446 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



for themselves or borrowed those of their neighbors " ; that " of 

 the theories current in Assyria and Phoenicia fragments have 

 been preserved, and these exhibit points of resemblance with the 

 biblical narrative sufficient to warrant the inference that both are 

 derived from the same cycle of tradition." 



After giving some extracts from the Chaldean creation tablets 

 he says : " In the light of these facts it is difficult to resist the 

 conclusion that the biblical narrative is drawn from the same 

 source as these other records. The biblical historians, it is plain, 

 derived their materials from the best human sources available. 

 . . . The materials which with other nations were combined into 

 the crudest physical theories or associated with a grotesque poly- 

 theism were vivified and transformed by the inspired genius of 

 the Hebrew historians, and adai)ted to become the vehicle of 

 profound religious truth." 



Not less honorable to the sister university and to himself is 

 the statement recently made by the Rev. Prof. Ryle, Hulsean Pro- 

 fessor of Divinity at Cambridge. He says that to suppose that a 

 Christian " must either renounce his confidence in the achieve- 

 ments of scientific research or abandon his faith in Scripture is a 

 monstrous perversion of Christian freedom." He declares : " The 

 old position is no longer tenable ; a new position has to be taken 

 up at once, prayerfully chosen, and hopefully held." He then 

 goes on to compare the Hebrew story of creation with the earlier 

 stories developed among kindred peoples, and especially with the 

 Assyro-Babylonian cosmogony, and shows that they are from the 

 same source. He points out that any attempt to explain particu- 

 lar features of the story into harmony with the modern scientific 

 ideas necessitates " a non-natural " interpretation ; but he says 

 that if we adopt a natural interpretation " we shall consider that 

 the Hebrew description of the visible universe is unscientific as 

 judged by modern standards, and that it shares the limitations of 

 the imperfect knowledge of the age at which it was committed to 

 writing." Regarding the account in Genesis of man's physical 

 origin, he says that it " is expressed in the simple terms of pre- 

 historic legend, of unscientific pictorial description." 



In these statements and in a multitude of others made by emi- 

 nent Christian investigators in other countries is indicated what 

 the victory is which has now been fully won over the older the- 

 ology. 



Thus, from the Assyrian researches as well as from other 

 sources, it has come to appear and to be acknowledged by the 

 most eminent scholars at the leading seats of Christian learning 

 that the accounts of creation with which for nearly two thousand 

 years all scientific discoveries have had to be " reconciled " the 

 accounts which blocked the way of Copernicus, and Galileo, and 



