PROEM TO GENESIS. 629 



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 sacred text. That there 

 is a further and larger question, not shut out from the view even of 

 the most convinced and sincere believers, Mr. Huxley may perceive 

 by reading, for example, Coleridge's "Confessions 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 

 following proposition. It is perfectly conceivable that a document 

 penned by the human hand, and transmitted by human means, may 

 contain matter questionable, uncertain, or even mistaken, and yet 

 may by its contents as a whole present such Trio-rets, such moral proofs 

 of truth Divinely imparted, as ought irrefragably pro tanto to com- 

 mand assent and govern practice. A man may possibly admit some- 

 thing not reconciled, and yet may be what Mr. Huxley denounces 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 compass of the first twenty-seven verses of Genesis, an 

 account of the cosmogony, and of the succession of life in the strati- 

 fication of the earth, which would combine scientific precision of state- 

 ment with the majesty, the simplicity, the intelligibility, and the im- 

 pressiveness of the record before us. Let me modestly call 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 reptiles, can not 

 in all points be sustained ; and yet still there remain great unshaken 

 facts to be weighed. First, the fact that such a record should have 

 been made at all. Secondly, the fact that, instead of dwelling in 

 generalities, it has placed itself under the severe conditions of a 

 chronological order, reaching from the first nisus of chaotic matter to 

 the consummated production of a fair and goodly, a furnished and a 

 peopled world. Thirdly, the fact that its cosmogony seems, in the 

 light of the nineteenth century, to draw more and more of counte- 

 nance from the best natural philosophy ; and fourthly, that it has 

 described the successive origins of the five great categories of j^resent 

 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 Assyrians, 

 or Egyptians, who monopolized the stores of human knowledge when 

 this wonderful tradition was born ; but among the obscure records of 

 a people who, dwelling in Palestine for twelve hundred years from 



