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that the account which Moses gives of the temptation and the fail is to be depended 

 upon, if it passed through no more than four hands between him and Adam.* 



If " the trustworthiness of our Lord Jesus Christ " is to stand 

 or fall with the belief in the sudden transmutation of the chemi- 

 cal components of a woman's body into sodium chloride, or on 

 the " admitted reality " of Jonah's ejection, safe and sound, on the 

 shores of the Levant, after three days' sea- journey in the stomach 

 of a gigantic marine animal, what possible pretext can there be 

 for even hinting a doubt as to the precise truth of the longevity 

 attributed to the patriarchs ? Who that has swallowed the camel 

 of Jonah's journey will be guilty of the affectation of straining at 

 such a historical gnat — nay, midge — as the supposition that the 

 mother of Moses was told the story of the flood by Jacob ; who 

 had it straight from Shem ; who was on friendly terms with Me- 

 thuselah ; who knew Adam quite well ? 



Yet, by the strange irony of things, the illustrious brother of 

 the divine who propounded this remarkable theory has been the 

 guide and foremost worker of that band of investigators of the 

 records of Assyria and of Babylonia who have opened to our 

 view, not merely a new chapter, but a new volume of primeval 

 history, relating to the very people who have the most numerous 

 points of contact with the life of the ancient Hebrews. Now, 

 whatever imperfections may yet obscure the full value of the 

 Mesopotamian records, everything that has been clearly ascer- 

 tained tends to the conclusion that the assignment of no more 

 than four thousand years to the period between the time of the 

 origin of mankind and that of Augustus Csesar is wholly inad- 

 missible. Therefore, that biblical chronology, which Canon Raw- 

 linson trusted so implicitly in 1859, is relegated by all serious crit- 

 ics to the domain of fable. 



But if scientific method, operating in the region of history, of 

 philology, of archaeology, in the course of the last thirty or forty 

 years, has become thus formidable to the theological dogmatist, 

 what may not be said about scientific method working in the prov- 

 ince of physical science ? For, if it be true that the canonical 

 Scriptures have innumerable points of contact with civil history, 

 it is no less true that they have almost as many with natural his- 

 tory ; and their accuracy is put to the test as severely by the latter 

 as by the former. The origin of the present state of the heavens 

 and the earth is a problem which lies strictly within the province 

 of physical science ; so is that of the origin of man among living 

 things ; so is that of the physical changes which the earth has un- 

 dergone since the origin of man ; so is that of the origin of the 

 various races and nations of men, with all their varieties of lan- 



* Bampton Lectures, 1859, pp. 50, 51. 



