero 
 it beoomea necMonry first of aU to notice the recital 
 in tliis ]>art of the indictment* In the langxiage of 
 I>r. Kevillc, tho book apeaka of the creation of the 
 fliaiB after the formation of the earth. Now. curiously 
 enovigh, the book says nothing cdtber of the ** forma- 
 tion " of tlio cai'th, or of the ** creation " of the stars. 
 It says in its first line thai ^^ in tlie beginning Ood 
 created the heaven and the earth.** It saya further 
 on (OeiL I W), '* He mado the stars ah^o/* Can it be 
 ur^^cd that this is a fanciful distinction between 
 creating' ou the one hand^ and making* forming, or 
 fashioning on the other t I>ante did not tliink so, for 
 speaking of the di\ine will, ho nay*: 
 
 (^o cir yXiA crU, e Clio Xntura face.— iViradKi^, ^87. 
 
11 
 
 THE OKDER OF CREATION. 
 
 Luther did not tliink so, for he uses sehn/ia the first 
 verse, and machte in the sixteenth. The English 
 translators and then- revisers did not think so, for 
 they use the words "created" and ''made" in the 
 two passages respectively. The main question, how- 
 ever, is what did the author of the book tliink, and 
 what did he intend to convey ? The LXX drew no 
 distinction, probably for the simple reason that, as 
 the idea of creation proper was not familial* to the 
 Greeks, their language conveyed no word better than 
 2)oiein to express it, which is also the proper word 
 for fashioning or making. But the Hebrew, it seems, 
 had the distinction, and by the writer of Genesis i it 
 has been strictly, to Dr. Reville I might almost say 
 scientifically, followed. He uses the word " created" 
 on the three grand occasions (1) of the beguming of 
 the mighty work (v. 1) ; (2) of the beginning of ani- 
 mal life (v. 21) "And God created great whales," and 
 every living creature that peoples the waters ; (3) of 
 •the yet more important beginning of rational and 
 spiritual life; "so God created man in his own 
 image" (v. 27). In every other instance the simple 
 command is recited, or a word implying less than 
 creation is employed. . ^ 
 
 From this very marked mode of use, it is surely 
 plain that a marked distinction of sense was intended 
 by the sacred writer. I will not attempt a definition 
 of the distinction further than this, that the one 
 phrase points more to calling into a sepai'ate or indi- 
 vidual existence, the other more to shaping and 
 fashioning the conditions of that existence ; the one 
 to quid, the other to quale. Oui* earth, created in 
 V. 1, undergoes structural change, different aiTange- 
 ment of material, in v. 9. After this, and in the fourth 
 
 DAWN OF CREATION AND OF WORSHIP 
 
 15 
 
 day, comes not the original creation, but the location 
 in tiie firmament of the sun and the moon. On their 
 " creation " nothmg pai'ticular has been said ; for no 
 use, palpable to man, was associated with it before 
 their perfect equipment. Does it not seem aUowable 
 to suppose that in the "heavens"* (v. 1), of which 
 after the first outset we hear no more, were included 
 the heavenly bodies ? In any case what is af terwai'ds 
 conveyed is not the caUing mto existence of the sun 
 and moon, but the assignment to them of a certain 
 place and orbit respectively, with a hght-giying 
 power. Is there the smallest inconsistency in a 
 statement which places the emergence of our land, 
 and its separation from the sea, and the commence- 
 ment of vegetable life, before the final and full 
 concentration of light upon the sun, and its reflection 
 on the moon and the planets ? In the gradual sever- 
 ance of other elements would not the severance of the 
 luminous body, or force, be gi'adual also ? And why, 
 let me ask of Dr. Reville, as there would plainly be 
 hght diffused before there was hght concentrated, 
 why may not that hght diffused have been sufficient 
 for the purposes of vegetation ? There was soil, there 
 was atmosi:>here, there was moistui-e, there was light. 
 What more could be requh-ed ? Need we go beyond 
 our constant experience to be aware that the process 
 of vegetation, though it may be suspended, is not 
 arrested, when, through the presence of cloud and 
 
 *In our translation, and in the recent revision, the singular 
 is used. But we are assured that the Hebrew word is plural 
 (Bishop of Winchester on Genesis i, 1, in the Speaker's Bible). 
 If so taken, we have the creation, visible to us, treated con- 
 jointly in verses 1-5, distributively m verses 6-19 ; surely a 
 most orderly arrangement. 
 
16 
 
 THE ORDER OF CREATION. 
 
 vapor, the sun's globe becomes to us in\dsible 1 The 
 same observations apply to the hght of the planets ; 
 while as to the other stars, such as were then percep 
 tible to the human eye, we know nothing. The 
 planets, bemg luminous bodies only through the 
 action of the sun, could not be luminous until such a 
 degree of light, or of light-force, was accumulated 
 upon or in the sun, as to make them luminous, 
 
 instead of being 
 
 silent as the moon, 
 When she deserts the night 
 Hid in her vacant interlunar cave. 
 
 Is it not then the fact, thus far, that the impeachment 
 of the book has fallen to the ground 1 There remains 
 to add only one remark, the propriety of which is, I 
 think, indisputable. Easy comprehension and im- 
 pressive force aie the objects to be aimed at in a 
 composition at once popular and summary ; but these 
 cannot be always had without some departure from 
 accurate classification, and the order of minute detail. 
 It seems much more easy to justify the language of 
 the opening verses of Genesis than, for example, the 
 convenient usage by which we affirm that the sim 
 rises, or mounts above the horizon, and sets, or de- 
 scends below it, when we know perfectly well that 
 he does neither the one nor the other. As to the 
 third charge of scientific error, that the vegetable 
 kingdom appeared before it could be subjected to the 
 action of solar Hght, it has been virtually disposed of. 
 If the light now appropriated to the sun alone was 
 gradually gathering toward and round him, why may 
 it not have performed its proper office in contributing 
 to vegetation when once the necessary degree of sev- 
 erance between soHd and fluid, between wet and dry, 
 
 DAWN OF CREATION AND OF WORSHIP. 
 
 IT 
 
 had been effected? And this is just what had been 
 described in the formation of the firmament, and the 
 separation of land from sea. 
 
 More singular still seems to be the next observation 
 offered by Dr. Eeville in his compound labor to sat- 
 isfy his readers, first, that there is no revelation in 
 Genesis, and secondly that, if there be, it is one 
 which has no serious or relevant meaning. He comes 
 to the remarkable expression in v. 26, " Let us make 
 man in our own image/' There has, it appears, 
 been much difference of opinion even among the Jews 
 on the meaning of this verse. The Almighty ad- 
 di*esses, as some think, his own powers ; as others 
 think, the angels ; others, the earth ; other writers, 
 especially, as it appears, Germans, have understood 
 this to be a plural of dignity, after the manner of 
 kings. Others, of tte rationalizing school, conceive 
 the word Elohim to be a rehc of polytheism. The 
 ancient Christian int<Tpreters,* from the apostle Bar- 
 nabas onward, find ii \ these words an indication of a 
 plurality in the diviue imity. Dr. Keville (p. 43) 
 holds that this is " simply the royal plural used in 
 Hebrew as in many other languages," or else, " and 
 more probably," that it is an appeal to the Bene 
 Elohim or angels. But is not this latter meaning a 
 direct assault upon the supreme truth of the unity of 
 God? If he chooses the former, from whence does 
 he derive his krowledge that this " royal plural " was 
 used in HebT«,w ? Will the royal plural account for 
 (Gen. iii, 22) " when the man is become as one of us ? " 
 
 *0n this expression, I refer again to the commentary of 
 Bishop Harold Browne. Bishop Mant supplies an interest- 
 
 ing U^t of testimonies. 
 
18 
 
 THE ORDER OP CREATION. 
 
 and would George 11., if saying of Charles Edward 
 " the man is become as one of us," have intended to 
 convey a singular or a plural meaning 1 Can we dis- 
 prove the assertion of Bishop Harold Browne, that 
 this plurality of dignity is unknown to the language 
 of scripture? And further, if we make the violent 
 assumption that the Christian Church with its one 
 voice is wrong and Dr. Reville right, and that the 
 words were not meant to convey the idea of plurahty, 
 yet, if they have been such as to lead all Christendom 
 to see in them this idea through 1,800 years, how can 
 he be sure that they did not convey a like significa- 
 tion to the earhest hearers or readers of the book of 
 Genesis ? 
 
 The rest of Dr. Reville' s criticism is directed rather 
 to the significance or propriety than to the truth of 
 the record. It is not necessary to follow his remarks 
 in detail, but it will help the reader to judge how far 
 even a perfectly upright member of the scientific and 
 comparative school can indulge an unconscious bias, 
 if notice be taken in a single instance of his method 
 of comparing. He compares together the two parts 
 of the prediction that the seed of the woman shall 
 bruise the head of the serpent, and that the serpent 
 shall bruise the heel of the seed of the woman (iii, 15) ; 
 and he conceives the head and the heel to be so much 
 upon a par in theu' relation to the faculties and the 
 vitality of a man that he can find here nothing to in- 
 dicate which shall get the better, or, in his own 
 words, *• on which side shall be the final victory " 
 (p. 45). St. Paul seems to have taken a different view 
 when he wrote : " The God of peace shall bruise 
 Satan under your feet shortly " (Rom. xvi, 20). 
 Moreover, *'our author" (in Dr. Reville's phrase) 
 
 DAWN OF CREATION AND OF WORSHIP. 
 
 19 
 
 is censured because he " takes special care to point 
 out [p. 44] that the first pair are as yet strangers to 
 the most elementary notions of morality," inasmuch 
 as they are unclothed, yet without shame ; nay, even 
 as he feehngly says, " without the least shame." In 
 what the morality of the first pair consisted, this is 
 hardly the place to discuss. But let us suppose for 
 a moment that then- morahty was simply the morahty 
 of a httle child, the undeveloped morality of obedi- 
 ence, without distinctly fonned conceptions of an 
 ethical or abstract standard. Is it not plain that 
 their feelings would have been exactly what the book 
 describes (Gen. ii, 25), and yet that in theu' loving 
 obedience to their father and creator they would cer- 
 tainly have had a germ, let me say an opening bud, of 
 morahty ? But this proposition, taken alone, by no 
 means does justice to the case. Dr. Reville would prob- 
 ably put a.«iide with indifference or contempt all that 
 depends upon the dogma of the Fall. And yet there 
 can be no more rational idea, no idea more palpably 
 sustained, whether by philosophy or by experience. 
 Namely, this idea : that the commission of sin, that 
 is, the act of deliberately breaking a known law of 
 duty, injures the nature and composition of the being 
 who commits it. It injui'es that nature in deranging 
 it, in altering the proportion of its pai'ts and powers, 
 in introducing an inward disorder and rebellion of the 
 lower against the liigher, too mournfully correspond- 
 ing with that disorder and rebelhon produced with- 
 out, as toward God, of which the first sin was the 
 fountain-head. Such is, I beHeve, the language of 
 Christian theology, and in particular of St. Augus- 
 tine, one of its prime masters. On this matter I ap- 
 prehend that Dr. Reville, when judging the author of 
 
20 
 
 THE ORDER OF CREATION. 
 
 Genesis, judges him without regard to his fundamen- 
 tal ideas and aims, one of which was to convey that 
 before sinning man was a being moraUy and physi- 
 caUy balanced, and nobly pui-e in every faculty ; and 
 that, by and from his sinning, the sense of shame 
 found a proper and necessary place in a nature which 
 before was only open to the sense of duty and of 
 
 reverence. 
 
 One further observation only. Dr. RevHle seems 
 to " score one " when he finds (Gen. iv, 2G) that Seth 
 had a son, and that 'Hhen began men to call on the 
 name of the Lord;" " but not," he adds, " as the re- 
 sult of a recorded revelation." Here at last he has 
 found, or seemed to find, the beginning of rehgion, 
 and that beginning subjective, not revealed. So has- 
 tily, from the first aspect of the text, does he gather 
 a verbal advantage, which, upon the shghtest inquiry, 
 would have disappeared hke dew in the morning sun. 
 He assumes the rendering of a text which has been 
 the subject of every kind of question and dispute, 
 the only thing apparently agreed on being that his 
 interpretation is wholly excluded. Upon a disputed 
 original, and a disputed interi^retation of the dis- 
 puted original, he founds a signification in flat con- 
 tradiction to the whole of the former naiTative, to 
 Elohist and Jehovist alike ; which narrative, if it rep- 
 resents anything, represents a continuity of active 
 reciprocal relation between God and man both before 
 and after the transgression. Not to mention differ- 
 erences of translation, which essentially change the 
 meaning of the words, the text itself is given by the 
 double authority of the Samaiitan Pentateuch* and 
 
 * 3vv Bishop of Winchester's " Comment arv." 
 
 DAWN OP CREATION AND OF WORSHIP. 
 
 21 
 
 of the Septuagint in the singular number, which of 
 itself wholly destroys the construction of Dr. Reville. 
 I do not enter upon the difficult question of conflict- 
 ing authorities ; but I urge that is unsafe to build an 
 important conclusion upon a seriously controverted 
 reading.* 
 
 There is nothing, then, in the criticisms of Dr. 
 Eeville but what rather tends to confirm than to im- 
 pau' the old-fashioned belief that there is a revelation 
 in the book of Genesis. With his argument outside 
 this proposition I have not dealt. I make no assump- 
 tion as to what is termed a verbal inspkation, and of 
 course in admitting the vaiiety I give up the abso- 
 lute integrity of the text. Upon the presumable 
 age of the book and its compilation I do not enter — 
 not even to contest the opinion which brings it down 
 below the age of Solomon — beyond observing that in 
 every page it apppears from internal evidence to be- 
 long to a remote antiquity. There is here no ques- 
 tion of the chronology, or of the date of man, or of 
 knowledge or ignorance in the primitiv man, or 
 whether the element of j)arable enters into any por- 
 tion of the narrative ; or whether every statement of 
 fact contained in the text of the book can now be 
 made good. It is enough for my present purpose to 
 point to the cosmogony, and the fourfold succession 
 of the Hving organisms as entirely harmonizing, ac- 
 cording to present knowledge, with belief in a revela- 
 
 * This perplexed question is discussed, in a sense adverse 
 to the Septuagint, by the critics of the recent Revision, in the 
 Quarterly Review for October, No. 322. The revisers of the 
 Old Testament state (Preface, p. vi) that in a few cases of ex- 
 treme diffioulty they have set aside the Massoretic Text in 
 favor of a readiuic from one of the ancient versions. 
 
22 
 
 THE ORDER OF CREATION. 
 
 tion, and as presenting to the rejector of that belief 
 a problem which demands solution at his hands, and 
 which he has not yet been able to solve. Whether 
 this revelation was conveyed to the ancestors of the 
 whole human race who have at the time or since ex- 
 isted, I do not know, and the scriptures do not appeal* 
 to me to make the affirmation, even if they do not con- 
 vey certain indications which favor a contrary opin- 
 ion. Again, whether it contains" the whole of the 
 knowledge specially vouchsafed to the parents of the 
 Noachian races may be very doubtful ; though of 
 course gi-eat caution must be exercised in regard to 
 the particulars of any primeval tradition not derived 
 from the text of the earhest among the sacred books. 
 I have thus far confined myself to rebutting objec- 
 tions. But I will now add some positive considera- 
 tions which appear to me to sustain the ancient and, 
 as I am persuaded, impregnable behef of Christians 
 and of Jews concerning the inspiration of the book. 
 I offer them as one wholly destitute of that kind of 
 knowledge which canies authority, and who speaks 
 derivitively as best he can, after listening to teachers 
 of repute and such as practice rational methods. 
 
 I understand the pages of the majestic process de- 
 scribed in the book of Genesis to be in general out- 
 line as follows : 
 
 1. The point of departure is the formless mass, 
 created by God, out of which the earth was shaped 
 and constituted a thing of individual existence 
 
 (verses 1, 2). 
 
 2. The detachment and collection of light, leaving 
 in darkness as it proceeded the still chaotic mass from 
 which it was detached (verses ^5). The narrative 
 
 DAWN OP CREATION AND OP WORSHIP. 
 
 25 
 
 assigning a space of time to each process appears to 
 show that each was gradual, not instantaneous. 
 
 2. The detachment of light from darkness is fol- 
 lowed by the detachment of wet fi'om dry, and of 
 soHd from Hquid in the firmament and on the face of 
 the earth. Each of these operations occupies a 
 " day," and the conditions of vegetable life, as known 
 to us by experience, being now provided, the order of 
 the vegetable kingdom had begun (verses 6-13). 
 
 4. Next comes the presentation to us of the heav- 
 enly bodies, sun, moon, and stars, in their final forms, 
 when the completion of the process of light-coUection, 
 and concentration in the sun, and the due clearing of 
 the intervening spaces, had enabled the central orb 
 to illuminate us both with direct and with reflected 
 hght (verses 14-19). 
 
 5. So far, we have been busy only with the adjust- 
 ment of material agencies. We now arrive at the 
 dawn of animated being ; and a great transition 
 seems to be marked as a kind of recommencement of 
 the work, for the name of creation is again intro- 
 duced. God created 
 
 (a) The water-population ; 
 {b) The air-population. 
 And they receive his benediction (verses 20-23). 
 
 6. Pursuing this regular progression from the 
 lower to the higher, from the simple to the complex, 
 the text now gives us the work of the sixth " day," 
 which supplies the land-population, air and water 
 having already been suppKed. But in it there is a 
 sub-division, and the transition from (c) animal to (d) 
 man, like the transition from animate to inanimate, is 
 again marked as a great occasion, a kind of recom- 
 mencement. For this purpose the word " create " is 
 
u 
 
 THIi ORDER 01* CREATION. 
 
 a third time employed. " God created man in his 
 own image," and once more he gave benediction to 
 this the final work of his hands, and endowed our 
 race with its high dominion over what lived and what 
 did not live (verses 24-31). 
 
 I do not dwell on the cessation of the Almighty 
 from the creating and (ii, 1) " finishing " work, which 
 is the " rest " and marks the seventh " day," because 
 it introduces another order of considerations. But 
 glancing back at the narrative which now forms the 
 first chapter, I ofi'er perhaps a prejudiced and in any 
 case no more than a passing remark. If we view it 
 as a popular narrative, it is singularly vivid, forcible, 
 and effective ; if we take it as as a poem, it is indeed 
 sublime. No wonder if it became classical and reap- 
 peared in the glorious devotions of the Hebrew 
 people,* pursuing, in a great degree, the same order 
 of topics as in the book of Genesis. 
 
 But the question is not here of a lofty poem, or a 
 skilfully constructed naiTative ; it is whether natural 
 science, in the patient exercise of its high caUing to 
 examine facts, finds that the works of God cry out 
 against what we have fondly believed to be his word, 
 and tell another tale, or whether, in this nineteenth 
 century of Christian progress, it substantially echoes 
 back the majestic sound which, before it existed as a 
 pursuit, went forth into all lands. 
 
 First, looking largely at the latter portion of the 
 narrative, which describes the creation of Hving organ- 
 isms, and waiving details, on some of which (as in 
 verse 24) the Septuagint seems to vary from the 
 
 * Ps. civ, 2-20, cxxxvi, 5-9, and the Song of the Three 
 Children in verses 67-60. 
 
 DAWN 01* CREATION AND OF WORSHIP. 
 
 25 
 
 Hebrew, there is a grand f oui'f old division set forth 
 vn an orderly succession of times as follows : on the 
 df th day 
 
 1. The water-population ; 
 
 2. The air-population ; 
 and, on the sixth day, 
 
 3. The land-population of animals ; 
 
 4. The land-population consummated in man. 
 Now this same fourfold order is understood to 
 
 have been so affirmed in our time by natui'al science 
 that it may be taken as a demonstrated conclusion 
 and established fact. Then, I ask, how came Moses, 
 or, not to cavil on the word, how came the author of 
 the first chapter of Genesis, to know that order, to 
 possess knowledge which natural science has only 
 within the present centmy for the first time dug out 
 of the bowels of the earth ? It is surely impossible 
 to avoid the conclusion, first, that either this writer 
 was gifted with faculties passing all human experi- 
 ence, or else his knowledge was divine. The first 
 branch of the alternative is truly nominal and unreal. 
 We know the sphere within which human inquiry 
 toils. We know the heights to which the intuitions 
 of genius may soar. We know that in certain cases 
 genius anticipates science ; as Homer, for example, 
 in his account of the conflict of the four winds in the 
 sea-storms. But even in these anticipations, mar- 
 velous, and, so to speak, imperial as they are, genius 
 cannot escape from one inexorable law. It must have 
 materials of sense or experience to work with, and a 
 Ttov (TTc^ from whence to take its flight ; and genius 
 can no more tell, apart from some at least of the 
 results attained by inquiry, what are the contents of 
 
26 
 
 THE ORDKR OF CREATIOJf. 
 
 the crust of the earth, than it could square the cu*cle 
 or annihilate a fact.* 
 
 So stands a plea for a revelation of truth from God, 
 a plea only to be met by questioning its possibility ; 
 that is, as Dr. Salmon (Introduction of the New 
 Testament, p. ix. Murray, 1885) has observed with 
 great force in a recent work, by suggesting that a 
 being, able to make man, is unable to communicate 
 with the creature he has made. If, on the other 
 hand, the objector confine himself to a merely nega- 
 tive position, and cast the burden of proof on those 
 who beheve in revelation, it is obvious to reply by a 
 reference to the actual constitution of things. Had 
 that constitution been normal or morally undisturbed, 
 it might have been held that revelation as an adrnini- 
 culwn, in addition to our natural faculties, would 
 itself have been a disturbance. But the disturbance 
 has in truth been created in the other scale of the 
 balance by departiure from the supreme will, by the 
 introduction of sin ; and revelation, as a special rem- 
 edy for a special evil, is a contribution toward 
 synunetry, and toward restoration of the original 
 equilibrium. 
 
 Thus far only the fourfold succession of the living 
 orders has been noticed. But among the persons of 
 very high authority in natural science quoted by Dr. 
 Reuschjf who held the general accordance of the 
 
 *In conversation with Miss Bumey (Diary i, 576), Johnson, 
 using language which sounds more disparaging than it really 
 \s, declares that ** genius is nothing more than knowing the 
 use of tools ; but then there must be tools for it to use." 
 
 tBibel und Natur, pp. 2, 63. The words of Cuvier are : 
 ** Moyses hat uns cine Kosmogenie hinterlassen, deren Ge- 
 nauigkeit mit jedem Tage in einer bewunderimgswiirdigern 
 
 DAWN OP CREATION AND OF WORSHIP 
 
 27 
 
 Mosaic cosmogony with the results of modern m- 
 quiry, ai'e Cuvier and Sir John Herschel. The words 
 of Cuvier show he conceived that " evei-y day " fresh 
 confirmation from the purely human source accrued 
 to the credit of scripture. And since his day, for he 
 cannot now be called a recent authority, this opimon 
 appears to have received some remarkable Hlustra- 
 
 tions. 
 
 Half a century ago Dr. WheweU (WOiewell's Astron- 
 omy and General Physics, 1834, p. 181, seqq.) dis- 
 cussed, under the name of the nebular hypothesis, 
 that theory of rotation which had been indicated by 
 Herschel, and more largely taught by Laplace, as the 
 probable method through which the solar system has 
 taken its form. Cai'efully abstaining, at that eai'ly 
 date, from a formal judgment on the hypothesis, he 
 appears to discuss it with favor ; and he shows that 
 this hypothesis, which assumes " a beginnmg of the 
 present state of things" (WheweU, op. cit. p. 20G), 
 is in no way adverse to the Mosaic cosmogony. The 
 theory has received marked support from opposite 
 quarters. In the - Vestige, of Creation " it is frankly 
 adopted ; the very curious experiment of Professor 
 Plateau is detailed at length on its behalf (Ves- 
 tiges, etc., pp. 11-15) ; and the author considers, w^th 
 Laplace, that the zodiacal Hght, on which Humboldt 
 in his " Kosmos " has dwelt at large, may be a remnant 
 of the luminous atmosphere originally diffused around 
 the sun. Dr. McCaul, in his very able argument on 
 the Mosaic record, quotes (Aids to Faith, p. 210) 
 Humboldt, Pfaff and Madler— a famous German 
 
 Weise bestatigt ist." The declaration of Sir John Herschel 
 was in 1864. 
 
28 
 
 THE ORIiER OF CREATION. 
 
 astronomer — as adheiing to it. It appears on the 
 whole to be in possession of the field; and IMi*. 
 McCaul observes (ibid) that, " had it been devised 
 for the express purpose of removing the supposed 
 difficulties of the Mosaic record, it could hardly have 
 been more to the pui-pose." Even if we conceive, 
 with Dr. Reville, that the *' creation," the first gift of 
 separate existences to the planets, is declared to have 
 been subsequent to that of the eai'th, there seems to 
 be no known law which excludes such a supposition, 
 especially with respect to the larger and more distant 
 of their number. These, it is to be noticed, ai'e of 
 great rarity as compared with the eaiih. Why should 
 it be declared impossible that they should have taken 
 a longer time in condensation, like in this point to 
 the comets, which still continue in a state of excessive 
 rarity? Want of space forbids me to enter into 
 further explanation; but it requu-es much more 
 serious efforts and objections than those of Dr Ke- 
 ville to confute the statement that the extension of 
 knowledge and of inquiry has confirmed the Mosaic 
 
 record. 
 
 One word, however, upon the " days " of Genesis. 
 We do not hea)' the authority of scriptuie impeached 
 on the ground that it assigns to the Almighty eyes 
 and ears, hands, arms, and feet ; nay, even the emo- 
 tions of the human being. This being so, I am unable 
 to understand why any dispai'agement to the credit 
 of the sacred books should ensue because, to describe 
 the order and successive stages of the divine working, 
 these have been distributed into " days." TVTiat was 
 the thing required in order to make this great pro- 
 cession of acts intelligible and imj^ressive ? Surely 
 it was to distribute the paits each into some integral 
 
 DAWN OF CREATION AND OF WORSmP. 
 
 29 
 
 division of time, having the character of somethmg 
 complete in itself, of a revolution, or outset aiid 
 return There ai'e but thi'ee such divisions f amihaxlj/ 
 known to man. Of these the day was the most f amil^ 
 iar to human perceptions ; and probably on this 
 account its figui'ative use is admitted fo be found in 
 prophetic texts, as, indeed, it largely pervades ancient 
 and modern speech. Given the object in view, which 
 indeed can hardly be questioned, does it not appear 
 that the " day," more definitely separated than either 
 month or year from what precedes and what follows, 
 was appropriately chosen for the purpose of convey- 
 mg the idea of development by gradation m the 
 pi^cess which the book sets forth ? , ^, . , 
 
 I now come to the last portion of my task, which 
 is to follow Dr. KevHle into his exposition of the 
 Olympian mvthology. Not, indeed, the Homenc or 
 Gi'eek religion alone, for he has considered the ca^e 
 of aU rehgions, and disposes of them with equal 
 facihty. Of any other system than the Olympian it 
 would be presumption in me to speak, as I have, be- 
 yond this hmit, none but the most vague and 
 superficial knowledge. But on the Olympian systo 
 in its earliest and least adulterated, namely its Ho- 
 meric development, whether with success or not, I 
 have freely employed a large share of such leisure as 
 more than thirty years of my Parhamentary life, 
 passed in freedom from the calls of office, ha.^ sup- 
 pUed. I liope that there is not in Dr. EeviLe s 
 treatment of other systems that slightness of texture 
 and that facihty and rapidity of conclusion, which 
 seem to me to mai'k his performances in the Olympian 
 
 V the main he follows -(vhat is called the solar 
 
30 
 
 THE ORDER OF CREATION. 
 
 theory. In his widest view he embraces no more 
 than " the rehgion of nature " (pp. 94, 100), and he 
 holds that all religion has sprung from the worship 
 of objects visible and sensible. 
 
 His fii'st essay is upon Heracles, whom I have 
 found to be one of the most difficult and, so to speak, 
 irreducible characters in the Olympian mythology. 
 In the Tyrian system Heracles, as Melkart, says Dr. 
 Keville in p. 95, is '' a brazen god, the devoui'er of 
 children, the terror of men ; " but, without any loss 
 of identity, he becomes in the Greek system, " the 
 great lawgiver, the tamer of monsters, the peace- 
 maker, the liberator." I am deeply impressed with 
 the danger that lurks in these summary and easy 
 solutions ; and I will offer a few words first on the 
 Greek Heracles generally, next on the Homeric pre- 
 sentation of the character. 
 
 Dr. L. Schmidt has contributed to Smith's great 
 dictionary a large and careful article on Heracles ; an 
 article which may almost be called a treatise. Unlike 
 Dr. Keville, to whom the matter is so cleai*, he finds 
 himself out of his depth in attempting to deal with 
 this highly incongruous character, which meets us at 
 so many points, as a whole. But he perceives in the 
 Heracles of Greece a mixture of fabulous and historic 
 elements : and the mythical basis is not, according to 
 him, a transplanted Melkart, but is essentially Greek 
 (Smith's Diet, ii, 400). He refers to Buttmann's 
 " Mythologus " and Mailer's "Dorians" as the best 
 treatises on the subject, " both of which regard the 
 hero as a purely Greek character." Thus Dr. Reville 
 appeal's to be in conflict with the leading authorities, 
 whom he does not confute,, but simply ignores. 
 
 Homer himself may have felt the difficulty which 
 
 DAWN OF CREATION AND OF WORSHIP. 
 
 31 
 
 Dr. Reville does not feel, for he presents tons, in one 
 and the same passage, a divided Heracles. "Whatever 
 of him is not €idolo?i (Od. xi, 601-4) dwells among 
 the Olympian gods. This eidolon, however, is no 
 mere shade, but something that sees and speaks, that 
 mourns and threatens ; no " lawgiver," or " peace- 
 maker," or " liberator," but one from whom the other 
 shades fly in terror, set in the place and company of 
 sinners suffeiing for theii- sins, and presumably him- 
 self in the same predicament, as the sense of grief is 
 assigned to him : it is in wailing that he addresses 
 Odysseus (Od. xi, 605-16). Accordingly, while on 
 earth, he is thrasuinemnon (Od. xi, 267), huperthu- 
 mos (H. xiv, 250), a doer of ^negala erga (Od. xxi, 
 26), which with Homer commonly are crimes. He is 
 profaue, for he wounded Her6, the specially Achaian 
 goddess (H. V. 392) ; and he is treacherous, for he 
 killed Iphitos, his host, in order to carry off his 
 horses (Od. xxi, 26-30). A mixed character, no 
 doubt, or he would not have had Hebe for a partner ; 
 but those which I have stated are some of the diffi- 
 culties which Dr ReviUe quietly rides over to describe 
 him as a lawgiver, peacemaker, and liberator. But I 
 
 proceed. 
 
 Nearly everything, with Dr. ReviUe, and, indeed, 
 with his school, has to be pressed into the service of 
 the solai- theory ; and if the evidence will not bear it, 
 so much the worse for the eridence. Thus Ixion, 
 tortured in the later Greek system on a wheel, which 
 is sometimes represented as a burning wheel, is made 
 (p. 105) to be the sun ; the luminai-y whose splendor 
 and benificence had rendered him, according to the 
 theory, the center of all Aryan worship. A sorry use 
 to put him to ; but let that pass. Now the occasion 
 
32 
 
 THE ORDER OF CREATION. 
 
 that supplies an Ixion and a burning wheel available 
 for solai-ism — a system which prides itself above all 
 things on its exhibiting the primitive state of things — 
 is that Ixion has loved unlawfully the wife of Zeus. 
 And first as to the wheel. We hear of it in Pindar 
 (Pyth. ii, 39) ; but as a winged, not a burning wheel. 
 This " solar " feature appears, I beheve, nowhere but 
 in the latest and most defaced and adulterated 
 mythology. Next as to the punishment. It is of a 
 more respectable antiquity. But some heed should 
 surely be taken of the fact that the oldest authority 
 upon Ixion is Homer; and that Homer affords no 
 plea for a biurning or any other wheel, for according 
 to him (II. xiv, 317), instead of Ixion's loving the wife 
 of Zeus, it was Zeus who loved the wife of Ixion. 
 
 Errors, conveyed without testimony in a sentence, 
 commonly require many sentences to confute them. 
 I will not dwell on minor cases, or those purely fanci- 
 ful ; for mere fancies, which may be admired or the 
 reverse, are impalpable to the clutch of argument, 
 and thus are hardly subjects for confutation. I^aulb 
 majora canamus. I continue to tread the field of 
 Greek mythology, because it is the favorite sporting- 
 ground of the exclusivists of the solar theory. 
 
 We aie told (p. 80) that because waves with 
 rounded backs may have the appearance (but query) 
 of horses or sheep throwing themselves tumultuously 
 upon one another, therefore " in maritime regions, 
 the god of the liquid element, Poseidon or Neptune, 
 is the breeder, protector, and trainer of horses." 
 Then why is he not also the breeder, protector, and 
 trainer of sheep ? They have quite as good a mari- 
 time title ; according to the first line of Ariosto ; 
 Jkluggendo van per mare, i cjran montoni. 
 
 DAWN OF CREATION AND OF WORSHIP. 
 
 33 
 
 I am altogether skeptical about these rounded 
 backs of horses, which, more, it seems, than other 
 backs, become conspicuous like a wave. The resem- 
 blance, i beheve, has commonly been drawn between 
 the horse, as regai'ds his mane, and the foam-tipped 
 waves, which are still sometimes called white horses. 
 But we have here, at best, a case of great super- 
 structure built upon a shght f oimdation ; when it is 
 attempted, on the groundwork of a mere simile, hav- 
 ing reference to a state of sea which in the Mediter- 
 ranean is not the rule but the rare exception, to frame 
 an explanation of the close, pervading, and almost 
 profound relation of the Homeric Poseidon to the 
 horse. Long and careful investigation has shown me 
 that this is an ethnical relation, and a key to impor- 
 tant parts of the ethnography of Homer. But the 
 proof of this proposition would require an essay of 
 itself. I will, therefore, only refer to the reason 
 which leads Dr. Reville to construct this (let 
 me say) castle in the air. It is because he thinks 
 he is accountmg hereby for a fact, which would in- 
 deed, if established, be a startlmg one, that the god 
 of the Hquid element should also be the god of the 
 horse. We are dealing now especially with the 
 Homeric Poseidon, for it is in Homer that the rela- 
 tion to the horse is developed ; and the way to a true 
 explanation is opened when we observe that the 
 Homeric Poseidon is not the god of the hquid element 
 
 at all. 
 
 The truth is that the Olympian and ruling gods of 
 Homer are not elemental. Some few of them bear 
 the marks of having been elemental in other systems ; 
 but, on admission into the Achaian heaven, they are 
 Oivested of their elemental features. In the case of 
 
34 
 
 THE ORDER OF CREATION. 
 
 DA^VN OF CRE-^TION AND OF WORSHIP. 
 
 35 
 
 Poseidon there is no sign that lie ever had these 
 elemental features. The signs are unequivocal that 
 he had been worshiped as supreme, as the Zeus-Po- 
 seidon, by certain races and in certain, viz. in far 
 southern, countries. Certainly he has a special rela- 
 tion to the sea. Once, and once only, do we hear of 
 his having habitation under the water (II. xiii, 17-31). 
 It is in 11. xiii where he fetches his horses from it, to 
 repair to the Trojan plain. He seems to have been 
 an habitual absentee; the prototype, he might be 
 called, of that ill-starred, ill-favored class. We heai' 
 of him in Samothrace, on the Solyman mountains, 
 as visiting the Ethiopians (Od. i, 25, 26), who wor- 
 shipped him, and the reek of whose offerings he 
 preferred at such times to the society of the Olympian 
 gods debating on Helenic affairs; though, when we 
 are in the zone of the outer geograj^hy, we find him 
 actually presiding in an Olympian assembly marked 
 with foreign associations (Od. viii, 321-66). Now 
 compare with this great mundane figure the true 
 elemental gods of Homer ; first Okeanos, a venerable 
 figui'e, wl.o dwells appropriately by the fuithest (II. 
 xiv, 201) bound of eai'th, the bank of the Ocean river, 
 and who is not summoned (II. xx, 7) even to the gi'eat 
 Olympian assembly of the twentieth book ; and sec- 
 ondly, the graybeaid of the sea, whom only from 
 the patronymic of his Nereid daughters we know to 
 have been called Nereus, and who, when reference is 
 made to him and his train, is on each occasion (II. i, 
 358 ; xviii, 36) to be found in one and the same place, 
 the deep recesses of the Mediterranean waters. If 
 Dr. Reville still doubts who was for Homer the 
 elemental god of water, let him note the fact that 
 while ?ieros is old Greek for wet, ttero is, down to this 
 
 very day, the people's word for water. But, con- 
 clusive as are these considerations, their force will be 
 most fully appreciated only by those who have close.y 
 observed that Homer's entii-e theurgic system is res- 
 olutely exclusive or natme-worship, except in its 
 lowest and most colorless orders, and that where he 
 has to deal with a nature-power of serious pretensions, 
 suc'h as the water-god would be, he is apt to pursue 
 a method of quiet suppression, by local banishment 
 or otherwise, that space may be left him to play out 
 upon his board the gorgeous and imposmg figures ct 
 his theanthi-opio system. 
 
