100 THE LAPSE OF TIME. 



names of three well-known princes (Ahaziah, Joash, 

 Amaziah), whose histories occupy several chapters in the 

 Second Eook of Kings, are omitted, and Amaziah's son 

 is described, without further note or comment, as a 

 son begotten by one who was really his father's great- 

 grandfather. In a matter so obvious, there cannot at- 

 tach to the compiler of the genealogy the very faintest 

 suspicion of bad faith, He was following the custom 

 of his country, for reasons then deemed, and perhaps 

 in those days actually being, good and sufficient. 

 Can we make as satisfactory an apology for men in 

 the present day, who shut their eyes to the nature of 

 the evidence on which they build opinions about the 

 age of the world opposed to the discoveries of science ? 

 If in the first century of the Christian era, in times of 

 comparative enlightenment, by men of approved truth 

 and uprightness, genealogies could be compiled without 

 the smallest regard being paid to the actual number of 

 successive generations, it becomes impossible to attach 

 any value as chronological evidence to Hebrew genea- 

 logies fifteen hundred, or, for all that we can tell, fifteen 

 thousand years more ancient. Had the genealogy on 

 which this conclusion rests admitted a chance of 'error, 

 had there been any motive for fraud in its construction, 

 did any suspicion lie against its authenticity, the case 

 would be weakened. But just because there neither was 

 nor could have been error in the mind of the writer, or 

 deceit in his intention, just because what he wrote, he 

 wrote deliberately and of set purpose, it is certain that 

 his record is not, and was never meant to be, a measure 



