X PREFACE 



spirit of scientific investigation. For those who 

 look upon ignorance as one of the chief sources of 

 evil ; and hold veracity, nut merely in act, but 

 in thought, to be the one condition of true pro- 

 gress, whether moral or intellectual, it is clear 

 that the biblical idol must go the way of all other 

 idols. Of infallibility, in all shapes, lay or clerical, 

 it is needful to iterate with more than Catonic 

 pertinacity, Delenda est. 



The essays contained in the present and the 

 following volume are, for the most part, intended 

 to contribute, in however slight a degree, to this 

 process of deletion. Unless I greatly err, the 

 arguments adduced go a long way to prove that 

 the accounts of the Creation and of the Deluge 

 in the Hebrew scriptures are mere legends ; and 

 further, that the evidence for the existence and 

 activity of a demonic world, implicitly and ex- 

 plicitly inculcated throughout the Christian scrip- 

 tures, and universally held by the primitive 

 Churches, is totally inadequate to justify the ex- 

 pression of belief in it. 



This much on the negative side of the discus- 

 sion. On the positive side, the essay on the 

 " Evolution of Theology," as I imagine, shows 

 cause for the conclusion that the Israelitic reli- 

 gion, in the earliest phase of which anything is 

 really known, is neither more nor less rational, 

 neither better nor worse ethically, than the reli- 

 gions of other nations in a similar state of 