 As a surgeon performs the most terrible operation 
 iu a few seconds, and with unbroken cahn, so 
 does the school of Dr. Roville, at least within the 
 Homeric precinct, maishal, label, and transmute the 
 personages that are found there. la touching on 
 the " lo<r " bv which Dr. Reville says Hera was 
 •represented for ages, she is quietly described as 
 the "queen of tlie shining heaven" (p. 79). For 
 this assumption, so naively made, I am aware of no 
 authority whatever among the Greeks-a somewhat 
 formidable difficulty for others than solansts, as we 
 are dealing with an eminently Greek conception. 
 Euripides, a rather late authority, says (Emip. 
 Helena, 100), she dweUs among the stai-s, <w a.1 
 deities might be said, ex officio, to do ; but gives no 
 indication either of identity or of queenship. Ety- 
 mology, stoutly disputed, may afford a refuge. 
 Schmidt (Smith's Diet., a.-t. " Hera") refers the name 
 to the Latin Jura; Cui-tius (Griech. Etymol., p. IIJ) 
 and I'reller (PreUer, Griech. Mythol. i, 121) to the 
 Sanscrit .s««;-, meaning the heaven ; and ^^ elcker 
 (Griech. G6tterlehi-e i, 362-3), with others, to what 
 
36 
 
 THE ORDER OF CREATION. 
 
 DAWN OF CREATION AND OF WORSHIP. 
 
 37 
 
 appears the more obvious form of, epa, the earth. 
 Dr. Reville, I presume, makes choice of the Sanscrit 
 svar. Such etymologies, however, are, though greatly 
 in favor with the solarists, most imcertain guides to 
 Greek interpretation. The effect of trusting to them 
 is that, if a deity has in some foreign or anterior sys- 
 tem had a certam place or office, and if this place or 
 office has been altered to suit the exigencies of a 
 composite mytholygy, the Greek idea is totally mis- 
 conceived. If we take the pre-name of the Homeric 
 Apollo, we may with some plausibility say the Fhoi- 
 bos of the poet is the sun ; but we are landed at once 
 in the absurd consequence that we have got a sun 
 already (See infra.) and that the two are joint actors 
 in a scene of the eighth " Odyssey" (Od. viii, 302, 
 334). Strange, indeed, will be the effect of such a 
 system if applied to our own case at some date in the 
 far-off future ; for it will be shown, inter alia, that 
 there were no priests, but only presbyters, in any • 
 portion of Western Christendom; that our dukes 
 were simply generals leading us in war ; that we 
 broke our fast at eight in the evening (for diner is but 
 a compression of dejeuner); and even, possibly, that 
 one of the noblest and most famous of Enghsh 
 houses pursued habitually the humble occupation of 
 
 a pig-driver. 
 
 The character of Hera, or Here, has received from 
 Homer a full and elaborate development. There is 
 in it absolutely no trace whatever of "the queen of 
 the shining heaven." In the action of the " Odyssey" 
 she has no share at all — a fact absolutely unaccount- 
 able if her function was one for which the voyages of 
 that poem give much more scope than is supplied by 
 the *' Iliad." The fact is that there is no queen of 
 
 heaven in the Achaian system ; nor could there be 
 without altering its whole genius. It is a curious m- 
 cidental fact that, although Homer recognizes to some 
 extent humanity in the stars (I refer to Orion and 
 Leucothee, both of them foreign personages of the 
 outer geography), he never even approximates to a 
 personification of the real queen of heaven, namely, 
 the moon. There happens to be one marked mcident 
 of the action of Hera, which stands in rather ludicrous 
 contrast with this lucent queenship. On one occasion 
 when, in vktue of her birth and station, she exercises 
 some' supreme prerogative, she directs the sun 
 (surely not so to her lord and master) to set, and he 
 reluctantly obeys (II. xviii, 239, 240). Her character 
 has not any pronounced moral elements ; it exhibits 
 pride and passion; it is pervaded intensely with 
 policy and nationalism ; she is beyond aU others the 
 Achaian goddess, and it is sai'castically imputed to 
 her by Zeus that she would cut the Trojans if she 
 - could, and eat them without requiiing in the first 
 instance any cuhnary process (H. iv, 35). I humbly 
 protest against mauhng and disfiguring this work; 
 against what great Walter Scott would, I think, have 
 called " mashackering and misjugghng " it, after the 
 manner of Nicol Muschat, when he put an end to his 
 wife Aihe (Heart of Midlothian) at the spot afterward 
 marked by his name. Why blur the picture so 
 charcred alike with imaginative power and with his- 
 toric" meaning, by the violent obtrusion of ideas, 
 which, whatever force they may have had among 
 other peoples or in other systems, it was one of the 
 main purposes of Homer, in his marvelous theurgic 
 work, to expel from all high place in the order of 
 
38 
 
 THE ORDER OF CREATION. 
 
 ideas, and from every corner, every loft and every 
 cellai', so to speak, of bis 01ymi)ian palaces ? 
 
 If the Hera of Homer is to own a relationship out^ 
 side the Achaian system, like that of Apollo to the 
 sun, it is undoubtedly with Gaia, the eaiih, that it 
 can be most easily established. The all-producing 
 function of Gaia in the Theogony of Hesiod (Theog. 
 llG-136) and her marriage with Oiu'anos, the heaven, 
 who has a partial relation to Zeus, points to Hera as 
 the majestic successor who in the Olympian scheme, 
 as the great mother and guardian of maternity, bore 
 an analogical resemblance to the female head of one 
 or more of the Pelasgian or Achaic theogonies that 
 it had deposed. 
 
 I have now done with the treatment of details, and 
 I must not quit them without saying that there are 
 some of the chapters, and many of the sentences, of 
 Dr. Reville which appear to me to deserve our thanks. 
 And much as I differ from him concerning an essen- 
 tial part of the historic basis of religion, I trust that 
 nothing which I have said can appear to imi)ute to 
 him any hostility or indifference to the substance of 
 
 rehgion itself. 
 
 I make, indeed, no question that the solai' theory 
 has a most important place in solving the problems 
 presented by many or some of the Aryan religions ; 
 but whether it explains their first inception is a 
 totally different matter. When it is ruthlessly applied, 
 in the teeth of evidence, to them all, in the last resort 
 it stifles facts, and reduces observation and reasoning 
 to a mockery. Sir George Cox, its able advocate, 
 fastens upon the admission that some one particular 
 method is not available for all the phenomena, and 
 asks, Why not adopt for the Greek system, for the 
 
 DAWN OF CREATION AND OF WORSHIP. 
 
 39 
 
 Aryan systems at large, perhaps for a still wider 
 range, " a clear and simple explanation," namely, the 
 sol^ 'theory (Mythology of Aryan Nations, i, 18)? 
 The plain answer to the question is that this must 
 not be done, because, if it is done, we do not follow 
 the facts, nor are led by them ; but to use the remark- 
 able phrase of iEschylus, we ride them down, we 
 trample them under foot. Mankind has long been 
 too familiar with a raxje of practitioners, whom coui'- 
 tesy forbids to name, and whose single medicine is 
 alike available to deal with every one of the thousand 
 figures of disease. There ai-e surely many sources to 
 which the old religions are referable. We have solar 
 worship, earth worship, astronomic worship, the wor- 
 ship of animals, the worship of evil powers, the 
 worship of abstractions, the worship of the dead, the 
 foul and poUuting worship of bodily organs, so wide- 
 spread in the world, and especially in the East ; last, 
 but not least, I Tvill name terminal worship, the 
 remarkable and most important scheme which grew 
 up, perhaps first on the NHe, in connection with the 
 stones used for maxkmg boundaiies, which finds its 
 principal representative in the god Hemes, and 
 which is very largely traced and exhibited in the first 
 volume of the work of M. Dulaui-e (Histoire abregee 
 de differens Cultes. Seconde edition. Paris, 1825.) 
 on ancient religions. 
 
 But none of these circumstances discredits or nn- 
 pairs the proof that in the book, of which Genesis is 
 the opening section, there is conveyed special knowl- 
 edge to meet the special need everywhere so palpable 
 in the state and history of our race. Far indeed am 
 I from asserting that this precious gift, or that any 
 process known to me, disposes of all the problems, 
 
/ 
 
 40 
 
 THE ORDER OF CREATION. 
 
 either insoluble or unsolved, by which we are sur- 
 rounded; of 
 
 the burden and the mystery 
 
 Of all this unintelligible world. 
 But I own my surprise not only at the fact, but at 
 the manner in which in this day, writers, whose 
 name is legion, unimpeached in character and 
 abounding in talent, not only put away from them, 
 cast into a shadow or into the very gulf of negation 
 itself, the conception of a deity, an acting and a rul- 
 ing deity. Of this behef, which has satisfied the 
 doubts and wiped away the tears, and found guid- 
 ance for the footsteps of so many a weary wanderer 
 on earth, which among the best and greatest of our 
 race has been so cherished by those who had it, and 
 so longed and sought for by those who had it not, 
 we might suppose that if at length w^e had discovered 
 that it was in the light of truth untenable, that the 
 accumulated testimony of man was worthless, and 
 that his wisdom w^as but folly, yet at least the decen- 
 cies of mourning would be vouchsafed to this irre- 
 parable loss. Instead of this, it is with a joy and 
 exultation that might almost recall the frantic orgies 
 of the Commune, that this, at least at first sight, ter- 
 rific and overwhelming calamity is accepted, and re- 
 corded as a gain. One recent, and in many ways 
 respected writer — a woman long wont to unship 
 creed as sailors discharge excess of cargo in a storm, 
 and passing at length into formal Atheism — rejoices 
 to find herself on the opeD, free, and "breezy com- 
 mon of humanity." Another, also a woman,* and 
 dealing only with the workings and manifestations of 
 
 * I do not quote names, but I refer to a very recent article 
 in one of our monthly periodicals. 
 
 DAWN OF CREATION AND OP WORSHIP. 
 
 41 
 
 God, finds in the theory of a physical evolution as 
 recently developed by Mr. Darwin, and received with 
 extensive favor, both an emancipation from eiTor and 
 a novelty in kind. She rejoices to think that now 
 at last Darwin " shows life as a harmonious whole, 
 and makes the future stride possible by the past 
 advance." Evolution, that is, physical evolution, 
 which alone is in view, may be true (Uke the solar 
 theory), may be delightful and wonderful, in its right 
 place ; but are we really to understand that varieties 
 of animals brought about through domestication, the 
 wasting of organs (for instauce, the tails of men) by 
 disuse, that natural selection aud the survival of the 
 fittest, all in the physical order, exhibit to us the 
 great arcanum of creation, the sun and center of Hfe, 
 so that mind and spirit are dethroned from their old 
 supremacy, are no longer sovereign by right, but may 
 find somewhere by chai^ity a placed assigned them, 
 as appendages, perhaps only as excrescences, of the 
 material creation? I contend that evolution in its 
 highest form has not been a thing heretofore unknown 
 to history, to phOosophy, or to theology. I contend 
 that it was before the mind of St. Paul when he 
 taught that in the fulness of time God sent forth his 
 son, and of Eusebius, when he wrote the " Prepara- 
 tion for the Gospel," and of Augustine, when he 
 composed the "City of God;" and, beautiful and 
 splendid as are the lessons taught by natural objects, 
 they are, for Christendom at least, indefinitely beneath 
 the subhme unfolding of the great drama of human 
 action, in which, through long ages, Greece was 
 making ready a language and an intellectual type, 
 and Rome a framework of order and an idea of law, 
 such that in them were to be shaped and fashioned 
 
42 
 
 THE OKDEB OF CREATION. 
 
 the destinies of a regenerated world. For those who 
 beheve that the old foundations are unshaken still, 
 and that the fabric built upon them will look down 
 for ages on the floating wreck of many a modern and 
 boastful theoi-y, it is difficult to see anything but in- 
 fatuation in the destructive temperament which leads 
 to the notion that to substitute a blmd mechanism 
 for the hand of God in the affaii's of life is to enlai'ge 
 the scope of remedial agency ; that to dismiss the 
 highest of all inspu^ations is to elevate the strain ot 
 human thought and Hfe ; and that each of us is to 
 rejoice that our several units ai'e to be disintegrated 
 at death into *' countless millions of organisms;" for 
 such, it seems, is the latest " revelation " dehvered 
 from the fragile tripod of a modern Delphi. Assuredly 
 on the minds of those who beheve, or else on the 
 minds of those who after this fashion disbeheve, there 
 hes some deep judicial darkness, a darkness that may 
 be felt. While disbehef in the eyes of faith is a sore 
 calamity, this kind of disbehef, which renounces and 
 repudiates with more than satisfaction what is 
 brightest and best in the inheritance of man, is 
 astounding, and might be deemed incredible. Nay, 
 some will say, rather than accept the flimsy aiul 
 hollow consolations which it makes bold to oif3r, 
 might we not go back to solar adoration, or, witL 
 Goethe, to the hollows of Olympus 1 
 Wenn die Funke spriilit, 
 Wenn die Asclie gluht, 
 Ellen wir den alten Gottcrn zu.* 
 
 W. E. Gladstone. 
 
 ♦Literally: 
 
 When the sparkicH flow, 
 
 When the anhi h Kl<^^^'» 
 
 Hartten we the okkii gods unto. 
 
 —Bride oj Corinth. 
 
 THE INTEJirnETERS OF GENESIS AND THE 
 INTERPRETERS OF NATURE. 
 
 A REPLY TO ME. GLADSTONE'S " DAWN OF CREATION AND OF 
 
 woRsmp." 
 
 BY PROF. T. H. HUXLEY. 
 
 Our fabulist warns ^' those who in quarrels inter- 
 pose" of the fate which is probably in store for them; 
 and, in ventming to place myself between so power- 
 ful a controversiahst as Mr. Gladstone aaid the emi- 
 nent divine whom he assaults with such vigor m the 
 last number of this Beviein, I am fully awai-e that I 
 run great danger of verifying Gay's prediction. 
 Moreover, it is quite possible that my zeal in ofi:ei^g 
 aid to a combatant so extremely well able to take 
 care of himself as M. Keville may be thought to 
 savor of indiscretion. 
 
 Two considerations, however, have led me to face 
 the double risk. The one is that though, m my 
 iudcrment, M. Reville is whoUy in the right m that 
 pai-t of the controversy to which I propose to restrict 
 my observations, nevertheless, he, as a foreigner, has 
 very little chaaice of making the truth prevail with 
 Englishmen against the authority and the dialectic 
 skiU of the greatest master of persuasive rhetoric 
 among Enghsh-speaking men of our tune. As the 
 queen's proctor intervenes, in certain cases, between 
 two htigants in the interests of justice, so it may be 
 pei-mitted me to interpose as a sort of uncommis- 
 sioned science proctor. My second excuse for my 
 
44 
 
 THE INTERPRETERS OF GENESIS 
 
 AND THE INTERPRETERS OF NATURE. 
 
 45 
 
 I! 
 
 meddlesomeness is that important questions of nat- 
 ural science— respecting which neither of the combat- 
 ants professes to speak as an expert— axe involved m 
 the controversy; and I think it is desirable that the 
 pubHc should know what it is that natural science 
 really has to say on these topics, to the best belief of 
 one who has been a dihgent student of natural 
 science for the last forty years. 
 
 The original Frolegombies de Thistoire des Relig- 
 ions has not come in my way; but I have read the 
 translation of M. KevHle's work, published in Eng- 
 laad under the auspices of Prof. Max Mailer, 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 reason- 
 ing 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 rela- 
 tion between science and religion. 
 
 In the chapter on "The Primitive Revelation," the 
 scientific worth of the account of 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 enhsting the assent of all com- 
 petent 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 
 
 avaUable From this point of view, the traditions recorded 
 rOenes^s possess, in addition to their own Pe-^^ha^^ 
 a value of the highest order; but we cannot ultimately see 
 L ttm more thai a venerable fragment, well deservmg at- 
 tention, of the great genesis of mankmd. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone is of a different mind. He dissents 
 from M. Seville's views respecting the proper estuna- 
 tionof the pentateuchal traditions no less than he 
 does from his interpretation of those Homeric myths 
 which have been the object of his ^^^^^^^"^.^'^^^^ 
 In the latter case, m, Gladstone tells M Reville that 
 he is wrong on his own authority, to which, m such 
 . a matter, all will pay due respect; in the former be 
 Affirms Mmself to be ^' whoUy destitute of that kmd 
 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 fol- 
 lowing passage: 
 
 But the question is not here of a lofty poem, or a skilf uUy 
 
 constructed narrative; It is ->^<'*'=' -"'"'''> ~^;^ *^ 
 mtient exercise of its high calling to examine facts finds that 
 fhe works of God cry out against what we have fondly be- 
 UeveTLbe his word, and tell another tale, or whether m 
 tWs nineteenth century of Christian progress, it substan Ually 
 echoes blel the majestic sound, which, before it exosted as a 
 pursuit went forth into all lands. 
 
 "^^ rt," looking largely at the latter portion of the narratrve, 
 which describes the creation of livmg organisms, and wa v- 
 5 deta ll on some of which (as in verse 24) the Sep^agmt 
 se^ms to vary from the Hebrew there is » f ^f f^f is 
 division, set forth In an orderly succession of times as 
 follows : on the fifth day. 
 
 1. The water-population, 
 
 2. The air-population, 
 ^and, on the sixth day. 
 
 -ii' 
 
I j 
 
 i 
 I f 
 
 'lit 
 
 46 
 
 THE INTERPRETERS OF GENESIS 
 
 3. The land-population of animals, 
 4 The land-population consummated in man. 
 Now this same fourfold order is understood to have been so 
 affirmed in our time by natural science that it may be taken 
 as a demonstrated conclusion and established fact (p. GOG). 
 
 "Understood?" By whom? I cannot bring my- 
 self to imagine that Mr. Gladstone has made so solemn 
 and authoiitative a statement on a matter of this im- 
 portance without due inquiiy— without being able to 
 found himself upon recognized scientific authority. 
 But I wish he had thought fit to name the source 
 from whence he has derived his information, as in 
 that case I could have dealt with his authority, and I 
 should have thereby escaped the appeai'ance of maknig 
 an attack on Mr. Gladstone himself , which is in every 
 way distasteful to me. 
 
 For I can meet the statement in the ]ast pai'agraph 
 of the above citation with nothing but a direct nega- 
 tive. If I know anything at all about the results 
 attained by the natuial science of our time, it is " a 
 demonstrated conclusion and established fact " that 
 the " foui-fold order " given by Mr. Gladstone is not 
 that in which the evidence at oui' disposal tends to 
 show that the water, ah, aud land populations of the 
 globe have made their appearance. 
 
 Perhaps I may be told that IVli'. Gladstone does gi^'e 
 his authority-that he cites Cuvier, S\i John Her- 
 schel, and Dr. -Whewell in support of his case. If 
 that has been Mr. Gladstone's mtention in mention- 
 ino- these emment names, I may remark that, on this 
 p^-ticulai' question, the only relevant authority is 
 that of Cuvier. But, great as Cuvier was, it is to be 
 remembered that, as Mi'. Gladstone incidentally re- 
 mai'ks, he cannot now be called a recent authority. 
 
 AND THE INTERPRETERS OF NATURE. 
 
 47 
 
 In fact he has been dead more than half a century 
 'Id tt paleontology of oui- day is related tojhat o, 
 l,is very much as the geography of ^^^ ^^^^^^^^ 
 Snt^y is related to that of the fourteenth. Since 
 1832 ihen Cuvier died, not only a new world, but 
 few wlds, of ancient hf e have been discovered ; ^d 
 ZlZho have most faithfully earned on the work of 
 irief founder of paleontology have done ^ost to 
 invalidate the essentially negative grounds of his spec 
 nlnfivp adherence to tradition. 
 
 H TGladstone-s latest information on these mat- 
 ters is derived from the f-°- f ^T^to^Hio, 
 the Ossemeus J^o«s»7es, I can understand the positwn 
 
 le has io^en up ; if he has ever opened a respecteHe 
 uxodern manual of paleontology or geology, I cannot 
 For the facts which demoUsh his whole argument are 
 !f the CO— St notoriety. But before proceedmg 
 toconsder the evidence for this assertion we must 
 be cle^ about the mearnng of the phraseology em- 
 
 ^^rapprehend that when m. Gladstone uses the 
 tem "water-population" he means those ammals 
 Sh in Genesis i, 21 (Revised Version a^-c spoken 
 oiZ " the gi-eat sea monsters aad every hvmg creat- 
 i that m'oveth, which the waters brought forth 
 abundantly, aiter their kind." And I presume i^.U 
 v.ill be agreed that whales and porpoises, ^^^^^^^^ 
 Id the Lumerable hosts of marine mvertebrated 
 ids, axe meaait thereby. So " aor-population 
 IS be the equivalent of "fowl;; in verse 20 and 
 « every winged fowl after its bnd," vex-se 21 I sup 
 posel may take it for granted that by "fowl we 
 have her" to understand buds-at any rate, pnmanly. 
 tcouLly, it may be that bats, and the extmct pter- 
 
4.3 THE INTERPRETERS OF GENESIS 
 
 odactyles, wluch were flying reptiles, come under the 
 same head. But whether aU insects are "creepmg 
 things" of the land-population, or whether flying 
 msects axe to be included under the denomination of 
 " winged fowl," is a point for the decision of Hebrew 
 exegetes. Lastly, I suppose I may assume that 
 "land-population" signifies "the cattle" and "the 
 beast of ihe earth," and " every creeping thing that 
 creepeth upon the earth," in verses 25 and 26 ; pre- 
 sumably it comprehends all kinds of terrestrial ani- 
 mals vertebrate aad invertebrate, except such as may 
 be comprised under the head of the " air-population." 
 Now, what I want to make clear is this, that if the 
 terms, ' " water-population," " air-population," and 
 "land-population," are understood in the senses here 
 defined, natural science has nothing to say in favor 
 of the proposition that they succeeded one another 
 in the order given by Mr. Gladstone ; but that, on 
 the contrary, all the evidence we possess goes to 
 prove that they did not. Whence it wiU follow that, 
 if Mr. Gladstone has interpreted Genesis rightly (on 
 which point I am most anxious to be understood to 
 offer no opinion), that interpretation is whoUy in-ec- 
 oncilable with the conclusions at present accepted by 
 the interpreters of nature— with everything that can 
 be called '' a demonstrated conclusion and estab- 
 hshed fact " of natural science. And be it observed 
 that I am not here deahng with a question of specu- 
 lation, but with a question of fact. 
 
 Either the geological record is sufficiently com- 
 plete to afford us a means of determining the order 
 in which animals have made then- appearaace on the 
 globe or it is not. If it is, the determination of that 
 order is little more than a mere matter of observa- 
 
 
 
 AND THE INTERPRETERS OF NATUEE. 
 
 49 
 
 tion ; if it is not, then natural science neither affirms 
 nor refutes the " fourfold order," but is simply silent, 
 The series of the fossiliferous deposits, which con- 
 tain the remains of the animals which have lived on 
 the earth in past ages of its history, and which can 
 alone afford the evidence required by natural science 
 of the order of appearance of their different species, 
 may be grouped in the manner shown in the left-hand 
 column of the following table, the oldest being at the 
 bottom : 
 
 FORMATIONS. 
 
 Quaternary. 
 
 Pliocene. 
 
 Miocene. 
 
 Eocene. 
 
 Cretaceous. 
 
 Jurassic. 
 
 Triassic. 
 
 Upper Paleozoic. 
 
 Middle Paleozoic. 
 
 Lower Paleozoic. 
 
 Silurian. 
 
 Cambrian. 
 
 FIRST KNOWN APPEARANCE OF 
 
 Vertebrate air-population (bats). 
 
 Vertebrate air-population (birds and pter- 
 odactyles). 
 
 Vertebrate land-population (amphibia, 
 repUlia[?']). 
 
 Vertebrate water-population (fishes). 
 
 Invertebrate air and land population (fly- 
 ing insects and scorpions). 
 
 Invertebrate water-population (much ear- 
 • lier, if eozoon is animal). 
 
 In the right-hand column I have noted the group 
 of strata in which, according to our present informa- 
 tion, the laiid, air, and icater populations appear for 
 the first time j and, in consequence of the ambiguity 
 about the meaning of " fowl," I have separately indi- 
 cated the first appeai-ance of bats, biids, flying rep- 
 tiles, and fljong insects. It will be observed that, if 
 " fowl " means only " bird," or at most flying verte- 
 brate, then the first certain evidence of the latter, in 
 the Jiu-assic epoch, is posterior to the first appear- 
 ance of truly terrestrial amphibia, and possiby of true 
 
50 THE INTERPBETERS OF GENESIS 
 
 reptiles, in the Carboniferous epoch (Middle Paleo- 
 zoic) by a prodigious interval of time. 
 
 The water-population of vertebrated animals first 
 appears in the Upper SHuiian. Therefore, if we 
 found ourselves on vertebrated animals, and take 
 " fowl" to mean bkds only, or at most flying verte- 
 brates, natural science says that the order of succes- 
 sion was water, land, and air-population, and not— as 
 IVIr Gladstone, founding himself on Genesis, says— 
 water, air, laad-population. If a chronicler of Greece 
 affirmed that the age of Alexander preceded that of 
 Pericles, and immediately succeeded that of the Tro- 
 jan wai', Mr. Gladstone would hai'dly say that this 
 order is " understood to have been so affirmed by his- 
 torical science that it may be taken as a demonstrated 
 conclusion and established fact." Yet natui'al sci- 
 ence "affii-ms" his "foui'-fold order" to exactly the 
 same extent — neither more nor less. 
 
 Suppose, however, that "fowl" is to be taken to 
 include flying insects. In that case the first appear- 
 ance of an ah'-population must be shifted back for 
 long a^es, recent discovery having shown that they 
 occur in rocks of SHurian age. Hence there might 
 stm have been hope for the fourfold order were it not 
 that the fates unkindly determined that scorpions- 
 " creeping things that creep on the eaa'th"i^ar excel- 
 lence— invned up in Siluiian strata nearly at the same 
 time. So that if the word in the oiiginal Hebrew 
 translated " fowl " should really after all mean " cock- 
 roach "—and I have great faith in the elasticity of that 
 tongue in the hands of biblical exegetes-the order 
 primaiily suggested by the existing evidence : 
 2. Land and air-population, 
 \, Water-population, 
 
 AND THE INTERPRETERS OF NATURE. 
 
 51 
 
 Ml 
 
 and Mr. Gladstone's order: 
 
 8. Land-population, 
 2. Air-population, 
 1. Water-population, 
 
 can by no means be made to coincide. As a matter 
 of fact, then, the statement so confidently put for- 
 ward turns out to be devoid of foundation and in 
 direct contradiction of the evidence at present at our 
 
 disposal.* 
 
 If, stepping beyond that which may be learned from 
 the facts of the successive appearance of the forms of 
 animal Hfe upon the surface of the globe, in so far 
 as they are yet made known to us by natural science, 
 we apply oui- reasoning faculties to the task of find- 
 ing out what those observed facts mean, the present 
 conclusions of the interpreters of nature appear to be 
 no less directly in conflict with those of the latest in- 
 terpreters of Genesis. 
 
 * It may be objected that I have not put the case fairly, in- 
 asmuch as the solitary insect's wing which was discovered 
 twelve months ago in Silurian rocks, and which is at present 
 the sole evidence of insects older than the Devonian epoch, 
 came from strata of Middle Silurian age, and is therefore 
 older than the scorpions which within the last two years have 
 been found in Upper Silurian strata in Sweden, Britam, and 
 the United States. But no one who comprehends the nature 
 of the evidence afforded by fossil remains would venture to 
 say that the non-discovery of scorpions in the Middle Silurian 
 strata up to this time affords any more ground for supposmg 
 that they did not exist than the non-discovery of flymg in- 
 sects m the Upper Silurian strata up to this time throws any 
 doubt on the certainty that they existed, which is derived 
 from the occurrence of the wing in the Middle Silurian. In 
 fact, I have stretched a point in admitting that these fossils 
 afford a colorable pretext for the assumption that the lana 
 and air-population were of contemporaneous ongm. 
 
ff2 
 
 THE INTERPRETERS OF GENESIS 
 
 Mr. Gladstone appeal's to admit that there is son:c 
 truth in the doctrine of evolution, and indeed places it . 
 under very high patronage : 
 
 I contend that evolution in its highest form has not been a 
 thing heretofore unknown to history, to philosophy, or to the- 
 ology. I contend that it was before the mind of St. Paul 
 when he taught that in the fulness of time God sent forth his 
 son, and of Eusebius, when he wrote the -Preparation for 
 the Gospel," and of Augustine when he composed the " City 
 of God" (p. 706). 
 
 Has any one ever disputed the contention thus 
 solemnly enunciated that the doctrine of evolution was 
 not invented the day before yesterday 1 Has any one 
 ever dreamed of claiming it as a modern innovation? 
 Is there any one so ignorant of the history of phi- 
 losophy as to be unaw^ai'e that it is one of the forms 
 in which speculation embodied itself long before t}io 
 time either of the Bishop of Hippo or the Apostle to 
 the GentHes? Is Mr. Gladstone, of all people in the 
 world, disposed to ignore the founders of Greek phi- 
 losophy, to say nothing of Indian sages to whom evo- 
 lution was a familiar notion ages before Paul of Tai'- 
 sus was bom ? But it is ungrateful to cavil at even 
 the most oblique admission of the possible value of 
 one of those affirmations of natural science which 
 really may be said to be " a demonstrated conclusion 
 and estabhshed fact." I note it with pleasure, if only 
 for the purpose of introducing the observation tluit 
 if there is any truth whatever in the doctiine of eve 
 lution as apphed to animals, IVIi-. Gladstone's gloss cu 
 Genesis in the following passage is hai'dly happy : 
 
 God created — 
 
 (a) The water-population; 
 
 ('>) The air-population. 
 
 AND THE INTERPRETERS OF NATURE. 
 
 63 
 
 f 
 
 And they receive his benediction (verses 20-23). 
 
 Pursumg this regular progression from the lower to the 
 higher, from the simple to the complex, the text now gives us 
 the work of the sixth " day," which supplies the land popu- 
 lation, ah- and water having been already supplied (pp. 695, 
 G96). 
 
 The gloss to which I refer is the assumption that 
 the "air-population" forms a term in the order of 
 progression from lower to higher, from simple to 
 complex— the place of which hes between the water- 
 population below and the land-population above— and 
 I speak of it as a "gloss" because the pentateuchal 
 writer is nowise responsible for it. 
 
 But it is not true that the air-population, as a 
 whole, is "lower" or less "complex" than the land- 
 population. On the contrary, every beginner in the 
 study of animal morphology is aware that the organ- 
 ization of a bat, of a bird, or of a pterodactyle, pre- 
 supposes that of a ten-estrial quadruped, and that it 
 is intelhgible only as an extreme modification of the 
 organization of a terrestrial mammal or reptile. In 
 the same way, winged insects (if they aie to be 
 counted among the "air-population") presuppose in- 
 sects which were wingless, and therefore, as " creep- 
 ing things," were part of the land-population. Thus 
 theory is as much opposed as" observation to the ad- 
 mission that natui-al science indorses the succession 
 of animal life which Mr. Gladstone finds in Genesis. 
 On the contrary, a good many representatives of nat- 
 ural science would be prepared to say, on theoretical 
 grounds alone, that it is incredible that the "air- 
 population " should have appeared before the " land- 
 population," and that if this assertion is to be found 
 
54 
 
 THE INTEKPBETERS OF" GENESIS 
 
 in Genesis, it merely demonstrates the scientific 
 worthlessness of the story of which it forms a part. 
 
 Indeed, we may go further. It is not even admis- 
 sible to say that the water-population, as a whole, ap- 
 peared before the air and the land-populations. Ac- 
 cording to the authorized version. Genesis especially 
 mentions among the the animals created on the fifth 
 day " great whales," in place of which the revised 
 version reads " great sea monsters." Far be it from 
 me to give an opinion which rendering is right, or 
 whether either is right. All I desire to remark is, 
 that if whales and porpoises, dugongs and manatees, are 
 to be regarded as members of the water-population 
 (and if they are not, what animals can claim the 
 designation "?), then that much of the water-popula- 
 tion has as certainly originated later than the land- 
 population as bats and birds have. For I am not 
 aware that any competent judge would hesitate to 
 admit that the organization of these animals shows 
 the most obvious signs of their descent from terrest- 
 rial quadrupeds. 
 
 A similar criticism applies to ]\Ir. Gladstone's as^ 
 sumption that, as the fourth act of that " orderly suc- 
 cession of times," enunciated in Genesis, ** the land- 
 population consummated in man." 
 
 If this means simply that man is the final term in 
 the evolutional series of which he forms a part, I do not 
 suppose that any objection will be raised to that state- 
 ment on the part of students of natural science. But 
 if the pentateuchal author goes farther than this, and 
 intends to say that which is ascribed to him by IVIr. 
 Gladstone, I think natural science will have to enter a 
 caveat. It is not by any means certain that man— I 
 mean the species Homo sapiens of zoological termi- 
 
 \ 
 
 AND THE INTERPRETERS OF NATURE. 
 
 55 
 
 nology— has *' consummated " the land-population in 
 the sense of appeai-ing at a later period of time than 
 any other. Let me make my meaning clear by an ex- 
 ample. From a morphological point of view, our 
 beautiful and useful contemporary— I might caU him 
 colleague— the horse {Eqiius cahallus), is the last term 
 of the^volutional series to which he belongs, just as 
 Homo sapiens is the last term of the series of which 
 he is a member. If I want to know whether the 
 species Equus cahallus made its appearance on the 
 surface of the globe before or after Homo sapiens, 
 deduction from known law does not help me. There 
 is no reason that I know of why one should have ap- 
 peai-ed sooner or later than the other. If I turn to 
 observation, I find abundaut remains of Equus cahaU 
 Ins in Quaternary strata, perhaps a little earher. The 
 existence of Homo sapiens in the Quaternary epoch 
 is also certain. Evidence has been adduced in favor 
 of man's existence in the Pliocene, or even in the 
 Irliocene epoch. It does not satisfy me; but I have 
 no reason to doubt that the fact may be so, neverthe- 
 less. Indeed, I think it is quite possible that further 
 research will show that Homo sapiens existed, not 
 only before Equus cahallus, but before many other 
 of the existing forms of animal life ; so that, if all the 
 species of animals have been separately created, man, 
 in this case, would by no means be the " consumma- 
 tion " of the land-population. 
 
 I am raising no objection to the position of the 
 foui-th term in IVIr. Gladstone's " order "—on the 
 facts, as they stand, it is quite open to anyone to 
 hold, as a pious opinion, that the fabrication of man 
 was the acme and final achievement of the process of 
 peophng the globe. But it must not be said that 
 
56 
 
 THE IKTERPRETEliS OF GENESIS 
 
 4* 
 
 1 
 
 i 
 
 BatiiraJ science counts tliis opinion among her 
 "demonstrated conclusions and established facts," 
 for there would be just as much, or as Httle, reason 
 for ranging the contrary opinion among them. 
 
