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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



George the Second, if saying of Charles Ed- 

 ward " the man is become as one of us," 

 have intended to convey a singular or a plu- 

 ral meaning ? Can we disprove the asser- 

 tion of Bishop Harold Browne, that this 

 plurality of dignity is unknown to the lan- 

 guage of Scripture ? And further, if we 

 make the violent assumption that the Chris- 

 tian Church with its one voice is wrong and 

 Dr. Beville right, and that the words Avere 

 not meant to convey the idea of plurality, 

 yet, if they have been such as to lead all 

 Christendom to see in them this idea through 

 1800 years, how can he be sure that they 

 did not convey a like signification to the 

 earliest hearers or readers of the Book of 

 Genesis ? 



The rest of Dr. Reville's criticism is di- 

 rected rather to the signiticance or propri- 

 ety, than to the truth, of the record. It is 

 not necessary to follow his remarks in de- 

 tail, but it will help the reader to judge how 

 far even a perfectly upright member of the 

 scientific and comparative school can in- 

 dulge an unconscious bias, if notice be taken 

 in a single instance of his method of com- 

 paring. 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 con- 

 ceives the head and the heel to be so much 

 upon a par in their relation to the faculties 

 and the vitality of a man that he can find 

 here nothing to indicate 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. Re- 

 ville's phrase) 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 feelingly 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 mo- 

 ment that their morality was simply the 

 morality of a little child, the undeveloped 

 morality of obedience, without distinctly 



formed 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 their 

 loving obedience to their Father and Creator 

 they would certainly have had a germ, let 

 me say an opening bud, of morality ? But 

 this proposition, taken alone, by no means 

 does justice to the case. Dr. Reville would 

 probably put aside with indifference or con- 

 tempt all that depends upon the dogma of 

 the Fall. And yet there can be no more 

 rational idea, no idea more palpably sus- 

 tained, whether by philosophy or by experi- 

 ence. Namely, this idea : that the commis- 

 sion 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 injures that nature in de- 

 ranging it, in altering the proportion of its 

 parts and powers, in introducing an inward 

 disorder and rebellion of the lower against 

 the higher, too mournfully corresponding 

 with that disorder and rebellion produced 

 without, as toward God, of which the first 

 sin was the fountain head. Such is, I be- 

 lieve, the language of Christian theology 

 and in particular of St. Augustine, one of its 

 prime masters. On this matter I apprehend 

 that Dr. Reville, when judging the author 

 of Genesis, judges him without regard to his 

 fundamental ideas and aims, one of which 

 was to convey that before sinning man was 

 a being morally and physically balanced, 

 and nobly pure in every faculty ; and that, 

 by and from his sinning, the sense of shame 

 found a proper and necessary place in a na- 

 ture which before was only open to the sense 

 of duty and of reverence. 



One further observation only. Dr. Re- 

 ville seems to " score one " when he finds 

 (Gen. iv, 26) that Seth had a son, and that 

 " then began men to call on the name of the 

 Lord " ; " but not," he adds, " as the result 

 of a recorded revelation." Here at last he 

 has found, or seemed to find, the beginning 

 of religion, and that beginning subjective, 

 not revealed. So hastily, from the first as- 

 pect of the text, does he gather a verbal ad- 

 vantage, which, upon the slightest inquiry, 

 would have disappeared like 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 



