lives of the first inhabitants of earth to some thousands of years; the records in Genesis, therefore, which give a far more moderate duration of existence, are not to be suspected of falsehood in this particular. The ancient worthies esteemed the patriarchal accounts of very great importance, as the groundwork and witness of their religion; as such they taught them to their children, and in old age frequently repeated the oft-told story, so that there could be little danger of the narrative being misunderstood or designedly corrupted. Such parts as had been clothed in verse, vestiges of which occur in Gen. iv. 23, 24, would be the more easily retained in memory, and could not be altered without injuring the parallelism or disturbing the harmony; and this would lead to the observation and correction of the error.

"The events related are fewer, and the narratives less full, and perhaps more obscure in proportion to the antiquity of the accounts and the length of time during which they were preserved by tradition; while, on the contrary, those which are the most modern are also the most complete. From this it is evident that the compiler or author of Genesis must have rejected all uncertain and suspicious accounts, very many of which had doubtless come down from a period of considerable antiquity, and must have received those only the correctness of which was unquestionable.

"Further, the subjects of the narrative are of the simplest kind, and altogether dissimilar to those which fill the earliest histories of other nations. If in any respects a slight similitude is discoverable, it is still evident that the latter are feigned or amplified and distorted by fictions, while the former exhibit merely the simple truth. This was acknowledged, without any hesitation, by the heathen, whether learned or unlearned, who in the first ages of Christianity turned from the contemplation of their own fables to that of the Hebrew Scriptures. Besides, those doubtful or partly

fictitious narrations, or, if the definition be preferred, philosophical opinions clothed in allegorical language, which are known by the name of mythi, are single fragments, which have no real connexion either among themselves or with genuine history. But the accounts in the book of Genesis are indissolubly connected with each other and with history in general. The mythi abound with fictions relating principally to gods and goddesses and demigods, to their wars, and even to their obscene and sexual intercourse. They relate to demons, heroes, nymphs, and metamorphoses, also to the inventors of useful arts and founders of noble families, whose origin they fabulously ascribe to an intermixture of the divine with the human. In the first book of the Pentateuch, nothing of the kind is to be found. The accounts which it contains relate only to one God, the creator and governor of the universe, and the preserver and guardian of morals and religion, to the establishment, protection, and promotion of which they are devoted; and they hold forth the prospect of an auspicious and blessed period, when true religion and virtue shall be propagated among all nations. That this prediction has been already fulfilled in a great degree, is undeniable; and past accomplishment encourages the believer to anticipate its completion.

"Should it be granted that alterations may have taken place in these accounts, yet even this would not render the character of the principal parts on which the history rests suspicious. Those portions which might be supposed to be most liable to suspicion of corruption or fiction, are such as may be thought to border on the marvellous, such as the accounts of divine revelations. But these very accounts of revelations contain predictions of the perpetual duration of the religion which they teach among the posterity of its first possessors, and of its future propagation among all nations, which it would have been impossible for the authors

of these accounts, whoever they were, to invent. See Gen. xii. 1-3, xviii. 18, xxii. 18, xxvi. 4, xxviii. 14, xviii. 19, and xvii. 4-14. The idea of God, which pervades all these records, is such as would never have originated with unassisted man.

"It may be remarked farther, that if these narratives, like the fabulous accounts of other nations, had been altered so as to suit the fancy of the narrator, they would have differed in many respects from their present form. As good morals are everywhere inculcated in them, the immoralities and facts of doubtful character which now occur and are certainly but little honourable to the principal personages of the history, would have been omitted. The various narratives which appear in the book of Genesis would not have corresponded so accurately with the nature of things; the speeches which it contains (see particularly xliii. 1—14,

3 and xliv. 18—44,) would hardly have been so exactly suited to the characters and situations of their respective authors; the general character of the personages would not have been preserved with such uniform and permanent consistency, but would have approached occasionally to caricature; the four hundred years of Gen. xv. 30, would have been changed into four hundred and thirty, to correspond with Ex. xii. 40; the apparent contradictions would have been reconciled; in one word, the whole narration would not have been so perfectly consentaneous to the general course of things observable in other histories.*

* "Illustrative of the manner in which the rationalists exhibit the statements made in the Bible, and endeavour to place them on the same footing with the early and fabulous accounts of other nations," I quote from the notice of Drechsler, already referred to, in the New York Review, p. 134, 135.

"It is well known,' says Von Bohlen, 'that all the nations of antiquity possessed accounts of the early history of mankind, of the increase

"The arguments which have been urged against the historical credit of the documents employed by the author of the book of Genesis do not prove that the narrations originally given in these documents have been altered, but only that they may have been; that is, in effect, they prove nothing, for the argument from possibilities to facts is void The of all force. He attempts to show that the narrations contained in these documents cannot be true, are entirely futile. Such is the assertion, that our first parents could not have immediately related the events described in Gen. ii. 4—iii. 24,

and extension of the human race, and even of the creation of the universe. In immediate connexion with them is the knowledge of God, his being and attributes, his connexion with the world, and particularly with men. These accounts remind us of a period, during which God or divine beings came down to earth, walked among men in human form, trying their virtue, promising and threatening, rewarding and punishing. To say all in one word, most of the eastern nations possessed writings similar in their contents to those of the Old Testament; and this not only in general, but often in particular, and even in a remarkable degree.'

From this representation, which no literary man thinks of questioning, what is to be gained? From promises like these, what results? As the accounts referred to are undoubtedly fabulous, the rationalist writer infers or assumes that those in the Old Testament are of the same character. A more direct and palpable begging of the question cannot be imagined. It is, as Drechsler says, a logical blunder. The possible suppositions of which the case admits are three. Either, several of these different accounts contain portions of historical truth; or, as Von Bohlen thinks, all are untrue; or one alone is really and historically the true statement. The sober and rational inquirer will not content himself with assuming that condition, which his prepossessions may have constituted the favourite one in his mind, but will carefully examine the evidence of all, and admit the one in favour of which the evidence preponderates."

To maintain, as the neological party in Germany have done, that a narrative must be fabulous or fictitious, or of comparatively late date, because its contents are of a prophetic or miraculous character, presumes the impossibility of prophecy or miracle, and is a course of procedure utterly unworthy of the name of argument.

in consequence of the imperfection of their language; and that when their stock of words had increased, they could not have remembered the events of their earliest existence, because without words nothing could be retained beyond an obscure recollection of things. But neither of these assertions is true. For, as to the former, our first parents were adult in the first moment of their existence, possessing the use of all the faculties of their minds, and of all the members of their bodies. They had, moreover, both the power of speech and incitement to its use, so that as soon as the ideas which must have entered their minds immediately upon their existence were conceived, they expressed them in language. With respect to the other assertion, the ideas produced during the first moments of their existence, when in possession of all their intellectual powers, whether they were produced by the impressions of the senses or by the instructions of the Deity, would be the most tenaciously retained by the mind, for the very reason that they were the first; they would be treasured in its inmost recesses, so as to be readily recollected during the remainder of life, and easily narrated in language sufficiently copious at any subsequent period.

"There can be no doubt that the doctrine of a creating Deity, and consequently that of the creation and origin of all things, are maintained throughout the whole of the book of Genesis; for the object of all the documents employed in its compilation, is to teach, that this doctrine was revealed to our first parents, that it was preserved by especial divine providence until the time of Abraham, and that it was to be preserved and at last propagated among all nations. The account therefore of the creation, with which the book commences, inasmuch as it coincides with this general object, is not a fiction, nor a poetical description of the creation, nor a philosophical speculation of some ancient sage, but, as