 It may seem superfluous to add to the evidence 
 that Ml*. Gladstone has been utterly misled in sup- 
 posing that his interpretation of Genesis receives any 
 support from natural science. But it is as well to do 
 one's work thoroughly while one is about it; audi 
 'hmk it may be advisable to point out that the facts, 
 as they ai'e at present known, not only refute Mr. 
 Gladstone s intei-pretation of Genesis in detail, but 
 aw opposed to 111© oentrnl idea on >Khich it appooni 
 
 iob6lMi8ed. 
 
 Thwe muHt bo iMJtuie i>O0itM)ii from wLi^ih the reo- 
 DmicflerA of «cicnc6 and Gcoem will, not i*li>c*t> Romo 
 ofifiiral idea Uw mnlntODanco of vUich hi vitiil and iU 
 refutation fatal Kveii if ihej now allow tlwit tlio 
 woi-dd ** til© evening luid the moniiag ** Lav© not tlifO 
 loaMt refertfKkce to a natural dav, but mttnii a x>erii>d of 
 ,uiy Dumber of millious of year* lliat may be Docea- 
 Kary ; even if Hioj' are driven to admit that tbe word 
 •* creation," whicli ho many miUiona of jiio^ia JewM 
 and ClkriMtianK Lave lield* and Ktill hold, to mam a 
 iudden act of tlio d^iily, eignifica a iiflroeeas of gnulual 
 e\olulion of one apedee from another, extending 
 ihiXMigb immMHRirable time ; oven if Uiej aix) willing 
 to grant tliat ibo MMoried coi]ftcid«U)Oo of the order of 
 nature with the "fourfold oordiar" a«ariUMl to GesMMM 
 fe an obTioua enror instead of .^ oalabliBhed tnitb — 
 Uiej are miroly prexMa^ed to make a hunt stand uixin 
 Ibe conception wbidi undertica the wLole^ and which 
 eoBBtitutcK the ettence of Mr Gladstone's '* fourfold 
 divinton, 6<tt forth in au orderly succoaaiou of 
 
 AND THE INTF.nrUKTKllfci OF NATURE. 
 
 57 
 
 tt 
 
 It is, that tho animal Bpecies which compose the 
 water-population, tho air population, and tho land- 
 population, re8pectivcly, originated during three dis- 
 tinct and successive periods of time, and only duiing 
 those peiiodti of time. 
 
 This stat('ni(»nt appears to mo to be the interpreta- 
 tion of Gt lu sir. wliirlv l\Tr. Oliidtitone support*, re- 
 duced to ilM simpk'Hl, r\]»n ssiou. ** Period of time** 
 is substitutiul for '' day ;" " originated " i« KubHli- 
 tuted for *' created ;" and any order requii'od for that 
 adopted by Mr. Gladstone. It ii* necessary to make 
 this proviso, for if •• day " may mean a few millioii 
 y^ans and "cxealiun " nwiy mean evolution, tlien it is 
 obvKWia that the oidrr (1) waiw^popnlatioa, (2) 
 air-popuktion, (3) land-population* may oIko m<5an 
 (1) wat«^poi>ulation. (2) lond-iKipulation, (3) air-iwp- 
 ulation; and it would bo unkind to bind down the 
 reooncilerM to thia derail when one has paiiod with ao 
 many otlicnt to oblige tbeoa. 
 
 But oven this 8ublimato<l tmmf^ of tho pttdta- 
 teucbol docirine (if it l>n »iich) remains oa diaeordant 
 with nntuiu) sciwicK* a* over. 
 
 It i* not true that tlio Hixdee ooinpoaing any one 
 of tho thrve jwpulatioma originated during anyone of 
 three Ruooefiiife i)eriod» of timey and not at uny other 
 
 of thesa 
 
 Undoubtedly, it is in Uio higtiMl degree psobaUe 
 Ibat anunal life api>eared fiwt under aquatic condi- 
 tions I tbat tcoTcalrial form* appeared lateor, and flying 
 animals only ikfttfr land aniraab ; but it is, at tboaaine 
 time, t«etiii<:<l by all tho orideuoe we powcttn that the 
 great majority, if not the whole, of the primordial 
 species of eadi division bavo long nince died out and 
 have been roplaocMl by a vast snooeaaion of new forma. 
 
53 THE INTERPRETER? OF GENESIS 
 
 Hundreds of thousands of animal species, as distinct 
 as those which now compose our water, land, and 
 ah- populations, have come into existence and died out 
 again, throughout the eons of geological time which 
 separate us from the lower Paleozoic epoch, when, as 
 I have pointed out, our present evidence of the exist- 
 ence of such distinct populations commences. If the 
 species of animals have all been separately created, 
 then it follows that hundreds of thousands of acts of 
 creative energy have occurred at intervals throughout 
 the whole time recorded by the f ossiHferous rocks ; 
 and, during the greater part of that time, the " crea- 
 tion" of the members of the water, land, and au- pop- 
 ulations must have gone on contemporaneously. 
 
 If we represent the water, land, and air populations 
 by a, b, and c respectively, and take vertical succession 
 on the page to indicate order in time, then the fol- 
 lowing schemes will roughly shadow forth the con- 
 trast I have been endeavoring to explain : 
 
 Nature (as i»terpreted 
 
 by natural science). 
 
 c^ a^ b^ 
 
 c c c e a^h^ 
 
 aaa * «' * 
 
 a a a 
 
 So far as I can see, there is only one resource left 
 for those modem representatives of Sisyphus, the rec- 
 oncilers of Genesis with science; and it has the ad- 
 vautage of being founded on a perfectly legitimate 
 appeal to our ignorance. It has been seen that, on 
 any interpretation of the terms *' water-population" 
 and *' land-population," it must be admitted that 
 invertebrate representatives of these populations ex- 
 isted during the lower Paleozoic epoch. No evolu- 
 tionist can hesitate to admit that other land animals 
 
 Genesis (as interpreted 
 
 by Mr. Gladstone). 
 
 b bh 
 
 AND THE INTERPRETERS OP NATURE. 
 
 59 
 
 (aud possibly vertebrates among them) may have ex- 
 isted during that time, of the history of which we 
 know so httle ; and, further, that scorpions are ani- 
 mals of such high organization that it is highly prob- 
 able then- existence indicates that of a long antece- 
 dent land-population of a similar character. 
 
 Then, smce the land-population is said not to have 
 been created untH the sixth day, it necessarily fol- 
 lows that the evidence of the order in which animals 
 appeared must be sought in the record of those older 
 Paleozoic times m which only traces of the water- 
 population have as yet been discovered. 
 
 Therefore, if anyone chooses to say that the 
 creative work took place in the Cambrian or Lauren- 
 tian epoch in exactly that manner which Mr. Glad- 
 stone does, and natural science does not, affirm, nat- 
 ural science is not in a position to disprove the 
 accuracy of the statement. Only one cannot have 
 one's cake aud eat it too, and such safety from the 
 contradiction of science meaas the forfeiture of her 
 
 support. 
 
 Whether the account of the work of the first, sec- 
 ond and third days in Genesis would be confirmed 
 by the demonstration of the truth of the nebular hy- 
 pothesis ; whether it is corroborated by what is 
 known of the nature and probable relative antiquity of 
 the heavenly bodies ; whether, if the Hebrew word 
 translated "firmament" in the Authorized Ver- 
 sion really means " expanse," the assertion that the 
 waters are partly under this " expanse " and partly 
 above it would be any more confirmed by the ascer- 
 tained facts of physical geography and meteorology 
 than it was before; whether the creation of the 
 whole vegetable world, and especially of '^ grass, herb 
 
GO 
 
 THE INTERPRETERS OF GENESIS 
 
 AND THE INTERPRETERS OF NATURE. 
 
 61 
 
 I 
 
 yielding seed after its kind, and tree bearing fmit," 
 before any kind of oaiinal is " afiarmed " by tlie appai- 
 ently plain teaching of botanical paleontology, that 
 grasses and fruit-trees originated long subsequently 
 to animals— all these are questions which, if I mis- 
 take not, would be answered decisively in the negative 
 by those who ai'e specially conversant with the sci- 
 ences involved. And it must be recollected that the 
 issue raised by IVIr. Gladstone is not whether, by 
 some effort of ingenuity, the pentateuchal story can 
 be shown to be not disprovable by scientific knowl- 
 edge, but whether it is supported thereby. 
 
 There is nothing, then, in the criticisms of Dr. R^ville, 
 but what rather tends to confirm than to impair the old-fash- 
 ioned belief that there is a revelation in the book of Genesis. 
 
 The form into which IMi'. Gladstone has thought 
 fit to throw this opinion leaves me in doubt as to its 
 substance. I do not understand how a hostile criti- 
 cism can, under any circumstances, tend to confirm 
 that which it attacks. If, however, IMi*. Gladstone 
 merely means to express his personal impression, "as 
 one wholly destitute of that kind of knowledge which 
 carries authority," that he has destroyed the value of 
 these criticisms,! have neither the wish nor the right 
 to disturb his faith. On the other hand, I may be 
 permitted to state my own conviction that, so far as 
 natural science is involved, M. Reville's observations 
 retain the exact value they possessed before Mr. 
 Gladstone attacked them 
 
 Trusting that I have now said enough to secure the 
 author of a wise and moderate disquisition upon a 
 topic which seems fated to stu' unwisdom and fanat- 
 icism to their depths, a fuller measui'e of justice thau 
 
 has hitherto been accorded to him, I retu-e from my 
 self-appointed championship, with the hope that I 
 shall not hereafter be called upon by M. Eeville to 
 apologize for damage done to his strong case by im- 
 perfect or impulsive advocacy. But perhaps I may be 
 permitted to add a word or two, on my own account, 
 in reference to the gi'eat question of the relations 
 between science and rehgion, since it is one about 
 which I have thought a good deal ever since I have 
 been able to think at all, and about which I have ven- 
 tured to express my views publicly more than once 
 in the course of the last thiiiy years. 
 
 The antagonism between science and religion, 
 about which we heai* so much, appears to me to be 
 purely factitious, fabricated on the one hand by 
 short-sighted religious people, who confoimd a cer- 
 tain brancli of science, theology, with religion ; and 
 on the other by equally shori-sighted scientific people 
 who forget that science takes for its province only 
 that which is susceptible of clear intellectual compre- 
 hension, and that outside the boundaries of that prov- 
 LQce they must be content with imagination, with 
 hope, and with ignorance. 
 
 It seems to me that the moral and intellectual life 
 of the civilized nations of Euiope is the product of 
 that interaction, sometimes in the way of antago- 
 nism, sometimes in that of profitable interchange of 
 the Semitic and Aryan races, which commenced with 
 the dawn of history, when Greek and Phoeniciiui 
 came in contact, and has been continued by Cartha- 
 ginian and Roman, by Jew and gentile, down to the 
 present day. Our art (except, porliap«, music) and 
 our science nvv. ihcj contributions of the Aryan; hut 
 the essence of our religion is derived from the 
 
f|i 
 
 62 
 
 THE INTERPRETERS OF GENESIS 
 
 AND THE INTERPRETERS OF NATURE. 
 
 63 
 
 Semite. In the eighth century b.c, m tiie heart of 
 a world of idolatrous polytheists, the Hebrew proph- 
 ets put forth a conception of religion which appears 
 to me to be as wonderful an inspiration of gemus as 
 the art of Pheidias or the science of Aristotle. 
 
 " And what doth the Lord require of thee, but to 
 do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly 
 
 with thy God r ^ ... f 
 
 If any so-called religion takes away from this great 
 
 saying of Micah, I think it wantonly mutilates, while 
 
 if it adds thereto, I think it obscures, the perfect 
 
 ideal of religion. , . ^ t 
 
 But what extent of knowledge, what acuteness of 
 scientific criticism, can touch this, if anyone possessed 
 of knowledge or acuteness could bo absurd enough 
 to make the attempt ? Will the progress of research 
 prove that justice is worthless and mercy hateful T 
 Wm it ever soften the bitter contrast between our 
 actions and our aspiiations, or show us the bounds of 
 the universe, and bid us say, " Go to, now we com- 
 prehend the infinite V 
 
 A faculty of wrath lay in those ancient Israehtes, 
 and surely the prophet's staff would have made swift 
 acquaintance with the head of the scholar who had 
 asked Micah whether, peradventuie, the Lord further 
 required of him an implicit behef in the accuracy of 
 the cosmogony of Genesis ! 
 
 What we are usually pleased to call rehgion now- 
 adays is, for the most part, HeUenized Judaism; and 
 not unfrequently the HeUenic element carries with it 
 a mighty remnant of old-world paganism and a great 
 infusion of the worst and weakest products of Greek 
 scientific speculation; while fragments of Persian and 
 
 Babylonian, or rather Accadian, mythology burden 
 the Judaic contribution to the common stock. 
 
 The antagonism of science is not to religion, but 
 to the heathen survivals and the bad phHosophy un- 
 der which rehgion herself is often weU-nigh crushed. 
 And, for my part, I trust that this antagonism will 
 never cease, but that to the end of time true science 
 will continue to fulfil one of her most beneficent 
 functions, that of relieving men from the burden of 
 false science which is imposed upon them in the name 
 
 of rehgion. 
 
 This is the work that M. ReviUe and men such as 
 he are doing for us; this is the work which his op- 
 ponents ai-e endeavoiing, consciously or uncon- 
 sciously, to hinder. T. H. Huxley. 
 
POSTSCRIPT TO SOLAR MYTHS. 
 
 65 
 
 .1 
 
 ?! 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 i 
 
 i; 
 
 « POSTSCIilPT TO SOLAR MYTHS. 
 
 A REPLY TO W. E. GLADSTONE. 
 BY F. MAX MULLER. 
 
 I jQnd it difficult, and should consider it almost dis- 
 courteous, to order the last revise of my article on 
 " Solar Myths " for press without saying a few words 
 in reply to Mr. Gladstone's essay on the " Dawn of 
 Creation and of Worship," published in the November 
 number of this Beview. INIi-. Gladstone's alignments, 
 it is true, are chiefly dii'ected against M. Eeville's 
 " Prolegom^nes de I'Histoire des Religions," a work 
 which I felt it an honor to introduce to the favorable 
 notice of the Enghsh pubhc by adding a small preface 
 to the Enghsh translation. Nor should I have 
 thought it incumbent upon myself, or respectful to 
 so eminent a theologian as M. Revnie has long proved 
 himself to be both as an active clergyman and as the 
 first professor of the science of rehgion at the College 
 de France, to step in between him and Mr. Glad- 
 stone, while these two eloquent pleaders ai'e discuss- 
 ing their own peculiar views on the origin of the 
 Pentateuch or on the exact meaning of certain con- 
 tested passages in the book of Genesis. 
 
 But when Mr. Gladstone jjroceeds to attack, with 
 what seems to me in some passages parliamentary 
 rather than academic eloquence, the fundamental piin- 
 ciples of comparative mythology, and more particu- 
 larly that theory which he calls Solarism, it might 
 show discretion indeed, but hardly valor, were I to 
 
 hide myself behind M. ReviUe, who has so boldly 
 come forward as the champion of a theory the pater- 
 nity of which I could not, and, if I could, I would 
 
 not deny. 
 
 Solarism, however, is used by Mr. Gladstone m a 
 sense very different from that in which I should use 
 it. He apphes it to a theory according to which all 
 mythology has a solar origin, all gods are solar gods, 
 all heroes solar heroes, all myths and legends but 
 half -forgotten stories about the sun as the giver o£ 
 hght and hfe, or as the lord of days and months and 
 seasons and years. IMine has been a much humbler 
 task, and I have never attempted more than to prove 
 ih2X certain portions of ancient mythology have a 
 directly solar origin. Nor have I ever done so except 
 in cases where, either by etymological analysis or by 
 a comparison of Greek and Romaa with Vedic myths, 
 I imagined I could make it clear that certain stories 
 which seemed urational or irreverent, when told of 
 gods such as Jupiter or ApoUo or Athene, became 
 perfectly inteUigible if accepted as they were told 
 originally of the sky or the sun or the dawn. I have 
 protested again and again against the theory that 
 there is but one key to unlock all the secret di'awers 
 of ancient mythology. As httle as the sun is the 
 whole of nature is aucient mythology wholly solar. 
 But as certainly as the sun, with all that is dependent 
 on it, forms the most prominent, half natural, and 
 half supernatural object in the thoughts of the ancient 
 and even of the modem world, are solar myths a most 
 important ingredient in the language, the traditions, 
 and the rehgion of the whole humaa race. If in 
 working out this theory my interpretation of passages 
 in Homer or in the Veda has been wrong, ii my ap- 
 
66 
 
 POSTSCRIPT TO SOLAR MYTHS. 
 
 POSTSCRIPT TO SOLAR MYTHS. 
 
 67 
 
 plication of phonetic rules has ever been inaccurate, 
 let it be proved. Nothing dehghts me more than 
 when I am proved to have been wrong, for in that 
 case I always carry away something that is worth 
 having. If, for instance, Mr. Gladstone or any other 
 Greek scholai* could prove that in Greek short e 
 without the spiritus asper can ever become the long 
 7f with the spiritus asper, then I should confess that 
 my protest against deriving the name of Hera from 
 ^ra, the earth, was futile, and I should as readily ac- 
 cept the origiual chthonic character of the wife of 
 Zeus as I should accept Mr. Gladstone's identification 
 of breakfast and dinner, provided always that he can 
 produce one single case from the whole of the French 
 language in which dt or dis (in diner or disner) rep- 
 resents an original dejeu (in dejeuner. That there 
 are chthonic elements in the character of Hera I 
 readily allow ; but that does not prove that one of her 
 names might not have been the heavenly or the brill- 
 iant goddess, just as in Latin she is called Juno, the 
 female counterpai't of Ju-piter, her heavenly consort. 
 Earth as well as heaven, nay, every part of nature, is 
 liable to mythological metamorphosis ; and I have 
 fried to show how many old sayings concerning 
 heaven, eaith, the sun, the moon, the stars, day and 
 night, months, seasons and years, rivers and mountains, 
 men and animals, the spirits of the departed, or even 
 mere abstractions, such as honor or virtue, have been 
 rolled up in time into that curious conglomerate of 
 ancient thought which, for want of a better name, we 
 call mythology. 
 
 This view I am prepared to defend with the same 
 lirm conviction with which I staited it nearly forty 
 vears ago. Nor do I see that Mi\ Gladstone's argu- 
 
 ments have shattered or even touched my old position^ 
 He maintains that in the Olympian mythology, such 
 as we find it in the Homeric poems, the Greek gods 
 are no longer mere representatives of physical 
 phenomena, but genuine nheanthromorphic" con- 
 ceptions. This is the very view which I have 
 defended, though I confess I have sometimes won- 
 dered whether the ancient popular poets had really 
 no suspicion whatever of the original character of 
 their gods, while some of the earhest Greek phi- 
 losophers were so fully conscious of it. But however 
 that may be, the Homeric mythology, as weU as the 
 Homeiic language, has surely its antecedents. Maiiy 
 of its anomalous legends and its irregular verbs did 
 Bot even spring into existence on Greek soil for they 
 can be traced in India and even in Iceland, though 
 certainly not, as Mr. Gladstone imphes (P^ge H), 
 in Egypt, still less in Palestine. It is with these 
 antecedents, with the prehistoric of Aryan mythology, 
 that comparative mythologists axe chiefly concerned, 
 and suiely m. Gladstone would be the last scholar 
 to be satisfied with merely superficial compansons. 
 There is a true radicalism in scholarship, too, which 
 despises all measures which do not go to the roots oi 
 thinj-s. Mr. Gladstone wai-ns us not to trust too 
 much to etymology ; he might as weU warn the ex- 
 plorer of Oxford clay not to beheve too much m that 
 sohd i?ranite which each honest digger will find, if 
 only he digs deep enough. Etymology represents 
 the prehistoric period in human language and human 
 thought, and the Hght which it has shed on later 
 periods is certainly not less important than he 
 lessons which geology and paleontology have added 
 to the study of mankind. As in the beautiful Campo 
 
68 
 
 POSTSCRIPT TO SOLAR MYTHS. 
 
 POSTSCHlPt TO &OLAR MYTHS. 
 
 69 
 
 m 
 
 Santo of Bologna we find, beneath the monuments 
 erected by the loving care of living mourners, tomb- 
 stones—discovered, one might fairly say, by the 
 divining rod and disinterred by the indefatigable 
 spade of Zannoni— which reveal to us the daily life 
 and the daily struggles, the hopes and fears, of races, 
 whom we call prehistoric, but who were once as tmly 
 historic as their conquerors and successors, whether 
 Umbrian, Etruscan, or Roman— the vast Aryan cem- 
 etery of language and myth, too, as explored by many 
 patient diggers, has surrendered tombstones which 
 tell us of the thoughts, of the faith and hope, of those 
 whose descendants we are, however difficult we find 
 it to understand their language and to think their 
 thoughts. Does IVIi'. Gladstone beheve that words 
 are ever without an etymology, or that myths are 
 ever without reason ? And, if not, does he think it is 
 of no importance to know why Zeus was first called 
 Zeus, or why Achilleus, like other Aryan heroes, was 
 beheved to be vuhierable in one point only 1 Mr. 
 Gladstone seems afraid that prehistoric ideas might 
 be transferred to historic times, and, speaking of the 
 future, he writes : *' Strange, indeed, will be the 
 effect of such a system, if applied to our own case at 
 some date in the far-off future ; for it will be shown 
 inter alia, that there were no priests, but only pres- 
 byters, in any portion of Western Chiistendom ; that 
 our dukes were simply generals leading us in war ; 
 that we broke our fast at eight in the evening (for 
 diner is but a compression of dejeuner) ; and even, 
 possibly, that one of the noblest and most famous 
 EngHsh houses pursued habitually the humble occu- 
 pation of a pig-driver." 
 
 I do not anticipate any such anachronisms; as httle 
 
 do I expect that future historians will mistake our 
 lords for bread-givers {hldf-ord) or our parliamentai-y 
 whips for pig-di'ivers. And yet every one of the 
 words which Mr. Gladstone quotes, if but rightly m- 
 terpreted, has some important lessons to teach those 
 who will come after us. 
 
 It is weU that they should know that originaUy 
 priests were not different from laymen, and that they 
 were weU satisfied with the simple title of presbyters 
 or elders, being elders not only in age, but in wis- 
 dom, self-denial, and in tolerance. 
 
 It is well that they should know, if it is so, that the 
 ancestor of one of the noblest and most famous 
 Enghsh houses was a pig-driver, if thus they may 
 leai-n that there was a time when a noble career was 
 open in England even to the humblest ranks. 
 
 It is well that they should know that dukes were 
 not always mere possessors of large wealth which 
 they had not earned themselves, but that origmally 
 they were in very deed leaders in battle, leaders m 
 thought, and ready to court the place of danger 
 whether against battahons or against the tumult of 
 vulgar error and prejudice. IVIr. Gladstone need not 
 be afraid that futui'e historians wiU ever mistake him 
 for a merely titular duke, though they will speak of 
 him as we do, as our leader, as a true Duca e Maes- 
 tro 'if not always against the tumult of vulgar error 
 and prejudice, yet, without fail, whenever any wrongs 
 had to be righted, effete privileges to be abolished, 
 and lessons of wisdom and moderation, however dis- 
 tasteful, to be taught to the strong and the weak, to 
 the rich and the poor. F. Max Muller. 
 
 Florence, November 7, 1885. 
 
PROEM TO GENESIS: A PLEA FOR A FAIR 
 
 TRIAL. 
 
 A KEPLY TO PROFESSOKS HUXLEY AND MULLEB. 
 
 BY W. E. GLADSTONE. 
 
 Vous avez une manure si amiable {Vannoncer les 
 phis mauvaises nouvelles, qu'elles perdefitpar Id de 
 leurs d'es agremeiit* So wi'ote, de haut en bas,^ the 
 Duchess of York to Beau Brummell, sixty or sev- 
 enty years back (Life, by Jesse, i, 260) ; and so write 
 I, de bas en haut.X to the two very eminent champions 
 who have in the Nineteenth Century of December 
 entered appeai'ances on behalf of Dr. EeviUe's I'role- 
 ffom^nes, with a decisiveness of tone, at aU events, 
 which admits of no mistake— Professor Huxley and 
 Professor Max Mtiller. My first duty is to acknowl- 
 edge in both cases the abundant courtesy and 
 indulgence with which I am personally treated. And 
 my first thought is that, where even disagreement is 
 made in a manner pleasant, it wiU be a duty to search 
 and see if there be any points of agreement or ap- 
 proximation, which will be more pleasant stiU. This 
 indulgence and courtesy deserves in the case of Pro- 
 fessor Huxley a special warmth of acknowledgment, 
 because, while thus more than liberal to the individ- 
 ual, he has for the class of ReconcHers, in which he 
 places me, an unconcealed and unmeasured scorn. 
 These are they who impose upon man a burden of 
 
 "T^u have so charming a manner of telling the worst news 
 that it loses its disagreeahleness. 
 t The high to the low. tThe low to the high. 
 
 PEOEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 71 
 
 false science in the name ofreligionr^^<^ dictate as 
 a divine command "an impUcit belief in the cos^ 
 mogony of Genesis ; " and who " stir unmsdom and 
 fanaticism to their depths." Judgments so severe 
 should surely be supported by citation orot^er evi- 
 dence, for which I look in vain. To some they might 
 suggest the idea that passion may sometimes un- 
 aw^es. intrude even withm the precincts of the 
 temple of science. But I admit that a greater mas er 
 of his art may well be provoked, when he finds his 
 materials tumbled about by incapable hands and may 
 mistake for irreverence what is only want of skUL 
 
 While acknowledging the gieat courtesy with 
 ^vhich Professor Huxley treats his antagomsts indi- 
 vidually, and whUe simply listening to his denuncia- 
 tions of the Eeconcilers as one hstens to distan 
 thunders, with a sort of sense that after all they wiU 
 do no great harm, I must presume to animadvert 
 with considerable freedom upon his method; upon 
 the sweeping character of his advocacy ; upon his 
 perceptible exaggeration of points m controversy, 
 upon his mode of dealing with authorities ; and upon 
 the curious fallacy of substitution by which he enables 
 himself to found the widest proscnpUons of the 
 claim of the book of Genesis to contain a divme rec- 
 ord upon a reasoned impeachment of its scientific 
 a<;curacy in, as I shall show, a single particular. 
 
 As to the first of these topics, nothing can be more 
 equitable than Professor Huxley's intention to mter- 
 vene as a " science proctor " in that part of tie aeba^ 
 raised by M. R^viUe, " to which he proposes to 
 xXct his observations." This is the part on 
 which he proposes in his first page to report as a 
 student-and every reader wiU inwardly add, as one 
 
72 
 
 PROEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 of the most eminent among all students — of natural 
 science. Now this is not the cosmogonical part of 
 the account in Genesis. On Genesis i, 1-19, contain- 
 ing the cosmogony, he does not report as an expert, 
 but refers us to " those who are specially conversant 
 with the sciences involved ; " adding his opinion about 
 their opinions. Yet in his second page, without 
 making any reference to this broad distinction, he at 
 once forgets the just limitation of his first, and om* 
 '*proctor for science " pronounces on M. Reville's 
 estimate, not of the fourfold succession in the strati- 
 fication of the earth, but of "the account of the 
 creation given in the book of Genesis," that its terms 
 are as " respectful as in his judgment they are just." 
 Thus the proctorship for science, justly assumed 
 for matters within his province as a student, is 
 rather hastily extended to matters which he himself 
 declares to be beyond it. In truth it will appear 
 that as there are many roads to heaven with one end- 
 ing, so, provided only a man arrives at the conclusion 
 that the great Proem of Genesis lends no support to 
 the argument for revelation, it does not much matter 
 how he gets there. For in this "just" account of the 
 creation I have shown that M. Reville supports his 
 accusation of scientific error by three pai'ticulars : 
 that in the first he contradicts the judgment of schol- 
 ai*8 on the sense of the original ; in the second ho 
 both misquotes (by inadvertence) the tenns of the 
 text, and overlooks the distinction made so palpable 
 (if not earher) half a centuiy ago, by the work of Di\ 
 Buckland (Bridgewater Treatise, vol. i, pp. 19-28), be- 
 tween hara and asa; while the third proceeds on the 
 assumption that there could be no light to produce veg- 
 etation, except Hght derived from a visible sun. These 
 
 PROEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 73 
 
 thi-ee charges constitute the head and front of M. 
 Reville's indictment against the cosmogony ; and the 
 fatal flaws in them, without any notice or defense, 
 are now all taken under the mantle of our science 
 proctor, who returns to the chai'ge at the close of his 
 article, and again dismisses with comprehensive honor 
 as " wise and moderate " what he had ushered in as 
 reverent and just. So much for the sweeping, undis- 
 ciiminatmg character of an advocacy which, in a 
 scientific waiter, we might perhaps have expected to 
 be carefully limited and defined. 
 
 I take next the exaggeration which appears to me 
 to mark unhappHy Professor Huxley's method. Un- 
 der this head I include all needless multiplication of 
 points of controversy, whether in the form of over- 
 stating differences, or understating agreements, with 
 
 an adversary. 
 
 As I have hved for more than half a century in an 
 atmosphere of contention, my stock of controversial 
 fire has perhaps become abnormally low ; while Pro- 
 fessor Huxley, who has been inhabiting the Elysian 
 regions of science, the edita docirind sapihitum 
 templa serena (Lucr. ii, 8), may be enjoying all the 
 freshness of an unjaded appetite. Certainly one of 
 the lessons hfe has taught me is that where there is 
 known to be a common object, the pursuit of truth, 
 there should also be a studious desii'e to interpret the 
 adversary in the best sense his words Tvill f aii'ly beai' ; 
 to avoid whatever widens the breach ; and to make 
 the most of whatever tends to naiTOW it. These I 
 hold to be part of the laws of knightly tournament. 
 
 I do not, therefore, fully understand why Professor 
 Huxley makes it a matter of objection to me that, in 
 rebuking a ^rnier who had treated evolution whole- 
 
74 
 
 PROEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 PROEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 75 
 
 If 
 
 sale as a novelty in the world, I cited a few old 
 instances of moral and historical evolution only, and 
 did not extend my front by examining English sages 
 and the founders of Greek philosophy. Nor why, 
 when I have spoken of physical evolution as of a thing 
 to me most acceptable, but not yet in its rigor (to my 
 knowledge) proved, we have only the rather niggardly 
 acknowledgment that I have made " the most oblique 
 admissions of a possible value." Thus it is when 
 agreement is threatened, but far otherwise when 
 differences ai'e to be blazoned. When I have spoken 
 of the succession of orders in the most general terms 
 only, this is declared a sharply divided succession in 
 which the last species of one cannot overlap the first 
 species of another. "WTien I have pleaded on simple 
 grounds of reasoning for the supposition of a sub- 
 stantial correspondence between Genesis i and science, 
 have waived all questions of a verbal inspiration, all 
 question whether the whole of the statements can 
 now be made good, I am treated as one of those who 
 impose " in the name of religion " as a divine requisi- 
 tion " an implicit belief in the accuracy of the cos- 
 mogony of Genesis," and who deserve to have their 
 heads broken in consequence. 
 
 I have urged nothing " in the name of rehgion." 
 I have sought to adduce probable evidence that a 
 guidance more than human lies within the great 
 Proem of the book of Genesis, just as I might adduce 
 probable evidence to show that Francis did or did not 
 write Jimius, that William the Third was or was not 
 responsible for the massacre of Glencoe ; I have ex- 
 pressly excepted detail, and have stated that in my 
 inquiiy '' the authority of scripture cannot be alleged 
 in proof of a primitive revelation." I object to all 
 
 these exaggerations of charge, as savoring of the 
 spirit of the Inquisition, and as restraints on hterary 
 
 freedom. 
 
 My next obsei-vation as to the professor s method 
 
 refers to his treatment of authorities. 
 
 In one passage (p. 46) Mr. Huxley expresses his re- 
 gret that I have not named my authority for the state- 
 ment made concerning the fourfold succession, in order 
 that he might have transferred his attentions from 
 myself to a new delinquent. Now,' pubUshed works 
 ai-e (as I may show) a fair subject for reference. But 
 as to pointing out any person who might have favored 
 me with his views in private correspondence, I own 
 that I should have some scruple in handmg him over 
 to be piUoried as a Reconciler, and to be pelted with 
 charges of unwisdom and fanaticism, which I myseH, 
 from long use, am perfectly content to bear. 
 
 I did refer to three great and famous names: 
 those of Cuvier, Sir John Herschel, and WheweU. 
 Mr. Huxley speaks of me as having quoted them m 
 support of my case on the fourfold succession; and 
 at the same time notices that I admitted Cuvier not 
 to be a recent authority, which in geology proper is, 
 I beUeve, nearly equivalent to saying he is, for par- 
 ticulai's, no authority at all. This recital is singu- 
 lai'ly inaccurate. I cited them, not with reference to 
 the fourfold succession, but generally for " the gen- 
 eral accordance of the Mosaic cosmogony with the 
 results of modem inquiry," and particularly in con- 
 nection with the nebular hypothesis. It is the cos- 
 mogony (Gen. i, 1-19), not the fourfold succession, 
 which was the sole object of Reville's attack, and the 
 main object of my defense, and which is the largest 
 portion of the whole subject. WiU Mr. Huxley vent- 
 
76 
 
 i>roem to genesis. 
 
 ui-e to say that Cuvier is an unavailable authority, or 
 that Herschel and WTiewell are other than great and 
 venerable names, with reference to the cosmogony? 
 Yet he has quietly set them aside without notice ; 
 and they with many more are inclusively bespattered 
 with the charges which he has launched against the 
 pestilent tribe of Keconcilers. 
 
 My fourth and last observation on the " method" 
 of Professor Huxley is that, after discussing a part, 
 and that not the most considerable pait, of the Proem 
 of Genesis, he has broadly pronounced upon the 
 whole. This is a mode of reasoning which logic re- 
 jects, and which I presume to savor more of hcense 
 than of science. The foui'fold succession is con- 
 demned w4th ai-gument; the cosmogony is thrown 
 into the bargain. True, ]VIi\ Huxley refers in a single 
 sentence to three detached points of it partially 
 touched in my observations (p. 50). But all my ax- 
 gument, the chief argument of my paper, leads up to 
 the nebular or rotary hypothesis. This hypothesis, 
 with the authorities cited — of whom one is the author 
 of " Yestiges of Creation " — is inclusively condemned, 
 and without a word vouchsafed to it. 
 
 I shall presently express my gratitude for the scien- 
 tific pait of Mr. Huxley's paper. But there are two 
 sides to the question. The whole matter at issue is : 
 1. A compai-ison between the probable meaning of 
 the Proem to Genesis and the results of cosmologicaJ 
 and geological science ; 2. The question whether this 
 comparison favors or does not favor the belief that 
 an element of divine knowledge— knowledge which 
 was not accessible to the simple action of the human 
 faculties— is conveyed to us in this Proem. It is not 
 enough to be accurate in one term of a compaiison, 
 
 PROEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 77 
 
 unless we are accurate in both. A master of Enghsh 
 may speak the vilest and most blundering French. 
 I do not think ]VIi\ Huxley has ever endeavored to 
 understand what is the idea, what is the intention, 
 which his opponent ascribes to the Mosaic writer, or 
 what is the conception which his opponent forms of 
 the weighty word Bevelation. He holds the writer 
 responsible for scientific precision ; I look for nothing 
 of the kind, but assign to him a statement general, 
 which admits exceptions ; popular, which aims mainly 
 at producing moral impressions ; summary, which can 
 not but be open to more or less of cnticism in detail. 
 He thinks it is a lectui'e. I think it is a sermon. He 
 desciibes living creatui'es by structure. The Mosaic 
 writer describes them by habitat. Both I suppose 
 ai-e right. I suppose that description by habitat 
 would°be unavailing for the purposes of science. I 
 feel sui-e that description by structure, such as the 
 geologists supply, would have been unavaihng for the 
 purpose of summary teaching with religious aim. 
 Of Revelation I will speak by and by. 
 
