Grote.] • >_<) [Sept. 19, 



ceded the more complex, is unanimously conceded by all who have investi- 

 gated any brancb of natural science, and effectually contradicts tbe sudden 

 and separate origin of things deducible from tbe account in Genesis. With 

 this, it will be sufficient if we point out in a brief way the facts discovered 

 by science which contradict the account of creation in Genesis, whether 

 we accept the sequence of plants and animals revealed by a study of fossils 

 and living kinds, as indicating a genetic connection, or as being insullicient 

 grounds for such a conception. 



" From internal evidence, Genesis is not homogeneous in its composition, 

 ;,s we have already seen. An originally detached portion having a different 

 immediate source, terminates with the third verse of the second chapter, 

 and it is quite evident that in dividing the text into chapters a mistake 

 has been committed in this instance; the second chapter should begin, if 

 an arbitrary division into chapters is intended to help the comprehension 

 of the text, at its fourth verse. That these two accounts contradict each 

 other is plain. The first account affirms that when God created man, 

 'male and female created he them.' The second account as positively 

 declares that man was created in the person of Adam as one sex and soli- 

 tary. Finding that such a creation was incomplete and useless, the Deity 

 made woman not out of the ground or dust, but of a hone of man himself. 

 At one time one can readily conceive that such a belief could be seriously 

 entertained when we read the accounts given by existing savages of their 

 own origin. But it never for one moment occurs to us to credit such con- 

 ceptions. The idealists have been busy with this account of the origin of 

 woman. It is taken as symbolical of the marriage state, of the dependence 

 of woman upon man, ' bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh.' But to the 

 uncultured races their fairy-stories are real, they believe them as Roman 

 Catholics believe modern miracles and Protestants ancient miracles. 

 Among the people who originated this fairy-tale of the origin of the first 

 pair, the story passed for circumstantial fact. It satisfied their natural 

 enquiry as to the origin of things, and it arose out. of their mental status. 

 But to ask us, who have gone beyond their mental condition, to stillaccept 

 it as true, is unreasonable, and it is quite impossible that we should comply 

 with such a request. 



"In the second account the events of creation are given in a different 

 order from the first, and this account is throughout more circumstantial. 

 The Garden of Eden is described, and this has been lately identified with 

 the mythological center of the ancient Chaldean Pantheon. Before both 

 accounts were cast in their present fossil condition in the Hebrew Bible, 

 they probably had a connection, as we have seen in a preceding chapter, 

 and had undergone a development in which both had lost something of 

 their original form, the tirst account more, the last less. 



"The fust account in the first chapter of Genesis may be now compared 

 with the facts ascertained by science. We must believe that the text 

 should be understood literally when it speaks of 'day' and 'night,' 

 becaus • with I his reading it agrees w ith the context. Prom the alternation 



