OUR FIRST PARENTS 219 



the use of iron only at a far later date, the Scrip- 

 ture is in perfect accord with science, or rather 

 we should express it in the reverse way, for while 

 scientific facts can stand by themselves unchal- 

 lenged, scientific theories can have no better com- 

 mendation of their plausibility than their accord- 

 ance with the Inspired Word, 



A stone implement is all that Adam could nat- 

 urally have fashioned, and this only with the 

 greatest difficulty and probably in the very crud- 

 est way. He was serving his sentence, and we 

 do not therefore presume that any very extraordi- 

 nary assistance was given him, such as would 

 have been accorded in Paradise, though we can- 

 not, of course, say what knowledge he may have 

 brought with him from there. It is true that 

 even in exile his mind and heart may have been 

 in the closest communion with his Creator, and 

 his thoughts may have penetrated deeper and 

 reached farther than our own. Yet the making 

 of a bronze spear-head would still have been en- 

 tirely beyond the wildest flights of his imagina- 

 tion, as the possibility of a gleaming steel needle 

 would have remained undreamed of by Eve as 

 she tried a hundred devices to fashion a gar- 

 ment of untanned skins. 



Above all we must understand that no need 

 was then felt of things that now seem to us so 

 indispensable. The loftier the mind, in fact, of 

 our first progenitors, the less they were probably 