 In order to institute with profit the comparison 
 now in view, the very first thing necessary is to de- 
 termine, so fax as the subject-matter allows, what it 
 was that the Pentateuchal or Mosaic writer designed 
 to convey to the minds of those for whom he wrote. 
 The case is, in more ways than one, I conceive, the 
 direct reverse of that which the professor has alleged. 
 It is not bringing Science to be tried at the bar of 
 Religion. It is bringing Rehgion, so far as it is rep- 
 resented by this pai't of the holy scriptures, to be 
 tried at the bar of Science. The indictment against 
 the Pentateuchal writer is, that he has ^vritten what 
 is scientifically untrue. We have to find then in the 
 
78 
 
 PROEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 first place what it is that he has written, according to 
 the text, not an inerrable text, as it now stands be- 
 fore us. . />, • 
 
 First, I assume there is no dispute that in Genesis 
 i, 20-27, he has represented a fourfold sequence or 
 succession of living organisms. Aware of my own 
 inability to define in any tolerable manner the classes 
 of these organisms, I recorted to the general phrases 
 water - population, air - popu:ation, land - population. 
 The immediate purpose of these phrases was not to 
 correspond with the classifications of Science, but to 
 bring together in brief and convenient form the 
 larger and more vai'ied modes of expression used m 
 verses 20, 21, 24, 25, of the chapter. 
 
 I think, however, I have been to blame for havmg 
 brought into a contact with science, which was not 
 sufficiently defined, terms that have no scientific 
 meaning: water-population, air-population, and (two- 
 fold) land-population. I shall now discai'd them and 
 shall substitute others, which have the double advan^ 
 tage of being used by geologists, and perhaps of ex- 
 pressing better than my phi-ases what was m the 
 mind of the Mosaic writer. These aie the words : 
 1 fishes; 2, birds; 3, mammals ;* 4, man. By all, I 
 think it will be felt that the first object is to know 
 what 'the Pentateuchal vniter means. The relation 
 of his meaning to science is essential, but, m orderly 
 argumentation, subsequent. The matter now before 
 us is a matter of reasonable and probable mterpreta- 
 tion What is the proper key to this hermeneutic 
 work ? In my opinion it is to be found in a just esti- 
 
 *I^vish to be understood as speaking here of the higher or 
 ordinary mammals, which alone I assume to have been prob- 
 ably known to the Mosaic writer. 
 
 PROEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 79 
 
 mate of the purpose with which the author wrote, and. 
 with which the book of Genesis was, in this part of 
 it, either composed or compiled. 
 
 If this be the true point of departure, it opens up 
 a question of extreme interest, at which I have but 
 faintly glanced in my paper, and which is nowhere 
 touched in the reply to me. WTiat proper place has 
 such a composition as the first chapter of Genesis in 
 such a work as the scriptures of the Old Testament 1 
 Theyai-e indisputably written with a religious aim;; 
 and their sub-matter is rehgious. We may describe 
 this aim in various ways. For the present purpose, 
 suffice it to say they are conversant with behef in 
 God, with inculcation of duties founded en that 
 behef, with history and prophecy obviously having it 
 for their central point. But this chapter, at the 
 least down to verse 25, and perhaps throughout, 
 stands on a different ground. In concise and rapid 
 outhne, it traverses a vast region of physics. It is 
 easy to understand St. Paul when he speaks of the 
 world as beaiing witness to God (Acts xiv, 17 ; Ko- 
 tnans i, 20). AMiat he said was capable of being ver- 
 ified or tested by the common experimental knowl- 
 edge of all who heard him. Of it, of oui- savior's 
 mention of the hhes— and may it not be said gener- 
 ally of the references in scriptm*e to natural knowl- 
 edge ?— they are at once accounted for by the posi- 
 tions in which they stand. But this first chapter of 
 Genesis professes to set out in its own way a 
 large and comprehensive scheme of physical facts: 
 the transition from chaos to kosmos, from the inam- 
 mate to hfe, from hfe in its lower orders to man. 
 Being knowledge of an order anterior to the creation 
 of Adamic man, it was beyond verification, as bemg 
 
80 
 
 PROEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 beyond experience. As a physical exposition in min- 
 iature, it stands alone in the sacred record. And, as 
 this singular composition is sohtary in the Bible, so 
 it seems to be hardly less sohtary in the sa^^red books 
 of the world. ^' The only important resemblance of 
 any ancient cosmogony with the scriptural accouiit, 
 is to be found in the Persian or Zoroastrian ;" this 
 Bishop Browne (Note on Gen. i, 5) proceeds to ac- 
 count for on the foUowing among other grounds: 
 that Zoroaster was probably brought into contact 
 with the Hebrews, and even perhaps with the prophet 
 Daniel ; a supposition which supplies the groundwork 
 of a recent and remai'kable romance, not proceeding 
 from a Chiistian school (" Zoroaster," by F. M. Craw- 
 ford. Macmillan, 1885). Again, the Proem does not 
 carry any Egyptian mai'ks. In the twenty-seven 
 thousand lines of Homer, archaic as they are and ever 
 turning to the past, there is, I think, only one (H. 
 vii 99) which belongs to physiology. The beautiful 
 sketch of a cosmogony by Ovid (Ovid, Metam i, 
 1-38) seems in considerable degi'ee to follow the Mo- 
 saic outlme ; but it was composed at a time when the 
 treasure of the Hebrew records had been for two 
 centuiies imparted, through the Septuagint, to the 
 
 Aryan nations. 
 
 Professor Huxley, if I understand him rightly, con- 
 siders the Mosaic witer, not perhaps as having 
 intended to embrace the whole truth of science m the 
 province of geology, but at least as hable to be con- 
 victed of scientific worthlessness if his language wnl 
 not stand the test of this construction. Thus the 
 - water-population" is to include " the innumerable 
 hosts of marine invertebrated animals." It seems to 
 me that these discoveries, taken as a whole and also 
 
 PROEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 81 
 
 taken in all their parts and particulars, do not afford 
 a proper, I 'mean a rational, standard for the inter- 
 pretation of the Mosaic writer ; that the recent dis- 
 covery of the Siluiian scorpion, a highly organized 
 animal, is of httle moment either way to the question 
 now before us ;* that it is not an account of the ex- 
 tinct species which we should consider the Mosaic 
 writer as intending to convey; that while his word^ 
 are capable of covering them, as the oikoumen^ of 
 the New Testament cover the red and yellow man, 
 the rules of rational construction recommend and re- 
 quu-e our assignmg to them a more limited meaning, 
 which I will presently describe. 
 
 Another material point in Professor Huxley's inter- 
 pretation appears to me to lie altogether beyond the 
 natural force of the words, and to be of an arbitrary 
 chai-acter. He includes in it the proposition that the 
 production of the respective orders was affected dm'ing 
 each of " three distinct and successive periods of 
 time; and only during those periods of time;" or 
 agam', in one of these, '' and not at any other of 
 these';" as, in a series of games at chess, one is done 
 before another begins; or as in a " march-past," one 
 regiment goes before another comes. No doubt there 
 may be a degree of literalism which will even suffice to 
 show that, as " as every winged fowl" was produced on 
 the fourth day of the Hexaemeron, therefore the birth 
 of new fowls continually is a contradiction to the text 
 of Genesis. But does not the equity of common 
 sense requke us to understand simply that the order 
 
 ♦Because my argument in no way requires universal ac- 
 cordance, wliat bearing the scorpion may have on any current 
 scientific hypothesis, it is not for me to say. 
 
82 
 
 PROEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 PROEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 83 
 
 of " winged fowl," whatever that may mean, took its 
 place in creation at a certain time, and th'at from that 
 time its various component classes were in course of 
 production? Is it not the fact that in synoptical 
 statements of successive events, distributed in time, 
 for the sake of producing easy and clear impressions, 
 general truth is aimed at, and periods ai*e allowed to 
 overlap 1 If, with such a view, we aiTange the schools 
 of Greek philosophy in numerical order, according to 
 the dates of their inception, we do not mean that one 
 expired before another was founded. If the archaeol- 
 ogist describes to us as successive in time the ages of 
 stone, bronze, and iron,* he certainly does not mean 
 that no kinds of stone implement were invented after 
 bronze began, or no kinds of bronze after iron began. 
 When Thucydides said that the ancient limited mon- 
 archies were succeeded by tyrannies, he did not mean 
 that all the monarchs died at once, and a set of ty- 
 rants, like Deucalion's men, rose up and took their 
 places. Woe be, I should say, to anyone who tries 
 summarily to present in series the phases of ancient 
 facts, if they are to be judged under the rule of Pro- 
 fessor Huxley. 
 
 Proceeding, on what I hold to be open ground, to 
 state my own idea of the tme key to the meaning of 
 the Mosaic record, I suggest that it was intended to 
 give moral, and not scientific, instruction to those for 
 
 *I use this enumeration to illustrate an argument, but I 
 must, even in so using it, enter a caveat against its particu- 
 lars. I do not conceive it to be either probable or historical 
 that, as a general rule, mankind passed from the use of stone; 
 implements to the use of bronze, a composite metal, witliout 
 passing through some intermediate (longer or shorter) period 
 of copper. 
 
 whom it was written. That for the Adamic race, re- 
 cent on the earth, and young in faculties, the tradi- 
 tions here incorporated, which were probably lar 
 older than the book, had a natural and a highly moral 
 pui-pose in conveying to their mmds a hvely sense of 
 the wise and loving care with which the almighty 
 father, who demanded much at theu- hands, had be- 
 forehand given them much, in the provident adapta- 
 tion of the worid to be theu- dwelHng-place, aud of 
 the created orders of theii' use and mle. It appears 
 to me that, given the very nature of the scriptures, 
 this is clearly the rational point of view. If it is so, 
 then it foUows that just as the tradition described 
 eai'th, au', and heaven in the manner in which they 
 superficially presented themselves to the daily expe- 
 riences of man — not scientifically, but 
 
 The common air, the sun, the skies— 
 
 so he spoke of fishes, of birds, of beasts, of what man 
 was most concerned with ; and, last in the series, of 
 man himself, lai'gely and generally, as facts of his ex- 
 perience ; from which great moral lessons of wonder, 
 gratitude, and obedience were to be deduced, to aid 
 him in the great work of his life training. 
 
 If further proof be wanting, that what the Mosaic 
 writer had in his mind were the creatures with which 
 Adamic man was conversant, we have it in the direct 
 form of verse 28, which gives to man for meat the 
 fruit of every seed-yielding tree, and every seed- 
 yielding herb, and the dominion of every beast, fowl, 
 and reptile hving. There is here a marked absence 
 of reference to any but the then Hving species. 
 
 This, then, is the key to the meaning of the book, 
 and of the tradition, if, as I suppose, it was before 
 
 .-j^*.,^^^,, 
 
82 
 
 PBOEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 of winged fowl," whatever that may mean, took its 
 place m creation at a certain time, and that from that 
 tune Its various component classes were in course of 
 production? Is it not the fact that in synoptical 
 statements of successive events, distributed in time 
 for the saie of producing easy and clear impressions' 
 general truth is aimed at, and periods are allowed to 
 overlap t If, with such a view, we arrange the schools 
 of Greek philosophy in numerical order, according to 
 the dates of their inception, we do not mean that one 
 expu-ed before another was founded. If the archmol- 
 ogist describes to us as successive in time the ages of 
 stone, bronze, and iron,* he certainly does not mean 
 Uiat no kmds of stone implement were invented after 
 Wze began, or no kinds of bronze after iron began, 
 men Thucydides said that the ancient limited mon- 
 archies were succeeded by tynmnies, he did not mean 
 that all the monarchs died at once, and a set of ty- 
 rants, hke DeucaKon's men, rose up and took their 
 p^es. Woe be, I should say, to anyone who tries 
 summarJy to present in series the phases of ancient 
 facts. If they are to be judged under the rule of Pro- 
 lessor Huxley. 
 
 Proceeding, on what I hold to be open ground, to 
 state my own idea of the true key to the meaning of 
 the Mosaic record, I suggest that it was intended to 
 givemoral, and not scientific, instruction to those for 
 
 *I use this enumeration to illustrate an argument but I 
 
 ars I do not conceive ,t to be either probable or historical 
 
 hat as a general rule, mankind passed from the use of s one 
 
 implements to the use of bronze, a composite metal, without 
 
 PROEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 83 
 
 whom it was written. That for the Adamic race, re- 
 cent on the earth, and young in faculties, the tradi- 
 tions here incorporated, which were probably far 
 older than the book, had a natural and a highly moral 
 purpose in conveying to their minds a Hvely sense of 
 the wise and loving care with which the almighty 
 father, who demanded much at their hands, had be- 
 forehand given them much, in the provident adapta- 
 tion of the world to be their dwelhng-place, and of 
 the created orders of their use and nile. It appears 
 to me that, given the very nature of the scriptures, 
 this is clearly the rational point of view. If it is so, 
 then it follows that just as the tradition described 
 earth, air, and heaven in the manner in which they 
 superficially presented themselves to the daily expe- 
 riences of man — not scientifically, but 
 
 The common air, the sun, the skies— 
 
 so he spoke of fishes, of birds, of beasts, of what man 
 was most concerned with ; and, last in the series, of 
 man himself, largely and generally, as facts of his ex- 
 perience ; from which great moral lessons of wonder, 
 gratitude, and obedience were to be deduced, to aid 
 him in the great work of his life training. 
 
 If further proof be wanting, that what the Mosaic 
 writer had in his mind were the creatures with which 
 Adamic man was conversant, we have it in the direct 
 form of verse 28, which gives to man for meat the 
 fruit of every seed-yielding tree, and every seed- 
 yielding herb, and the dominion of every beast, fowl, 
 and reptile Hving. There is here a marked absence 
 of reference to any but the then Hving species. 
 
 This, then, is the key to the meaning of the book, 
 and of the tradition, if, as I suppose, it was before 
 
84 
 
 PBOEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 the book, which seems to me to offer the most prob- 
 able, and therefore the rational, guide to its interpret 
 tation. The question we shaU have to face is whether 
 this statement so understood, this majestic and 
 touching lesson of the childhood of Adamic man, 
 stands in such a relation to scientific truth, as far as 
 it is now known, as to give warrant to the inference 
 that the guidance under which it was composed was 
 more than that of faculties merely human, at that 
 stage of development, and likewise of information, 
 which belonged to the childhood of humanity. 
 
 We have, then, before us one term of the desired 
 comparison. Let us now turn to the other. 
 
 And here my first duty is to render my grateful 
 thanks to Professor Huxley for having corrected 
 my either erroneous or superannuated assumption as 
 to the state of scientific opinion on the second and 
 third terms of the fourfold succession of life. As 
 one probable doctor sufficed to make an opinion 
 probable, so the dissent of this eminent man would 
 of itself overthrow and pulverize my proposition that 
 there was a scientific consensus as to a sequence like 
 that of Genesis in the production of animal hfo, as 
 between fishes, birds, mamm'als, and man. I shaU 
 compare the text of Genesis with geological state- 
 ments ; but shall make no attempt, unless this be an 
 attempt, to profit by a consensus of geologists. 
 
 I suppose it to be admitted on all bauds that no 
 perfectly comprehensive and complete correspond- 
 ence can be estabhshed between the terms of the 
 Mosaic text and modern discovery. No one, for in- 
 stance, could conclude from it that which appears to 
 be generaUy recognized, that a great reptile-age 
 would be revealed by the mesozoic rocks. 
 
 PROEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 85 
 
 I 
 
 Yet I think readers who have been swept away by 
 the torrent of Mr. Huxley^s denunciations will feel 
 some surprise when on di^awing summarily into Hne 
 the main allegations, and especially this ruling order 
 of the Proem, they see how small a part of them is 
 brought into question by Mr. Huxley, and to how 
 large an extent they ai'e favored by the tendencies, 
 presumptions, and even conclusions of scientific in- 
 quiry. 
 
 First, as to the cosmogony, or the formation of 
 the earth and the heavenly bodies — 
 
 1. The first operation recorded in Genesis appears 
 to be the formation of light. It is detached, appar- 
 ently, from the waste or formless elemental mass 
 (verses 2-5), which is left relatively daik by its with- 
 drawal. 
 
 2. Next we hear of the existence of vapor, and of 
 it3 condensation into water on the surface of the 
 earth (verses 6-10). Vegetation subsequently begins : 
 but this belongs rather to geology than to cosmogony 
 (verses 11, 12). 
 
 3. In a new period, the heavenly bodies are de- 
 clared to be fully formed and visible, dividing the 
 day from night (verses 14-18). 
 
 Under the guidance particularly of Dr. Whewell, I 
 have refeiTed to the nebular hypothesis as confirma- 
 tory of this account. 
 
 Mr. Huxley has not either denied the hypothesis, 
 or argued against it. But I turn to Phillips's " Man- 
 ual of Geology," edited and adapted by Mr. Seeley 
 and Mr. Etheridge (1885). It has a section in vol. i 
 (pp. 15-19) on " Modem Speculations Concerning 
 the Origin of the Eaith." 
 
 The first agent here noticed as contributing to the 
 
 /^ 
 
86 
 
 PROEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 PROEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 87 
 
 work of production is the " gas hydrogen in a burn- 
 ing state," which now forms the enveloping portion 
 of the sun's atmosphere ; whence we ai'e told the in- 
 ference arises that the earth also was once " incan- 
 descent at its surface," and that its rocks may have 
 been "products of combustion." Is not this repre- 
 sentation of hght with heat for its ally, as the first 
 element in this speculation, remaikably accordant 
 with the opening of the Proem to Genesis? 
 
 Next it appeal's that " the product of tliis combus- 
 tion is vapor," which with diminished heat condenses 
 into water, and eventually accumulates "in de- 
 pressions on the sun's surface so as to form oceans 
 and seas." " It is at least probable that the eaiih 
 has passed through a phase of this kind." "The 
 other planets are apparently more or less hke the 
 earth in possessing atmospheres and seas." Is there 
 not here a remarkable concurrence with the second 
 great act of the cosmogony ? 
 
 Plainly as I suppose it is agreeable to these sup- 
 positions that, as vapor gi'adually passes into water, 
 and the atmosphere is cleared, the full adaptation of 
 sun and moon by visibility for their functions should 
 come in due sequence, as it comes in Gen. i, 14-18. 
 
 Pursuing its subject, the "Manual" proceeds 
 (p. 17) : " This consideration leads up to what has 
 been called the nebular hypothesis," which " supposes 
 that, before the stars existed, the materials of which 
 they consist were diffused in the heavens in a state of 
 vapor." The text then proceeds to describe how 
 local-centers of condensation might throw off rings, 
 these rings break into planets, and the planets, under 
 conditions of sufficient force, repeat the process, and 
 
 thus produce sateUites like those of Saturn, or like 
 the moon. 
 
 I therefore think that, so far as cosmogony is con- 
 cerned, the effect of IVIr. Huxley's paper is not by 
 any means to leave it as it was, but to leave it 
 materially fortified by the " Manual of Geology," which 
 I understand to be a standard of authority at the 
 present time. 
 
 Turning now to the region of that science, I 
 understand^ the main statements of Genesis, in suc- 
 cessive order of time, but without any measurement 
 of its divisions, to be as follows : 
 
 1. A period of land, anterior to all life (verses 9, 
 10). 
 
 2. A period of vegetable life, anterior to animal 
 life (verses 11, 12.) 
 
 3. A period of animal life, in the order of fishes 
 (verse 20). 
 
 4. Another stage of animal life, in the order of 
 birds. 
 
 5. Another, in the order of beasts (24, 25). 
 
 6. Last of all, man (verses 26, 27). 
 
 Here is a chain of six links, attached to a previous 
 chain of three. And I think it not a httle remarkable 
 that of this entire succession, the only step directly 
 challenged is that of numbers four and five, which 
 Mr. Huxley is inclined rather to reverse. He admits 
 distinctly the seniority of fishes. How came that 
 seniority to be set down here ? He admits as prob- 
 able upon present knowledge, in the person of Homo 
 sapiens^ the juniority of man. How came this junior- 
 ity to be set down here? He proceeds indeed to 
 describe an opposite opinion concerning man as hold- 
 ing exactly the same rank as the one to which he had 
 
88 
 
 1*K0EM TO GEXESIS. 
 
 PROEM TO aENESIS. 
 
 given an apparent sanction. As I do not precisely 
 understand the bearing of the terms he uses, I pass 
 them by, and I shall take the Hberty of referring 
 presently to the latest authorities, which he has him''- 
 self suggested that I should consult. But I add to 
 the questions I have just put this other inquiry: 
 How came the Mosaic writer to place the fishes and 
 the men in their true relative positions not only to 
 one another, and not only to the rest of the animal 
 succession, but in a definite and that a true relation 
 of tune to the origin of the first plaut-Hfe, and to the 
 colossal operations by which the earth was fitted for 
 them aU ? Mr. Huxley knows very well that it would 
 be in the highest degree irrational to ascribe this 
 correct distribution to the doctrine of chances ; nor 
 will the stone of Sisyphus of itself constitute a suffi- 
 cient answer to inquiries which are founded, not upon 
 a fanciful attempt to equate every word of the Proem 
 with every dictum of science, but upon those princi- 
 ples of probable reasoning by which aU rational hves 
 are and must be guided. 
 
 I find the latest pubHshed authority on geology in 
 the second or Mr. Etheridge's volume of the " Man- 
 ual " of Professor PhiUips, and by this I will now 
 proceed to test the sixfold series which I have vent- 
 ured upon presenting. 
 
 First, however, looking back for a moment to a 
 work, obviously of the highest authority (Paleontology, 
 by Richard Owen (now Sir Richard Owen, K.C B ) 
 Second edition, p. 5, 1861), on the geology of its day, 
 I find m it a table of the order of appearance of 
 animal hf e upon the earth, which, beginning with the 
 oldest, gives us — 
 
 89 
 
 1. Invertebrates, 4. Birds, 
 
 2. Fishes, 5. Mammals, 
 
 3. Reptiles, 6. Man. 
 
 I omit all reference to specifications, and speak 
 only of the principal lines of division. 
 
 In the Phillips-Etheridge " Manual," beginning as 
 before with the oldest, I find the following arrange- 
 ment, given partly by statement, and partly by 
 diagram. 
 
 1. " The Azoic or Archaean time of Dana ; " called 
 Pre-Cambrian by other physicists (pp. 3, 5). 
 
 2. A commencement of plant Hfe indicated by 
 Dana as anterior to invertebrate animal Hfe ; long 
 anterior to the vertebrate forms, which alone are 
 mentioned in Genesis (pp. 4, 5). 
 
 3. Three periods of invertebrate life. 
 
 4. Age of fishes. 
 6. Age of reptiles. 
 
 6. Age of mammals, much less remote. 
 
 7. Age of man, much less remote than mammals. 
 As to birds, though they have not a distinct and 
 
 separate age assigned them, the " Manual " (vol. i, 
 ch. XXV, pp. 511-20) suppUes us very clearly with 
 their place in " the. succession of animal life." We 
 are here furnished with the following series, after the 
 fishes. 1. Fossil reptiles (p. 512); 2. Ornithosauria 
 (p. 517) ; they were " flying animals, which combined 
 the characters of reptiles with those of birds;" 
 3. The first birds of the secondary rocks with 
 "feathers in all respects similar to those of existing 
 birds " (p. 518) ; 4. Mammals (p. 520). 
 
 I have been permitted to see in proof another 
 statement from an authority still more recent, Pro- 
 fessor Prestwich, which is now passing through 
 
90 
 
 l>llOElrf TO GENESIS. 
 
 the press. In it (pp. 80, 81) I find the foUowing 
 seniority assigned to the orders which I here name : 
 
 1. Plants (cryptogamous), 4. Mammals, 
 
 2. Fishes, 5. Man. 
 
 3. Birds, 
 
 It will now, I hope, be observed that, according to 
 the probable intention of the Mosaic TVTiter, these five 
 orders enumerated by him coiTespond with the state 
 of geological knowledge presented to us by the most 
 recent authorities in this sense ; that the origins of 
 these orders respectively have the same succession as 
 is assigned in Genesis to those representatives of the 
 orders, which alone were probably known to the ex- 
 perience of Adamic man. My fourfold succession 
 thus grows into a fivefold one. By placing before 
 the first plant-life the azoic period, it becomes sixfold. 
 And again, by placing before this the principal stages 
 of the cosmogony, it becomes, according as they are 
 stated, nine or ten fold ; every portion holding the 
 place most agreeable to modem hypothesis and 
 modem science respectively. 
 
 I now notice the points in which, so far as I under- 
 stand, the text of the Proem, as it stands, is either 
 mcomplete or at variance with the representations of 
 science. 
 
 1. It does not notice the great periods of inver- 
 tebrate life standing between (1) and (2) of my last 
 enumeration. 
 
 2. It also passes by the great age of reptiles, with 
 their antecessors, the Amphibia, which come between 
 (2) and (3). The secondary or Mesozoic period, says 
 the "Manual" (i, 511), "has often been termed the 
 age of reptiles." 
 
 3. It mentions plants in terms which, I understand 
 
 PROEM TO Genesis. 
 
 di 
 
 from Professor Huxley and otherwise, correspond 
 with the later, not the earher, forms of plant life. 
 
 4. It mentions reptiles in the same category with 
 its mammals. 
 
 Now, as regards the first two heads, these omis- 
 sions, enormous with reference to the scientific 
 record, are completely in harmony with the probable 
 aim of the Mosaic writer, as embracing only the 
 formation of the objects and creatures with which 
 early man was conversant. The introduction of these 
 orders, invisible and unknown, would have been not 
 agreeable, but injurious, to his purpose. 
 
 As respects the third, it will strike the reader of 
 the Proem that plant life (verses 11, 12) is mentioned 
 with a particularity which is not found in the accounts 
 of the hving orders ; nor in the second notice of the 
 creation, which appears, indeed, pretty distinctly to 
 refer to recent plant-life (Gen. ii, 5, 8, 9). Questions 
 have been raised as to the translation of these pas- 
 sages, which I am not able to solve. But I bear in 
 mind the difficulties which attend both oral traditions 
 and the conversation of ancient MS., and I am not in 
 any way troubled by the discrepancy before us, if it 
 be a discrepancy, as it is the general structure and 
 effect of the Mosaic statement on which I t^e my 
 stand. 
 
 With regard to reptiles, while I should also hold 
 by my last remark, the case is different. They aj)- 
 pear to be mentioned as contemporary with mammals, 
 whereas they are of prior origin. But the relative 
 significance of the several orders evidently affected 
 the method of the Mosaic writer. Agreeably to this 
 idea, insects are not named at all. So reptiles are a 
 family fallen from greatness ; instead of stamping on 
 
 
92 
 
 PROEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 a great period of life its leading character, the. 
 mere y skulked upon the earth. They are introduced 
 aswill appeal- better from the LXX than from the 
 A.V. or E.V., as a sort of appendage to mammals. 
 Lymg outside both the use and the dominion of man 
 and far less within his probable notice, they are not 
 whoUy omitted like insects, but treated appLntly L 
 a loose manner as not one of the main features of the 
 pictures which the writer meaat to draw. In the 
 Song of the Three Children, where the foui- principal 
 orders are recited after the series in Genesis; reptUes 
 are dropped altogether, which suggests either that 
 the present text is unsound, or, perhaps, more prob- 
 ably, that they -were deemed a secondary and insi<r. 
 nificant part of it. But, however this case may be 
 regarded, of course I cannot draw from it any sup- 
 port to my general contention. 
 
 I -distinguish, then, in the broadest manner, be- 
 tween Professor Huxle/s exposition of certain fa^ts 
 of science and his treatment of the book of Genesis 
 1 accept the first, with the reference due to a greai 
 teacher from the meanest of his hearers, as a needed 
 correction to myself, and a valuable instruction for 
 he worid. But, subject to that correction, I adhere 
 to my proposition respecting the fourfold succession 
 in the Proem ; which further I extend to a fivefold 
 succession respecting life, and to the great stages of 
 the cosmogony to boot. The five origins, or firs( 
 appearances of plants, fishes, birds, mammals, and 
 man, are given to us in Genesis in the order of sue- 
 cession in which they are also given by the latest 
 geological authorities. 
 
 It is, therefore, by attaching to words a sense thev 
 were never meant to bear, and by this only, that Mr. 
 
 PROEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 93 
 
 
 
 Huxley establishes the parallels (so to speak) from 
 which he works his heavy artillery. Land-population 
 is a phrase meant by me to describe the idea of the Mo- 
 saic writer, which I conceive to be that of the animals 
 familiarly known to early man. But, by treating this 
 as a scientific phrase, it is made to include extinct 
 reptiles, which I understand Mr. Huxley to treat as 
 being land-animals ; as, by taking birds of a very 
 high formation, it may be held that mammal forms 
 existed before such birds were produced. These are 
 artificial contradictions, set up by altering in its 
 essence one of the two things which it is sought to 
 compare. 
 
 If I am asked whether I contend for the absolute 
 accordance of the Mosaic writer, as interpreted by 
 me, with the facts and presumptions of science, as I 
 have endeavored to extract them from the best 
 authorities, I answer that I have not endeavored to 
 show either that any accordance has been demon- 
 strated, or that more than a substantial accordance 
 
 an accordance in principal relevant particulars— is to 
 be accepted as shown by probable evidence. 
 
 In the cosmogony of the Proem, which stands on a 
 distinct footing as lying wholly beyond the experi- 
 ence of primitive man, I am not aware that any seri- 
 ous flaw is alleged ; but the nebular hypothesis with 
 which it is compared appeal's to be, perhaps from the 
 necessity of the case, no more than a theory; a the- 
 ory, however, long discussed, much favored, and 
 widely axjcepted in the scientific world. 
 
 In the geological part, we are liable to those modi- 
 fications or displacements of testimony which the 
 future progress of the science may produce. In this 
 view its testimony does not in strictness pass, I sup^ 
 
94 
 
 PROEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 pose out Of the category of probable into that of de- 
 monstrative evidence. Yet it can hardly be supposed 
 that careful researches, and reasonings strictly ad- 
 justed to method, both continued through some gen- 
 erations, have not in a large measure produced what 
 has the character of real knowledge. With that real 
 Imowledge the reader will now have seen how far I 
 claim for the Proem of Genesis, fairly tried, to be in 
 real and most striking accordance. 
 
 And this brings me to the point at which I hare to 
 observe that Mr. Huxley, I think, has not mastered, 
 and probably has not tried to master, the idea of his 
 opponent as to what it is that is essentially embraced 
 m the idea of a divine revelation to man. 
 
 So fai- as I am awaie, there is no definition, prop- 
 erly so caJled, of revelation either contained in script- 
 ure or established by the general and permanent 
 consent of Christians. In a word polemically used 
 of mdetermmate or variable sense. Professor Huxley 
 has no title to impute to his opponent, without in- 
 quu-y anything more than it must of necessity convey 
 JJut he seems to assume that revelation is to 
 be conceived of as if it were a lawyer's parch- 
 ment, or a sum in arithmetic, wherein a flaw discov- 
 ered at a particular point is ipsofa^,to fatal to the 
 whole. Very little refleccion would show Professor 
 Huxley that there may be those who find evidences 
 of the communication of divine knowledge in the 
 Proem to Genesis as they read it in their Bibles 
 without approaching to any such conception. There 
 IS the uncertainty of translation; translators are not 
 mspu-ed There is the difficulty of transcription: 
 transcribers are not inspired, and an element of error 
 18 mseparable from the work of a series of copyists 
 
 PROEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 95 
 
 How this works in the long courses of time we see in 
 the varying texts of the Old Testament, with rival 
 claims not easy to adjust. Thus the authors of the 
 recent Revision (Preface to the Old Testament, p. vi) 
 have had to choose in the Massoretic text itself be- 
 tween different readings, and " in exceptional cases " 
 have given a preference to the ancient versions. 
 Thus, upon practical grounds quite apart from the 
 higher questions concerning the original composition, 
 we seem at once to find a human element in the sa- 1 
 cred text. That there is a fui'ther and larger ques- 
 tion, not shut out from the view even of the most 
 convinced and sincere believers, IVlr. Huxley may per- 
 ceive by reading, for example, Coleridge's " Confes- 
 sions of an Inquiring Spirit." The question whether 
 this Proem bears witness to a divine communication, 
 to a working beyond that of merely human faculties 
 in the composition of the scriptures, is essentially one 
 for the disciples of Bishop Butler ; a question, not of 
 demonstrative, but of probable, evidence. I am not 
 prepared to abandon, but rather to defend, the fol- 
 lowing proposition : It is perfectly conceivable that 
 a document penned by the human hand, and trans- 
 mitted by human means, may contain matter, ques- 
 tionable, uncertain, or even mistaken, and yet may by 
 its contents as a whole present such nioxEi^, such 
 moral proofs of truth divinely imparted, as ought 
 uTefragably/>ro tanto to command assent and govern 
 practice. A man may possibly admit something not 
 reconciled, and yet may be what Mr. Huxley de- 
 nounces as a Reconciler. 
 
 I do not suppose it would be feasible, even for 
 Professor Huxley, taking the nebular hypothesis and 
 geological discovery for his guides, to give, in the 
 
 ajM-aaajseaaa-TT jf, ^m -aj,.^ ..mll.. ^ . 
 
96 
 
 PROEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 compass of the first twenty -seven verses of Genesis 
 an account of the cosmogony, and of the succession 
 of hfe in the stratification of the earth, which would 
 combine scientific precision of statement with the 
 majesty, the simphcity, the intelhgibility, and the 
 impressiveness of the record before us. Let us mod- 
 estly caU it, for argument's sake, an approximation to 
 the present presumptions and conclusions of science 
 Let me assume that the statement in the text as to 
 plants, and the statement of verses 24, 25 as to rep- 
 tiles, cannot in aU points be sustained j and yet still 
 there remain great unshaJven facts to be weighed. 
 First, the fact that such a record should have been 
 made at all. Secondly, the fact that, instead of 
 dwelling m generalities, it has placed itself under the 
 severe conditions of a chronological order, reaching 
 from the first nisus of chaotic matter to the consum""- 
 mated production of a fair and goodly, a furnished 
 and a peopled, world. Thirdly, the fact that its cos- 
 mogony seems, in the light of the nineteenth century 
 to draw more and more of countenance from the 
 best natural philosophy ; and fourthly, that it has 
 described the successive origins of the five gi-eat cate- 
 gories of present life, with which human experience 
 was and is conversant, in that order which geological 
 authority confirms. How came these things to be <? 
 How came they to be, not among Accadians, or As- 
 syrians, or Egyptians, who monopolized the stores of 
 human knowledge when this wonderful tradition was 
 bom; but among the obscure records of a people 
 who, dwelling in Palestine for twelve hundred years 
 from their sojourn in the valley of the Nile, hardly 
 had force to stamp even so much as their name upon 
 the history of the worid at large, and only then begaa 
 
 PBOEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 97 
 
 to be admitted to the general communion of mankind 
 when their scriptures assumed the dress which a 
 gentHe tongue was needed to supply ? It is more 
 rational, I contend, to say that these astonishing an- 
 ticipations were a God-given supply, than to suppose 
 that a race, who fell uniformly and entirely short of 
 the great inteUectual development* of aatiquity, 
 should here not only have equaled and outstripped it,' 
 but have entirely transcended, in kind even more thail 
 in degree, all known exercise of human faculties. 
 
 Whether this was knowledge conveyed to the mind 
 of the Mosaic author, I do not presume to determine. 
 There has been, in the behef of Christians, a profound 
 providential purpose, Httie or variously visible to us, 
 which presided from Genesis to the Apocalypse, over 
 the formation of the marvelous compound which we 
 term the Holy Scriptures. This we wonderingly em- 
 brace without being much perplexed by the questions 
 which are raised on them ; for instance, by the ques- 
 tion, in what exact relation the books of the Apoc- 
 i-ypha, sometimes termed deutero-canonical, stand 
 to the books of the Hebrew Canon. Difficulties of 
 detail, such as may (or ultimately may not) be found 
 to exist in the Proem to Genesis, have much the same 
 relation to the evidence of revealed knowledge in this 
 record as the spots in the sun to his all-unfolding 
 and sufficing hght. But as to the Mosaic writer him- 
 self, all I presume to accept is the fact that he put 
 
 *I write thus bearing fully m mind the unsurpassed sub- 
 limity of mucli that is to be found in the Old Testament. 
 The consideration of this subject would open a whoUy new 
 line of argument, which the present article does not allow me 
 to attempt. 
 
98 
 
 PKOEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 upon undying record, in this portion of his work, a 
 series of particulars which, intei-preted in the grow- 
 ing light of modem knowledge, requii-e from us. on 
 the whole, as reasonable men, the admission that we 
 do not see how he could have written them, and that 
 m all likehhood he did not write them, without aid 
 from the guidance of a more than human power. It 
 is in this guidance, and not necessarily or uniformly 
 m the consciousness of the writer, that, according to 
 my poor conception, the idea of revelation mainly Hes. 
 And now one word on the subject of evolution I 
 cannot foUow IVIi-. Huxley in his minute acquaintance 
 with Indian sages, aad I am not aware that evolution 
 has a place in the greater number of the schools of 
 Greek philosophy. Nor can I comprehend the rapidity 
 with which persons of authority have come to treat 
 the Banvinian hypothesis as having reached the final 
 stage of demonstration. To the eye of a looker-on 
 their pace and method seem rather too much like a 
 steeplechase. But this may very weU be due to their 
 want of appropriate knowledge and habits of thought. 
 For myself, in my loose aad uninformed way of 
 looking at evolution, I feel only too much biased in 
 its favor by what I conceive to be its relation to the 
 great argument of design.* 
 
 Not that I share the honor with which some men 
 of science appear to contemplate a multitude of what 
 they te rm " sudden " acts of creation. AU things 
 
 *- Views like these, when formulated by religious instead 
 of scientific thought, make more of divine providence and 
 fore-ordmation than of divine intervention; but perhaps 
 they are not the less theistical on that account." From the 
 very remarkable lectures of Professor Asa Gray on -Natural 
 bcicncc and Religion," p. 77. Scribncr, New York 1880 
 
 PBOEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 99 
 
 considered, a singular expression: but one, I sup- 
 pose, meaning the act which produces, in the region 
 of nature, something not related by an unbroken suc- 
 cession of measured and equable stages to what has 
 gone before it. But what has equahty or brevity of 
 stage to do with the question how far the act is crea- 
 tive ? I fail to see, or indeed am somewhat disposed 
 to deny, that the short stage is less creative than the 
 long, the single than the manifold, the equable than 
 the jointed or graduated stage. Evolution is, to me, 
 series with development. And like series in mathe- 
 matics, whether arithmetical or geometrical, it 
 estabHshes in things an unbroken progression; it 
 places each thing (if only it stand the test of abihty 
 to Hve) in a distinct relation to every other thino- 
 and makes each a witness to all that have preceded 
 it, a prophecy of all that are to follow it. It gives 
 to the argument of design, now called teleological 
 argument, at once a wdder expansion, and an aug- 
 mented tenacity and soHdity of tissue. But I must 
 proceed. 
 
 I find Mr. Huxley asserting that the things of 
 science, \sdth which • he is so splendidly conversant, 
 are " susceptible of clear intellectual comprehe4sion." 
 Is tliis rhetoric, or is it a formula of philosophy ? If 
 the latter, will it bear examination ? He preeminently 
 understands the relations between those thino-s which 
 Nature ofiers to his view; but does he understand 
 each thing in itself, or ho2/) the last term but one in 
 an evolution series passes into and becomes the last? 
 The seed may produce the tree, the tree the branch, 
 the branch the twig, the twig the leaf or flower ; but 
 can we imderstand the slightest mutation or growth 
 of Nature in itself ? Can we tell how the twig passes 
 
100 
 
 PBOEM TO 0EHES18. 
 
 into leaf or flower, one jot more than if the flower or 
 leal, instead of coming from the twig, came directly 
 irom the tree or from the seed ? 
 
 I cannot but trace some signs of haste in Professor 
 Huxley's assertion that, outside the province of 
 science, we have only imagination, hope, and igno- 
 rance. Not, as we shall presently see, that he is one 
 of those who rob mankind of the best and highest of 
 their inheritance, by denying the reaUty of all but 
 material objects. But the statement is surely open 
 to objection, as omitting, or seeming to omit, from 
 view the vast fields of knowledge only probable, 
 which are not of mere hope, nor of mere imagination 
 nor of mere ignorance; which include alike the 
 mww-dand the outward life of man; within which 
 he the real mstruments of his training, and where he 
 is to learn how to think, to act, to be. 
 
 I will now proceed to notice briefly the last page 
 of Professor Huxley's paper, in which he drops the 
 scientist and becomes simply the man. I read it with 
 deep interest, and with no smaJ] sympathy. In 
 touchmg upon it, I shall make no reference (let him 
 forgive me the expression) to his "damnatory 
 clauses or to his harmless menace, so deftly con 
 veyed through the prophet Micah, to the public peace. 
 The exaltation of Kehgion as against Theology is 
 at the present day not only so fashionable, but usu- 
 ally so dommeering and contemptuous, that I am 
 fateful to Professor Huxley for his frank statement 
 
 !n,„iw ^ ^^^ "' * ^"'^"^ °^ ''^'"'^' '»«'• ^o I in the 
 smallest degree quazrel with his contention that Ee- 
 
 L^on and Theology ought not to be confounded. 
 We may have a great deal of Rehgion with very little 
 iiieology; and a great deal of Theology with very 
 
 I»ROEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 101 
 
 *'''*'*'*WR'»3W»r~iW5!«>«i«s~ 
 
 little Keligion. I feel sure that Professor Huxley 
 must observe with pleasure how strongly practical, 
 ethical, and social is the general tenor of the three 
 synoptic gospels; and how the appearance in the 
 world of the great doctrinal gospel was reserved to a 
 later stage, as if to meet a later need, when men had 
 been toned anew by the morahty and, above all, by 
 the life, of our Lord. 
 
 I am not, therefore, writing against him, when I 
 remark upon the habit of treating Theology with an 
 affectation of contempt. It is nothing better, I be- 
 lieve, than a mere fashion ; having no more reference 
 to permanent principle than the mass of ephemeral 
 fashions that come from Paris have with the immov- 
 able types of beauty. Those who take for the bui'den 
 of their song, " Kespect KeHgion, but despise Theol- 
 ogy," seem to me just as rational as if a person were 
 to say, "Admire the trees, the plants, the flowers, 
 the sun, moon, or stars, but despise botany, and de- 
 spise astronomy." Theology is ordered knowledge; 
 representing in the region of the intellect what rehg- 
 ion represents in the heart and life of man. And this 
 religion, Mr. Huxley says a little further on, is 
 summed up in the terms of the prophet Micah 
 (vi, 8) : " Do justly, and love mercy, and walk hum- 
 bly with thy God." I forbear to inquire whether 
 every addition to this — such, for instance, as the 
 Beatitudes — is to be proscribed. But I will not dis- 
 pute that in these words 'is conveyed the true ideal 
 of rehgious discipHne and attainment. They really 
 import that identification of the will which is set out 
 with such wonderful force in the very simple words 
 of the " Paradiso :" 
 
 In la sua volontade h nostra pace, 
 
102 
 
 PROEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 and wluch no one has more beautifully described than 
 (I thxnk) Charles Lamb: " He gave his heart to the 
 Punfier, h,s will to the Will that governs the uni- 
 uerse. It may be we shaU find that Christianity 
 Itself ,s m some sort a scaffolding, and that the fimJ 
 building as a pure and perfect theism : when (1 Cor 
 God"'«fl! "^^^J^gdom shall be deUvered up to 
 t^od, that God may be all in all." Still, I cannot 
 help bemg struck with an impression that Mr. Huxlev 
 appears to cite these terms of Micah, as if they r^ 
 duced the work of religion from a difScult to a very 
 easy performance. But look at them again. Examine 
 them well. They ai-e, in truth, in Cowper-s words, 
 
 Higlicr than the hights above, 
 
 Deeper than the depths beneath. 
 
 Bo justly, that is to say, extinguish self; love mercy 
 cut uterly away all the pride and wrath, and aU the 
 cupidity, that make this fair worid a wilderness • 
 walk humbly with thy God, take his will and set it i^ 
 the place where thine own was used to rule. " Rin.. 
 out the old ring in the new." Pluck down the ty" 
 rant from his place; set up the true Master on his 
 lawful throne. 
 
 There are certainly human beings, of happy com- 
 position who mount these aiiy hights with elastic 
 Step and with unabated breath. 
 
 Sponta sua, sine lege, fidem rectumque colebat. 
 
 — Omd, Metam. t, 90. 
 This comparative refinement of nature in some may 
 ev^n lead them to undervalue the stores of that rich 
 armory which Chnstianity has provided to equip us 
 for our great life-battle. The text of the prophet 
 Micah, developed mto aU the breadth of St. Paul and 
 
 PROEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 103 
 
 St. Augustine, is not too much — ^is it not often all too 
 little? — for the needs of ordinary men. 
 
 I must now turn, by way of epilogue, to Professor 
 Max Mailer; and I hope to show him that on the 
 questions which he raises we are not very far apart. 
 One grievous wrong, indeed, he does me in (appar- 
 ently) ascribing to me the execrable word " theanthro- 
 morphic," of which I wholly disclaim the paternity, 
 and deny the use. Then he says, I warn him not to 
 trust too much to etymology. Not so. But only not 
 to trust to it for the wrong purj)ose, in the wrong 
 place ; just as I should not preach on the virtue and 
 value of Hberty to a man requiring handcuffs. I hap- 
 pen to bear a name known, in its genuine form, to 
 mean stones or rocks frequented by the gled; and 
 probably taken from the habitat of its first bearer. 
 Now, if any human being should ever hereafter make 
 any inquiry about me, trace my name to its origin, 
 and therefore describe the situation of my dwelling, 
 he would not use etymology too much but would use 
 it ill. What I protest against is a practice, not with- 
 out example, of taking the etymology of mythologic 
 names in Homer, and thereupon supposing that in all 
 cases we have thus obtained a guide to their Homeric 
 sense. The place of Nereus in the mind of the poet 
 is indisputable; and here etymology helps us. But 
 when a light-etymology is fotmd for Hera, and it is 
 therefore asserted that in Homer she is a light-god- 
 dess, or when, because no one denies that Phoihos is 
 a light-name, therefore the Apollo of Homer was the 
 Sun, then indeed, not etymology, but the misuse of 
 etymology, hinders and misleads us. In a ques- 
 tion of etymology, however, I shall no more meas- 
 
 wawimmi 
 
 ii i iiiuniinwin 
 
 WWMiiiiilliiillllilMgBiQjIlljllll 
 
104 
 
 1*K0EM TO GENESIS. 
 
 m-e swords with Mr. Max Mailer than with Mr 
 
 , sunple reason that mj sword is but a lath. I there 
 
 ore surrender to the mercy of this great philoSS 
 
 the dentation of aine and diner from rf^;W 
 
 wkch may have been suggested by the use ofTeTord 
 
 <i^ne m our Bible (as John xxi, 12) for breakTastTn' 
 
 a sense expressed by La Bruyere xi) in t Word's' 
 
 But, Mr. Max Mailer says, I have offended a;,ainst 
 
 mortal sm ? By attackmg solarism. But what havA 
 I attacked, and what has he defended^ I ha" 
 at acted nothing but the exclusive use of the sol 
 
 ^'^ati:tT ^^"''^'"^ °^ the Aryan r^t 
 seek'to at V t. monopoh^ing pretension that I 
 
 thlt'lf^V tr""" °^ «°'«rism, while admitting 
 that the solar theory has a most importaiit place" 
 
 "^v cl^oT T'^'"^- ^"' ""^ "'-^ «--' -horn I 
 solansm I denounce is not his solarism at all • and 
 he only seeks to prove that " certain portions of 
 ancxent mythology have a directly solar or^^^ So 
 
 iS:tTL':JfT, That is. lUlTsl' 
 
 throughourthtXltrid ^ '" '"'^'^ ^'-""^ 
 
 It 18 only when a yoke is put upon Homer's nert 
 
 :XfrwrcrHZe:^:sr " , -f -S 
 
 -velous and spleX l^r P^t' Z 
 guidance of ethnological affinities and memorie'lt t 
 
 PROEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 105 
 
 corporates in itself the most diversified traditions, 
 and binds them into a unity by the plastic power of 
 an unsurpassed creative imagination. Its dominating 
 spirit is intensely human. It is therefore of necessity 
 thoroughly anti-elemental. Yet, when the stones of 
 this magnificent fabric are singly eyed by the ob- 
 server, they bear obvious marks of having been 
 appropriated from elsewhere by the sovereign pre- 
 rogative of genius ; of having had an anterior place 
 in other systems ; of having belonged to nature- wor- 
 ship, and in some cases to sun-worship ; of having been 
 drawn from many quarters, and among them from 
 those which Mr. Max Mtiller excludes : from Egypt, 
 and either from Palestine^ or from the same tradi- 
 tional source to which Palestine itself was indebted. 
 But this is not the present question. As to the solar 
 theory, I hope I have shown either that our positions 
 are now identical, or that, if there be a rift between 
 them, it is so narrow that we may conveniently shake 
 hands across it. 
 
 W. E. Gladstone. 
 
 Postscript. — I learn with satisfaction that in 
 America, where the stores of geological knowledge 
 have been so greatly enlarged, the business of the 
 Keconciler has been taken into the hands of scient- 
 ists : Dr. Dana, Professor of Geology in Yale Col- 
 lege, and Dr. Arnold Guyot, Professor of Geology 
 and Physical Geograj^hy in New Jersey College. 
 Both of these authorities, it appears, have adhered 
 through a long career, and now adhere with increased 
 confidence, to the idea of a substantial harmony be- 
 tween science and the Mosaic text. Professor Dana's 
 latest tract has recently appeared in the Bihliotheca 
 
 I 
 
106 
 
 PEOEM TO GENESIS. 
 
 pian mammals (p 214V hnf of, / marsu- 
 
 early p,ant-life ^n !" W peZ ^ sTsf "".^ 
 was With P.ofessor Guyot/thrti: IJ Tl' 
 mog-omcal, portion of the l>roPm r.^f i 
 
 It IS a rehef to find that the burdp„ Jti. 
 ment is shared with witnesses Iho at eoi^IS 
 
 yojecuon . J kis people, which knmo-th nnt th. j 
 IS accursed" (St. John vii 49) ' '^* '"'"' 
 
 IegrhoS';r!rT °^ ^'^'-"tolo^-y in Yale Col- 
 iege, Holds (Ormthodontes, 1880 n 1^7^ „ *%, 
 
 grounds of the wide differences Ww !f^' *^* 
 
 *-y. and the other ^ZT:,'':^^^,''^^^^ 
 
 ::~ -r- -s ren^ote, and^prirw 
 
 C6«5^ow, The latfpr irr^r^i,- ^"^ priority for 5z/c- 
 
 Which is not foin^LStUr -S ^T^' 
 Wen b, the absence of reference Tl^ ert^ 
 brates of .he paleozoic, and the reptiles Tu.« 
 mesozoio rocks. "utues ol the 
 
 W. E. G. 
 
 ■'--i^**aWWj^««»«*^!^»«f^-' 
 
 '"s^sj^awiBiftiKiT:::":'''',. ■^- 
 
 '^-DJTTiV^ Oii^ CREATION''— AN ANSWER TO 
 
 MR. GLADSTONE. 
 
 BY ALBERT REVILLE, D.D. 
 
 I had been already a month in Italy, and expected 
 to remain at least another there, and I was so absorbed 
 in my journey, which was partly for pleasure, partly 
 for instruction, through that beautiful country, that 
 I gave absolutely no thought to poHtics or theology, 
 except to the veiy special subject which had drawn 
 me to Ravenna and Rome. Had there been elections 
 in France which might have thrown my country into 
 Parhamentary confusion ? Were other elections im- 
 pending in England menacing a people to whom I 
 am much attached, with a similar fate ? Did the Bul- 
 garian question threaten Europe with a terrible 
 storm ? I confess, to my shame, that all these ques- 
 tions had become as foreign to my thoughts as the 
 conflicts of Peru and Chili, or the question of the 
 prolongation of the mandates of the Hungarian dep- 
 uties. I hved wholly in pagan and Christian antiq- 
 uity. My time also was limited and barely sufficient 
 for the task I had undertaken. I only remember 
 that one day at table cVhote I took somewhat warmly 
 the side of Mr. Gladstone— as far as it was proper 
 for a stranger discussing the affairs of a country not 
 his own to do so— against an oldEngHsh lady who was 
 vehemently denouncmg the patriarch of Enghsh Lib- 
 eralism. For with all due reserve on the points on 
 which the Enghsh aJone are competent to speak. Mr. 
 
 imi i minn! 
 
 MMMnM 
 
 mm 
 
108 
 
 ANSWER TO MR. GLADSTONE. 
 
 Gladstone is, to us who hold ourselves Contiuental 
 Liberals, one of the Tories one of fl,. "oimenta^ 
 forces of P.,,^ b'"nes, one ot the great moral 
 
 lorces of European LiberaUsm. I am bound how- 
 ever, to add that my defense of him waTentoel 
 restricted to the field of politics ^ 
 
 There seemed, therefore, a certain irony of fate to 
 
 etsoTe a?. ^'^^ """ "'^"' ' '^ ^^ «« 
 episode, at the same table d'h6te, an Italian count 
 
 who, unhke myself, was hving wholly i„ the contem 
 
 pora,7 world, suddenly said to me, "You aie M eI" 
 
 ^rler ^"xe^^^^T '' ''l ^""^^^^ « 
 JLes. WeU, it seems that Mr Glad 
 
 review. Impossible !" I exclaimed. "Yes the 
 
 Mahe (an Itahan newspaper published in French) 
 says so, and I bring you the number " ^ 
 
 tiontd'f "/ ^''"^'^' "' "" ffreatincrease of atten- 
 oX Teen 7 7."' ""^ '^°'^'' ""'^'^^ ^ ^^ ^^tterto 
 heard, that they were saying behind me, « That is 
 
 anirg2:rreS:"'th^rr ^^^ ^-^^ 
 
 The hofri 1 ■ / ^^ ''®''°"'« a personage. 
 
 entL 1 , r^'' "^^ '^' ""*^'« *'«'=-"« -ore deffr- 
 ential, and I soon saw that it was beyond all doubt 
 
 GladsTor"^'"^'^^-^^-'>^-"-^edbyr 
 
 r ptSd'rh^^aty^-^thr ' ' '"^ 
 
 wMch had been ^^oj^^ ZTn Jlt^^V^ 
 
 ;e...andV-nrurt:;;^^^^^^^ 
 
 erl T""''' ""'"""-'■ ^' ^- - -'^tter oT Mif 
 ference to me to know that I had been censured by 
 
 ANSWER TO MR. GLADSTONE. 
 
 109 
 
 the ex-premier of the United Kingdom, for whose 
 character and superior talents I had long felt a sin- 
 cere admiration. But a(;e quad agis. I had come 
 to Italy for a special object. I could not deviate 
 from it even for an empire, and when the first mo- 
 ment of surprise and emotion was over I said to my- 
 self, Hke a merchant on his hohday, "Business 
 to-morrow ! We will see to this in Paris." 
 
 At last, thanks to the obliging intervention of some 
 friends in England, and especially to the kind editor 
 of the Nineteenth Century, I am in a position not 
 only to make myself acquainted with the article about 
 myself, but also to submit to the EngUsh public, and, 
 with every respect, to JVIi'. Gladstone himself, some 
 reflections on the points on which, in language at 
 once indulgent and severe, he has done me the honor 
 of attacking me. 
 
 These remarks will serve to explain why I am so 
 late in replying to the objections of my illustrious 
 assailant. The delay, however, has had this advan- 
 tage, that I have found my work half done, and by 
 abler hands than mine. M. Max Mailer, in an article 
 entitled, " Solar Myths," has defended with his usual 
 talent the theory which gives a naturalistic interpre- 
 tation to the greater part of the myths that have come 
 down to us from antiquity, or that can be even now 
 collected in uncivilized nations. Mr. Huxley has 
 demonstrated, with his accustomed vigor and with 
 his indisputable competence, that Mr. Gladstone 
 labors under illusions about the harmony which he 
 supposes himself to have estabhshed between the Bib- 
 Heal account of the creation and the conclusions of 
 modern science. I can only express to these two em- 
 inent men my gratitude for their good opinion of my 
 
 8a» i imaw i ;i i '»»i ; ummm. 
 
 mmmm 
 
110 
 
 ANBWEB TO MB. GLADSTONE. 
 
 humble person, and assure Mr. Huxley in particular 
 that, so far from resenting it, I am happy and proud 
 that a man of his caliber should have so warmly taken 
 my part, or, to speak more accurately, should have 
 taken my writings as an occasion for defending what 
 for him as for me is the cause of scientific truth. 
 
 I now come to the points of dispute. Mr Glad- 
 stone, with a courtesy for which I must thank him 
 accuses my "Prolegomena" of being rather Epile^ 
 gomena, because, as he says, I have in the first place 
 without any preliminary demonstration, eliminated 
 from the field of the scientific history of religions aU 
 theories which stait from the supposition of a super- 
 natural revelation granted to primitive humanity. I 
 have put, he maintains, in the "preface " of the "His 
 tory of Religions" what ought logically only to come 
 at the end, if it comes at all. 
 
 I will ventuie respectfully to observe that prefaces 
 are usually composed by authors when then- books 
 are completed, and that they contain directly or indi- 
 rectly their conclusions; at all events they fore- 
 shadow them. I did not begin a history of religions 
 without having studied the subject as a whole. More- 
 over the natural end of Prolegomena is to expound 
 and if necessaiy to demonstrate, the method which it 
 IS proposed to follow in the works to which they are 
 prefixed. Mr. Gladstone is too clear-sighted not to 
 understand at once that it makes an essential differ- 
 ence m the manner in which the history of reU-ions 
 must be treated whether the writer starts from the 
 Idea of a primitive revelaUon made to the human race 
 or whether he rejects this hypothesis as unproved or 
 anti-scientific. In the first case, this history is the 
 history of a prolonged decadence. In the second it 
 
 ANSWER TO MR. GLADSTONE. 
 
 Ill 
 
 is the history of a progressive evolution. I was there- 
 fore forced, by the very nature of things, to state 
 which side I took on this grave question, since all 
 that foUowed depended upon it. If IVIi-. Gladstone 
 himself undertook a general history of rehgion, I 
 would defy him to escape from this necessity. 
 
 My honored critic in the next place complains that 
 I have chosen him, rather than many others, as the 
 representative of the point of view favorable to the 
 idea of a primitive revelation founded on the testi- 
 mony of the Bible, whereas I ought rather to have 
 referred to specialists, such as Dr. Keusch, who have 
 developed this theory ex pro/esso. Mr. Gladstone 
 acknowledges that he would not now formulate his 
 views as " crudely " as formerly on this question, 
 which seemed then more simple than in these later 
 times; that to presuppose the supernatural in such 
 matters is to deviate from the law of scientific 
 method ; that he was especially absorbed with the 
 luxuriant beauties of the Homeric poetry, and that 
 he only entered indirectly into the theological heal- 
 ings of his researches. He maintains only that there 
 are evident traces inthe poems of Homer of a histor- 
 ical connection with the traditions of the Hebrews, 
 and especially with the book of Genesis. As for the 
 precise form in which he expressed his views on this 
 question, he insists on it so little that he has not 
 wished to repubhsh the book which contains them, 
 and it has now become very rare. In fine, he refuses 
 to admit the too dogmatic form given by me to that 
 primitive orthodoxy which was revealed to the first 
 man. It consisted at most "of rudimentary indica- 
 tions of what are now developed and established 
 truths." 
 
112 
 
 ANSWER TO MR. GLADSTONE. 
 
 I can only bow before these attenuations, intro- 
 duced bj the author himseK into a theory which had 
 appeared to me, and to others also, to have assumed 
 a much more definite and angular fonn. If I se- 
 lected 'Mr. Gladstone rather than others as the repre- 
 sentative of a point of view which is not mine, I did 
 so on account of his eminence. His name has often 
 been put forward in support of the theory which I 
 considered myself obliged to attack. Being called 
 upon by the position I hold to endeavor to make the 
 educated public of my coimtry familiar with an order 
 of studies and controversies as yet very Httle culti- 
 vated in France, it was my duty to consider carefully 
 the antagonists who might be opposed to me. The 
 name of Dr. Eeusch would have conveyed nothing to 
 my audience or to my readers. The name of IVIr. 
 Gladstone shone with a very different splendor. I 
 did not know, and was not bound to know — especially 
 when I saw so eminent an Englishman as Sir G. Cox 
 forming the same estimate as myself of Mr. Glad- 
 stone's views — that IVIr. Gladstone had somewhat re- 
 ceded from the " crudity " of his early affirmations. 
 I note with great satisfaction his corrections. I see 
 in them a sign that his views ai*e not as far as they 
 were from mine, and I shall certainly mention in a 
 new edition the limitations which Mr. Gladstone has 
 himself thought fit to place upon his earlier ideas 
 about the religious origins of humanity. 
 
 My illustrious adversaiy next passes from the de- 
 fensive to the offensive, and reproaches me first of all 
 for my manner of looking on the book of Genesis, 
 and in the second place for my errors about the 
 mythology of Homer. 
 
 On the second point I must decline at present to 
 
 ANSWER TO MR. GLADSTONE. 113 
 
 enter into a prolonged controversy. Time, and, to a 
 
 ZTm T ' ,T"^'' '"^' "" ^^ S^-^-- litera- 
 ture Mr G.adstone is a speciaHst who might weU 
 
 mtmndate gi^eater scholars thaii myself. This does 
 not, however, prevent me from thinking that when 
 he sees a historical relation between the accounts in 
 . Genesis and the traditions embalmed in the Homeric 
 poems he is looking through deceptive glasses which 
 unconsciously impair the clearness of his si<.ht In 
 our age he is about the only eminent scholar who ha^ 
 perceived this family resemblance. This is not a 
 reason for asserting that it does not exist, but it is a 
 reason for aistrusting it, and I own that, for my part, 
 I find It nnpossible to establish it. Pui^ely external 
 coincidences, analogies of detail, prove nothing in 
 such a matter. The general history of religious be- 
 liefs and practices shows that very curious ideas and 
 customs, entirely unconnected with those that now 
 occupy us, have existed among very different and very 
 distant nations, although it is not possible reasonably 
 to suppose that they were communicated. In such 
 ca^es It is necessaiy simply to investigate the psycho- 
 logical pomt of depaiiui e of these ideas and customs, 
 and if this can be discovered, the conclusion must be 
 di-awn that the essential unity of the human mind 
 causes it often, when starting from the same institu- 
 tion or principle, to aiTive in many different regions 
 at consequences, appHcations, and analogies of belief 
 which are truly astonishing both from their stran<re- 
 ness and from their resemblances. The Incas who 
 ruled over ancient Peru had certainly never read 
 Machiavel, but those who study their history must 
 admne the consummate art with which they knew how 
 .0 govem their va^t empire, regulating theii- conduct 
 
 ■mWBIlHWHI 
 
114 
 
 ANSWER TO MR, GLADSTONE. 
 
 ANSWER TO MR. GLADSTONE. 
 
 115 
 
 by maxims which might seem borrowed from the 
 great Florentine theorist. I must suspect that what 
 Mr. Gladstone has taken for signs of a "historical 
 relationship " between the Homeric poems and Gen- 
 esis are merely superficial analogies, explained by the 
 very nature of the human mind w^hen brought face to 
 face with the same problems, and implying none of 
 those consequences which the eminent statesman 
 wishes to draw from them. 
 
 I shall push my boldness one step further. Mr. 
 Gladstone acknowledges himself, with the most 
 engaging modesty, that ** of any other system than 
 the Olympian it would be presumption in him to 
 speak, as he has, beyond this limit, none but the most 
 vague iand superficial knowledge." Let me regret 
 deeply this gap in the learning of so distinguished a 
 Hellenist. If there be any department of knowledge 
 in which a compaiison of analogies and correspond- 
 ences is especially instructive, it is undoubtedly the 
 history of reUgions. Each pait of it throws Hght 
 upon the others, and all who have devoted themselves 
 to it will, I am sure, agree with me, that at every 
 step some problem arises which appears inexplicable 
 as long as we look at it only in one local rehgion, but 
 finds an easy and immediate solution by reference to 
 some other rehgion. M. Max Mtiller and the " In- 
 dianists " of his school have suppHed us by this com- 
 parative method with very plausible explanations of 
 many exceedingly obscure points in Greek mythology 
 which could never have been elucidated if we had 
 confined ourselves to Greece alone. Who could have 
 otherwise arrived at the explanation of the love of 
 Apollo for Daphne, and of the transformation of the 
 young nymph into a laurel t By what other way 
 
 could we have traced to its origin the story of Pro- 
 metheus ? And to what error, to what impotence, are 
 not those now condemned who attempt to explain 
 the OlympiaQ mythology by itself aJone, without ever 
 comparing it with the mythologies that aie its 
 sisters ? 
 
 Let me add, however, that, while speaking in this 
 way, I am one of those who are inclined to think that 
 in these later years some injustice' has been done to 
 the Greek mythology and to its originahty by resolv- 
 ing it, so to speak, into a multitude of extraneous 
 elements coming from all quarters. I may perhaps 
 give some small pleasure to Mr. Gladstone by in- 
 forming him that I on the whole share his view about 
 Heracles, whom I do not at all identify with the Phoe- 
 nician Melkart. Both, I am persuaded, are solar 
 divinities. The myths concerning Melkart, or forged 
 in honor of that itinerant divinity, have largely 
 entered into the developed legend of Heracles. 
 Nevertheless, I think with Buttman, Otfried Mttller, 
 and Schmidt, that Heracles is primitively a concep- 
 tion purely and authentically Greek. Not only ai'e 
 the characters of the two divinities very different, it 
 is also inadmissible that an exotic god should have 
 held so considerable a place in the history of primi- 
 tive Greece. 
 
 I acknowledge moreover that the place and the 
 part assigned to Heracles in the Homeric poems have 
 something in them difficult to explain. He is far 
 from being represented there as a hero without 
 reproach. He appears to be rather imposed on the 
 poet by a commanding tradition than hked by him. 
 I will add— what perhaps Mr. Gladstone will think 
 very rash— that being but httle convinced of the 
 
 ■MiHMll 
 
116 
 
 ANSWER TO MR. GLADSTONE. 
 
 unity of the Homeric poems, I regard as a not very 
 skilful interpolation of a harmonist the passage of the 
 Odyssey, xi, 601-604, where the received text dis- 
 tinguishes the Heracles admitted into the divine 
 abode from the Heracles whom Ulysses perceives 
 among the mournful shades that inhabit the kingdom 
 of Hades. I have myself a little explanation of this 
 apparent anomaly, but I hardly venture to propose it 
 to the learned commentator of Homer. I think that 
 Heracles was long a popular divinity in the lower 
 ranks of the Greek population, still more legendary 
 and especially less refined than his rival, the beautiful 
 Phoebus Apollo, even though both may have spnmg 
 from the same root. But Phoebus Apollo was the 
 sun-god prefeiTed by the upper classes, by the nobles, 
 the princes, and the kings. He was the aristocratic 
 sun, and the poetry of the aedes, a poetry in some 
 sort feudal, was from the beginning more in sym- 
 pathy with the poet-and-musician-god, the sun-god of 
 the upper classes, than with the Gargantua of the 
 populace. Hence the depreciation of the latter and 
 the kind of satisfaction with which his brutality, his 
 arrogance, even his impiety and his crimes, are 
 recounted. At a later period the popular legend 
 obliged every one to respect its favorite hero, and, 
 without effacing all his faults, impressed upon him 
 definitively in the mythology the characters of the 
 pacificator, the liberator, and the "Good Giant," 
 which Mr. Gladstone, imprisoned in his " Homer," 
 accuses me with some irony of having lightly 
 attributed to a god who by no means deserved them. 
 I do not know whether this explanation, which I 
 could develop and support with some proofs, will find 
 
 ANSWER TO MR. GLADSTONE. 
 
 117 
 
 any favor with my censor, and I merely submit it to 
 him with deference. 
 
 Another indication of the limitation which the too 
 exclusive study of a single author may impose on the 
 most clear-sighted mind may be found in a Httle 
 attack which Mr. Gladstone makes on me about 
 Ixion and his burning wheel. It is true that a pas- 
 sage of Homer which speaks of Zeus as having loved 
 the wife of Ixion does not agree with the myth ordi- 
 narily received and related at length by Pindar 
 (Pyth. ii), according to which it was Ixion who pur- 
 sued with his criminal addresses the spouse of Zeus. 
 According to Pindar, Ixion's wheel was not "burning," 
 but " winged." This contradiction between Homei* 
 and Pindar, and the difference between Pindar and 
 the later mythology, only prove that originally many 
 diverging mythical nations connected themselves with 
 the name of Ixion, " the man on the wheel," the " re- 
 volving one," but the narrative of Pindar, an excellent 
 witness to the myths which were then sung before 
 assembled Greece, proves that this was the conse- 
 crated form which at that time dominated over all 
 others. Whether the wheel was "burning" or 
 simply " winged " is of no consequence. This doec 
 not deprive the student of myths of the right of 
 bringing together all the mythic wheels, which, from 
 India to the Poitevins of France, have in so many 
 countries been employed to represent the sun. The 
 sun was not only or always conceived as a happy and 
 benevolent being. Phoebus Apollo himself is dis- 
 tinguished by something else than goodness and 
 constant happiuess, and the notion of the sun as an 
 enslaved being, condemned to a weary task, forced to 
 roll on forever, and therefore wretched, guilty and 
 
 ■^•■1 
 
118 
 
 ANSWEB TO MB. GLADSTONE. 
 
 punished, may be easily found elsewhere as well as in 
 the myth of Ixion. 
 
 May I now be allowed to express the surprise 
 which I felt in reading in Mr. Gladstone's article that 
 the Poseidon of Homer, the god in whom the Latins 
 thought they recognized their Neptune, " is not the 
 god of the liquid element at all 1 " This statement 
 appeared to me so contrary to evidence that I read it 
 twice to assure myself that I was not mistaken. I 
 willingly admit that the gods of Homer, at least the 
 Olympian or superior gods, must no longer be con- 
 founded materially with the physical elements, of 
 which they were originally the simple personifications. 
 They are distinguished — not absolutely separated— 
 from them. They are above all humanized. As the 
 savage beheves that the soul of a man may quit his 
 body and walk abroad according to its caprices, so 
 the Greek of the Homeric times distinguished the 
 divine person from the physical elements that imder- 
 lay it. He made of it a being superior to, but at the 
 same time resembling, man ; and he attributed to 
 this being all the liberty of will, of movement, and of 
 action that could be supposed to exist in a man of 
 gigantic size, force, and intelligence. Side by side 
 with these gods now emancipated from their material 
 prison, the Greek mythology, with the easy syncretism 
 which belongs to polytheistic systems, kept up the 
 memory of other gods which were not in reality 
 older, but which corresponded to older notions: 
 Hehos by the side of Apollo, Selene by the side of 
 Artemis, Okeanos and Nereus by the side of Posei- 
 don, etc. But to pretend that this latter is not 
 essentially a sea-god, in Homer as everywhere else — 
 an ancient personification of the Hquid element — ^he 
 
 ANSWER TO MR. GLADSTONE. 
 
 119 
 
 and his spouse Amphitrite, who surrounds the earth 
 and beats it with her incessant waves — is to take up 
 a position in direct contradiction to the beautiful de- 
 scription of the "Iliad" (lib. xiii, 10 sq.), while 
 through the " Odyssey " the hero is compelled con- 
 tinually to sufier upon the sea the efiects of the anger 
 of the god of the seas. Does not Poseidon himself 
 declare in the *"IHad" that in the division of the 
 world between himself and his two brothers he 
 received for his lot " the foaming sea " (xv, 190)? 
 
 What does it signify that he has been in some 
 places adored as the supreme God 1 — this is true of 
 almost all the gods of polytheism ; or that his wor- 
 ship may be found in the midst of a continent ? — the 
 fountains of water, the sources of the rivers, were 
 there attributed to him ; or that he loved to visit the 
 Ethiopians? — this was a very usual taste among the 
 Greek gods; Mr. Gladstone knows the reason as 
 well as I do. 
 
 I shall not dilate upon the objections he advances 
 on the subject of Hera, the august spouse of Zeus, 
 who seems to me to have personified the sky in its 
 inconstant aspect, mobile, easily disturbed, as if she 
 represented the vaiiable and lower element, while 
 Zeus, her husband, is rather the unchanging sky, in 
 the majestic serenity of its unalterable blue. WTien 
 they are united and agreed, nothing can equal the 
 smiling beauty of Natm-e. When they are divided 
 and disputing, all goes wrong. Moreover, in the 
 " Iliad," Hera shares, though in a lower measure, the 
 powers of Zeus. She also scolds from the celestial 
 heights, and can, in concert with Boreas, let loose the 
 storms (H. xi, 42; xv, 26). I know that the question 
 of her physical origin is less simple than that of most 
 
 >%i4«i 
 
 •»!$rmer!<mKmii»m»ii>m»mtt%.'m'wm 
 
no 
 
 ANSWER TO MR. GLADSTONE, 
 
 of the Olympians. I myself hesitated long about 
 whether she ought to be placed in the categoi-y of 
 the earth goddesses Hke Gaia, Rhea, Cybele, Themis, 
 Danae, Leto, Semele, and probably Dione of Dodona! 
 Analogy appeai'ed to lead to this conclusion. Never- 
 theless, on the whole, Hera seems to me to want the 
 characteristics which usually distinguish the earth 
 goddesses. She has neither their fixity— for la 
 donna d mobile— nor their attributes of divination. 
 Her typical bird, the peacock, with its expanding tafl, 
 seems rather to suggest the starry sky than the earth! 
 Her position as the recognized spouse of the god of 
 the heavens, distinct from the earth goddesses, who 
 originally held the first rank in the great number of 
 local mythologies (which, it may be said in passing, 
 contributed greatly to tarnish the conjugal reputation 
 of Zeus), seems to me to be traceable to a time, 
 already past in the Homeric age, when the division of 
 the world into three distinct kingdoms, each with its 
 supreme god, was generally recognized in the Greek 
 world. From that period it must have appeared nat- 
 ural that the titular spouse of the supreme celestial 
 god should have been herself celestial, and not a per- 
 sonification of the marine element or of the earth, 
 which had in Hades its supreme god in Pluto, and its 
 goddess in Demeter or Persephone, just as the sea- ' 
 god Poseidon had as his " parhedra" Amphitrite, the 
 Nereid. But I repeat it, this question of Hera is one 
 of the most obscure in Greek mythology; I do not 
 pretend to discuss or to resolve it in my *' Prolegom- 
 ena," where I only alluded to it in passing, nor can 
 I attempt to treat it fully in a mere controversial 
 article. I only wish to show my eminent critic that 
 it has not been with a superficial presumption that I 
 
 ANSWER TO MR. GLADSTONE. 
 
 121 
 
 allotted to Hera the mythological title of "Queen of 
 
 the Shining Heaven "—I am persuaded that she has 
 a right to it. 
 
 In the next place, I must protest against the term 
 " solar theory," which Mr, Gladstone appUes to my 
 general views about mythology. It is the " natural- 
 istic theory" that I have supported— that is, the theory 
 which explains the genesis of mythologies by the 
 personification and dramatization of natural phenom- 
 ena. Undoubtedly that theory when well understood 
 supposes the action of the religious sentiment inherent 
 in human nature. There is nothing in it materiaUstic 
 or irrehgious. Undoubtedly, also, the sun and the 
 phenomena connected with it, hold so prominent a 
 place that it is natural to expect that social myths 
 will be the most conspicuous by their number, their 
 attraction, and their variety. But the sun is still 
 only a part of a whole which our languages and our 
 modern minds designate by the word nature. Side 
 by side with the solar myths, there aie myths which 
 are purely celestial, marine, and tellurian. It is 
 neither accurate nor just, systematically to describe 
 the whole by one of its parts. I am astonished that 
 the sagacity of Mr. Gladstone has not long since led 
 him -to favor an explanation which has found a brill- 
 iant confii'mation in the relations discovered between 
 the Greek mythology and the mythologies of India 
 and the other Aryan regions, and which Egypt, 
 America, Oceanica, Africa, even China, not to speak 
 of the Semitic races, have, I will venture to say, 
 raised to the position of demonstrated truth. But, 
 to judge the force of this demonstration, a scholar 
 must not confine himself to the Homeric poetry. 
 I shall now pass to the other part of Mr. Glad- 
 
 kalariMMMa 
 
122 
 
 ANSWER TO MR. GLADSTONE. 
 
 ANSWER TO MR. GLADSTONE. 
 
 123 
 
 stone's attack, which relates to the errors I am sup- 
 posed to have committed in denying that the BibhcaJ 
 account of the creation agrees with the results of 
 modem natural science. This, if I mistake not, is the 
 part which will have most interested the majority of 
 his readers. 
 
 I have said in my " Prolegomena," while rendering 
 full homage to the beauty and religious purity of the 
 Biblical account of the creation, that it contains 
 assertions contradicted by modem science. Thus 
 the firmament destined to separate the waters below 
 from those above is represented as a solid vault ; the 
 stai's have been created after the earth, the periods of 
 creation or formation are single days. I have also, 
 it appears, not recognized the wonderfully scientific 
 order of the successive appearance of the creatures 
 that inhabit the water, the air, and the eai'th, until at 
 last man appears to crown and complete the work of 
 creation. These are my principal heresies, in addi- 
 tion to which I am accused of having put forward 
 some bad-sounding propositions about the moral 
 state of the first couple, as it appears in the account 
 of the fall in Eden, and about the meaning of the 
 plural which the creator employs in speaking of him- 
 self. 
 
 I must allow myself to remind my readers that my 
 object in treating these questions was neither to at- 
 tack nor to defend the sacred writings. It was solely 
 to show, by a succinct analysis of their chief contents, 
 that the partisans of a primitive doctrinal revelation 
 are mistaken in supposing that the Bible itself sup- 
 ports their view. 
 
 For the rest, even after the ingenious pleadings of 
 Mr. Gladstone, I maintain my assertions. 
 
 Mr. Huxley has made it unnecessary for me to 
 dwell upon the pretended conformity of the success- 
 ive appearances of organized beings in Genesis with 
 the results that have been estabHshed by comtem- 
 porary geology. It is not true that the vegetable, 
 aquatic, flying, quadruped, and reptile species suc- 
 ceeded each other in their totality in the order 
 specified by the canonic writer. Mr. Gladstone 
 seems to have lost sight of the fact that at verses 11 
 and 12 the whole vegetable world in all its depart- 
 ments, as the author of the narrative knew it, had 
 made its complete appearance at the command of 
 God. Consequently, the objection drawn from the 
 absence of the solar light remains in all its force. 
 For it is not a difiiised hght, concentrating itself 
 gradually round the sun, that could have simul- 
 taneously permitted all the vegetable species to 
 develop over the surface of the earth. I know well 
 that a lax interpretation has transformed fhe days of 
 Genesis into periods of immense length, in spite of 
 the mention of *' evening " and " morning " which 
 closes each of the creative acts. Unfortunately, it is 
 impossible to adopt this interpretation. For it is on 
 the supposition that the days of the creation were 
 similar to our own that the famous commandment of 
 the Sabbath is based, and this is the motive assigned 
 for it by the Hebrew legislator : " Thou shalt work 
 six days and do all thy work, but the seventh day is 
 the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. Thou shalt do 
 no work on that day . . . For in six days the 
 Lord made the heavens, the earth, and the sea, and 
 all that is in them, and rested the seventh day" 
 Now, if the days of the creation should be under- 
 stood as periods of thousands or millions of years, I 
 
124 
 
 ANSWER TO MR. GLADSTONE. 
 
 beg Mr. Gladstone to explain how they can serve as 
 an argument in support of the command to work for 
 six days of our week and to rest on the seventh. 
 
 I also regret to tell him that the Hebrew word 
 ordinarily translated in our versions by the word 
 firmament, while it expresses the idea of an expan- 
 sion, of something that is stretched out, expresses 
 also that of something solid. This is why the firma- 
 ment supports the waters that ai-e above it, and 
 separates them according to the divine will from 
 those w^hich are below it (v. 6, 7). Otherwise the 
 passage would be incomprehensible. This idea of a 
 solid sky is general throughout antiquity, and the 
 sacred text, when it proceeds to the account of the 
 deluge, does not fail to tell us that the sluices or 
 closing parts of the heavens were opened, which 
 brought about the junction of the waters above the 
 heavens with the waters below the earth, which rose 
 from the springs of the great abyss, so that the earth 
 was entirely covered from the second divine work of 
 the creation was for the time annulled (comp. Gen. 
 vii, 10-12 ; i, 6-8, and also in the same order of ideas 
 Ps. cxlviii, 4 ; Apoc. iv, 6). All these ways of repre- 
 senting things suppose the solidity of the firmament, 
 and the LXX in translating the Hebrew word by 
 GXBfttoDjAa have perfectly given its sense, ^repo^, 
 in fact, expresses the idea of firmness and solidity. 
 
 I am also afraid that Mi'. Gladstone attaches a very 
 undue and ill-founded importance to the metaphysical 
 distinction which he establishes between the expres- 
 sions " to create " and " to make," which are used 
 alternately in the account in Genesis of the successive 
 works of the creator. It is true that it is said God 
 created the heavens and the earth (i^ 1), God maJj 
 
 ANSWER TO MR. GLADSTONE, 
 
 125 
 
 the firmament (v. 7), God made the sun and the 
 moon (v. 16), God created the great fishes (v. 21), 
 God made the terrestrial animals (v. 25), and God 
 created man (v. 27). But are we therefore authorized 
 to think that the canonical writer intended to maik 
 the enormous difi^erence from a metaphysical point of 
 view, which separates creation— that is, calling being 
 mto existence by an incomprehensible act of divine 
 power— from the act of making? Hebraists are far 
 from certain that the word barah, which we translate 
 by " to create," had this exclusive and rigorous meaa- 
 ing. It signifies, according to the dictionaries, " to 
 form," "to fashion," as weH as "to create." The 
 LXX had no idea of expressing the distinction be- 
 tween creating and making. They might certainly 
 have employed alternately the words xriCeiv and 
 Ttoiaiv. They did not do so, probably because the 
 distmction of meaning escaped their notice. More- 
 over, a clear proof that the distinction to which Mr. 
 Gladstone appeals has not a great importance is that 
 in V. 26 God says, " Let us make man in our image " 
 and in v. 27 it is said, " God created maa in his im- 
 age." It is evident from this that in the mind of the 
 author the words "create" and '^maie" might be 
 used undistinguishably, and that we modems are 
 qmte wrong in trying to force our metaphysical dis- 
 tmctions on old historians who never dreamed of 
 them. 
 
 But what use is there, it wiU be said, in these 
 subtle discussions ? It remains not the less certain 
 that canonical writers wished to express the great 
 monotheistic truth that God is the only and absolute 
 author of the world and of all that exists, that he is 
 the principle and source of being, and this is all that 
 
126 
 
 ANSWER TO MR. GLADSTONE. 
 
 it is necessary from a religious point of view to main- 
 tain. Be it so, but it is in a distinction, which is in 
 my eyes an anaclironism, that Mr. Gladstone hopes 
 to find an answer to those who object to the pre- 
 tended harmony between Genesis and modem science 
 that the first represents the sun, moon, and stars, as 
 created subsequently to the earth, and intended only 
 to throw hght upon it. I think in truth that this 
 was the idea of the sacred writer, and that every one 
 who reads him without a preconceived opinion would 
 derive this impression from his words. But this is 
 not the opinion of Mr. Gladstone. No, he says, God 
 did not create, in the strict sense of the word create, 
 the celestial bodies on the fourth day, when the earth 
 already existed, freed from waters and covered with 
 plants; he made them, which is a very different 
 thing ; he assigned them their place in relation to 
 the earth. They were, no doubt, already included in 
 the creation of the heavens which is mentioned in the 
 first verse. The fourth day only marks the moment 
 of the final exclusive concentration of light in the sun 
 and of its reflection on the moon and on the planets. 
 I must here stop : I do not wish to prolong this ex- 
 planation to the point of giving it an appearance of 
 irony. I would only submit this question to any im- 
 paitial reader—when it is said that God determined 
 that there should be light-giving bodies in the firma- 
 ment, to divide the seasons, and to shine upon the 
 eaith, that God made them, and that God placed 
 them in the firmament, is it conceivable that such 
 words were intended to convey that these hght-bear- 
 ing- bodies already existed, and that the work of the 
 creator on that day consisted simply of assigning them 
 » place, an orbit, and a power of radiation ? Whether 
 
 \ 
 
 ANSWER TO MR. GLADSTONE. 
 
 127 
 
 X 
 
 God made or created the stars on the fourth day, 
 after the earth and its vegetation, the difficulty 
 remains absolutely the same. 
 
 Having said this, I have now only to defend myself 
 against two reproaches of a certain importance. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone blames me for having misinterpreted 
 the passage, ** Let us make man in our image," in 
 which orthodox Christianity wishes to see an allusion 
 to the Trinity. I have suggested that this is either 
 a pluralls majestlcus, or that this passage may im- 
 ply the existence of celestial beings, the Bene Elohim, 
 in whose presence the creator was displaying his 
 energies, and whom he invites to some kind of coop- 
 eration when he comes to the last and the most per- 
 fect of his works. I have not concealed my preference 
 for the second explanation which appears to me sup- 
 . ported by the analogy of other passages of the Old 
 Testament, such as Gen. iii, 22 ; vi, 2 ; Job xxxviii, 7. 
 I must dechne absolutely the honor which Mr. Glad- 
 stone is good enough to do me in representing me as 
 opposing proudly and presumptuously my sohtary 
 opinion to the traditions of the Christian church. 
 There are passages in the Bible, as, for example, 
 Isaiah vu, 14, concerning which the imanimity of tra- 
 dition does not prevent it from being very erroneous. 
 But as for the passage we are now discussing, I am 
 very far from being alone in my opinion, and I wait 
 for some other refutation than an appeal to a tradi- 
 tion of which those who alone for so many centuries 
 knew how to read or to interpret the original Hebrew 
 were profoundly ignorant. 
 
 In the last place Mr. Gladstone is much surprised 
 that, relying on the picture which the author of the 
 second chapter of Genesis traces of the life of the first 
 
128 
 
 ANSWER TO MR. GLADSTONE. 
 
 human couple in Eden, I say that he represents them 
 as ignorant of the elementary notions of morality. 
 He admits, indeed, that it is only possible to ascribe 
 to them " the morality of a httle child, the undevel- 
 oped morality of obedience." This is already some 
 approach to an agreement. But in my turn I will 
 venture to ask him if he has duly weighed the full 
 significance of the declaration that they were without 
 the knowledge of good and evil? that thej only 
 acquired this knowledge by a transgression the im- 
 moral character of which must necessarily have 
 escaped them 1 I have not to justify or to criticise 
 the canonical writer. I confine myself to registeiing 
 his statement. There are but these two alternatives. 
 Either Adam and Eve before eating the forbidden 
 fruit knew that they were committing, not a false cal- 
 culation, not an act of imprudence, but a fault in the . 
 moral sense of the word, and in that case it is inad- 
 missible that they had no knowledge of good and evil 
 until after they had eaten it; or else they had, as the 
 canonical narrative affirms, up to this time no knowl- 
 edge of good or evil, and in that case I am perfectly 
 justified in saying that they were strangers to the 
 most elementaiy notions of morahty. And I see a 
 confirmation of this opinion in the incident related 
 by the sacred author with so much psychological 
 truth, according to which the sentiment of shame 
 which distinguishes so clearly man, the moral being, 
 from the brute, only awoke in them after they had 
 eaten the forbidden food. 
 
 No doubt much may be said about the meaning 
 or the possible meanings of this mythical story. 
 The great difficulty in penetrating to its true mean- 
 ing comes not onl^ from the fact that a later theology 
 
 ANSWER TO MR. GLADSTONE. 
 
 129 
 
 has based upon its poetry imposing dogmas of which 
 the author had no idea, and that many succeeding 
 generations have only looked on it through the facti- 
 tious lights created by these traditional dogmas ; it 
 comes also from the fact that the author himself could 
 not completely extricate himself from the apparent 
 contradiction of the two principles to which he tries 
 to do justice. On the one side man has advanced ; 
 he knows what he did not know ; he has become a 
 moral being ; the serpent has not Hed ; his eyes have 
 been opened. On the other side the progress seems 
 to have been accompHshed against God and in spite 
 of God. We find elsewhere this double sentiment of 
 a timid piety, which, while recognizing the progress 
 of man as good in itself, finds it difficult to imagine 
 that it does not constitute an insolent, impious, 
 guilty revolt against the sovereign God. Is not this 
 the point of view of old ^schylus in the drama of 
 " Prometheus ? " But it is not now our business to 
 resolve the antinomies involved in the narratives we 
 are trying to interpret. It is sufficient to interpret 
 them exactly. How many of the most eminent minds 
 find it difficult to read them without infusing into 
 them ideas or points of view which distort their mean- 
 ii^g ! The same author in connecting with a divine 
 malediction provoked by the first transgression cer- 
 tain collective evils which afflict the man, the woman, 
 and the serpent, says that God pronounced that 
 there should be henceforth enmity between the pos- 
 terity of the serpent and the posterity of the woman, 
 that the posterity of the woman should attack the 
 serpent on the head (or bruise its head), and that the 
 serpent or its posterity should attack on the heel the 
 posterity of the woman. Others besides myself have 
 
130 
 
 ANSWER TO MR. GLADSTONE. 
 
 ANSWER TO ME. GLADSTONE. 
 
 131 
 
 thought that it has been a mistake in the Christian 
 church to see a prophecy of the Redemption in this 
 curse which leaves the two adversaiies in a relation 
 of mortal enduring hostility, without giving any 
 prospect of its cessation (compare Gen. iii, 15). But 
 this displeases Mr. Gladstone. He thinks he finds 
 an indication of the superiority and final victory of 
 man in the fact that man attacks his enemy on the 
 head, and that his enemy can only attack him on the 
 heel, for the head is much more essential to life than 
 the foot. Good heavens ! If Mr. Gladstone were 
 unfortunate enough to be bitten on the heel by a ven- 
 omous serpent, would his lot be much more favorable 
 than that of the serpent whose head he had crushed? 
 
 I shall not pause upon a little cavil which he raises 
 against me about the somewhat strange text Genesis 
 iv, 26, generally translated, " Then they began to in- 
 voke the name of Jahveh." The importance of this 
 Jahvistic text comes especially from its contradiction 
 with the Elohistic text, Exodus vi, 2, 3, from which it 
 seems to follow that the name of Jahveh was un- 
 known to the patriai'chs. However this may be, and 
 without entering into a discussion which would be 
 necessarily too long, and even if the phrase ought to 
 be put in the singular, with the Samaritan codex and 
 the LXX, which the Hebrew text puts in the plural, 
 I maintain that this text may be always justly ad- 
 duced against those who pretend that the first man 
 received a doctrinal revelation in the beginning. 
 This is all that I attempted to maintain in my " Prol- 
 egomena," and I do not think that the arguments of 
 my respected critic aie of a nature to weaken the 
 proof. 
 
 I am sincerely grateful to him for not having con- 
 
 founded me with those who despise or detest religion 
 itself. Though much detached from the dogmatic 
 traditions of the church, I am in truth more and 
 more convinced of the legitimacy of the rehgious 
 principle in the human mind. I see in it a prophetic 
 indication of the higher destiny of man ; and I must 
 add that it is my conviction that religion among civ- 
 ilized men is for ever destined to move in the same 
 direction which the gospel gave it eighteen hundred 
 years ago. Either man will cease to be religious, or 
 he will find himself compelled to be in a certain 
 measure Christian. I do not recognize myself, there- 
 fore, in the eloquent and moving picture which Mr. 
 Gladstone has drawn at the end of his ai'ticle of the 
 iconoclasts who are exulting in the idea that they 
 have destroyed one or other of the beHefs from which 
 so many generations have drawn their best consola- 
 tion and hopes. If I have been able like others to 
 greet with enthusiasm the comj^lete Hberty of con- 
 science and intelligence contained in principle in the 
 gospel, partially restored at the Reformation and 
 completely w on in our own day, I have also more than 
 once known what it is to bid melancholy farewell to 
 traditional doctrines which had charmed my childhood 
 and my youth with their grandeiu-, their poetry, and 
 their mystic beauty. The fruits of the tree of knowl- 
 edge are sometimes bitter, and Mr. Gladstone is quite 
 right in protesting against the brutality with which 
 the venerable roots of the ancient faith are sometimes 
 treated. 
 
 But allow mo to tell him that there is one thing of 
 far higher importance than the propriety and the de- 
 cency which he demands from contemporaiy criticism. 
 It is that it should be inspired by a genuine and 
 
 / 
 
132 
 
 ANSWER TO MR. GLADSTONE. 
 
 disinterested love of truth. I can well imagine that 
 the defenders of expiring paganism or the sincere 
 Roman Catholics who lived during the destructive 
 revolution of Luther, shed many a tear over the kind 
 of fury with which men were sapping the very 
 foundations of systems w^hich seemed to them the 
 most sacred and the most consoling in the 
 world. Yet the Christians of the fourth cen- 
 tury, the Protestants of the sixteenth, were in 
 the truth; they were on the path that leads upwai'd 
 to truth. Let us keep clear of all passion, whether 
 it be conservative or negative. Passion always 
 blinds. But let us have the courage to seek for and 
 express the truth, as it appears to our minds, in all 
 its simplicity and its purity. Do not let us be 
 alarmed by the toiTents swollen with the autumnal 
 rains, nor yet with the frost that congeals the waters 
 and the plants. In due time the spring will come 
 with its brightness and its flow^ers. The worst thing 
 that could happen would be that humanity should 
 cease to discuss those great problems which consti- 
 tute at once its torment, its nobihty, and its happi- 
 ness. This danger is not now to be feared. On the 
 contrary, we may hope that from the angry shock of 
 opposing religious principles and ideas a great syn- 
 thesis will arise which may satisfy the wants and 
 aspirations of all. We shall probably not see it with 
 the eyes of the flesh, but we may all contribute to its 
 advent by seeking for truth in religion as in all other 
 things, laboriously, faithfully, and courageously. 
 Neither the rage of an iiTeligious fanaticism, nor the 
 sentimentality of an emasculated romanticism, must 
 guide us in this voyage toward the unknown or the 
 little known. The love of trnth is but one of the 
 
 \ 
 
 ANSWER TO MR, GLADSTONE. 
 
 133 
 
 elements of the love of God, since truth is but one of 
 the aspects of his supreme perfection. If Christ Hved 
 and spoke in the midst of us, unless he were untrue 
 to himself, he could speak no other language. Let 
 us search, study, work, each in his sphere, for the 
 good, the just, and the true, in nature, in society, in 
 the soul. I know an illustrious statesman who in our 
 days has been one of the great workers of God in the 
 work of justice on the eai'th. Perhaps he has been 
 less happy in his excursions into the field of religious 
 science. It is still a great and salutai'y example 
 which he has given to his contemporaries in turning 
 to this side also his powerful and brilliant intellect. 
 However this may be, just because we believe in 
 God, let us never lose our faith in the final results of 
 sincere search for truth everywhere and always, 
 whether it be in the vast and obscure fields of phys- 
 ical nature or in the records which embalm the 
 experiences and the beliefs of our race. This work, 
 can-ied on by very difierent intellects, cannot be 
 accompHshed without discussions or without errors. 
 But let us never lose courage. Magna est Veritas et 
 prcevalebit. 
 
 Albert Reville, D.D. 
 
MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS. 
 
 135 
 
 MH. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS. 
 
 BY T. H. HUXLEY. 
 
 In controversy, as in coui'tsbip, the good old rule 
 to be off with the old before one is on with the new 
 greatly commends itself to my sense of expediency. 
 And therefore it appeal's to me desirable that I should 
 preface such observations as I may have to offer upon 
 the cloud of arguments (the relevancy of which to the 
 issue which I had ventured to raise is not always 
 obvious) put forth by Mr. Gladstone in the January 
 number of this Bevie^c, by an endeavor to make clear 
 to such of our readers as have not had the advantage 
 of a forensic education the present net result of the 
 discussion. 
 
 I am quite aware that, in imdertaking this task, I 
 run all the risks to which the man who presumes to 
 deal judicially with his own cause is liable. But it is 
 exactly because I do not shun that risk, but, rather, 
 earnestly desire to be judged by him who cometh 
 after me, provided that he has the knowledge and 
 impartiaHty appropiiate to a judge, that I adopt my 
 present course. 
 
 In the article on the " Dawn of Creation and of Wor- 
 ship" it will be remembered that Mr. Gladstone unre- 
 servedly commits himself to three propositions. The 
 first is that, according to the writer of the Penta- 
 teuch, the "water-population," the " air-population," 
 and the " land-population " of the globe were created 
 successively, in the order named. In the second 
 place, Mr. Gladstone authoritatively asserts that this 
 
 1 
 
 (as part of his " fourfold order ") has been " so affirmed 
 in our time by natui'al science, that it may be taken 
 as a demonstrated conclusion and established fact." 
 In the third place, IVIr. Gladstone argues that the fact 
 of this coincidence of the Pentateuchal story with 
 the results of modem investigation makes it " impos- 
 sible to avoid the conclusion, first, that either this 
 writer was gifted with faculties passing all human 
 experience, or else his knowledge was divine." And, 
 having settled to his own satisfaction that the first 
 " branch of the alternative is truly nominal and un- 
 real," Ml*. Gladstone continues, " So stands the plea 
 for a revelation of truth from God, a plea only to be 
 met by questioning its possibiHty." 
 
 I am a simple-minded person, wholly devoid of 
 subtlety of intellect, so that I willingly admit that 
 there may be depths of alternative meaning in these 
 propositions out of all soundings attainable by my 
 poor plummet. Still, there are a good many people 
 who suffer under a like intellectual limitation ; and, 
 for once in my life, I feel that I have the chance of 
 attaining that position of a representative of average 
 opinion which appears to be the modem ideal of a 
 leader of men, when I make free confession that, after 
 turning the matter over in my mind with all the aid 
 derived from a careful consideration of Mr. Glad- 
 stone's reply, I cannot get away from my original 
 conviction that, if Mr. Gladstone's second proposition 
 can be shown to be not merely inaccurate, but di- 
 rectly contradictory of facts known to everyone who 
 is acquainted with the elements of natural science, 
 the third proposition collapses of itself. 
 
 And it was this conviction which led me to enter 
 upon the present discussion. I fancied that if my 
 
 \ 
 
136 
 
 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS. 
 
 MB. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS. 
 
 137 
 
 respected clients, the people of average opinion and 
 capacity, could once be got distinctly to conceive 
 that Mr. Gladstone's views as to the proper method 
 of dealing with grave and difficult scientific and 
 rehgious problems had permitted him to base a sol- 
 emn "plea for a revelation of truth from God " upon 
 an error as to a matter of fact, from which the intel- 
 ligent perusal of a manual of paleontology would 
 have saved him, I need not trouble myself to occupy 
 their time and attention with further comments upon 
 his contribution to apologetic literature. It is for 
 others to judge whether I have efficiently canied out 
 my project or not. It certainly does not count for 
 much that I should be unable to find any flaw in 
 my own case, but I think that it counts for a good 
 deal that Mr. Gladstone appears to have been equally 
 unable to do so. He does, indeed, make a great 
 parade of authorities, and I have the greatest respect 
 for those authorities whom Mr. Gladstone mentions. 
 If he will get them to sign a joint memorial to the 
 effect that our present paleontological evidence 
 proves that birds appeared before the " land-popula- 
 tion " of teiTestrial reptiles, I shall think it my duty 
 to reconsider my position — but not till then. 
 
 It will be observed that I have cautiously used the 
 word " appeal's " in referring to what seems to me 
 to be absence of any real answer to my criticisms in 
 Mr. Gladstone's reply. For I must honestly confess 
 that, notwithstanding long and painful strivings after 
 clear insight, I am still uncertain whether Mr. Glad- 
 stone's " Defense " means that the great " plea for a 
 revelation from God " is to be left to perish in the 
 dialectic desert, or whether it is to be withdrawn 
 
 I: 
 t 
 
 under the protection of such skirmishers as are avail- 
 able for covering retreat. 
 
 In particular the remai'kable disquisition which 
 covers pages 86 to 92 of Mr. Gladstone's last con- 
 tribution has greatly exercised my mind. Socrates 
 is reported to have said of the works of Herachtus 
 that he who attempted to comprehend them should 
 be a " Delian swimmer," but that, for his part, what 
 he could understand was so good that he was dis- 
 posed to believe in the excellence of that which he 
 found uninteUigible. In endeavoring to make myself 
 master of Mr. Gladstone's meaning in these pages, I 
 have often been overcome by a feeling analogous to 
 that of Socrates, but not quite the same. That which 
 I do understand, in fact, has appeared to me so very 
 much the reverse of good that I have sometimes per- 
 mitted myself to doubt the value of that which I do 
 not understand. 
 
 In this part of Mr. Gladstone's reply, in fact, I find 
 nothing of which the bearing upon my arguments is 
 clear to me, except that which relates to the question 
 whether reptiles, so far as they are represented by 
 tortoises and the great majority of lizards and snakes, 
 which are land animals, are creeping things in the 
 sense of the Pentateuchal writer or not. 
 
 I have every respect for the singer of the Song of 
 the Three Children (whoever he may have been); I 
 desu-e to cast no shadow of doubt upon, but, on the 
 contrary, marvel at, the exactness of Mr. Gladstone's 
 information as to the considerations which *' affected 
 the method of the Mosaic writer ;" nor do I venture 
 to doubt that the inconvenient intrusion of these con- 
 temptible reptiles — *' a family fallen from greatness " 
 (p. 91), a miserable decayed aristocracy reduced to 
 
138 
 
 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS. 
 
 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS. 
 
 139 
 
 mere *' skulkers about tlie earth " (ibid.) — in conse- 
 quence apparently of difficulties about the occupation 
 of land arising out of the earth-hunger of their former 
 serfs, the mammals — into an apologetic argument, 
 which otherwise would run quite smoothly, is in 
 every way to be deprecated. Still, the wretched 
 creatures stand there, importunately demanding 
 notice ; and, however different may be the practice in 
 that contentious atmosphere with which Mr. Glad- 
 stone expresses and laments his familiarity, in the 
 atmosphere of science it really is of no avail whatever 
 to shut one's eyes to facts, or to try to bury them 
 out of sight under a tumulus of rhetoric. That is 
 my experience of " the Elynian regions of Science," 
 wherein it is a pleasure to me to think that a man of 
 Mr. Gladstone's intimate knowledge of English life 
 during the last quaiter of a centuiy believes my 
 philosophic existence to have been rounded off in un- 
 broken equanimity. 
 
 However reprehensible, and indeed contemptible, 
 terrestrial reptiles may be, the only question which 
 appears to me to be relevant to my argument is whether 
 these creature are or are not comprised under the de- 
 nomination of " everything that creepeth upon the 
 ground." 
 
 Mr. Gladstone speaks of the author of the first 
 chapter of Genesis as " the Mosaic writer ; " I sup- 
 pose, therefore, that he will admit that it is equally 
 proper to speak of the author of Leviticus as the 
 " Mosaic writer." Whether such a phrase would be 
 used by any one who had an adequate conception of 
 the assured results of modern Bibhcal criticism is 
 another matter ; but, at any rate, it cannot be denied 
 that Leviticus has as much claim to Mosaic author- 
 
 ship as Genesis. Therefore, if one wants to know 
 the sense of a phrase used in Genesis, it will be- well 
 to see what Leviticus has to say on the matter. 
 Hence, I commend the following extract from the 
 eleventh chapter of Leviticus to Mr. Gladstone's 
 serious attention : 
 
 And these are they which are unclean unto you among the 
 creeping things that creep upon the earth : the weasel, and 
 the mouse, and the great lizard after its kind, and the gecko, 
 and the land-crocodile, and the sand-lizard, and the cha- 
 meleon. These are they which are unclean to you among all 
 that creep (v. 29-31. 
 
 The merest Sunday-school exegesis therefore suf- 
 fices to prove that when the " Mosaic writer " in Gen- 
 esis i, 24, speaks of " creeping things " he means to 
 include lizards among them. 
 
 This being so, it is agreed on all hands that ter- 
 restrial lizards, and other reptiles allied to lizards, 
 occur in the Permian strata. It is further agreed 
 that the Triassic strata were deposited after these. 
 Moreover, it is well known that, even if certain foot- 
 prints are to be taken as unquestionable evidence of 
 the existence of birds, they are not known to occur in 
 rocks earHer than the Trias, while indubitable remains 
 of birds are to be met with only much later. Hence 
 it follows that natural science does not " affirm " the 
 statement that birds were made on the fifth day, and 
 " everything that creepeth on the ground " on the 
 sixth, on which IVIr. Gladstone rests his order ; for, as 
 is shown by Leviticus, the " Mosaic writer " includes 
 hzards among his *' creeping things." 
 
 Perhaps I have given myself superfluous trouble 
 in the preceding argument, for I find that Mr. Glad- 
 stone is wilhng to assume (he does not say to admit) 
 
140 
 
 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS. 
 
 that the statement in the text of Genesis as to rep- 
 tiles cannot "in all points be sustained." But my 
 position is that it cannot be sustained in any point, 
 so that, after all, it has perhaps been as well to go 
 over the evidence again. And then Mr. Gladstone 
 proceeds, as if nothing had happened, to tell us that — 
 
 There remain great unshaken facts to be weighed. First, 
 the fact that such a record should have been made at all. 
 
 As most peoples have their cosmogonies, this 
 " fact " does not strike me as having much value. 
 
 Secondly, the fact that, instead of dwellmg in generalities, 
 it has placed itself under the severe conditions of a chrono- 
 logical order reaching from the first nism of chaotic matter 
 to the consummated production of a fair and goodly, a fur- 
 nished and a peopled world. 
 
 This " fact " can be regarded as of value only by 
 ignoring the fact demonstrated in my previous paper 
 that natural science does not confirm the order 
 asserted so far as living things are concerned ; and 
 by upsetting a fact to be brought to light presently, 
 to wit, that, in regaid to the rest of the Pentateuchal 
 cosmogony, prudent science has very litle to say one 
 way or the other. 
 
 Thirdly, the fact that its cosmogony seems, in the light of 
 the nineteenth century, to draw more and more of coun- 
 tenance from the best natural philosophy. 
 
 I have already questioned the accuracy of this 
 statement, and I do not observe that mere repetition 
 adds to its value. 
 
 And, fourthly, that it has described the successive origms 
 of the five great categories of present life with which human 
 experience was and is conversant, in that order which geo- 
 logical authority confirms. 
 
 By comparison with a sentence on page 92, in 
 
 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS. 
 
 141 
 
 which a fivefold order is substituted for the " four- 
 fold order," on which the " plea for Kevelation " was 
 originally founded, it appears that these five cate- 
 gories are " plants, fishes, birds, mammals and man," 
 which, Mr. Gladstone affirms, " are given to us in 
 Genesis in the order of succession in which they are 
 also given by the latest geological authoiities." 
 
 I must venture to demur to this statement. I 
 showed, in my previous paper, that there is no reason 
 to doubt that the term "great sea monsters " (used in 
 Genesis i, 21) includes the most conspicuous of great 
 sea animals — namely, whales, dolphins, porpoises, 
 manatees, and dugongs ;* and as these are indubit- 
 able mammals, it is impossible to affirm that mam- 
 mals come after birds, which are said to have been 
 created on the same day. Moreover, I pointed out 
 that as these Cetacea and Sirenia are certainly modi- 
 fied land animals, their existence impHes the ante- 
 cedent existence of land mammals. 
 
 Furthermore, I have to remark that the term 
 " fishes," as used technically in zoology, by no means 
 covers all the moving creatures that have life, which 
 are bidden to " fill the waters in the seas" (Genesis 
 i, 20-22). Marine moUusks and Crustacea, echino- 
 derms, corals, and foraminifera are not technically 
 fishes. But they are abundant in the paleozoic rocks, 
 ages upon ages older than those in which the first 
 evidences of true fishes appear. And if , in a geolog- 
 ical book, Mr. Gladstone finds the quite true state- 
 ment that plants appeared before fishes, it is only by 
 a complete misunderstanding that he can be led to 
 
 ♦Both dolphins and dugongs occur in the Red Sea, por- 
 poises and dolphins in the Mediterranean; so that the 
 '' Mosaic writer" may well have been acquainted with them. 
 
m 
 
 142 
 
 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS, 
 
 Ij!! 
 
 imagine it serves his purpose. As a matter of fact, 
 at the present moment, it is a question whether, on 
 the bare evidence afforded by fossils, the marine creep- 
 ing things or the marine plant has the seniority. No 
 cautious paleontologist would express a decided opin- 
 ion on the matter. But, if we are to read the Penta- 
 teuchal statement as a scientific document (and, in 
 spite of all protests to the contrary, those who bring 
 it into comparison with science do seek to make a 
 scientific document of it), then, as it is quite clear, 
 that only terrestrial plants of high organization are 
 spoken of in verses 11 and 12, no paleontologist 
 would hesitate to say that, at present, the records of 
 sea animal life are vastly older than those of any land 
 plant describable as *' grass, herb yielding seed, or 
 fruit-tree." 
 
 Thus, although, in Mr. Gladstone's " Defense," the 
 " old order passeth into new," his case is not im- 
 proved. The fivefold order is no more " affirmed in 
 our time by natural science " to be a " demonstrated 
 conclusion and established fact " than the fourfold 
 order was. Natural science appears to me to decline 
 to have anything to do with either; they are as 
 wrong in detail as they are mistaken in principle. 
 
 There is another change of position, the value of 
 which is not so apparent to me as it may well seem 
 to be to those who are unfamiliar with the subject 
 under discussion. Mr. Gladstone discards his three 
 groups of "water-population," "air-population," and 
 "land-population," and substitutes for them (1) 
 fishes, (2) birds, (3) mammals, (4) man. Moreover, 
 it is assumed in a note that " the higher or ordinary 
 mammals" alone were known to the " Mosaic writer " 
 (p. 78). No doubt it looks, at first, as if something 
 
 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS. 
 
 143 
 
 ,1 
 
 t 
 
 1 
 
 
 were gained by this alteration; for, as I have just 
 pointed out, the word "fishes " can be used in two 
 senses, one of which has a deceptive appearance of 
 adjustabihty to the "Mosaic" account. Then the 
 inconvenient reptiles are banished out of sight ; and, 
 finally, the question of the exact meaning of "higher" 
 and " ordinary" in the case of mammals opens up the 
 prospect of a hopeful logomachy. But what is the 
 good of it all in the face of Leviticus on the one 
 hand and of paleontogy on the other ? 
 
 As, in my apprehension, there is not a shadow of 
 justification for the suggestion that when the Penta- 
 teuchaJ writer says "fowl" he excludes bats (which, 
 as we shall see directly, are expressly included under 
 "fowl" in Leviticus), and as I have already shown 
 that he demonstrably includes reptiles, as well as 
 mammals, among the creeping things of the land, I 
 may be permitted to spaie my readers further dis- 
 cussion of the " fivefold order." On the whole, it is 
 seen to be rather more inconsistent with Genesis than 
 its fourfold predecessor. 
 
 But I have yet a fresh order to face. Mr. Glad- 
 stone understands " the main statements of Genesis, 
 in successive order of time, but without any measure- 
 ment of its divisions, to be as follows : 
 
 1. A period of land, anterior to all life (v. 9 and 10). 
 
 2. A period of vegetable life, anterior to animal life (v. 11 
 and 12). 
 
 3. A period of animal life, in the or^er of fishes (v. 20). 
 
 4. Another stage of animal life, in the order of birds. 
 ' 5. Another, in the order of beasts (v. 24 and 25). 
 
 6. Last of all, man (v. 26 and 27). 
 
 Mr. Gladstone then tries to find the proof of the 
 
144 
 
 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS. 
 
 MK. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS. 
 
 145 
 
 occurrence of a similar succession in sundry excellent 
 works on geology. 
 
 I am really grieved to be obliged to say that this 
 third (or is it fourth ?) modification of the foundation 
 of the " plea for Revelation " originally set forth, sat- 
 isfies me as Httle as any of its predecessors. 
 
 For, in the first place, I cannot accept the assertion 
 that this order is to be found in Genesis. With 
 respect to No. 3, for example, I hold, as I have 
 already said, that " great sea monsters " includes the 
 Cetacea, in which case mammals (which is what, I 
 suppose, Mr. Gladstone means by *' beasts ") come in 
 under head No. 3, and not under No. 5. Again, 
 " fowl " are said in Genesis to be created on the same 
 day as fishes; therefore I cannot accept an order 
 which makes birds succeed fishes. Once more, as it 
 is quite certain that the term " fowl " includes the 
 bats — for in Leviticus xi, 13-19, we read, "And 
 these shall ye have in abomination among the fowls 
 . . . the heron after its kind, and the hoopoe, 
 and the bat " — it is obvious that bats are also said to 
 have been created at stage No. 3. And as bats aire 
 mammals, and their existence obviously presupposes 
 that of terrestrial " beasts," it is quite clear that the 
 latter could not have first appeared as No. 5. I need 
 not repeat my reasons for doubting whether man 
 came *' last of all." 
 
 As the latter half of Mr. Gladstone's sixfold order 
 thus shows itself wholly unauthorized by, and incon- 
 sistent vnth, the plain language of the Pentateuch, I 
 might decline to discuss the admissibility of its former 
 half. 
 
 But I will add one or two remarks on this point 
 alsa Does Mr. Gladstone mean to say that in any of 
 
 the works he has cited, or indeed anywhere else, he 
 can find scientific warranty for the assertion that 
 there was a period of land — by which I suppose he 
 means di-y land (for submerged land must needs be 
 as old as the separate existence of the sea) — " anterior 
 to aU life r 
 
 It may be so, or it may not be so ; but where is 
 the evidence which would justify anyone in making a 
 positive assertion on the subject ? What competent 
 paleontologist will afl&rm, at this present moment, 
 that he knows anything about the period at which 
 life originated, or will assert more than the extreme 
 probability that such origin was a long way ante- 
 cedent to any traces of life at present knovm ? What 
 physical geologist will affirm that he knows when dry 
 land began to exist, or will say more than that it was 
 probably very much earlier than any extant direct 
 evidence of terrestrial conditions indicates ? 
 
 I think I know pretty well the answers which the 
 authorities quoted by Mr. Gladstone would give to 
 these questions ; but I leave it to them to give them 
 if they think fit. 
 
 If I ventured to speculate on the matter at all, I 
 should say it is by no means certain that sea is older 
 than dry land, inasmuch as a soUd terrestrial surface 
 may very well have existed before the earth was cool 
 enough to allow of the existence of fluid water. And 
 in this case dry land may have existed before the sea. 
 As to the first appearance of life, the whole argument 
 of analogy, whatever it may be worth in such a case, 
 is in favor of the absence of Hving beings until long 
 after the hot water seas had constituted themselves ; 
 and of the subsequent appearance of aquatic before 
 terrestrial forms of life. But whether these " proto- 
 
146 
 
 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS. 
 
 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS, 
 
 147 
 
 plasts " would, if we could examine them, be reck- 
 oned among the lowest microscopic aJgse, or fungi, or 
 among those doubtful organisms which He in the de- 
 batable land between animals and plants, is, in my 
 judgment, a question on which a prudent biologist 
 will reserve his opinion. 
 
 I think that I have now disposed of those parts of 
 jVIr. Gladstone's defense in which I seem to discover 
 a design to rescue his solemn " plea for Revelation." 
 But a great deal of the *' Proem to Genesis " remains 
 which I would gladly pass over in silence, were such 
 a course consistent with the respect due to so distin- 
 guished a champion of the " reconcilers." 
 
 I hope that my clients — the people of average 
 opinions — ^have by this time some confidence in me ; 
 for when I tell them that, after all, Mi\ Gladstone is 
 of opinion that the " Mosaic record " was meant to 
 give moral and not scientific instruction to those for 
 whom it was written, they may be disposed to think 
 that I must b© misleading them. But let them listen 
 further to what Mr. Gladstone says in a compendious 
 but not exactly correct statement respecting my 
 opinions : 
 
 He holds the writer responsible for scientific precision ; I 
 look for nothing of the kind, but assign to him a statement 
 general, which admits exceptions ; popular, which aims 
 mainly at producing moral impressions ; summary, which 
 cannot but be open to more or less of criticism of detail. 
 He thinks it is a lecture. I think it is a sermon (p. 77). 
 
 I note, incidentally, that Mr. Gladstone appears to 
 consider that the differentia between a lecture and a 
 sermon is that the former, so far as it deals with 
 matters of fact, may be taken seriously, as meaning 
 
 ^M 
 
 exactly what it says, while a sermon may not. I 
 have quite enough on my hands without taking up 
 the cudgels for the clergy, who will probably find 
 Mr. Gladstone's definition unflattering. 
 
 But I am diverging from my proper business, 
 which is to say that I have given no ground for the 
 ascription of these opinions, and that, as a matter of 
 fact, I do not hold them, and never have held them. 
 It is Mr. Gladstone, and not I, who will have it that 
 the Pentateuchal cosmogony is to be taken as science. 
 
 My belief, on the contrary, is, and long has been, 
 that the Pentateuchal story of the creation is simply 
 a myth. I suppose it to be a hypothesis respecting 
 the origin of the universe which some ancient thinker 
 foiind himself able to reconcile with his knowledge, 
 or what he thought was knowledge, of the nature of 
 things, and therefore assumed to be true. As such, 
 I hold it to be not merely an interesting but a venera- 
 ble monument of a stage in the mental progress of 
 mankind, and I find it difficult to su^ose that any 
 one who is acquainted with the cosmogonies of other 
 nations — and especially with those of the Egyptians 
 and the Babylonians, with whom the IsraeHtes were 
 in such frequent and intimate communication — 
 should consider it to possess either more or less 
 scientific importance than may be allotted to these. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone's definition of a sermon permits me 
 to suspect that he may not see much difference be- 
 tween that form of discourse and what I call a myth; 
 and I hope it may be something more than the slow- 
 ness of apprehension to which I have confessed which 
 leads me to imagine that a statement which is " gen- 
 eral" but " admits exceptions," which is "popular" 
 and " aims mainly at producing moral impressions," 
 
148 
 
 MB. GLADSTONE AND QKNK8I8. 
 
 "summary" and therefore open to **criticiMm of do- 
 tail," amounts to a myth, or perhaps less than a myth. 
 Put algebraically, it comes to thi«: x=a-{-lt-\-c ; 
 always remembering that there in nothing to nhow 
 the exact value of either a, or ^, or c. It ia true that 
 a is commonly supposed to equal 10, but there are 
 exceptions, and these may reduce it to 8, or 8, or 0; 
 b also popularly means 10, but bedng chicdj UNod by 
 the algebraist as a " moral " valu€i» you canooi do 
 much with it in the addition or mibtraciion of malli* 
 ematical values; c also is quite "suminary,'' afid if 
 you go into the details of which it iii modQ up, maDjr 
 of them may be wrong, and their tram total oqual to 
 0, or oven to m minuit quantity. 
 
 Mr. OlndjitoDo appcam to wish tliat I uliould, (1) 
 «Bt6r upon a i9ort of ctMiaj compotitiop with tbe (uitlior 
 of the P6nta(«uclia) oonoogony; (2) thai I should 
 OMbe a further BUU«m<5ut aboai Msno «lenMDt4U'y 
 factii in tho history of Indian and Greek philo^iphy ; 
 and ^3) that } nbouid nhoir caoae Icor my L<«iiiaiuii 
 in aooepting tbn aaMvtioD that GeaenB is supporiod, 
 ai any xoio to tho extent of tho first two Teraee^ by 
 the neUilar hypotbesiB. 
 
 A certain 011180 ci humor prfrrcoita mo from aocctpt- 
 ing tho fimt inritatioQD. I would as soon attczu])t to 
 put Homlot'a aotiloquy into a more Boieotiiio tiLajic. 
 Bat if I Huppowxi tho '• \foiak) writ^" to bo inspired, 
 a« Mr. OhuLitotto dociiy it would not be oonaiBtent 
 with my notions of retipeot for tho miproma being to 
 imagine him uoable to frame a form of woida which 
 should accAiratefy» or at least not inaocuiatoly, oxpnaa 
 bin own meaning. It 'w cometimes said that> hod the 
 Ktatcmenta contained in the iirHt chapter of QeMrifl 
 bcru seientiiically true, thoy would have b«ai unintel- 
 
 MB. 0T»Aik«raxi Asn o 
 
 140 
 
 ligible to ignorant pooplo; but bow is the msitter 
 mended if^ being iicicntiBcally uutniev (hej muat 
 needs l>e rojoct^d by instiuctod people t 
 
 With reupect to theMCond miggcution, it woidd be 
 prt'sxmiptuous in mo to pretend to instruct Mr. Glad- 
 btone in mat tors which lie as much within the prov- 
 inoo of literature and Liiftory as in. tha( of «cienoo; 
 bnt if anyono detfiroutt of further knowlodgo will be 
 ■o good OS to turn to that txioni excdlcot and by no 
 means recondite source of information, (he EiM^rclo- 
 pedia Britannica, bo will find, under the letter IC, tho 
 woffd ** Evolnlioo/' and a kmg article on that f^ubjcct 
 Now, I do not rooommcnd him to read tlie first half 
 of tho articio ; but the seeOdkd half, by my friend Mr. 
 SuUy, is r«dly very good. He will thcarc find it said 
 that in some of tbe pHloaophicti of undent India the 
 kleaof evolution in dearly cxprowed: ** Brahma w 
 con<^T<>d an tho ctemnl Milf -existent being, wblch^ 
 on ita material bide, unfolds itself to tho world by 
 giadually condensing i(>^f tomaterisl objccta through 
 tho gmdations of ether, ftre» water, earth, and other 
 elements." 
 
 And again : ^ In tho later Ryvtom of emanation 
 of Sankhya there w a more marked approach to 
 a BatoffidtiMtks doctrine of evolution." What little 
 knowledge I have of the matter— chioHy derived 
 from that very inutnictive book» ** />^e lUUgion of 
 Buddha^ by C. F. Koeppen, wpplcmentod by 
 Hatvl}''s interesting works) — l<«da mo to think that 
 Hr. SaDy might havo Rpokcn much more etrongly as 
 to tho ovolntaooary character of Indian phUoeophy, 
 and cfvpodally of that of the Buddhistei But tho 
 quccition is too huge to be dealt with incdilnntally. 
 
150 
 
 Mr. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS. 
 
 And with respect to early Greek philosophy* the 
 seeker after additional enlightenment need go no 
 further than the same excellent storehouse of infor- 
 mation : 
 
 The early Ionian physicists, including Thales, Anaximan- 
 der, and Anaximenes, seek to explain the world as generated 
 out of a primordial matter which is at the same time the uni- 
 versal support of things. This substance is endowed with a 
 generative or transmutative force by virtue of which it passes 
 into a succession of forms. They thus resemble modern ev- 
 olutionists, since they regard the world, with its infinite 
 variety of forms, as issuing from a simple mode of matter. 
 
 Further on, Mr. Sully remarks that "Heraclitus 
 deserves a prominent place in the history of the idea 
 of evolution," and he states, with perfect justice, that 
 Heraclitus has foreshadowed some of the special pe- 
 cuHarities of "Mr. Darwin's views. It is indeed a very 
 strange circumstance that the philosophy of the great 
 Ephesian more than adumbrates the two doctrines 
 which have played leading parts, the one in the de- 
 velopment of Christian dogma, the other in that of 
 natural science. The former is the conception of the 
 Word which took its Jewish shape in Alexandria, and 
 its Christian formf in that gospel which is usually 
 referred to an Ephesian source of some five centu- 
 ries later date ; and the latter is that of the struggle 
 for existence. The saying that " strife is father and 
 king of all," ascribed to HeracHtus, would be a not 
 inappropriate motto for the " Origin of Species." 
 
 *I said nothing about ''the greater number of schools of 
 Greek philosophy," as Mr. Gladstone implies that I did, but 
 expressly spoke of the " founders of Greek philosophy." 
 
 tSee Heinze, Die Lehre vom Logos^ p. 9, et seq. 
 
 im. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS. 
 
 151 
 
 I hare referred only to Mi\ Sully's article, because 
 his authority is quite sufficient for my purpose. But 
 the consultation of any of the more elaborate histo- 
 ries of Greek philosophy, such as the great work of 
 Zeller, for example, will only bring out the same fact 
 into still more striking prominence. I have professed 
 no "minute acquaintance" with either Indian or 
 Greek philosophy, but I have taken a great deal of 
 pains to secure that such knowledge as I do possess 
 shall be accurate and trustworthy. 
 
 In the third place, Mr. Gladstone appears to wish 
 that I should discuss with him the question whether 
 the nebular hypothesis is or is not confirmatory of 
 the Pentateuchal account of the origin of things. 
 Mr. Gladstone appears to be prepared to enter upon 
 this campaign with a light heart. I confess I am 
 not, and my reason for this backwardness will doubt- 
 less surprise Mr. Gladstone. It is that, rather more 
 than a quarter of a century ago (namely in February, 
 1859), when it was my duty, as president of the Geo- 
 logical Society, to deliver the anniversary address 
 (reprinted in Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Beviews, 
 1870), I chose a topic which involved a very careful 
 study of the remarkable cosmogonical speculation 
 originally promulgated by Immanuel Kant, and sub- 
 sequently by Laplace, which is now known as the 
 nebular hypothesis. With the help of such Httle 
 acquaintance with the principles of physics and 
 astronomy as I had gained, I endeavored to obtain a 
 clear understanding of this speculation in all its bear- 
 ings. I am not sure that I succeeded ; but of this I 
 am certain, that the problems involved are very diffi- 
 cult, even for those who possess the intellectual dis- 
 cipline requisite for deaUng with them. And ifc was 
 
152 
 
 Km. CHADSTONE AND GENESIS. 
 
 this conviction that led me to express my desire to 
 leave the discussion of the question of the asserted 
 harmony between Genesis and the nebular hypothesis 
 to experts in the appropriate branches of knowledge. 
 And I think my course was a wise one ; but as Mr. 
 Gladstone evidently does not understand how there 
 can be any hesitation on my part, unless it arises 
 from a conviction that he is in the right, I may go so 
 far as to set out my difficulties. 
 
 They are of two kinds — exegetical and. scientific. 
 It appears to me that it is vain to discuss a supposed 
 coincidence between Genesis and science, unless we 
 have first settled, on the one hand, what Genesis 
 says, and, on the other hand, what science says. 
 
 In the first place, I cannot find any consensus 
 among Biblical scholars as to the meaning of the 
 words, " In the beginning God created the heaven and 
 the earth." Some say that the Hebrew word hara, 
 which is translated " create," means " made out of 
 nothing." I venture to object to that rendering, not 
 on the gi'ound of scholarship, but of common sense. 
 Omnipotence itself can surely no more make some- 
 thing " out of " nothing than it can make a triangular 
 circle. What is intended by "made out of nothing" 
 appears to be " caused to come into existence," with 
 the impUcation that nothing of the same kind pre- 
 viously existed. It is further usually assumed that 
 " the heaven and the earth " means the material sub- 
 stance of the universe. Hence the " Mosaic writer " 
 is taken to imply that where nothing of a material 
 nature previously existed, this substance appeared. 
 That is perfectly conceivable, and therefore no one 
 can deny that it may have happened. But there are 
 other very authoritative critics who say that the 
 
 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS. 
 
 153 
 
 ancient Israelite* who wrote the passage was not 
 likely to have been capable of such abstract thinking, 
 and that, as a matter of philology, hara is commonly 
 used to signify the " fashioning," or *' forming," of 
 that which already exists. Now it appears to me 
 that the scientific investigator is wholly incompetent 
 to say anything at all about the first origin of the 
 material universe. The whole power of his organon 
 vanishes when he has to step beyond the chain of 
 natural causes and effects. No form of the nebular 
 hypothesis that I know of is necessarily connected 
 with any view of the origination of the nebular sub- 
 stance. Kant's form of it expressly supposes that 
 the nebular material from which one stellar system 
 starts may be nothing but the disintegrated substance 
 of a stellar and planetary system which has just come 
 to an end. Therefore, so far as I can see, one who be- 
 Keves that matter has existed from all eternity has just 
 as much right to hold the nebular hypothesis as one 
 who believes that matter came into existence at a 
 specified epoch. In x)ther words,- the nebular 
 hypothesis and the creation hypothesis, up to this 
 point, neither confirm nor oppose one another. 
 
 Next, we read in the revisers' version, in which I 
 suppose the ultimate results of critical scholarship to 
 be embodied : " And the earth was waste [without 
 form, in the authorized version] and void." Most 
 people seem to think that this phraseology intends 
 to imply that the matter out of which the world was 
 to be formed was a veritable " chaos " devoid of law 
 
 **♦ Ancient," doubtless, but his antiquity must not be ex- 
 aggerated. For example, there is no proof that the ** Mo- 
 saic " cosmogony was known to the Israelites of Solomon's 
 time. 
 
154 MB. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS. 
 
 and order. If this interpretation is correct, the neb- 
 ular hypothesis can have nothing to say to it. ine 
 scientific thinker cannot admit the absence of law 
 and order, anywhere or any when, in nature. Some- 
 times law and order are patent and visible to our 
 limited vision; sometimes they are hidden But 
 every particle of the matter of the most fantastic- 
 looking nebula in the heavens is a realm of law and 
 order in itself, and that it is so is the essential condi- 
 tion of the possibihty of sote and planetary evolution 
 from the apparent chaos.* 
 
 "Waste" is too vague a term to be worth consid- 
 eration. "Without form," intelligible enough as a 
 metaphor, if taken literally, is absurd ; for a materia^ 
 thing existing in space must have a B^P;^fi^^^«/ f ^ 
 if it has a superficies it has a form. The wildest 
 Btreaksof marestail clouds in the sky, or the most 
 irregular heavenly nebula, have surely just as much 
 W as a geometiical tetrahedron ; and asfor voi^ 
 how can that be void which is fuU of matter? As 
 poetry, these hues are vivid and admirable; a^ a 
 scientikc statement, which they must be taken to be 
 if any one is justified in comparing them with an- 
 other scientific statement, they fail to convey any 
 inteUi£nble conception to my mmd. 
 
 The account proceeds: "And darkness was upon 
 the face of the deep." So be it; but where, then is 
 the hkeness to the celestial nebula, of the existence 
 of which we should know nothing ^^^^.^^^^ f^^^ 
 with a light of their own? "And the spint of God 
 
 "";^n Jeremiah (iv. 23) says, " I beheld the earth and, 
 10, U was waste and void," he certainly ^^^^^J-^^::^ 
 ply that the form of the earth was less defimte, or its suh- 
 
 Btance less solid, than before. 
 
 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENE3IS. 
 
 155 
 
 moved upon the face of the waters." I have met with 
 no form of the nebular hypothesis which involves 
 anything analogous to this process. 
 
 I have said enough to explain some of the difficul- 
 ties which arise in my mind when I try to ascertain 
 whether there is any foundation for the contention 
 that the statements contained in the first two verses 
 of Genesis are supported by the nebular hypothesis. 
 The result does not appear to me to be exactly favor- 
 able to that contention. The nebular hypothesis 
 assumes the existence of matter having definite prop- 
 erties as its foundation. Whether such matter was 
 created a few thousand years ago, or whether it has 
 existed through an eternal series of metamorphoses 
 of which our present universe is only the last stage, 
 are altemativs, neither of which is scientifically 
 untenable, and neither scientifically demonstrable. 
 But science knows nothing of any stage in which 
 the universe could be said, in other than a met- 
 aphorical and popular sense, to be formless or empty, 
 or in any respect less the seat of law and order 
 than it is now. One might as well talk of a fresh- 
 laid hen's egg being " without form and void," be- 
 cause the chick therein is potential and not actual, as 
 apply such terms to the nebulous mass which con- 
 tains a potential solar system. 
 
 Until some further enlightenment comes to me, 
 then, I confess myself wholly unable to understand 
 the way in which the nebular hypothesis is to be con- 
 • verted into an ally of the "Mosaic writer."* 
 
 *In looking through the delightful volume recently pub- 
 lished by the Astronomer Royal for Ireland, a day or two 
 ago, I find the following remarks on the nebular hypothesis, 
 
156 
 
 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS. 
 
 But Mr. Gladstone informs us that Professor Dana 
 and Professor Guyot are prepared to prove that the 
 "first or cosmogonical portion of the Proem not only 
 accords with, but teaches, the nebular hypothesis." 
 There is no one to whose authority on geological 
 questions I am more readily disposed to bow than 
 that of my eminent friend Professor Dana. But I 
 am familiar with what he has previously said on this 
 topic in his well-known and standard work, into 
 which, strangely enough, it does not seem to have 
 occurred to Mr. Gladstone to look before he set out 
 upon his present undertaking; and unless Professor 
 Dana's latest contribution (which I have not yet met 
 with) takes up altogether new ground, I am afraid I 
 shall not be able to extricate myself, by its help, fi'om 
 my present difficulties. 
 
 It is a very long time since I began to think about 
 the relations between modem scientifically ascertained 
 truths and the cosmogonical speculations ' of the 
 
 which I should have been glad to quote in my text if I had 
 known them sooner : 
 
 *' Nor can it be ever more then a speculation ; it cannot be 
 established by observation, nor can it be proved by calcula- 
 tion. It is merely a conjecture, more or less plausible, but 
 perhaps, in some degree, necessarily true, if our present laws 
 rf heat, as we understand them, admit of the extreme appli- 
 cation here required, and if the present order of things has 
 reigned for sufficient time without the intervention of any 
 influence at present known to us" (The Story of the Heavens, 
 p. 606). 
 
 Would any prudent advocate base a plea, either for or 
 against revelation, upon the coincidence, or want of coin- 
 cidence, of the declarations of the latter with the require- 
 ments of a hypothesis thus guardedly dealt with by an astro- 
 nomical expert? 
 
 MB. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS. 
 
 167 
 
 writer of Genesis; and, as I think that Mr. Gladstone 
 might have been able to put his case with a good deal 
 more force if he had thought it worth while to con- 
 sult the last chapter of Professor Dana's admirable 
 "Manual of Geology," so I think he might have been 
 made aware that he was undertaking an enterprise of 
 which he had not counted the cost if he had chanced 
 upon a discussion of the subject which I pubhshed 
 in 1877.* 
 
 Finally, I should like to draw the attention of 
 those who take interest in these topics to the weighty 
 words of one of the most learned and moderate of 
 BibHcal critics: 
 
 A propos de cette premiere page de la Bible, on a coutume 
 de nos jours de disserter, k perte de vue, sur I'accord du r^cit 
 mosaique avec les sciences naturelles; et comme celles-ci, 
 tout dloigndes qu'elles sont encore de la perfection absolue 
 ont rendu populaires et en quelque sorte irre'fragables un 
 certain nombre de faits gJnereaux ou de theses fondamen- 
 tales de la cosmologie et de la geologic, c'est le texte sacrd 
 qu on s'^vertue ^ torturer pour le faire concorder avec ces 
 donn^es (Reuss, L'Histoire Sainte et la Loi, i, 275).t 
 
 ^^Inmy paper on " The Interpreters of Genesis and 
 
 ♦Lectures on Evolution delivered in New York. CAmeri 
 can Addresses.) 
 
 tTRAN8LATioN.-In reference to this first page of the Bible 
 It has become now the custom to discuss it copiously from 
 the wrong standpoint, or at random, on the agreement or 
 harmony of the Mosaic record with the natural sciences ; and 
 as these, far removed as they may yet be from absolute per- 
 fection, have undoubtedly rendered popular and in a degree 
 iirefutable a certain number of general facts or fundamental 
 theses relatmg to cosmology and geology, the sacred text is 
 stramed and twisted in order to make it agree with these ad- 
 mitted facts, ■ 
 
158 
 
 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS. 
 
 the Interpreters of Nature," while freely availing 
 myself of the rights of a scientific critic, I endeavored 
 to keep the expression of my views well within those 
 bounds of courtesy which are set by self-respect and 
 consideration for others. I am therefore glad to be 
 favored with Mr. Gladstone's acknowledgment of the 
 success of my efforts. I only wish that I could ac- 
 cept all the products of Mr. Gladstone's gracious 
 appreciation, but there is one about which, as a mat- 
 ter of honesty, I hesitate. In fact, if I had expressed 
 my meaning better than I seem to have done, I doubt 
 if this particular proffer of Mr. Gladstone's thanks 
 would have been made. 
 
 To my mind, whatever doctrine professes to be the 
 result of the apphcation of the accepted rules of 
 inductive and deductive logic to its subject-matter, 
 and accepts, within the limits which it sets to itself, 
 the supremacy of reason, is Science. Whether the 
 subject-matter consists of realities or unreaUties, 
 truths or falsehoods, is quite another question. I 
 conceive that ordinary geometry is science, by reason 
 of its method, and I also beheve that its axioms, def- 
 initions, and conclusions are all true. However, 
 there is a geometry of four dimensions, which I also 
 beheve to be science, because its method professes to 
 be strictly scientific. It is true that I cannot con- 
 ceive four dimensions in space, and therefore, for me, 
 the whole affair is unreal. But I have known men of 
 great intellectual powers who seemed to have no dif- 
 gculty either in conceiving them, or at any rate in 
 imagining how they could conceive them, and there- 
 fore four-dimensioned geometry comes under my 
 notion of science. 
 
 So I think astrology is a science, in so far as it pro- 
 
 MB. GLADSTONE AND GENESIS. 
 
 159 
 
 fesses to reason logically from principles estabHshed 
 by just inductive methods. To prevent misunder- 
 standing, perhaps I had better add that I do not 
 beheve one whit in astrology ; but no more do I be- 
 heve in Ptolemaic astronomy, or in the catastrophic 
 geology of my youth, although these, in their day, 
 claimed— and, to my mind, rightly claimed— the name 
 of science. If nothing is to be called science but 
 that which is exactly true from beginning to end, I 
 am afraid there is very httle science in the world out- 
 side mathematics. Among the physical sciences I do 
 not know that any could claim more than that each 
 is true within certain limits, so narrow that, for the 
 present, at any rate, they may be neglected. If such 
 is the case, I do not see where the Hne is to be drawn 
 between exactly true, partiaUy true, and mainly un- 
 true forms of science. And what I have said about 
 the current theology at the end of my paper leaves, I 
 think, no doubt as to the category in which I rank \t 
 For all that, I think it would be not only unjust, but 
 almost impertinent, to refuse the name of science to 
 the " Summa " of St. Thomas or to the " Institutes " 
 of Calvin. 
 
 In conclusion, I confess that my supposed "un- 
 jad^ appetite" for the sort of controversy in which 
 it needed not ]VIr. Gladstone's express declaration to 
 teU us he is far better practised than I am (though 
 probably, without another express declaration, no 
 one would have suspected that his controversial fires 
 are burning low) is already satiated. 
 
 In " Elysium " we conduct scientific discussions in 
 a different medium, and we are hable to threatenings 
 of asphyxia in that "atmosphere of contention " in 
 
160 
 
 MR. GLADSTONE AND GENESISL 
 
 wliich Mr. Gladstone has been able to live, alert and 
 vigorous beyond the common race of men, as if it 
 were purest mountain air. I trust that he may long 
 continue to seek truth, under the difficult conditions 
 he has chosen for the search, with unabated energy — 
 I had almost said fire : 
 
 May age not wither him, nor custom stale 
 His infinite variety. 
 
 But Elysium suits my less robust constitution 
 better, and I beg leave to retire thither, not sorry for 
 my experience of the other region — ^no one should 
 regret experience — but determined not to repeat it, 
 at any rate in reference to the "plea for Revelation." 
 
 T. H. Huxley. 
 
A PROTEST AN-D A PLEA. 
 
 BY MRS. E. LYNN LINTON, 
 
 In the Mneteenth Century of last November Mr. 
 Gladstone pubHshed a remarkable ai'ticle, wliich has 
 ah-eady received two answers. Professor Huxley has 
 dealt with its science, Professor Max Mailer with its 
 mythology and etymology ; and even the " Ulysses 
 of dialectics " will, I think, find it hai^d to reply to or 
 refute either the one or the other. This protest of 
 nune is founded on a much smaller point, but one on 
 which I am entitled to speak, inasmuch as Mr. Glad- 
 stone did me the honor to allude to me directly and 
 by quotation, though not by name. 
 
 The phrase to which I object occurs in a pai'a^aph 
 which expresses surprise " not only at the fact, but " 
 at the maimer in which in this day, wiiters, whose 
 name is legion, unimpeached in chai'acter and abound- 
 ing in taJent, not only put away from them, cast into 
 shadow or into the very gull of negation itself, the 
 conception of a deity, an acting and ruHng deity. Of 
 this beHef, which has satisfied the doubts, and wiped 
 away the tears, and found guidance for the footsteps 
 of so many a weary wanderer on earth, which among 
 the best and greatest of our race has been so cher^ 
 ished by those who had it, and so longed and sought 
 for by those who had it not, we might suppose that 
 if at length we had discovered that it was in the Hght 
 of truth untenable, that the accumulated testimony of 
 man was worthless, and that his wisdom was but 
 
162 
 
 A PROTEST AND A PLEA. 
 
 folly, yet at least the decencies of mourning would be 
 vouchsafed to this irreparable loss. Instead of this, 
 it is with a joy and exultation that might almost re- 
 call the frantic orgies of the Commune that this, at 
 least at first sight, terrific and overwhelming calamity 
 is accepted and recorded as a gain." (The italics are 
 my own.) 
 
 The phrase is cruel, misdirecting, unjust. As rev- 
 erently as those who believe that the Bible is the 
 word of God — the ipsissima verba — and the church 
 of Christ the sole ark of salvation, do we, who doubt 
 of both, worship the truth and stretch out our hands 
 to the light. If we think that such religions as the 
 world has hitherto seen have been subjective and not 
 given from without — self -generated and not re- 
 vealed — it is not because we are indifferent to the 
 religious idea, not because we want to get rid of a 
 restraining moral influence, nor yet because we de- 
 spise the consolations of faith and the peace which 
 follows prayer. It is simply because certain things, 
 integral to those revelations, cannot stand the test of 
 scientific truth, and fall to pieces under the touch of 
 reason. And what is this joy, this exultation, to 
 which Mr. Gladstone assigns so shameful a parallel- 
 ism ? Is it in our sense of freedom, through our 
 deliverance from the cruel superstitions which have 
 overwhelmed brave men with abject terror, reduced 
 feeble minds to imbecility and inflamed ardent ones 
 to madness — which have ruined the happiness of 
 multitudes, destroyed innumerable Hves, and put in- 
 struments of torture into the hands of fanatics where- 
 with to oppress their victims, till the hell they 
 preached was translated to earth, and the devil they 
 painted was embodied in their own persons ? Musi 
 
 A PROTEST A»T) A PLEA. 
 
 163 
 
 we bury that devil with the " decencies of mourning," 
 and hang up wreaths of parsley and crowns of im- 
 mortelles on the closed gates of hell? Yet neither 
 the one nor the other is to be extricated from the 
 correlative ideas of God and heaven as given to us by 
 the Bible and the Christian churches. What is our 
 exultation ? To feel that we are men, surrounded by 
 unfathomable mysteries, but free from the fears 
 which desolate and degrade — to feel that we can look 
 up to heaven above unabashed if questioning — that 
 we are one with the nature we do not yet understand, 
 but part of the whole, and not ruled off to a special 
 destiny of eternal torment — to have broken our 
 ghastly idol, the Moloch of our sorrow, bloodstained 
 and tear-bedewed, and to have enshrined in its place 
 Infinity and Law — this is our joy, deep, solemn, self- 
 respecting, abiding; and we would that aU humanity 
 shared it. But to question the objective truth of 
 the anthropomorphic religions accepted by man as 
 revelations, and to have cast from us the hideous 
 superstitions bound up with them, is ' not to repeat 
 the " frantic orgies of the Commune." 
 
 The theory of direct revelation creates a dilemma 
 from which I see no escape. Either it is necessary 
 for the spiritual well-being of man that truths taught 
 by God himself should be known and beheved, or it 
 is not. If the former, then we are landed in the 
 mystery of Partiahty and the Favored Nation ; with 
 the corollary of injustice to those excluded for no 
 fault of their own — ^by the mere accident of their 
 birth deprived of benefits essential to their eternal 
 happiness. If the latter, then it seems scarcely worth 
 the trouble for Omnipotence to have deHvered a mes- 
 sage in the tremendous form assumed by Christians, 
 
164 A PROTEST AND A PLEA. 
 
 if the fate of tlie excluded is not touched thereby, 
 and everything is made pleasant at last for every one 
 all round. If we accept the theory of a Unified 
 Truth delivered by diiect revelation, we are forced 
 into the position occupied by Roman Catholics and 
 Mohammedans — that is, the exclusion of unbelievers 
 from the privileges promised to the faithful — and the 
 consequent injustice of the divine being, who favors 
 some and disinherits others, irrespective of personal 
 merits and for motives of pure caprice. 
 
 Better than a divine soui'ce seems to me the purely 
 human origin of this belief in a specialized and par- 
 tial revelation, and how it is the translation into 
 religion of that passionate patriotism which makes its 
 own tribe, race, nation, the finest in the world, the 
 preservation and supremacy of which is of the first 
 importance. It is no other than the egotism which 
 is necessary for self-preservation, but which cannot 
 bear the test of reason exterior to itself. Standing 
 apart fi'om all, and impartial to all, we can judge bet- 
 ter than when we are face to face with one alone. And 
 standing apart, judging for the whole human race 
 and on the broad grounds of equal justice, we see 
 how infinitely unjust would be any partial revela- 
 tion — any creation of a favored nation which should 
 exclude from pai'ticipation in its benefits the innocent 
 disinherited. If we find joy, too, in this deUverance 
 from the injustice involved in partial, local, and racial 
 revelations — revelations made to some and withheld 
 from others — it is because we open the doors of truth 
 to all humanity alike — making it general and not 
 special — because we think oui' spmtual democracy a 
 nobler thing than the creation of an aristocracy 
 among souls, where inherited beUef in Christ, Mo- 
 
 A PROTEST AKD A PLfiA. 
 
 1G5 
 
 hammed, Jehovah, or Vishntl confers celestial rank 
 and eternal privileges, denied to the excluded. But 
 to see only the mind of man in concrete religious sys- 
 tems is not to deny nor to despise the religious 
 idea — the instinct of reverence for the Highest 
 Ideal — the worship which is inspired by the sense of 
 Infinity— the confession of that Something beyond 
 ourselves and our knowledge, which some men call 
 God, and others the Unknowable, and others, again, 
 the Law of Righteousness by which we are gov- 
 erned and to which we strive to attain. 
 
 The very fact that there are more reHgions than 
 one in the world, and that each consoles and sustains 
 its worshiper, surely of itseK proves the subjective 
 quality of creeds. Who can deny the power which 
 behef in the gods of Olympus had on men ? When 
 wild thoughts and tumultuous desires disturbed the 
 Greek girl's heart, did she derive no calming spiritual 
 influence when she fled to the altar of Artemis and 
 laid her offerings before the goddess, beseeching her 
 divine support ? Where was the difference between 
 her prayer and that of her younger sister who kneels 
 before the shrine of the Vii'gin to-day, or tm-ns in 
 fear of herself to her patron saint, her guardian 
 angel, asking each to defend her from sinful thoughts 1 
 Was the story of Actaeon, slain for his presumptuous 
 intrusion on divine privacy, less real to the Greek 
 than is to the Jew that of the fifty thousand and 
 three score and ten men of Beth-shemesh, smitten be- 
 cause they had looked into the Aik of the Lord ? 
 ^Tien women, in their hour of trial, cried out to 
 Lucina, was it with a different feeling from that 
 which makes the Sicilian invoke the aid of la Madonna 
 della Catena? Was the mystery of the bii'th of 
 
166 
 
 A I>BOT£ST AKB A PLEA. 
 
 Dionysos more incredible than that of the Miraculous 
 Conception, or the avatar of Crishna ? Like our own 
 Divine Triad, unseen by excess of light, hidden be- 
 hind the clouds, veiled in the summer sunshine, 
 heard in the tempest, and present in the darkness of 
 the night, ever unseen but ever there, the gods of 
 Olympus drew in council together and watched over 
 the affairs of the men they had made. And the pious 
 beheved what they did not see, and worshiped by 
 faith, not knowledge. When some bold skeptic de- 
 nying possibility, or ardent believer seeking to realize 
 his faith, chmbed to the top of the Sacred Hill, 
 searching for proof, what did he find? Was there 
 but one feather of eagle or of dove, of peacock or of 
 owl, to attest the truth of the greater by the evidence 
 of the less ? — one solitary stain of the old gray stone, 
 swept by the wind and bleached by the snow, which 
 showed where the nectar had fallen from Hebe's cup 
 or Ganymede's unpracticed hand?— one spangle of 
 gold from the girdle worn by the " Most Beautiful?" 
 Was there one smallest material proof of the existence 
 of those Divine Twelve, to whom so many temples 
 had been raised, so many prayers addressed ? Do 
 we believe their objective existence now ? and have 
 we buried them with the "decencies of mourning?" 
 WTiat to us is that vision of Athene which inspired 
 the artist and cheered the faint and feeble ? — ^what the 
 worth of those processions and prayers, those offer- 
 ings and sacrifices, which then were held all-powerful 
 to avei*t war or secure victory, to give good crops to 
 the land and bring divine favor to the devout ? What 
 to us are those divine advocacies or enmities in which 
 Achaian and Trojan so imphcitly trusted ? Do we 
 believe in the visit of Jove and Mercury to Baucis 
 
 A fEOTESTJ And a plea. 
 
 167 
 
 and Philemon — even those of us who accept as divine 
 the stories in the Bible of how God and his angels 
 came down to visit Adam and Eve, Abram and Sara, 
 Moses and Mary ? Where are the satyrs who fright- 
 ened the nymphs in the woods, and the fauns who 
 linked the himian ynih the brute ? Where are the 
 rude gods of the river, fathers of men ? — the Eimien- 
 ides and Ate, Styx and Cerberus ? Do we not now 
 confess their phantasmal, subjective, self- generated 
 existence ? Do we not say : " These things never 
 were, but were only thought to be ? " Yet one of the 
 charges which cost Socrates his life was that he de- 
 spised the tutelary deities of the state, putting in 
 their place another divinity/ which was as if a 
 medieval Spaniard should have denied the actual 
 appearance of Saint Jago at the battle of Clavijo ; or 
 his brother monks have questioned the holy visitation 
 to Fra Angelico ; or as when some modem thinker 
 stands apart from the anthropomorphism of the Chris- 
 tian creed, doubts direct revelation, and questions 
 the divine authorship of the first chapter of Genesis, 
 in favor of unchangeable law and progressive im- 
 provement in knowledge, brain-power, and cosmic 
 conceptions. 
 
 Admit the theory of an Omnipotent Artificer out- 
 side Law — of an Author of Creation who could Jiave 
 made all things differently if he would — and we are 
 caught in a network of contradictions from which 
 there is no possibihty of freeing ourselves. Where 
 do we find the benevolence of that acting and ruling 
 deity, belief in whom has, truly enough, " satisfied 
 the doubts, wiped away the tears, and found guidance 
 for the footsteps of so many a weary wanderer on 
 the earth ? " Not in nature, of which man is but one 
 
168 
 
 A PEOTEST AND A PLEA. 
 
 manifestation among the countless millions. All 
 through nature we find pain and strife and death as 
 the charter of existence. The weak are the prey of 
 the stiong, and hfe must incessantly be sacrificed 
 that life may continue to exist. We make great 
 account of our own pains, and put up prayers in 
 churches when certain microscopic organisms have 
 taken possession of us, and ai'e rapidly destroying 
 our vitality; but who prays Omnipotence for the 
 small crab held down by the big one, and slowly 
 picked to death by those ruthless pincers tearing 
 fragment after fragment from the quivering flesh be- 
 neath the shell? What feebler-winged creature 
 invokes supernatural aid against the tenible dragon- 
 fly, the murderous wasp, bearing down on it for 
 destruction? Look at the spider, the vulture, the 
 tiger, the cannibal, and the tyrant among men. Ai'e 
 they not all parts of one great whole — integral to 
 creation as it is — different manifestations of the same 
 law ? But if not the result of law, working inexor-' 
 ably and automatically from its own center, then are 
 they the deliberate work of an independent creator, 
 who might have done differently and more mercifully 
 if he would. In which theory hes the most reasona- 
 bleness and the most humihty?— in that which con- 
 fesses ignorance of the causa causans, or in that 
 which creates unanswerable contradictions because of 
 its declaration of knowledge, and its ascription of 
 pain, misery, and death to the will of a beneficent 
 deity and an omnipotent and all- wise father ? 
 
 If there be any truth in science at all, and astron- 
 omy, geology, chemistry, biology are not so many 
 delusions of the senses, there was a time when our 
 ancestor— v> horn, for want of a better term, we call 
 
 A PROTEST AND A PLEA. 
 
 169 
 
 Primitive Man— was removed from the brute only in- 
 somuch as he had a more erect caniage, a little bigger 
 brain, ajid more completely differentiated members. 
 Of religion, morality, decency, pity, social law, patriot- 
 ism, he understood no more than the ape, his 
 brother. He was as much outside the pale of the 
 moral law as the spider or the vulture. In his mm-- 
 ders, his cannibalism, his bestialities was no sin, be- 
 cause there was no knowledge. He was simply a 
 brute, inclosing in himself potentiaHties of future de- 
 velopment. The product of the law of evolution, he 
 had within him the power of evolution. By slow 
 degrees his brain grew and his thoughts ripened. He 
 learnt the value of fixed laws for government, and 
 the consequent need of obedience, with punishment 
 for infraction. He developed a conscience, and he 
 developed morahty; and among his moral qualities 
 He developed pity for suffering. Fear of the pitiless 
 elements, of the ferocity of wild beasts, ignorance of 
 causes aud consequent fear of results, together with 
 dreams, sickness and death, had akeady created an 
 Elemental God. When the social conscience was 
 born, the creation of a Moral God, the pitiful helper 
 of man, followed as of necessity— by the same law as 
 that which created the elemental deity, and made vis- 
 ible fetishes of stones and trees, prefacing the graven 
 images and painted idols. Imperfect social conditions 
 necessitated a Court of Ultimate Appeal. The man 
 oppressed here by his stronger superior, and helpless 
 in a state of society where might was right and law 
 was not justice, needed some one to redress his 
 wrongs— if not now nor here, yet in the future— the 
 beyond. The tyranny of the potent kings must be pun- 
 ished by the wrath of the one omnipotent ; the suffej-- 
 
170 
 
 A PBOTEST AND A PLEA. 
 
 ings of the innocent and helpless must be avenged 
 by the eternal ruler who holds the scales and metes 
 out justice. But our God was, and is, the transcript 
 of our social condition — the measure of our knowl- 
 edge. The social and personal wrongs of which we 
 make so much account are but the translation into 
 human action of the material sufferings pervading all 
 animate creation. Why must a man be eternally com- 
 pensated for a cruel and untimely death, or for the 
 loss of his worldly goods and gear, while the worm, 
 prdled asimder by two blackbirds or slowly devoured 
 by flies — which tried Frederick Kobertson's faith so 
 sharply — the smaller lobster, which is ejected from 
 its safe hiding-place among the rocks and thrown out 
 into the waste of the sea to perish by its enemies, is 
 but fulfilling its appointed destiny, without which life 
 would not exist at all ? This necessity for a Court of 
 Ultimate Appeal and a righteous Judge who shall 
 compensate those who have been afflicted here, while 
 punishing the oppressors, seems to me no more a 
 necessity when life is over than compensation for the 
 worm or the lobster. Each is the same thing, differ- 
 entiated by circumstances and conditions — the homo- 
 geneity of nature and the invariability of the universal 
 law being surely among the firpt lessons to be learned 
 by those who dare to think. 
 
 Better and truer than the individual consolations 
 of eternity are the general ameliorations wrought in 
 time. By the law of evolution which rules society — 
 the expression of man's mind — ^just as it rules the 
 translation of organisms, wrong and injustice create 
 better laws when the human brain has advanced to 
 the point when it can understand that injustice and 
 shape a nobler ideal The world, which in its bar- 
 
 A PEOTEST AND A PLEA. 
 
 171 
 
 barous nonage prostrates itself at the feet of crowned 
 robbers covetous of their neighbors' vineyards — of 
 royal murderers setting obstructive husbands in the 
 front of the battle that the wives may be possessed 
 in peace — in its manhood sees the greater good of 
 equal justice to all, and preaches the nobler law of 
 rights and duties as against that of submission and 
 privileges. The specialized inheritance of the few 
 enlarges itself into the generous democracy of Christ, 
 which swept down the barriers of the court and rent 
 the veil of the temple. The Favored Nation was 
 called on to share; the aristocrats of heaven had to 
 enlarge their borders, and the Elect to add new 
 thrones to their number. But as presbyter, once a 
 liberal protest, grew to be only "old priest writ 
 large," so Christianity, which was in the beginning 
 as wide as humanity, by the law of consoHdation and 
 contraction working in things spiritual as well as 
 material, has become as close a guild and as exclusive 
 a sect as the Judaism it was pledged to displace. By 
 the dogma of a Unified Truth, of a divine and direct 
 revelation, giving privileges to those who beheve and 
 entailing loss on those who are excluded, the Savior, 
 whose salvation was in his universaUty, has been nar- 
 rowed into a sectarian deity, like Jehovah, like Allah, 
 like Vishnti. It is the Agnostic who now takes up 
 this lapsed creed of universaUty — who preaches 
 afresh the democracy of souls — who, in his behef that 
 the religious idea is one to be improved and finally 
 perfected by evolution and knowledge, sees the true 
 salvation of men and their final redemption from 
 error. In this behef He his hope for the future and 
 his patience with the present. He trusts to time to 
 carry on the work of mental enlargement, as it has 
 
170 
 
 A PROTEST AND A PLEA. 
 
 A PE0TE8T AND A PLEA. 
 
 171 
 
 ings of the innocent and helpless must be avenged 
 by the eternal ruler who holds the scales and metes 
 out justice. But our God was, and is, the transcript 
 of our social condition — the measure of our knowl- 
 edge. The social and personal wrongs of which we 
 make so much account are but the translation into 
 human action of the material sufferings pervading all 
 animate creation. Why must a man be eternally com- 
 pensated for a cruel and imtimely death, or for the 
 loss of his worldly goods and gear, while the worm, 
 pulled asunder by two blackbirds or slowly devoured 
 by flies— which tried Frederick Robertson's faith so 
 sharply — the smaller lobster, which is ejected from 
 its safe hiding-place among the rocks and thrown out 
 into the waste of the sea to perish by its enemies, is 
 but fulfilling its appointed destmy, without which life 
 would not exist at all ? This necessity for a Court of 
 Ultimate Appeal and a righteous Judge who shall 
 compensate those who have been afl^cted here, while 
 punishing the oppressors, seems to me no more a 
 necessity when life is over than compensation for the 
 worm or the lobster. Each is the same thing, differ- 
 entiated by circumstances and conditions — the homo- 
 geneity of nature and the invariability of the universal 
 law being surely among the first lessons to be learned 
 by those who dare to think. 
 
 Better and truer than the individual consolations 
 of eternity are the general ameliorations wrought in 
 time. By the law of evolution which rules society — 
 the expression of man's mind — ^just as it rules the 
 translation of organisms, wrong and injustice create 
 better laws when the human brain has advanced to 
 the point when it can understand that injustice and 
 shape a nobler ideal The world, which in its bar- 
 
 barous nonage prostrates itself at the feet of crowned 
 robbers covetous of their neighbors^ vineyards— of 
 royal murderers setting obstructive husbands in the 
 front of the battle that the wives may be possessed 
 in peace— in its manhood sees the greater good of 
 equal justice to all, and preaches the nobler law of 
 rights and duties as against that of submission and 
 privileges. The specialized inheritance of the few 
 enlarges itself into the generous democracy of Christ, 
 which swept down the barriers of the court and rent 
 the veil of the temple. The Favored Nation was 
 called on to share ; the aristocrats of heaven had to 
 enlarge their borders, and the Elect to add new 
 thrones to their number. But as presbyter, once a 
 hberal protest, grew to be only "old priest vmt 
 large," so Christianity, which was in the beginning 
 as wide as humanity, by the law of consohdation and 
 contraction working in things spiritual as well as 
 material, has become as close a guild and as exclusive 
 a sect as the Judaism it was pledged to displace. By 
 the dogma of a Unified Trutii, of a divine and direct 
 revelation, giving privileges to those who beheve and 
 entailing loss on those who are excluded, the Savior, 
 whose salvation was in his universaUty, has been nar- 
 rowed into a sectarian deity, hke Jehovah, hke Allah, 
 hke Vishnti. It is the Agnostic who now takes up 
 this lapsed creed of universality— who preaches 
 afresh the democracy of souls— who, in his belief that 
 the religious idea is one to be improved and finally 
 perfected by evolution and knowledge, sees the time 
 salvation of men and their final redemption from 
 error. In this behef he his hope for the future and 
 his patience with the present, He trusts to time to 
 carry on the work of mental enlargement, as it has 
 
172 
 
 A PROTEST AND A PLEA. 
 
 A PROTEST AND A PLEA. 
 
 173 
 
 already, together with that of physical improvement ; 
 he trusts to science to give us increase of veritable 
 knowledge — and he knows that his trust is not in 
 vain. 
 
 All bitterness and reproach, all persecution and 
 scorn, are among the things dead and done with to 
 the Agnostic. As Httle as he would curse the ele- 
 ments which wrecked his house and ruined his land 
 would he curse — though he would prevent — the spir- 
 itual cruelties of his brother, acting according to the 
 law of an uneducated mind, a biiitish nature, and 
 walkiiig by the dim hght of that dawn which is not 
 yet morning. Ho knows that humanity must fulfil 
 the universal law, and from low, amorphous begin- 
 nings reach up to moral nobleness and spiritual 
 beauty. He knows that all society is experimental, 
 all laws are tentative ; that the stream of tendency 
 does indeed make for righteousness, with many wind- 
 ings and much doubling back on its way, but always 
 flowing onward from the darkness to the Hght — from 
 the narrow rock in the mountain to the broad and in- 
 finite sea. In the abhorrence which good men feel 
 for crime he sees the ultimate destruction of crime ; 
 in the gi'eat Man-God which forms the ideal of all 
 rehgions he sees the projection of humanity itself on 
 the screen of the future ; in the fact that this human- 
 ity has ever touched the level of Moses, Buddha, 
 Christ, he sees the possibilities of the whole race. 
 He knows and humbly confesses the great wall of tho 
 Unknown between him and the Ultimate Verity. 
 But in measming where he stands now from that 
 brutish Piimitive who was his ancestor, he sees no 
 limit to further infinite advance. He sees no limit 
 save that of the individual. Every man must be bom 
 
 helpless, and if he hves to the end of his tether he 
 must die decayed, carrying his experiences with him. 
 All the same the race survives. 
 
 Let it be so. The individual is nothing. He is no 
 more than the diatom, the bit of protoplasm which 
 helps to make a geological stratum and a biological 
 world. From the individual as he is now — striving 
 after righteousness, suffering for truth, offering him- 
 self as a fragment in the great stepping-stone— will 
 come the race which shall some day be as gods, 
 knowing good and evil. The storms of the present 
 may wither the vines and blight the fig-trees, but the 
 roots remain ; and it is better to be among the eternal 
 roots of Yggdrasil, barren of beauty for ourselves, 
 but helping in the life and solace of others, than to 
 be one of the fairest of the annuals— things bom of 
 the day and perishing with the day, leaving nothing 
 permanent nor solid behind. Ah ! better than all 
 personal gain of riches or of love, which perish with 
 our hves, is that immortahty of influence found in 
 the example of those who have done a noble deed or 
 spoken a brave truth ! Worst of all the errors, most 
 deadly of all the UTeligious denials, is that egotistic 
 preference of individual gain over the general well- 
 being. Not against those who doubt the divine per- 
 sonality they cannot see— who question the fatherly 
 care and beneficence of an omnipotent aitificer who 
 has made sorrow, suffering disease, and death neces- 
 sities of existence— but against the egotists who 
 make the unit of more importance than the whole 
 should such men as Mr. Gladstone turn their arms. 
 Speculative opinions ai'e incapable of proof, but moral 
 heroism is a certain quaatity ; and the belief in and 
 practice of Altruism are essentially parts of that code 
 
174 
 
 A PROTEST AND A PLEA. 
 
 which has to come to the front in the future. Once 
 men did not see the higher ideal contained in the 
 spiritualized Lord whom Paul preached, over the 
 deities whom Ovid vulgarized. They preferred their 
 joyous hymns and picturesque processions to the 
 colder, more sublime, less tangible worship of the 
 " pale Galilean," behef in whom included the socialism 
 of general poverty for this world and the hope of 
 happiness transferred from life here to life after 
 death. "What was it to the joyous Greek, to the 
 strong and sensual Roman, to whom Hades was but 
 a world of shadows, to be told to give up all here — 
 all that was lovable, pleasurable, tangible — for the 
 hypothetical joys of heaven? Did he not say: "I 
 will take when I can and hold by what I know? " just 
 as those to whom Altruism is unwelcome because of 
 its destruction of egotism say : " What to me is the 
 race? JT suffer — Zlove — /desire; what do I care for 
 the rest ? " But it has to come. The nobler life is 
 inevitable ; and the day when Duty shall overcome 
 Pleasure, and Altruism be stronger than Individ- 
 ualism, is as certain in the futiire as is the calculation 
 of an eclipse or a new discovery in chemistry. 
 
 The loss out of his life of a personal deity does not 
 dismay the Agnostic, and the destruction of his be- 
 Hef in direct revelation has not left him desolate. As 
 a brave man knows how to die and pass into the 
 darkness of the grave with calmness and dignity, so 
 a brave soul knows how to Hve by the light of an 
 educated conscience only — that conscience being the 
 result of gradual development, as much as is the 
 sense of justice and the consciousness of shame. He 
 waits for the time when better knowledge shall enable 
 men to reconcile the mystery of the material cruelty 
 
 A PBOTEST AND A PLEA. 
 
 175 
 
 of nature with the pity, the justice, the moral sense, 
 which are the active and substantive possessions of 
 man only— who, after all, is only matter conscious 
 of itself to the highest degree yet attained. He does 
 not know why the House of Life should be thus di- 
 vided against itself, nor why he, who Is only a higher 
 translation of the Force which expresses itself in the 
 worm and the crab, should feel pity when he sees the 
 one pulled asunder by two blackbirds— a sickening 
 kind of indignation when the Hving flesh of the other 
 is being slowly picked out by the pincers of the 
 stronger. One with nature, and the product of 
 material things, his revulsion from the circumstances 
 of his origin is not to be explained by the theory of 
 a moral sense— that something extra added by the 
 God who has originated these circumstances. This 
 would be to make the creator ashamed of his own 
 creation, and to make man his judge and assessor. 
 It is a mystery; and the greatest of the many by 
 which we are surrounded. Why matter, fully con- 
 scious of itself in the mind of man, should find the 
 inevitable law, the unalterable conditions of life, 
 cruel, and should do what it can to ameHorate them, 
 is an'enigma not to be explained away by the story of 
 Adam and Eve— a talking snake standing erect— a 
 God who walked m the garden in the cool of the 
 evening— a Forbidden Tree and a Tree of Life— or 
 any other of the mythological circumstances to which 
 the orthodox pin their faith, finding them sufficient 
 
 for their peace. 
 
 Let us go out into the open and judge for our- 
 selves. Let us climb to the top of Mount Olympus, 
 of Ararat, of Meru ; let us Hf t up the hd of the Ark 
 of the Covenant, enter the Sepulcher, touch the stone 
 
176 
 
 A PROTECT AND A PLEA. 
 
 at Mecca, feel the wheels of the car of Juggernaut, 
 and test what we find by the aid of reason and such 
 science as we possess. If we find there things which 
 vanish as we look — things vaporous as clouds that 
 cannot be held — unstable as the river mist which can- 
 not be compelled — can we still beheve in the objective 
 existence of the faiths bound up with these things ? 
 Or shall we not rather say they are all of the same 
 order — prophet and pythoness, angel and demigod, 
 Madonna and Hera, Crishna and Chiist, Jehovah and 
 Zeus — they are all names, not persons, and all repre- 
 sent analogous conditions of brain differentiated by 
 climate and the tendencies of the race? Beyond 
 them all lies the boundless and impersonal Infinite — 
 the grandeur of impartial law — the prizes to be won 
 from the depths of the as yet unknown — and the 
 one concrete imperishable essence of all religion — 
 our duty to our fellow-men, and our duty in self- 
 respect to ourselves. 
 
 Always the popular faith has been the last word, 
 the supreme revelation, to those who beheve; and 
 always the first doubters — the Uhlans preceding the 
 army of destroyers and subsequent reconstructors — 
 have been made martyrs to their negation. To be 
 said to doubt the tutelar deities of the city cost 
 Socrates his life — Socrates, who, before all men, taught 
 reverence and preached virtue. To deny that Jesus, 
 the Son of Mary, was God Incarnate has cost many 
 hundreds of Hves. To question the divine mission 
 of Mohammed has been as fatal to thousands as was 
 the denial of the supremacy of Jehovah to the priests 
 of Baal. The world reveres its idols, and looks neither 
 to the fashion of their make nor to the passions they 
 typify. Jealous or cruel, punishing the children for 
 
 A PROTEST AND A PLEA. 
 
 177 
 
 the father's sin or demanding the sacrifice of the in- 
 nocent for the redemption of the guilty— these idols 
 are precious beyond all else, and their worship is 
 held as dear as Hfe itself. And ever the deniers of 
 their divinity have been accused of preaching the 
 wildest immorality as well as the most godless in^e- 
 hgion, and of desiring to break all the wholesome 
 restraints which keep men from crime and vice and 
 force them to obey the moral law. *' The frantic 
 orgies of the Commune!" Yes, that is the modem 
 name for the old stone. It is always the same stone, 
 renamed according to circumstances. But by and by 
 the world comes up to these pioneers. Then it 
 ceases to revile, and takes their place, crying out : 
 " We knew all this before ; you are telhng us no new 
 
 thing." . - 
 
 There is no more sin in questioning the objective 
 
 truth of reUgious systems than there is in verifying a 
 scientific position. We seek the truth, and the fact 
 of this seeking is the proof that we have not yet 
 found. "Judicial bhndness" is the phrase of cer- 
 tainty so far as the individual is concerned. But his 
 realization does nothing for another ; on the contrary, 
 that one man reaUzes one thing and his brother an- 
 other incontestably proves the subjective quaUty of 
 each creed. The cry of the human heart is yet 
 unanswered, and the reconcihng medium between 
 man's moral sense and the natural law is yet to s; 
 The world stands with parched lips, waiting for . 
 dew of Hermon by which its thirst will be slak 
 and tiUwe cau reconcile t^^e-two (^po§ingmau^ 
 Testations of the lame ForSQ^t^vmlt r«i9aij3;ift4satij ^ 
 fied. The solution is not to be found in tKe addfnne 
 
 of Original Perfection, th^ jk}\ ioAMP' fopseqjie^t 
 
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178 
 
 ▲ VKVCESr AND A PLEA. 
 
 sufferings of all life for the childish disobedience of 
 one man. Meanwhile, we who believe in the future 
 of bmnanity by the law of progress wait, hoping and 
 of good heart. Schools are our temples ; science is 
 our ritual ; time is our heaven ; the human race con- 
 tains our future gods ; and the Satan we have to 
 conquer and to chain is that arid Egotism which de- 
 spises for the race what it cannot enjoy in its own 
 person, and cares more for the salvation* of its own 
 individuality than it does for the redemption of the 
 world. If in this creed can be found any analogy to 
 the frantic orgies of the Commune, I for one am con- 
 tent to stand in the pillory, and let Mr. Gladstone 
 and his co-reHgionists pelt me at their pleasure. 
 
 E. Lynn Linton. 
 
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 MEN, WOMEN, AND GODS, 
 
 AND OTHER LECTURES. 
 
 By HELEN H. GARDENER. 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 By col. R. G. INGERSOLL. 
 
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 as the following notice of "Men, Women, and Gods :' J n..r.ioT,pr i« a 
 
 "Men, Women, and Gods, and Other Lectures," by Helen H. Gardener, is » 
 flnodecimo volume of about 186 pages, containing three lectures ^ith an 
 np^ndix,seTun^forth some of the authorities from which the lecturer draws 
 
 ^^'"Thefi'rst^lectur^e^ gives the title to the book, the second is on "Vicariona 
 Atonement," and the Sird on " Historical Facts and Tlieolpgical Fictions^ 
 
 AllTre keen, \agSrous, and acrid attacks on the Christian church forms of 
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 ine since the flower of that plant is charity of thought and action,. and in this 
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 ^eedom of^nvestigation anS opinion she sees the highest end of 1^;« "jteUectual 
 Bide H-r leading purpose seems to be to show. that women, of aU persons, 
 Ihoiild LTast suppol^^^ and the churches which .hold it m reverence 
 
 The first lecture is a surprisingly bitter and scathing denunciation of the 
 OldTestlS^entasthesumol aU cruelty and bmtahty toward women, an^ 
 inakes UD a startUngly strong case from the pages of the book itself. . J-t^any one 
 S not thfnk th?case can1>e made strong let him read carefully this book and 
 also the thirty-firSt chapter of " Numbers." , . , , '^i„r,*i^^ 
 
 The second lecture arraigns vicarious atonement as an inexcusable injustice 
 in itsofffweTkening^^^ in its influence, like indiscriminate alms- 
 
 Sv/ng, and Ss oTth^^^^ not peculiar to ckristiamty, but is found in 
 
 ""^i't'hThlSe'arl^rTst^^^^^^^^^ disfigured with a good 
 
 deal of flippant pShag.de8i^e%,n doubt, t^ catch thejpooular attention by 
 tiSlinc the popular ear. The lecturer's strongest .work is. done in the third 
 Kre^XSe?ie?puiTOseisto8howthat our. civilization " i.^i .^ ^?!S.^f^>S 
 S-p Christianity, anT^ the Christian religion has e^^^^^y ^^^.^^fi^ 
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 whioh in this world, is in cUmate and soil. In support of ^er .view of the posi- 
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 morals of civilization— morals in general, mdeed-are. not at aU based in or 
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 S gSden nS??' the tehest principle of moraUty, antedates Chnstiamty » 
 thousand years. 
 
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 life to what is really known, to accept the facts and then see what 
 sustenance can be extracted from them. A book like this is certain 
 to be widely read and to produce a deep impression. — Liberal Chris- 
 tian. 
 
 Mr. Frothingham is a gentleman of fine scholarly attainments, a su- 
 perior writer and an eloc^uent speaker, and, judged by his intellect, 
 liberality, progress and independence, is jprobably the best preacher 
 in the United States at the present day. On what is human, natural, 
 practical, useful and liberal, he is very conclusive, instructive, and 
 gratifying, and gems of this kind are sparkling on every page of 
 " The Safest Creed."— .Boston Investigator. 
 
 Mr. Frothingham's idea of God is as noble a conception as ever 
 emanated from the brain of a human being. He is painted in the 
 finest and most charming colors. Mr. F.'s use of the brush is that of 
 the most accomplished artist, and thinking men of every shade of 
 opinion will fina delight in the picture presented. — Jewish Times. 
 
 These discourses manifest deep thought, thorough conviction, and 
 great ability. — Philadelphia Press. 
 
 The author of these discourses is the high priest of New England 
 rationalism, and is the recognized exponent of the latest and most 
 genteel phase of modern infidelity. None of his contemporaries can 
 approach him in elegance of diction. He writes gracefully, in the 
 richest garb of flowery rhetoric. — Albany Evening Journal. 
 
 The author has courage as well as sincerity, and presents his ideas 
 with entire frankness, and with a clearness of style and intellectual 
 strength which will command for them general attention. The book 
 is printed on tinted paper, and is handsomely bound.— J?M^(W Satur- 
 day Evening Gazette. 
 
 THEOLOGY AND MYTHOLOGY. 
 
 An Inquiry into the Claims of Biblical Inspiration 
 and the Supernatural Element in Religion. 
 
 By ALFRED H. O'DONOGHUE, 
 
 Counselor at Law, formerly of Trinity College, Dublin. 
 
 Extra Cloth, 12mo., 194 pp. - - - - Price, $1.00 
 
 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 An able and thorough treatment of the subject, remarkable for its 
 candor, earnestness, and freedom from partisan bias. — Critical Eeview. 
 
 As a man of liberal education and wide reading, and one who thor- 
 oughly understands himself, and is actuated by an earnest desire to 
 find the right, he deserves a he&nng.— American Bookseller, 
 
 It has the brilliancy and felicity of many other Irish writings. 
 The author was educated in the Episcopal church, and his dedica- 
 tion of his ability to free thought and speech will be widely appre- 
 ciated. — Commonwealth (Boston). 
 
 The author is evidently well-read in the authorities pro and eon, 
 has a clear mental view of the case as it is, handles all the evidence 
 as he would in a case at law, and expresses his opinions and convic- 
 tions in a fearless manner. He treats the whole subject in a purely 
 rationalistic manner— just as all subjects that interest the human 
 race ought to be treated. — St. Louis Republican. 
 
 The book can be read by intelligent religionists without prejudice. 
 There is no harm in understanding what the liberal mind is thinking 
 about, and if mythology has anything to do with theology we should 
 know it. — Kansas City Journal,. 
 
 EXTRACTS. ' 
 
 " While at the Dublin University, with the intention, at the proper 
 time, of entering the Divinity School, my mind underwent a great 
 change, both as to the so-called truths of Revelation and the sincerity 
 of belief held in those assumed truths by over three-fourths of the or- 
 dain^ and educated preachers of the gospel with whom I came in con- 
 tact. . . 1 seek to eliminate the fictitious in Christianity as now taught." 
 
 *' The doctrines that Jesus taught— the brotherhood of man and the 
 condemnation of priestcraft — entitle him forever to the admiration and 
 gratitude of his race . . . Jesus, like all great reformers, was himself 
 m advance of the conscience, as well as the intelligence, of his age, but 
 in order to render his mission at all successful, he was compelled to 
 deal gently with the superstitions of his time. Probably he was not 
 himseljf altogether divested of them." 
 
 "'The pale Galilean has conquered;' but it has only been by 
 passing under the yoke of the conqueror, and assuming the ban- 
 ners, the emblems, and the passwords of the enemy. It is a conquest 
 in which genuine Christianity has disappeared, or skulks behind altars, 
 
 Eillars, paintings, and music. Christianity as taught and understood 
 y Jesus and his followers has ceased to exist for sixteen hundred 
 years. Even the infant Church was driven to abandon the Commun- 
 istic idea that distinguished the first few years of its existence. In mod- 
 em Christianity hardly a trace of the religion of Jesus is discernible. 
 If Jesus and his true life were taken from Christianity, it is doubtful if 
 it would excite notice, or, if noticed, cause regret, comment, or surprise. ' 
 
APPBOPBIATB TO ALL SEAaONB! 
 
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 pictures could be given to any child.-[John Swinton's Paper. 
 
 i?ntirAlv nricrinal. Dure in tone, and well calculated to broaden, 
 lighten, anS st?e^Sthen the growing mind.-[Rhode Island Pendulum. 
 
 A book that should be in every family. We would recommend it 
 above any other book of the kind now known to us.-[Independent Pulpit. 
 
 Stirs and stimulates the noblest inspirations of its readers. Every 
 Preethought parent who can possibly .pay for it, and does not purchase a 
 CTi^rwilX be iguilty of injustice to Ms or her chUdren. -[Freethinkers' 
 
 Magazine. 
 
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